Name: The Twin Heros (93.16% in 19 votes)
Type: RPG
Platform: WINDOWS
Company: U&J Technology
Release date: 1999
Reviewed by: Tabris
Okay after a little convincing from Lamuness, i actually decide to write this Pre review paragraph explaining my bias. This game is EXCELLENT. Not only is it excellent but I got hooked on it for 3 days non stop playing. Although there are many statements about the bad points in the game, it is simply based on my biased due to the novel not being the same and characters that i love is not in the game. But part 2 is coming out so whos complaing right =)
When most people hear the word chinese kung fu novel, many people will remember JinYong. But what people are forgeting is another very famous author, Goo Long. Goo Long wrote the infamous Twin heros story and now U&J decides to make a game out of it. Personally being a big fan of Chinese kung fu novels in general, this story is no stranger to me. When the press released the games news, I quickly jumped on top of it and went out on a rampage to hunt the game down. And might i add, it was all worth while (for most part anyways).
For all of you who are not familiar with the story, Let me briefly introduce the game story. The story begins with China's most handsome guy by the name of Kong Pui,whom ran off with a girl He deeply loves, Fa Yuet Lao. Fa Yuet Lao, is a servant for the Moving Flower Palace. This palace is known for two brutal sisters whom uses the Martial Arts of Ming Yuk Kuet and the Moving Flower Stances. But, at the same time, the two sisters, are in love with Kong Pui as well. They never thought that their stunning beauty lost to a servant of theirs. Because of this, they got very angry. When Kong Pui and Fa Yuet Lao, are trying to hide from the two sisters, Kong Pui's understudy Kong Kum, betrayed them for the two sister's trust, Martial arts, and some money. When the two sisters killed Kong Pui and Fa Yuet Lao, they discovered that Kong Pui and Fa Yuet Lao had twins. So they decide to raise one twin up and let Kong Pui's god brother, Yen Nam Ten, worlds best swordsman, raise the other. And twenty years later, they would see the two twins fight each other to death with only the twin sisters knowing the secret of their sibling relationship. When Yen Nam Ten arrive to the murder scene, he only found one baby and decides to revenge for his god brother. This brought him to the place The Bad man's Cliff in search of the understudy Kong Kum. Who would have thought, the people there ambushed him and paralyzed him. Ten years went by, the people inside the cliff decided to raise the kid, and named him Kong Sao Yue (little fish). And the story begins...
The sound on the game is excellent. There were voice dialogues in the beginning screen and the sound during the whole entire game, many many sounds in that, are of excellent quality. The music actually does give you an ancient china mood without giving you none of the hard to listen to (or as i would put it annoying crap) that other games try to use to accomplish this mood.
As for graphics, it is SUPERB. 65500 colors and more and the characters are made by alpha channel, a smoother polygon graphically interface that actually reminded me of a better version of Final Fantasy 7. (The gameplay is actually a little simiilar too) Besides the polygon graphics, The character dialogue are loaded with a face picture and face expressions and you can see the many different face expressions of may characters in the story. One of the best part of the characters that i personally like is the status menu where you see the 3/4 body shot of the character you are using. The drawing in that is totally awesome especially the girls =P.
The gameplay of the game is actually very interesting. You actually pick up books and learn martial arts little bits at a time which makes the game a lot harder. But a supplement to this is that everytime you fight an enemy, if you equip yourself with that book and use that attack/special, then it adds points to the learning status. Also, you get skill points where when saved enough, you can master the martial arts with. Another point that this game is not the usual RPG game is the use of herb making. You actually get experience points in making herbs and that if you hebr making skill is low, then your chance of making a good herb is low. A very interesting point that distinguish this game from other RPGs is that there are some enemies that you can select to enter battle mode or have a conversation with. Depending on the person, you can get some information out of them, Make them trade some with you, trick them into giving you stuff or stealing their stuff. This illustrates a goodpoint in the story, that Kong Sao Yue is actually a bad/good guy. And finally, the main selling point of the game is the different varieties of martial arts you can learn in the game. And the way you can get these books to learn the skill is crazy as well. Yes some skills are learned just regularly like double team attacks and some special attacks that you learn first before you get the book.
Back to the part about the gameplay being similar to FF7, this game have the anger meter and when it is full you can use limit breaks. Another aspect is the time meter, but in this game, the time meter is more precise. I say this because different attacks takes off different amounts of time on your time meter, and you can only attack when the meter is full. So if you use a very powerful attack, chances are, the enemy will hit you two times back before you can hit again.
Pros - The game overall is nicely done. The graphics are tremedous. The background scenes are just AMAZING. And the personality of a lot of characters are portrayed very well throughout the game.
Con - There are a lot of drawbacks in the game though, for instance, there are a lot of errors in the dialogue, and sometimes you can get a face that belongs to a character that wasn't suppose to say that. Also there are a lot of black screens in the game that are sound effects, that shows hidden things the character did, like get into a fight, get saved by so and so, but these black screen jumps too quick and the story doesn't explain what happened between the black screens. Lucky for me i know the story so i can kind of guess what happened. Another thing, the game is simply too easy. The red words in the dialogue tells you what you need to do and the way the game is set up makes it a fairly easy game to beat if you have the time. Last and Most important draw back is that the story is not the same as the novel. Many characters i loved were not found in the game.The funny situations in the book with Kong Sao Yue is not translated thoroughly making the game losing the essence of the story.
Final Statement - Besides the drawbacks (most of which are my personal opinions) the game is made with SUPERB quality and the company deserves every penny i paid for the game.
Recommends to - This game is recommended for ALL. Especially RPG lovers who loves a interesting story (not the same as the novel but quite interesting). Also recommended for people who appreciate fine quality games and beautiful looking girls i mean graphics =)
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