Diablo

If you follow me on Twitter (and personally, you do, because how the hell would you know of my blog if you didn't), you'll know that I had been playing Diablo recently.

Diablo is a dungeon crawling RPG created by Blizzard Entertainment, the company now famous for World of Warcraft.

Deep beneath the small town called Tristram, the Lord of Terror, Diablo, is awakening. With all hell breaking loose, it is your job to search throughout the labyrinth and destroy Diablo.

There are three classes to choose from. The warrior, the mage and the rogue. Apart from maybe the rogue, each class is self-explanatory. The warrior has high strength, and low magic, the mage has high magic and low strength, and the rogue is more or less a jack of all trades, thriving in dexterity. Furthermore, each class has a unique innate ability. The warrior can repair equipment, albeit lowering the max durability value, the mage can recharge staves, also lowering the max amount of chages, and the rogue can detect and disarm trapped doors and chests.

There are 16 floors in the labyrinth. The first four floors consist of the cathedral which is the entrance to the labyrinth. The architecture loosely resembles that of a cathedral or church I guess. There are many shrines which can potentially boost your base stats. Many of the monster found here are of the undead variety, with some minor imps thrown about.

Floors 5-8 are the catacombs beneath the cathedral levels. There are many rooms with ancient tomes in these floors which can provide you with spell books. The monsters are still predominantly undead, but more and more lesser demons can spawn here as you go deeper. Some of these foes can be invisible right until they materialize right in front of you.

9-12 are the subterranean caves. Lava flows freely here, which can be both an advantage or a disadvantage, provided archers a way to shoot down enemies on the other side of the rivers, but also letting ranged demons attack you from afar as well. The foes here are much different from the previous areas. Large lava demons can hurl balls of magma at you. Other smaller demons will spit globs of acid that will remain on the floor for a short period, causing continuing damage if you stray too long.

Finally, the deepest parts of the labyrinth reside in Hell itself! Expect the fiercest demons and hellspawn in these dark recesses. Most notable are the succubi, with their magic that can drain your life and replenish their own.

Much of the story of Diablo II is learned through the various quests, and talking with the villagers of Tristram. Furthermore, there are tomes in the labyrinth that will tell of backstory of the world of Sanctuary. Also, throughout the various quests you can learn more about the villagers themselves. Like how Wirt lost his leg to the demon called the Butcher, or what caused Farnham to sink further and further into a drunken stupor, and finally the true identity of Cain himself.

There are four basic stats. Strength, Magic, Dexterity and Vitality. Strength increases your damage value, and allows you to equip heavier armors or weapons. Magic allows you to learn more powerful magics, and furthering you skill in already known spells. Magic also increases you mana pool, alowing you to cast more spells. Dexterity ups your hit rate, and can increase you damage and defense values, as well as increase your block rate should you use a shield. Dexterity is required to equip more powerful bows. Vitality increases you life, allowing you to take more damage from foes.

Every time your character levels up, you gain Life and Mana, as well as 5 stat points in which to put into whatever stat you desire. However each cap has a max value per stat. In addition to leveling up, you may find shrines inthe labyrinth that can be used to enhance your stats. Be warned however that some shines will add points to one stat, but take away points to another. Further, starting in the Caves, monster may drop Elixirs that will add 1 stat to whatever stat the Elixir is of. These Elixirs can eventually be bought at the merchants in town for high prices.

Unfortunately, there is very little to no music in the game. The only real music is the memorable Tristram village theme. In the dungeons its mostly just ambient music. Regardless what music there is does fit the theme of the game.

All the villages are fully voice acted and have very memorable voices. From Griswold's Scottish-like accent to Adria's sing-song voices. And the classic voice of Cain, which sounds like Sean Connery. The player characters are also voice acted, although to a lesser extant.

All in all, Diablo is a solid game, and worthy of its sequel. And with a third game in the making, its lived it legacy and will continue on for times to come. Diablo itself may not be as popular as it once was, but that doesn't mean it's obsolete. Diablo's sequel, the aptly named Diablo II is still growing strong over the years. If you've ever played Diablo II and never played Diablo, I suggest checking it out to see how the series starts. And if you've never played either, now is as good a time as any.

Bioshock

Just finished playing Bioshock. I know, Bioshock 2 is out, and I finally get to the first one. Whatever. I won't get to Bioshock 2 until Bioshock 3 is out probably...

