Game 7 - Villgust Review

As I said in the opening post, this game really seems like Bandai realized they had to make a video game out of the Villgust franchise. They handed it to a team that had no interest, and slapped together the laziest, most cliched product possible. I honestly don't have that much to say about the game.

Story/Characters: Although you have 8 different party characters, they have no personality or backstory in the game itself. The story is cookie cutter -- an evil wizard trying to revive a demon god, and a chosen hero attempting to stop him. There are one or two places in the story that are somewhat original, but only somewhat. There are very few story sequences. The villains are also generic. Most of them appear out of nowhere in the dungeons, say "I'll defeat you!" and then die with you barely knowing who they were.

World: Generic fantasy, with an emphasis on generic. It's hard to distinguish between the towns. There are two continents, but there's not a clear indication of kingdoms or any other administrative districts. There are apparently different races, but once again, there's little to no information in the game itself on that. Perhaps they really expected most fans to own the Gashapon stuff or seen the OVA.

Game Flow: On the whole, there's little to stop your progress through the game. With a couple of exceptions, it's obvious where to go next, there aren't any puzzles, and as long as you fight battles along the way you'll quickly be high enough level to trounce the next boss. 

System: The battle system is your basic attack-heal-attack. Magic users don't have enough MP to do anything but save it for healing. The magic system seems incomplete; there are no party heal spells, and the attack spells aren't very useful. I didn't find that any of the items aside from the heal items were of any use.

The one aspect that is unusual is the scaling of the numbers. You begin with around 80 hp, and by the end of the game you have over 40,000. The first sword you get has an attack power of 20, the strongest weapon is 10,000. I'm not sure why they did this.
Side Quests/Optional Content: None.

Interface: Average for the time. You can't see the strength of weapons or armor, but the game won't let you buy something that's weaker than what you have equipped. Of course this means there's no special properties of weapons; it's purely a question of which one has higher attack power. At least there's a "universal" command button so you don't have to pick everything from a list. 

Graphics/Sound: Bland and forgettable. I don't know why the characters have such large heads, though. I guess it comes from the SD style which probably originated in the original Gashapon toys. Why can you walk through the townspeople? When you do things like board ships, there's no animation. You just disappear and reappear at the destination. The battles are also weak; enemies disappear, then reappear near the character they're attacking.

Just writing about this game bores me.

Up next is Light Fantasy, another game with a terrible reputation.