Name: Soukaigi (70.00% in 1 votes)
Type: ADV
Platform: PSX
Company: SquareSoft Japan
Release date: 1998
Reviewed by: Tamahome
Final Fantasy 7, Parasite Eve, Xenogears... These are all the great games that sqaure has made for us in the past two years. Many people have been wondering about the limits of Square's potential. The screenshots of FF8 sure looks good and I heard that it might go all the way up to 5 CDs. With all these great games, who dares say Square has not been successful. I've been a major fan of Sqauresoft titles and I usually give it a rating it deserves in my reviews. However, The recent release of Soukaigi held a little disappointment for me.
The game Soukaigi begins during December of 1998. Fuji mountain erupted and it killed a lot of people in Japan. After that God like creatures started to release monsters so that they could dominate the world. The player then can control different characters in the game to battle these monsters and bosses. The gameplay itself is smooth for an action game. Unlike the high detail levels of Resident Evil 2 and Tomb Raider 2, the game uses rough backgrounds that is not really appealing. However the backgrounds are streamed during movies which avoided the issue of major loading time for the movies.
The gameplay in my opinion is better than the Tomb Raider series, but lacks the thrill of the Resident Evil series. The characters can do various moves and combos allowing them to deal out different damage to the enemy. Along with the enemy in the level, there are also three types of crystals in which the character could destroy. These crystals allow extra attributes to the characters. The attributes are Jump and Dash, number of magic tailsman, Number of enemy the character can freeze, Magic Defense, physical Defense, magic and projectile attack and Attack. Different characters require a different number of crystals to add a level to the stats. The interesting thing about this game is that the crystals are shared amount the characters in the beginning of the level, so there are no permenant changes to the stats of the characters.
Many people would call this an Action RPG and before I played the game, I immediately relate this game to the Seiken Densetsu series, but this game is nothing like that. I would say this game is closer to Resident Evil than any of the Seiken Densetsu games. Although I am not amazingly impressed at this game like I am with other Squaresoft games, it is still a title which should be picked up.
Here are the ratings I give to this game:
Gameplay: 8/10
One of the stronger attributes of this game. It has better controls than the Tomb Raider series, but since the motions are rather exagerrated like the ones in Dragon Ball Z. It is sometimes hard to recover from a big hit when all sense of direction has been lost. Some of the bosses are also very annoying since they fly around too fast for the players to follow. The levels are not long enough to be addictive and some of the levels are too simple.
Music: 7/10
The music is nice, especially the song in the first level, but other than that it gets repetative and I found it rather boring. After playing the game a while, you don't actually concentrate on the music since everything moves too quickly. I don't even know what the music tracks were for some parts of the game. There are a lot of voices in this game, and for the most part, the voice actors and actresses did a great job for the game. Let's hope that if the US ever decides to release it, that they would subtitle the conversation instead of dubbing it over :)
Graphics: 6/10
The graphics are not as good as it should have been. The backgrounds and objects look grainy and often distorted and so does the character's face close up. It has grainy graphics than the ones in Xenogears, so you could imagine that the graphics are not the game's best attribute. The monsters are dull and usually just a deformed pile of color. The spells and special moves are anaimated nicely though and the attacks and combos are also well done.
Story: 7/10
For an adventure game, it has a good story. But the plot revolves around fighting god like beings which resembles most of the themes of Square games. Although the story is very good, most of the time the story is told with the characters standing still. People who do not understand Japanese would have the urge to skip the scenes and just play the levels. The dialogues are too lengthy for an adventure game but the right length for an RPG game. I guess that's why people would call this game an action RPG.
Overall: 7/10
I would give this game a higher rating if it has better graphics and backgrounds. The short gameplay also adds up to a lost to the game. Although fun, the replay value is not really there, unless you want to continue the game after the last boss to collect all the lost crystals and so on. The simple graphics and short gameplay only allowed me to give it a 7/10. I would have to say that this is not the best Square game that has been released. I would recommend this game for anyone who likes adventure game and wanted to play an adventure game more farfetched than RE2. However this game is definitely not for die hard RPG fans who depise RE and Tomb Raider type of games.
Soukaigi is created by Yuke and Squaresoft and all rights are reserved to those companies.
Please feel free to email me at Tamahome2@home.com for more info.
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