Anyhow. The game was fun, well worth the 20 dollars I spent on it. The game wasn't too hard, but I did play it on Easy Mode, because I remember the demo being fairly hard. And my friend kept telling me that ammo is hard to find in the game.

Setting/Story
The setting of the game is what interested me the most. The city of Rapture is basically a whole self-governed city underwater in the 1960's. It has the feel of an old Sci-fi movie. I believe that is why I like the game so much. All the technology is similar to what you would expect in the 50s/60s. Every so often you'll here a radio or Jukebox playing music of the era.

Andrew Ryan is the creator of Rapture, and basically what he says is the law. Apparently everything was all peaceful until a new technology was discovered: ADAM. ADAM is a mutagen extracted from a special type of sea slug. Using ADAM, Plasmids were created. Plasmids rewrite a persons genetic code, giving them special powers. For instance, the first Plasmid you encounter in the game is the Lightning Plasmid, allowing you to shoot lightning from your hand. The side of effect of ADAM is that a person must be take regular injections of ADAM or go insane. But ADAM was in short supply. Thus the fall of Rapture. Soon everyone was killing for more ADAM.

Gameplay
One thing I have to nitpick is the walking speed in the game. At times it just seemed so slow. Fortunately there's a Plasmid that increases walking Speed. Once I got that, it was smooth sailing.

The Plasmids are an interesting feature. Basically adding a feel of Magic in a genre thats all about headshots and blowing stuff up. Sometimes you'll need to use Plasmids to solve puzzles, other times, just to kill enemies. The game totes you off with the Lightning Plasmid and a wrench. When you bast an enemy with the lightning, it stuns them, then you can run it and smash their heads in. While they are fun to play with, I found myself mostly relying on the weapons instead.

The game can be slow paced, more time looking for something than actually fighting things, but honestly, thats in my opinion a strong point. I love sneaking around the environments, not knowing when an enemy is gonna come pop out around the corner. But when action comes in, the game really picks up its pace. Especially if theres a big room with Splicers and a Big Daddy and you accidentally shoot the Big Daddy.

Weapons:
The weapons is Bioshock, are pretty much standard issue: Pistol, Machnegun, Shotgun, RPG, Flame Thrower, and a less standard, Crossbow.

Each weapon however has 3 different ammunitions to use with. For instance, instead of using Napalm for the Flame Thrower, you can get Liquid Nitrogen to freeze enemies with, or even use an "electric gel" that will shoot electricity at the enemy, stunning them.

The shotgun, my personal favorite weapon, can use special buckshot rounds charged with electricty, or an explosive round that will detonate on impact, causing an enemy to burst into flames.

The Crossbow can be equipped with electric trip wire arrows, to create traps for your opponent. These mght be useful, but frankly I didn't use them because I figured it'd backfire, and I'd accidentally run into the wire.

While there is a vast arsenal of different types of ammo for almost any occasion, I found myself using the same weapons throughout the game.

Difficulty:
I can't really rate the difficulty, as I already stated above I played on Easy Mode, which is pretty damned easy. Though the game really did ramp up the difficulty around the halfway mark, when the game started shelling out "Elite" Splicers. Even the Big Daddies weren't very hard if you used the right ammunition.

Conclusion
Overall, the game is definitely worth picking up if you haven't already. And with Bioshock 2 already out, and a third game planned, now is as good a time as ever.

Temple of Elemental Evil

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!  I bought it online for 4 dollars and want my money back.  I enjoyed the hell out of Icewind Dale, and had moderate enjoyment out of Baldur's Gate, so even though this game was not by Bioware, it was still D&D based, so I thought I'd enjoy it as well.  I WAS FUCKING WRONG!

It doesn't seem so bad at the beginning.  I liked creating my own party, that was one of the main reasons I liked Icewind Dale.  And there were still NPCs to use, like in Baldur's Gate.  So the beginning seemed like I would enjoy the game.  Than the story comes in, which is pretty non-existent, but then Icewind Dale's story was a bit slow too.  

The first set of quests are fetch quests.  Dull, repetitive quests that take up all your time.  Going from X NPC to Y NPC back to X NPC just to tell you to go Z NPC to tell you to go back to Y NPC, etc etc. Hell, this is less exciting than fucking World of Warcraft.  At least you get items for doing fetch quests in WoW.  You don't get shit for them in Temple.

