I can only wonder what is happening to Square Enix. This is yet another title of theirs that has a "rushed to the presses" feel. I understand the need to get a game out before the Christmas holiday, but do not sacrifice quality to do so.
The storyline, which I found rather weak, revolves around Rush Sykes. He witnesses his sister Irina being kidnapped by some mysterious soldiers. Now mind you that their parents are researchers, but does he run off to call Mommy and Daddy for help? Of course not! Rush the teenage protagonist runs off to battle evil and save his dear ol’ sis.
They lived on the secluded island of Eulam so Rush was off to the mainland to sniff out the trial. The first battle dives you into a cluster of not only enemies but also a nice dose of slow frame rates, load times, bad camera angles, small font issues, and a plethora of pop up instructional windows chock full of definitions. Useless material that this reviewer was not going to take to memory in the heat of a battle.
Once the how-to’s were gone I was able to sit back and watch the game forget that even I was logged in with a controller in my hands.
Why?
Because the bloody thing decides to play with itself for the next five minutes or so. Then you are treated to even more instructions making you wonder if there is a test to follow. The battle ends with David Nassau blasting a cannon type gun/Remnant and agreeing to join you in the quest to find your sister. Well not for long, and then you are back on your own after a bit of a spat.
This is one turn based RPG that clearly shows how not to use the Unreal Engine. I’m still scratching my head over how some can use the engine to great success and others can fall flat. Frustration was one word to describe me while playing.
The slow and at times sluggish frame rate, which was not even cured by loading the game onto my hard drive, was not the only gripe I have. Tech flaws were numerous and the game design is just down right confusing.
Simple things like lack of checkpoints, which had me just shutting off my system with a spew of choice words flowing from my lips, make this game very difficult to play. There is nothing like dying close to the end of a quest only to start back at the beginning.
Now don’t get me wrong; you can save at anytime, but it is a bit tedious to stop and save every few minutes.
This was a game full of battles with little storyline. Amazing though that you get more story from pub quests then the main one.
Graphics were nice but the frame rate problems and the camera angles spoiled it.
The voice acting was just above awful. Not the worse and defiantly not the best that I have heard. I now understand why this was released this year for the 360 and the release dates for the PS3 and PC are TBA.
We were the test subjects for the game and hopefully they fix the main issues before any other platform’s release.