PlayStation 2 User Reviews

This game is janky fun, but I wouldn't recommend playing through to the end. It has some frustrating moments, particularly toward the end, but those moments are worth powering through to experience other - more fun - parts of the game. The story is bad and kind of all over the place with way too many major plot twists, so it's kind of hard to follow. The combat is unique, but needed to be fleshed out a little more. I liked the combat, the hilariously bad characters, and the overall aesthetic of the game.

Game with great wasted potential. Ok, so you're Orphen, the moneylender sorcerer who was tricked by Volcan and Dortin into Chaos Island. Once in the ship, you are attacked by monsters, the ship wrecks and you have to choose 1 of 3 characters to help in their questline. You can choose which of them to help first but that doesn't affect the story, only the spells you have can be of some advantage. The story is ok and has a nice plot twist at the very ending. The best thing is surely the combat and graphics, considering a 2000 game. The combat is unique, being some mix of turn based and real time:you attack but then return to your original position. There are no damage count, you can only see the life bar in red(enemies) and blue(you and team mates). The worst part of this game is the gameplay outside battles. The camera doesn't help, hitbox sometimes **** bad(hello Mars segments) and the traps are way too punitive. You just want to get done with some parts.

In many ways this game is not very good, and I'll gladly admit it -- The movement is stiff, the locations bare, the animations are atrocious and the overall story is actually three smaller stories that literally contradict one another (albeit that this was actually given a somewhat interesting explanation as to how this is possible). There's plenty of oddball 3D platforming that's more annoying than either fun or challenging, there are game-lengthening bits that are just unnecessary (such as one part where you jump through time like 6 times in one sequence) and the battles, in particular boss battles, are irritating because the enemies all have weaknesses that the game doesn't tell you. Oh, and that final boss fight - only once did I complete it without using Gameshark/Action Replay. However, this game does have many shining, pleasant elements as well. While sparse, the visuals are crispy, colorful and often times very artistic. The light and shadow work is honestly way ahead of its time, creating realistic shadows that change in scale and positioning absolutely perfectly, on par with the Resident Evil Remake on the Gamecube. Also, the battles are unique and highly cinematic in execution, and the maps of the ruins feel like actual places, to some extent. The dungeons are interesting, the puzzles are fun and the game itself is generally somewhat challenging while rarely becoming frustrating. The music, while perhaps too light, is actually quite beautiful at times, and the sound effects/design is really impressive for a game in 2000. On the narrative front, the dialogue isn't particularly well written, but I do appreciate the attitude that the writers had, which was unique at the time: They gave us a cynical hero who HATES fantasy cliches despite being forced to partake in them, such as a grieving father looking for his long-lost daughter. With him is the naive and somewhat gullible Magnus and the purposely-irritating and abrasive Cleo, and between them, a recurring problematic troll, and finally some villains, you are perhaps more happy when Orphen gives one of them a verbal burn than when he wins a conflict. Finally, the voice acting, while deliciously over-the-top, absolutely sells the fact that this is one-part fantasy epic and one-part fantasy-parody, and Quinton Flynn's performance as the main character is absolutely top-notch (honestly giving a much better smartass-hero performance than Nolan North ever has). If the game has one distinct problem is that it's not a good adaptive work. Orphen was a slightly-comedic Dark Fantasy that was actually pretty violent and tragic when all is said and done, and this game would never make you think such a thing. I love this game but I also love the anime, and frankly they feel like they belong to two separate intellectual properties. But still, I do admit I love this game, being my first PS2 game and the first I ever saw that blended Humor with Fantasy in a way that wasn't just Wacky or Sarcastic, instead being borderline Self-Aware. It hasn't aged gracefully, but it's cheap, it's got momentum, the art is still good as is the sound design, and it's legitimately fun overall. As such, I don't necessarily recommend it, but I'm going to play it for years to come.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]