Finally you talk to that one NPC that actually tells you about a dungeon!  And you go in the dungeon, and you don't necessarily get your ass kicked, but you don't necessarily kick ass at the same time.  You might even have a character die, or at least go unconscious.  No big deal, just rest in the dungeon!  Big mistake.  It doesn't take 8-12 hours in game time to heal your characters.  It takes days.  Like 2 whopping HP per DAY.  So if your fighter is unconscious at level 1 he probably has 10 HP max.  Now depending on how unconscious he is, he could be -9 HP.  That means he's missing 19 HP, so it'll take pretty much 10 days to heal.  If your in the dungeon, you'll probably get fought at least every 6 hours, putting more damage on your already wounded party.

So you survived your first battle.  Good job!  So you go back down to the dungeon and fight a harder battle, and you still live but one of your characters dies.  Like really dead.  Oh shit.  What are you gonna do?  The cleric is only level 1 or 2, so you don't have Raise Dead yet.  Oh well, there's always the church back in town.  So you go to the church and you find out it costs 1000 gold to revive the dead.  You only have 12 gold and 27 silver and 32 copper.  I don't exactly know what the fuck that even mean, suffice to say you are shit poor.  So your dude's dead and you can't revive him.  Shit sucks.  

So somehow you raise that that much GP by selling just about all your belongings that you don't need and maybe some you do need.  And you go back to the church and have him revived.  Only the fucking asshole takes your money and doesn't fucking revive your character, even though the bastard tells you he did.  Oh, well, maybe its a glitch?  Reload.  Same shit.  Close the game out and relaunch.  Same shit.  Well, I never did download the patches, maybe the patches will remedy this. 

Install patches.  Launch game.  Your file's gone.  WTF?  Well, at least I was only at the beginning.  Remake your party.  Though it took probably an hour to make the party the first time, it'll only take maybe 45 minutes this time.  And then do all those fucking fetch quests again.  WHOO, THIS GAME IS AWESOME!

So you progress to the same point in the game and you actually win the third battle without too much damage, ie all your characters alive.  Hell, you even level up!  Awesome.  So you continue down the dungeon and the next battle you fight you finally realize that, damn, you miss a lot.  I mean a LOT.  You probably didn't notice it too much earlier cause you were level 1.  But your level 2 now and you figure you're probably missing 80% of the time, and the monsters are hitting you about 70% of the time.  Somethings fucked up there.  But you continue anyways.  

Next you fight some bats that drain your stats.  WTF?  Stat draining monsters in the FIRST FUCKING DUNGEON.  Oh my god this game fucking hates you. Save that shit for later in the game, God damn.  Not to mention you CAN'T FUCKING HIT THE MONSTERS.  Somehow you win, and you go back to town and rest for like 30 days and your stats return to normal.

Well, they were bats, so they might just be inherently hard to hit.  Continuing on.  Next you fight a group of bugbears.  This looks like its gonna be easy.  I mean c'mon, theres only three of them and 8 of you.  How the hell are you gonna lose?  Probably by missing.  The one bugbears goes into a barbarian rage and gibs your fully healed fighter instantly.  WTF was that?  Fucking lame.  Suffice to say, YOU DON'T WIN.

Alright fuck this game with its shitty chance to hit.  Find out how to use the console.  Set all character's Dexterity to 20.  18 in D&D s good for a level 1-2 character.  20 should be overcompensating.  With your ill-gotten stat increase you decide to try that battle again.  And you still get your sad ass kicked, and you STILL FUCKING MISS!

Fuck this shit, setting DEX to 50.  That should teach them.  WRONG!  

Maybe 500?  Hell having 500 DEX gives you a bonus of 200+.  Theres no way in hell you'll miss now.  Except you do, just MAYBE SLIGHTLY less.  So you end up winning.

So you find the item you were sent to find and take it back to the NPC and the game fucking crashes.

You know what?  FUCK THIS GAME!  I'M GONNA GO PLAY ICEWIND DALE INSTEAD!

Geneforge

I have been horribly, horribly addicted to the Geneforge series by Spiderweb Software.  Horribly.  I've been pretty much playing them non-stop.  The only break I really took was when I went to MetroCon the other weekend (which I'll eventually get around to posting about).  

Spiderweb Software is an independent game company that pretty much consists of a single programmer.  Most of Spiderweb's games feature elaborate storyline with minimal graphics.

Anyways, there's nothing phenomenal about Geneforge, but for some reason I can't stop playing the games.  I'm on the 4th game of the series now.  There's only five games, so I dunno what I'll do when I finish the fifth.  Its an isometric turn based RPG.  The gameplay isn't what makes the game really.  Its the story and the paths you can take.

