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Summoner
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Graphics & Sound:
The graphics in Summoner range from the truly impressive to the downright dull, and pretty much everywhere in between. There are times where you'll be really impressed . . . and there are times that you'll be sick and tired of looking at the same textures over and over. And the camera . . . The good: Some of the structures are very impressive, such as the huge castle-city-thing in Lenele, and some sweeping spires you'll see as you play the game. There are quite a few characters in the game, and they're all pretty well detailed, which is better than most games with scads of 'generic villagers'. Sure, they reuse the models and skins here too, but it's considerably less noticeable than in most games. And some of the spells and summons look very, very cool. The bad: Many of the 'dungeons' use the same textures over and over, and even in the often impressive city of Lenele, too many structures are reused to the point of making you confused. When there are flats and flats of crates that look the same, and you're trying to see if an item's hidden in any of them, it's both confusing and frustrating. Another major offender is the world map, which basically looks like a low-res scan of a mossy turf or something like that, with little to no real detail other than the locations on it. After running around through forests and deserts in a game like Final Fantasy IX, it's hard to appreciate the blank slate look of the map in Summoner. The ugly: The camera is evil. The camera refuses to do what you want it to do. The camera never shows as much as you want it to. You can use the arrows to move the camera, and controlling it is much simpler if you use the 'run towards the pointer' method of moving your characters, as you can make the camera swivel by running to the side, but I found myself tinkering with the camera way, way more than I should ever have to do for a game like this. Evil, evil camera. The sound in the game is adequate, if nothing spectacular. The voice acting is surprisingly solid, actually, and I found myself enjoying it more than I would have thought--Joseph's occasional backslapping aside. Sound effects, on the other hand, feel a little tinny and undernourished, but perhaps that's just my sound system. The music is downright unnoticeable, to be honest; after playing the game for hours, I still don't remember much, if any, of the music in the game. |
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Gameplay:
What I do remember is an intriguing battle engine that is often marred by the evil, evil camera system, and an experience that is considerably more enjoyable than its Playstation2 counterpart. Summoner still isn't perfect, and it needs to be patched before it's really that usable, but it's still quite fun if you're willing to persevere and get into the game. You are thrust into the role of Joseph, a young man who destroyed a town in his youth with a demon he summoned in self-defense and was summarily outcast from the remains of the village. Of course, people have come looking for him, and the game starts off as yet another village burns around him. Soon, he searches for Yago, his tutor from the past and the only one who can show him the way to go, the path of the Summoner. Along the way, Joseph meets up with a number of other characters that join his party, each fitting quite nicely into the generic fantasy framework. You've got a thief (Flece), another magic-user (Rosalind), and the brawny warrior (Jekhar). Like many things in Summoner, the system ends up feeling like a cross between console RPGs and computer RPGs. Despite the 'classing' of the characters, you're given skill points at every level up which you can distribute as you see fit, customizing the characters to your liking. To an extent, at least. Indeed, this melding of console and computer RPGs goes through even to the gameplay itself. The main game is very story driven, with twists and turns and a genuinely intriguing plot. But there is also a bewildering array of side quests, which can both bog you down and reward your persistence, depending on just how much you want to get into it. It works, for the most part, although some could be easily overwhelmed by the scope of the game. The battle system is also a mix, and it ends up being both entertaining and flawed. You go into combat by clicking on an enemy; after that, your characters start to swing at the bad guys and they swing back at your party. The subtleties come in two ways: you are given bonuses for attacking in the back, or from higher ground, and you can 'chain' attacks (a la Vagrant Story) to cause various effects and do more damage. Indeed, while you're chaining, the enemy cannot attack, which is a nice feature. Because of this complexity, you can only control one character at a time. You can set the computer to control the others in various ways (defense, offense, spell casting, et cetera), and while it tries its best, the AI is often woefully inadequate in genuinely difficult battles. The swinging camera doesn't help either, often making seeing the chain symbol difficult. Argh. If you get tired of the single-player game, which is quite massive, you can play multiplayer through THQ's matching service. There's no plot here: you pick a map and go. There are no people to talk to or quests to fulfill; the sole objective is to slaughter bad guys and gain experience and equipment. It's reminiscent of, say, a Diablo deathmatch or something equally vapid. It's entertaining for a while, and getting together with others can be appealing, but it's definitely not deep (or meant to be) and will probably not hold your interest for too long. Still, it's impressive that they even included something like this in what's meant to be a single-player epic. |
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Difficulty:
Once you've got the battle system down, the difficulty of the game mainly lies in the boss battles. Admittedly, some of them are very challenging, and made only moreso with the moronic 'AI' that helps you as you play. Ugh. Make sure that you constantly switch between the 'important' characters -- the ones that you need tight control over, such as Rosalind and Joseph himself. You gain your spell/skill points back pretty rapidly, so management's not so much of an issue when you're wandering around, but in heated battles you need to make sure it doesn't bite you in the arse. Just be careful, and you should be able to swing your way through Summoner without too many problems.
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Game Mechanics:
Most of the controls in Summoner are done with the mouse. You can 'click to move' like in Diablo, but this doesn't work well at all--with the wonky camera, you can rarely see where you need to click, and the characters never go where you want them to. A better method is the click-and-hold, which has them chase the mouse pointer. You can drag various controls into a little 'hottray' in the bottom right corner, which is very useful for spells like Heal and other ones that you use regularly. There are also keyboard shortcuts for most of the menus, but I tend to forget those sorts of things. The core mechanics of the game are solid, although the helper AI could use some (a lot) of work. If it weren't for the camera, the game would be a hell of a lot less frustrating to play, as well. Load times were quite minimal on my system, considerably moreso than the obnoxiously long ones on the PS2. I must note, however, that the launcher that came with Summoner never managed to actually launch the game--I had to do it manually. What's up with that? Summoner tries to be both a console RPG, with the strong characters and storyline, and a computer RPG, with the adjustable characters and gazillions of side quests. It ends up being somewhere in the centre, not as good as the best in either genre, but still pretty impressive. The computer version of it certainly impressed me more than the PS2 one, perhaps because there was less in the way--using a mouse is much better for this sort of game than a control pad. The game still has its issues, especially with the camera and the AI, but those of you hankering for an RPG experience would be wise to check Summoner out if you haven't already done so. It may be occasionally frustrating, but there are definitely some shining moments in there as well. |
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-Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications AKA Phil Bordelon |
Minimum System Requirements:
Win9x/MeE, P2/K6-2 400, 8MB 3D Accelerator, 64MB RAM, 4x CD-ROM, 800MB HD Space, sound card, mouse, keyboard |
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Test System:
Athlon 1.1GHz running Win98 SE, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2 GTS w/ 32MB RAM, SoundBlaster Live!, 8x DVD-ROM |
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