It’s been a good season to own a GBA (or the backwards compatible DS). This surprising little system hasn’t been threatened at all by the new kids on Portable Street. Despite its age I’ve found great games for the GBA one after the other and Summon Night: Swordcraft Story tops them all. The team that made the Tales series have put their action-oriented style of RPGs to work in this new series. Boasting a unique setting, quick action and several customizable options, Summon Night could be an RPG even action gamers will want to try. And the best part is I don’t have to wait more than a month for the sequel.
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Let me be the first to introduce you to Wystern, The City of Swords built on a steel tower that juts straight out of the ocean and reaches miles beneath it. As the name implies, the city is famous for its weapons; that and its strange caste of warrior/weapon smiths known as craftknights. Craftknights not only temper cold steel into fierce weapons, they wield it themselves alongside guardian beasts who support the craftknight with magic. At the pinnacle of the craftknight hierarchy lie the craftlords, protectors of their homeland and leaders of all craftknights. Recently, a vacancy has opened up in the craftlord ranks; the one previously held by your father. To fill the gap, a tournament must be held to determine a replacement. As an apprentice craftknight, the honor of your name and your guild are on the line as you fight to take your father’s place. But there are more things at work than a simple tournament here. Foreign powers seek to capitalize on the disorder caused by the missing craftlord, and there seems to be conspiracy even within the ranks of the craftlords themselves. Rival guilds that’d rather see one of their own become craftlord may resort to foul play to do so. Even your guildmates who support you as a friend will seek their own glory at the top of the craftknight order.
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You have the option of being a boy or a girl at the start of the game. This doesn’t change your stats, but it does affect the plot subtly and your relationships with other characters. What has more of an impact is which guardian beast you get paired up with. Early in the game you will be asked several questions, the answers to which will determine which of four monsters you get. Each companion can learn different spells to support you in battle. Moreover, certain monsters have ties to your father’s past and make the plot more interesting. But even if you end up with a monster that can’t speak, you’ll be sure to experience a rich plotline that poses serious questions about the nature of friendship and heroism.
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As a craftknight, your first duty is to make weapons. You have access to a forge which is where you will make all of your weapons using materials found in dungeons. However, you can’t make weapons without a plan, so you must ask your guild master for designs of the type of weapon you want: Swords, spears, gloves, axes or drills. Each has a distinct feel and usefulness. Your guild master will start you off with the weakest plans, naturally, but eventually grant you access to the most devastating weapons. Another way to get designs is to break the weapons of the other craftknights you fight. This can prove to be far more difficult than simply defeating your opponent, but the plans for their weapon that you obtain grant you early access to some of the most powerful weapons in the game.
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A craftknight’s second duty is to fight. Battles are fun, fast and all action. The controls are simple and allow you to easily manage using up to three weapons and four different magic spells in battle. Battle occurs mostly within dungeons (against randomly encountered monsters) or the tournament ring (against other craftknights). The system is the same as any game in the Tales series. You control your character on a side-scrolling plain where you can run, jump and slice in three directions. In dungeon battles, you can swap between three equipped weapons using the L button to maximize your effectiveness in every encounter. The R button lets you scroll through five commands that can be executed using the A button. One is always block, which is an essential technique against any adversary. The other four are spells equipped to your guardian beast. These range in effect from arming an elemental effect to your weapon, to boosted speed, to launching fireballs at your enemies. On the top of the screen are your life and durability bars. As you probably guessed, if your life reaches zero, you die. But if your durability bar drops to zero, your weapon permanently breaks. This can just as devastating, as some weapons are quite difficult to make and a broken weapon in a tournament match means game over as well.
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When you level up, you are given a choice of whether to spend bonus points on attack, defense or agility. You’re monster will also level up just as often as you, allowing it more variety of spells and greater number of charges for each spell.
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The variety of choices you have to make, between what weapons to bring, which spells to equip and how to spend bonus points really allows you to make a customized fighting style. I really felt like this character was my own. I even had control over several plot points either through a decision or simply my actions.
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At the end of each storyline day, you can choose one character to chat with and learn some back-story from. This allows you to gain a more in-depth understanding of the characters that interest you most, even if that’s your guardian beast. Character portraits also help to define each character’s personality, with changing expressions for everything they say. The art isn’t elaborate, but it is colorful and pleasant. Though, other than the City of Swords itself, all of the locations are the generic RPG fare of castles, villages, volcanoes and caves. You’ll also notice that both the look and feel of the game are leaning towards younger gamers. Most of the characters appear to only be about 12 years old. But you definitely shouldn’t let that stop you from giving it a try. The plot deals with some mature themes and there are no kid gloves in terms of difficulty.
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Let me put it simply; this is a fun game. It has a quickly developed plot with interesting characters and an exciting enough battle system that you’ll never be bothered by the frequency of fights. However, it suffers from the curse of most great games; it’s short. On average, you’ll beat it in less than 15 hours, but it does provide you with a final dungeon that’s worth several more hours of gameplay. It is also worth playing the game over as another character or with a different guardian beast. I’ve seen a lot of RPGs falling into the “same old thing” category lately and it’s heartening to find a game like this. It’s worth a try no matter what genre of game you like to play, and if you like it, look forward to Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2 October 5 of this year.