In most of the games your character is a Shaper, which in the Geneforge world is pretty much a wizard.  Shapers come in three flavors: Guardian, Agent and Shaper.  Guardian is the melee class, Agent is I guess the Stealth/Magic-based class, and Shaper is the Summoner/Wizard class.  Each class can summon creatures to help them in battle.  

In the world of Geneforge, Shapers are the law.  Shapers are respected as well as feared.  Shapers can create lifeforms and easily snuff them out as well.  Shapers commonly create Servile as basically slaves.  They are made intelligent enough to do work on their own, but dumb enough to follow orders without question.  Other creations, such as Drayks are so powerful and intelligent that Shapers decreed the creation of Drayks banned.  

In the first Geneforge, you are a Shaper novice, sent off to an island to finish your training, but your ship (which is actually a living creature) is attacked, forcing you to abandon it and swim for the nearest shore:  Sucia Island.  Sucia Island is a barred island, with the penalty of death for all trespassers.  As you travel the island you unravel the story of why the island was barred.  You also find that the Shapers planned to return to the island.  The Serviles still remain on the island, and have formed tribes (which was thought impossible by the Shapers).  The three tribes are the Obeyers, who remain loyal to the Shapers, the Takers, fanatical Serviles who wish to destroy Shapers, and the Awaken, Serviles who believe Shapers and Serviles can live together as equals.  You can ally yourself with any of the three sects, or none at all.  There is a fourth force at work on the island as well.  The Sholai, a race of people from beyond the ocean.  A rebel Sholai discovers the secret of why the island was barred, the Geneforge.  Depending on your choices you can help the rebel Sholai, or destroy the Geneforge.

The series is mostly rinse and repeat with variations.  Each game reveals more information about the Shapers, and the Geneforge itself.  In Geneforge 4 you begin as an anti-Shaper rebel and use a Geneforge to gain your powers.  You can also play as a Servile, which I thought was kind of interesting (even though I didn't choose to play as it).

You can have up to five creations in the games, although I typically just stuck to one or two.  Each creation has its strengths and weaknesses.  Summoning creatures costs a base amount of Essence.  When creating a monster, you can modify its stats, which increases the amount of Essence required for it.  Essence can only be given back if the creature dies.  You gain Essence by leveling up, and you gain even more by increasing you INT.  

There are many stats in the game you can increase with levels.  So many that its hard to decide what to do with.  Along with the standard Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Endurance, there are different schools of Magic and Shaping, multitude of different combat specialties, as well as skills used for thievery and deception.  You only get five skill points per level, so you have to decide wisely, as each skill costs a different amount of skill points to level up.

While the game is not for everyone, especially those all for graphics, the series' story is where the game really shines.  I can't recommend this for everyone, but if you like classic-style old-school games, this is something you may want to look into.

Bahamut Lagoon

**WARNING: SPOILERS***

Bahamut Lagoon is probably one of Squaresoft's last entries on the SNES.  Its a mix of strategy and role playing games.  You can control up to six units which consist of four characters each and a dragon.  The dragons are not exactly part of the unit, they move and act on their own.  On the battlefield the game shows its strategy roots.  However when your units engage the enemy, it turns into a typical RPG type system.  But instead of fighting until the enemy unit is dead, each character only gets one turn.  Back on the battlefield, you don't necessarily have to engage in melee on the enemy.  You can instead use special skills that the unit might have, like for instance magic.  Skills you can use on the battlefield are Field skills.  Field skills depend on the characters in the unit.  So if you don't have a Wizard in the unit, you can't use magic.  In addition, if you have more than one Wizard in the unit, the magic power is enhanced.  However, having a unit with just Wizards is not exactly a good idea, as if they were to be attacked in melee they would have no chance.  There are advantages and disadvantages to using Field skills as well as melee attacks.  You get more money in melee, but the enemy can counterattack.  Using Field skills you get a free attack on the enemy, however, the damage will be less than if you did a melee.

The dragon's determine what elemental attacks your units have, and how strong said attacks are.  The dragon's have five elements: Fire, Lightning, Ice, Life and Poison.  Each parameter goes up to 100, and every time points increases the elements level.  So at 20 points, you have level 2 of that element.  In addition to giving skills to units, the Dragon's can also attack in battle.  Sometimes if you attack melee, the dragon will attack before your characters turns, doing additional damage.  The dragons all have elemental breath attacks, which attack all enemy character in close combat, or they can attack multiple units on the battlefield.

