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Saturday 9 February, 2008
Gameplay
During the later parts of the game I came across another town. On the outside it appeared to be just another large village, but once I entered it, I discovered it was actually a port town. I beat some pirates up and get their ship in return for not killing the captain. "Yeah!," I thought to myself only to discover that at this point in the story, the boat can only take me to a limited number of places. Most of which are either places I've visited or areas that give me no reason to make port. Oh well, it saves me the trouble of walking back through all those forests.
Unfortunately, the game isn’t very direct in telling you what needs to be done in order to follow the storyline correctly. For example, after you get said ship, you’re apparently supposed to sail south to an elven kingdom with a cursed prince. After listening to some random gossip it is safe to assume that you must travel west in search of ruins. Sadly, they neglect to mention a fork in the road. If someone wanted to follow through "correctly" they would take the north fork to some ruins and talk to a nobleman about lifting the curse, then go to the south fork to get some other ruins to get a mystical artifact of some sort. Not knowing of this, I went in the opposite way, and as a result skipped the previous scenes and obtained the artifact. Whichever way is chosen, the nobleman turns out to be the cause of the curse and causes a boss battle. This would not have bothered me except for the simple fact that should you skip the first part, he reacts as though you spoke to him prior to that moment thus causing a simple plot development to become confusing and more complicated than it has to be.
Design
You start off the game as the main characters who happen to be the Warriors of Light. As a neat little feature, you are given the opportunity to choose each of their names and classes. It seems the game was based off of the concept of allowing the player to choose his or her character to determine how the story unfolds rather than having the story follow that of a set group of predetermined characters who already have their own names and back-stories. Also the lack of a back-story gives the player more flexibility and creativity in how they play through the game. An example would be that the player can create a character and create a back-story for said character (though the game would not recognize this back-story, it gives the player a sense of control in the flow of the game as opposed to "reenacting" a pre-made character's adventures).
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