|
|
Game Information
|
Preview
|
Review |
Screenshots |
Forum |
»Aedis Eclipse: Generation of Chaos
"What d'ya know? Good games DO happen to bad franchises!"
Wow, talk about a turn-around. If anyone recalls, I basically panned the first PSP entry in the GoC series for being slow, confusing and riddled with lagging and slow loading times, but Idea Factory and NIS America have made a huge improvement in the period of time between these two games. Now, it’s actually a good (or at least average) strategy RPG.
The world of Aedis Eclipse is divided in to three separate realms, the divine (mystical beings), upper (swords and magic), and lower (an almost steam punk-flavored realm of science and magic). Each world has their own main character and story; therefore, players can experience three different stories at once. Depending on which world the player begins with, the difficulty level will differ. The lower world, which is regarded in AE as the "modern" human world, is considered to be the beginner’s stage with various tutorials to guide the player through the game. The higher the world you choose to play, the more difficult the game becomes.
I said the same thing when I first heard that GoC was getting a sequel... Anywho, moving onto the various storylines, we’ll start with the lowest and work our way up. In the lower world scenario, you take on the role of three students, Quinn, Gon and Keri, who attend a military academy. Another boring day of school is suddenly interrupted by a surprise bombardment. While most students flee for safety, you decide to watch the battle. In a bizarre turn of events, you are dragged into the bloody warfare. Meanwhile, in the upper world scenario, you take on the role of a knight by the name of Herault, who along with his compatriots Duo and Liza, come to a kingdom ruled by a ruthless leader. His other comrades have been captured by the royal army and you must rescue them before it is too late. Finally, there’s the tale of the divine world, a world where angels and demons lived together in peace. Tragedy strikes as the king of demons is assassinated by a radical group of angels. Now, a war has broke out between the two factions and you, as a demon named Atrapollus and an angel named Rose, must stop them from destroying the world. Despite the seemingly unrelated elements of these three storylines, they are all linked.
As for gameplay, on a basic level, it’s similar to that of the first GoC. You essentially control various captains, each in command of their own personal army, made up of various forms of soldiers, ranging in elements and fighting styles (melee or long-range). Moving on, the battle field is separated into something that somewhat resembles a game board, with various spaces on it. Along the way, there are various buildings, ranging from your and your enemy’s main strongholds, caves, small forts, and (oddly) small buildings that seem to resemble some form of trophy with a gold star on its top. These smaller buildings are a bit more flexible in terms of ownership; many of them start out empty and can be claimed on a "first come, first served" basis. But don’t fret, even if enemy generals take over a much needed fort, you can overtake it by attacking the fort. If anything, I’d compare the map system in this game to that of the "Chronicles of the Sword" mode from Soul Calibur III, though with a greater restriction on how far you can move at a time, and the fact that it's turn-based. You can also buy weapons, armors and other items from the shop at any point during your turn in each scenario.
"...and they said those calligraphy lessons wouldn't pay off!"
Next we come to the battle system, which has been fixed big-time, compared to the last game’s system, which can only be described as a massive clump of disorganized retardation. This time around though, it’s been vastly improved. First off, there’s far greater unit customization, as you’re allowed to assign two types of soldiers to each of your captains, one in the front of the group and one in the back. This allows for much better organization of your troops, allowing you to have soldiers that are well-adapted to their positions, as opposed to having half of your troops in a basically useless position. Another improvement comes from the fact that you can know assign instructions to individual groups in your attack force, which means that, unlike last time, your captain isn’t being held back by your other soldiers, who are collecting into a massive clump of crappy AI. There are various options that you can assign to each group: attack (a straight-forward attack on any enemy forces that get in your way), wait (exactly what it sounds like, your soldiers stand still and do nothing), charge (at the beginning of each battle, you can elect to charge straight for the enemy captain), and run (self-explanatory, right?). The super moves return, now listed as "Skills" and you can find them pretty much on the same scale as items and equip them to any compatible character. On the plus side, one of the few things I actually liked from the first GoC, the Prisoner Capture system, returns in full force in AE. After defeating certain opponents, you can capture them and take them back to one of your forts, as a prisoner. You are then given a few choices as for what to do with each of them. You can simply release them, execute them, or even try to persuade them to join your side, giving you a nice advantage. There’s also a brand-new battle-oriented feature that I love; the "Partner" system. It allows you to group together two generals, one acting as a lesser "partner" under the "leader's" command.
There are two other returning features which add quite a bit of variety to the gameplay. First, we have "Terraforming". Each space on the map has its own elemental status (fire, water, earth, air, holy, dark, or none). Basically, if the element on the panel corresponds to the element of either captain, it can have a positive (same element) or negative (element weak to said element) on them. Of course, if a panel isn’t to your liking, you can elect to terraform it into a new element, at a small cost. You can also use terraforming to change unnavigable spaces (known as rough terrain) into terrain you can walk on. There’s also various patches of undeveloped land in the area (marked with what appears to be a sign), which you can build into new forts, or various other things, including recruitment centers. Despite these new improvements, I’m still a little put off by the whole map system. I hate the limitations that they place on the distance each character can cover. 
No shit, Sherlock.
The graphics, on the other hand, are pretty much similar to GoC in terms of quality. Not that that’s a bad thing, if anything, the graphics was the only likable thing of GoC in my opinion. The character designs have a nice anime-inspired look to them, and the in-game sprites are actually able to pull of a super-deformed style without coming off looking retarded or cheesy. The skill effects look nice, especially for some of the more powerful skills, which sometimes interrupt a mildly animated cut cene of a close-up of the caster’s face. The animated intro also looks nice, but that’s pretty much standard for the PSP.
As for the sound, well, it’s pretty similar to that in the first game. The music this time is a little more epic and catchy, but once again, it isn’t very memorable, at least not in my opinion. Still, it does its main job, by adding to the game’s environment, so I can’t really fault it. The sound effects are pretty standard, and the voice acting's good (and pretty much completely in-sync this time around!).
Replay-wise, I’d say this game has quite a bit of value to it. As I said earlier, there are three different scenarios, which in itself seems to echo and improve upon the idea of epilogue quests that you see in some RPGs. Also, this time around, there’s actually some decent gameplay, so turn-based strategy fans should be pleased. All-in-all, it’s a pretty good game, which is great, considering how far it’s come from its prequel. So, if you’re looking for a good intro into the strategy genre and happen to own a PSP, you could probably do a lot worse than Aedis Eclipse. For example, you could get its prequel...
Article by: Wolfdogg
Posted on: Apr. 20th, 2007 |
|
|
|
Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| A major improvement over the original, with decreased load-times, little to no lagging, and a better battle system. There’s still some room for improvement though in the map design. |
 |
|
|
Graphics |
| Well-rendered anime-inspired CG game sprites, nicely animated intercut cutscenes for attacks, and some nice attack effects make Aedis Eclipse a great-looking PSP game. |
|
|
|
Sound |
| The music is catchy, but not exceptionally memorable. On the other hand, the voice acting’s pretty good, and the sound effects are okay. |
 |
|
|
Replay Value |
| With three different scenarios and good gameplay this time around, I could see myself picking this one up again. |
|
|
|
Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
![](http://www.portablereview.com/images/screenshots/thumbs/3569.jpg "\")