Between battles you can feed the dragons to enhance their parameters.  Weapons give plus to strength, armor to vitality.  If the weapon/armor is elemental, they get pluses the corresponding element.  The dragons can also evolve into more powerful forms as well.  Unfortunately they sometimes devolve into useless dragons.  If this happens, feed them a Matelite Axe, and they'll be back to normal.  

All the characters have personality, and  are very likable, with the exception of the princess and maybe Palpaleos.  You are Byuu, the silent protagonist, and captain of the Dragon Squad.  Byuu's default unit consists of his knight friends, Rush, Truce and Bikkebakke.  Rush acts before he thinks, and doesn't get along with superiors, even so far as sort of mini-rebelling against Matelite.  Truce is more quiet and level headed, but gets dragged into the mini-rebellion as well.  Bikkebakke wishes after the war to live with his best friends Rush and Truce peacefully, and begins selling mushrooms in hope to afford a house.  Sadly, Byuu is actually a pretty horrible character, battle wise.  Using Field skills he is somewhat alright, but in close combat, Rush, Truce and Bikkebakke outshine him hands down, even when Byuu has better equipment than the others.  The Knights get elemental attacks, but can only be used in melee.  Byuu's Sword Tech can be used in and out of battlle, but its not exactly that great either way.

Matelite is a class of his own.  He's the crazy Royal Guard of Kahna.  He takes command of everything, and is completely dedicated to Kahna.  Its really hard to explain his character.  He probably one of my favorite characters.  His unit defaults with three Heavy Armors, Taicho who is a general of Mahal, before it was taken by the empire, Gunso, Taicho's right hand man (who is creepy, he scratches himself all the time, and you get Gunso's ??? from him occasionally, which I don't even want to know what that is), and Barclay, he doesn't have much character, basically he falls in love with one of the Wizards.  Matelite has Inspire, a lightning field skill that can destroy buildings, it can also be used in close combat as a powerful lightning skill.  He can't get any other elements however.  The Heavy Armors all move very slow, but the damage they deal more than makes up for it.  They can get all the elements, but their attacks can only be used in melee.

I don't remember the rest of the default units, so I'll just list by class now.

Light Armors:  Lukia and Jeanne.  Lukia at the beginning seems to be an important character, as she always shows up in cut scenes, but later she is pretty much forgotten.  She's a cool and level headed person.  Jeanne has almost no character.  Both Jeanne and Lukia apparently have had a past fling with Donfan.  Light Armors don't have field skills, but their elemental attacks in close combat hit all enemies for moderate damage.  Their physical attack is limited.  What makes them invaluable, however, is there ability to increase the speed of units on the field.  I highly recommend putting one in with Heavy Armors.  There is a third Light Armor secret character but I didn't get her, so I dunno anything about her.

Wizards:  None of the Wizards really have any character.  Melodia is an annoying little girl that likes minidevils, Ectarina has a crush on Hornet (the ships captain), Nelbo is friends with Joy and torments Donfan, and Anastasia who is described in game as stuck up, but doesn't actually show up in game.   Wizards are wizards....  There's nothing to describe really.  Magic can be used as Field Skills and well as in melee.

Priests:  Frederica is my favorite priest.  She's funny.  She is physically weak and collapses after battle, and takes medicine regularly.  She wants to open a pharmacy after the war.  Zora is kind of funny too, she tells it like it is, and has no qualms about slapping the princess when she's be hard to deal with.  Her son is Zora's Son.  I'm not kidding.  Thats his name.  Joy is friends with Nelbo and torments Donfan with her.  Diana is the ship's gossiper.  She'll tell you the interesting things happening on the ship.  Like wizards, Priests are priests.  They're magic can be used on the field or in melee.

Lancers:  Reeve and Frenze were close friends at the beginning, but at one point Frenze gets homesick and Reeve get annoyed at him for not being enthusiastic about being a lancer.  Their friendship ends, and Frenze is constantly getting back at Reeve for ending it.  Donfan believes he is the man for all the ladies.  As soon as a girl talks to him he breaks in and tries to woe her.  He always fails.  At one point he goes to the girl's dorm and is caught by Nelbo and Joy who torment him.  Zora's Son attempted to make a Dragon Squad in Mahal, but doesn't know how to take care of the dragon.  He pretty much a failure at life, but does a good job cleaning up the place (catch that reference).  His real name is Orelus, also the name of the games' world.  He doesn't really live up to it.  Lancers are pretty cool.  Their field skills are pretty damned good if you have all of them in one army.  However in melee they are pretty crappy.  Their Lance skills do moderate damage, but they are physically kind of weak, and if you attack without using the lance skills, they can't do much damage at all.  Fortunately, most lance skills take 1 SP to use, and they have quite a bit of SP, so you shouldn't have to worry about running out.

