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»Brave Story: New Traveler
"Beyond the door you can change your destiny!"
We all know what
it takes to make a good RPG. It’s really not that hard. Make the
character models look unique, the dungeons varied, and throw in some
level grind goodness but don’t make it too tedious or too frequent.
Take this, coupled with a story that captivates the game playing
audience, and you’ve got something that will satisfy most RPG nerds.
That being said, the question to ask oneself is, “How can we manage to
improve upon this cookie-cutter design and make the player feel more a
part of the game – more like he or she is actually playing this role
that we’ve created for them?” The answer is quite simple, really.
Simply add massive amounts of character to each and every protagonist,
antagonist, and villain that you throw about your game world. Not only
that, but have the characters converse with one another throughout the
game’s progress, making the player feel that much more connected to
these “people” they are fighting alongside.
Few companies out there seem to “get it” when it comes to this,
however; JapanStudio (of Genji fame) seems to have hit the nail on the
proverbial head with this Brave Story. The graphics are beautiful, the
game mechanics are tried and true, and most importantly, I cared
about the non-player characters’ stories and wanted to see them resolve
as well as whatever was in store for my character’s ending.
Brave Story does an excellent job of captivating the player once your
journey actually gets to a start, but as with nearly everything, it’s
not perfect. Very early on, the game forces you to go through some less
than useful tips about playing the game. For even an upstart, these
tutorials will seem unnecessary and dull. What’s more, the game has a
“feature” known as Bird Brawling. Basically, this seems to be a
tacked-on extra solely for the purpose of multi-player support as this
is the only aspect of the game even remotely multi-player friendly.
Bird Brawling, and the actual catching of the little guys is something
one can avoid entirely without missing anything pertinent to the story.
The idea here is that you have to wrangle up little birdies with a bug
net and some gigantic birdseed. Once you finish catching them, they
fuse together into one bird with combined stats. This will be the bird
you send into battle. As you find more bird catching places, you will
accumulate more and more birds (if you choose to do so). The more you
have, the more likely you’ll win the random Bird Brawl fans that are
hidden in the various dungeon areas.
As stated above, Bird Brawling is unnecessary and thus, the mandatory
tutorial for this aspect of the game is quite frustrating and entirely
boring. Once you get past it, be sure to save ASAP so you don’t have to
do it again upon dying (if you choose to do so).
I guess I should start telling you a little bit about the actual game
now, huh? Brave Story takes many great elements from some very
well-known classics in the genre. The battle system reminds me a lot of
Suikoden and Dragon Quest while the graphic style seems to be a cross
of Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy VII.
The visual similarities are quite obvious right off the bat as it
begins with your main character (Default name: Tatsuya) and the leading
lady (Default name: Miki) are sitting on a park bench (much like the
scene with Cloud and Tifa at the playground) having a conversation
about him playing his video games too much. Tatsuya looks very similar
to the main character in Kingdom Hearts, both in the way he is dressed
and the basic art style. Lighting has a lot of similarities to Kingdom
Hearts as well.
It’s not until later that you’ll see the other similarities in the
battle system as this game isn’t one of those RPGs that starts you out
fighting a boss with ultra-high level characters just to show of the
battle system. In fact, the way the story begins, I didn’t think that
this game would turn out to be as traditional of an RPG as it is.
Article by: Bloodspoor
Posted on: Jul. 19th, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| I really appreciated the story enough to make up for the minor shortcomings of the stupid Bird Brawl aspect. The battle system is great and rarely gets old. |
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Graphics |
| The lighting effects and character designs are really slick looking and make the world of Vision come alive. My only complaint here lies on the sometimes muddy backgrounds and a few character designs are less than detailed yet they get too many close ups in cut-scenes. |
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Sound |
| The musical score is above average and never quite grows tiresome. It’s well-composed and varied. The sound effects are average, but the American-exclusive voice acted cut scenes are actually pretty decent. |
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Replay Value |
| There are tons of side quests to take on that are entirely optional, including finding your demon weapons and some fetch tasks. Add this to each of your main party member Brave Soul tasks and you’ve got quite a few things to do in addition to the decently long main task. |
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Comments |
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September 25, 2007 |
symphony1125 |
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Great review Blood. I saw this title in GameStop today, and hadn't really heard of it. Now after reading this review, I'll definetly be looking forward to owning it!
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