I didn’t have many expectations for this game. If anything, I was expecting it to be average and nothing more. But the game ended up being really badly made and no fun at all.

So as you can guess, I didn’t like it.

Read on to see why!

Looks and sounds
The graphics are… unimpressive at best. The character models have seemingly low poly-counts(the lion bosses look lame and lifeless), the environments are repetitive (basically every room looks the same), the enemies designs are not too great and have a massive lack of variety and the cutscenes use the in-game engine which isn’t too great. It uses some sort of cel-shading to try to hide the flaws, but ultimately fails.

The sounds are basic stuff. The music is not too bad actually, the high point of the game… The voice acting is…. Well, the lion bosses sound lame, the lame light magic guy is lame and Ayumi is okay.

Story
You play as Ayumi, a treasure hunter. She’s on some random island with ruins looking for treasure. After the first boss she becomes cursed and tried to find a cure for the curse (which, sometimes, makes a big number of enemies pop up). So now she tries harder to find the treasure since it can apparently get rid of the curse. Really basic and boring story. I skipped half the cutscenes because they weren’t fun to watch. Ayumi could’ve been an interesting character, but fails to do or say anything interesting. The setting and such of the game doesn’t help either. Random girl going to random island to find random treasure and gets random cliché curse… Not gonna win awards anytime soon, that’s for sure.

Gameplay
Where to start? Well, it’s hard to say if they wanted to make a lame DMC clone or a lame Dynasty Warriors clone…
The controls are okay. You can jump(X), use normal attack combos(Square), shoot your guns (R1), lock-on(L1), move around and use special attacks or power-ups binded to certain buttons (Triangle, Circle, L2 and R2). The normal attack combo is standard stuff. The lock-on system is quite annoying to use. Special attacks and guns target to the currently targeted enemy (which is random basically, unless you point the camera straight at the enemy you want), or just hit an area around you. What really annoying is the dodge system. You need to be moving in one direction, then push the same direction while pressing the jump button. It doesn’t work well, but above all it’s completely useless other than in one of the trap rooms.

Fighting enemies is simple at first, but it becomes a hassle really fast. At first it’s hard to see when you’re getting hit, since there’s pretty much no sign of attacks hitting you(small splatters of blood), unless it’s big fireballs. Eventually, there’s tons of enemies in a room that can hurt you just by touching you, so when there’s a lot, your combos get broken off fast. You also realize that getting hit cuts off your attack and you get a tiny amount of time where you can’t attack (other than certain special attacks), so when you’re surrounded by a lot of enemies and other flying enemies are swooping down on you(AKA ALL THE TIME), your chances to attack are quite cut down. And with so many many enemies all the time, the targeting is screwed up too.

When entering a room, normally there’s a type of enemy in particular you have to kill, and the only way to know that is killing them and checking if the “enemy life bar” is going down or not. And the encounters are usually long and boring, with many life-bars, or generators that respawn enemies that you have to destroy. Pretty much all the rooms are like that. This game is the very definition of repetitive. There’s, like, 3 trap rooms with no enemies, but they’re actually really lame and easy to get through.

Really, the fighting is all sorts of annoying, you really need to experience it to see the crappiness. The hit detection is bad, there’s bugs everywhere (the most obvious one being that Ayumi jumps at total random sometimes), and it’s just not fun at all. There’s some interesting ideas, like enemies that are weak to certain kinds of magic or attacks and such, and the combo meter to get more souls when killing enemies works fine when it’s not being stopped by annoying flying enemies. But there’s so much bad that the good points can’t make up for it.

But with all the annoyances, you’d expect the game to be really hard. But it’s all the contrary. The game is overly easy to get through. Why? Well,it’s simple. If you have enough souls, you can’t die. There’s an upgrade system in the game, requiring to gain souls to gain new techniques, but what you’ll most often be using is healing. That’s right, you can pause the game any time and heal yourself. Any trouble you may have with the game is nulled by the fact that you can heal yourself when you want. Sure, it costs souls to get them, and the cost goes up as you advance through the game. But the number of souls you get as you advance gets higher and higher, and you can revisit rooms to farm souls, so it’s really easy to get both the skills you need and still have enough to heal yourself all you need through “tough” battles. This makes the game really boringly easy.

The one almost interesting part is the boss fights. They require you knowing what techniques and skills to use. Some bosses have special barriers, certain weaknesses, things like that, and having the right build or skills can make or break the battle. But in the end they’re also a bit easy, and when you have all the skills you can easily set-up the proper skillsets you need.

Overall
This isn’t a well done game at all. Filled with bugs, clunky hit detection, annoying enemies and it’s just not fun to play. I see what they were trying to do with this game, and it was a good attempt, but in the end the final result was bad.
The story is boring, the gameplay is lame and filled with bad design, the graphics are sub-par, the story is bad, and it’s too easy. It’s a bit hard to explain, but the bottom line is that it’s not a good game.

I can’t recommend this game to anyone really. Unless you like bad games, that is.

jobocan Console, Games, Review