|
An RPG must have a good story. The story-telling in Summoner does one thing right and one thing wrong. What they did wrong was to introduce too many terms in the made up language of fantasy. While some made up words, whether proper nouns, places, or things are necessary, I read somewhere that too many of these becomes overwhelming. Summoner is definitely guilty of overusing made up terms. On the other hand, if you engage in conversations with citizens, they are smart to retell and rephrase the same story elements enough times that the story does become clear without seeming like the characters are just repeating the same two lines over and over. So the rephrasing and retelling of plot points and background lore overcome the initial overload of unfamiliar terms, but the overload is there nonetheless.
My favorite part of the game was the stealth action at the beginning of the second act. Your party is disbanded and the thief/assassin must sneak into an enemy facility to free the party leader. What ensues is a somewhat simplified stealth action sequence, but it is action gameplay right in the middle of an RPG. This was fantastic! It also worked well, despite having less complexity than games like Splinter Cell. What I find interesting, though, is that I happened to have the thief (Flece) developed for backstabbing and sword fighting. I wonder if this section would prove frustrating or less fun if a player had chosen to make her character into a ranged type, or tried to make her a caster. The stealth mechanics worked well and were easily understood, as was the backstabbing. This whole section provided for some great variety in the game that was totally unexpected and proved to be incredibly fun.
The first city, Lenelle, is enormous. The game starts out with a fairly standard setup; boy from farm finds his village under attack, kills a few guards while making his escape to seek out a lost mentor in the big city. After spending a few HOURS in this city alone, I thought the world was going to be epic. However, it turns out that this is the only city in the game. While there is nothing wrong with that, per se, it seemed like the narrative was painting a picture of a much larger world, such that I was expecting to encounter at least two of these cities in my adventures. The game also reuses the same levels, albeit with a few changes in layout (e.g. destroyed sections of the city later block off access to the slums that you explored early in the game). Regardless, the reuse of the same spaces was somewhat boring. The game also took only 36 hours to complete, including exploring all over the place and my typical MO of talking to every single npc I encounter. In other words, I am not a speed gamer in RPGs, so 36 hours by my standards is a fairly small world.
[Spoiler Alert: this paragraph contains major huge mega spoilers]
The story has some great plot twists peppered throughout the narrative. In fact, throughout the latter part of the second act in Orenia, I was getting whiplash at all the crazy plot twists that were thrown at me during almost every conversation! It was splendid to behold. I also liked the two possible endings. In both cases, the world is righted and the party members go on to do great things. The difference is in what happens to you, the main character. In one case, you become the god Urath. In the other case, if you walk away from "your destiny", the story concludes that not much is known about our character, suggesting that perhaps he went on to other, yet untold, adventures. What is nice is that the people in the world throughout the game had been divided about whether the gods were useful, dead, or the actual causes of all the problems in the first place. So it is fitting that neither of the choices results in a "bad" ending. You could argue that the choice is thus irrelevant, since nothing bad happens either way, but it is more subtle this way, allowing for a choice that doesn't have to be a black/white decision like the ones that dominate most games with morality systems these days.
The game was a launch title for the PS2. It is widely reported that development for the Emotion Engine was difficult. With that in mind, I still have to point out a few technical issues. The frame rate is very unstable and seems to really chug at times. This makes the "chain" timing difficult to predict most of the time. Another problem was the camera. The camera angles really crushed the visual experience. The worst case was when the camera refused to follow the players up a steep set of stairs toward the Great Library. During the demo reel that plays from the main menu, a shot going up these same stairs shows flags flying and an impressive scene. However, in the real game the camera will only look down at the player's party, so this set piece effect is completely lost. I can only assume that the limited view angles were at least partly because they could not draw enough things in the distance fast enough, hence this is a technical criticism. If it was not a technical limitation, the designer(s) who set these angles should be dragged into an alley and flogged to death.
The AI was mostly simple brawler mechanics, where a limited number of foes would close to melee range. However, when a caster was mixed with a few melee types, the combat became more difficult. If multiple casters were involved, the player stress and combat difficulty shot up to new levels. While this made the overall difficulty of the game vary wildly, defeating these relatively rare multi-caster combat encounters became very rewarding.
One of the most memorable encounters for me was a fight when my party was split up, so I only had two members. We ran into a group of three casters simultaneously, even though I was attempting to aggro them one at a time. The fight dragged out into epic duration. I was using health potions like crazy and trying to deal out damage faster than the casters were able to heal each other and damage my people. It was a rough fight and I just barely won, but it was very fun! I had a similar enconter with the full party later in the game, but it was more frustrating than fun. Managing all four party members was tedious in that case, as they would easily split up and start attacking different enemies, making it difficult to concentrate the combined efforts of the party on any one foe.
Overall, the game had some great moments, some excellent plot twists, and an intersting internal dialogue about religion, made even more impressive by the fact that is was weaved into the narrative, never breaking the "fourth wall" or slapping the player in the face with an opinion.
|