Summoners:  Princess Yoyo and Sendak.  the Princess is probably the most annoying character in game.  At the beginning it seemed like Byuu and the Princess were to get together, even so far as promising to go to the Church of Memories when they get older.  However, all this breaks apart when she falls in love with Palpaleos when she was taken by the empire.  Then its all "Palpaleos, Palpaleos, Palpaleos."  Its sickening.  Sendak is a creepy old man.  He might be gay.  Sexuality aside, he's pretty funny, and an important asset to the party.  The the summoners get two different skill sets.  The first one is Red Magic, which pretty much sucks.  Its like 3 skills, Fire magic, Heal magic, and Status Recovery magic.  I don't think they even get Raise Dead.  At first they start as Red Mages, but become Sumoners as the game progresses.  Summons break the game.  They are way too powerful.  On the field they can do extreme damage to a wide area of enemies.  Summons do take a LOT of mana though.  

Assassin and Minidevils:  They are useless in my opinion. They're field skills suck, and in melee the Assassin are about as good as Light Armors.  The minidevils suck in melee as well as in the field.

The story revolves around the infamous rebel force struggling against and eventually overthrowing the evil Empire.  Only the empire isn't necessarily evil.  In fact the Emperor is actually quite noble and honorable, even though he aims to take over the world.  Emperor Sauzer wishes to awaken all the Holy Dragon's in order to make way for the new Era.  However to do this, he needs the help of a Dragnar, some one who can speak to the Holy Dragons.  Princess Yoyo of Kahna is a Dragnar, so he kidnaps her when he takes over Kahna.  Once the Rebels rescue Princess Yoyo,they decide that the only way to defeat the empire is to gain the powers of the Holy Dragons.  There is more to the story, but I won't spoil it entirely.

There is a Plus Game when you finish it, but ultimately I think its kind of worthless.  The characters and Dragons all stay the same level as when you beat the game, with the addition that Sendak can use Summons right from the start, however you only have one dragon to summon.  Apparently if you missed getting Princess ???s you can do the Plus Game to get them.  If you feed 5 of those to a dragon you can make a Behemoth class dragon, which apparently is awesome?  I honestly didn't care enough to find out.  I'm a casual gamers, so doing EVERYTHING in the game is not something I strive to do.  Also, the game wasn't too hard the first time around, so honestly its kind of stupid to play it again with high level characters.

Review - Dawn of Mana

I just finished Dawn of Mana for the PS2 the other day.  It was a fun game, but not without its shortcomings.

Gameplay wise its quite different from the previous games in the series.  Instead of an overhead view of the world, its now a 3d platformer type game, not unlike Zelda Ocarina of Time.  I've read reviews on the game that seem to give the game bad marks just because of problems with the camera angles.  While there are indeed instances where I didn't know what the heck was going on because the camera screws up, I actually laughed hysterically because of it.  While yes this could be a hindrance on bosses, fortunately it never happened to me during a boss.  The camera angles made jump quests especially hard, fortunately there aren't that many jump quests though.   So yeah, the camera could have used some work, but I don't think thats why the game should have gotten 4.5/10 on some of the reviews I read that basically just said the camera was the worst point.  Also, the camera in any game will have issues, especially in games such as this.  

Dawn of Mana does have a learning curve.  They actually tell you just about everything you need to know in the prologue, but they really don't tell you how to execute this knowledge.  I learned stuff at the end of the game, that I should have been doing the entire game.  For instance, in the beginning I would use Keldy's whip thing and grab an item/enemy, and then release it by flinging it at an enemy.  I didn't realize until the end that I could have just used the square button to fling it, but keep it attached to the whip and pummel enemies with it over and over until one dies.  Would have made the game a lot easier.

Now would be a good time to point out the battle system.  Its quite different from any game I've ever played.  Enemies have a "Panic" meter, which basically means if they get hit by something, or something comes very close to hitting them, they freak out and are either stunned, or they start running away.  When they are stunned they will drop Medals when you hit them, which are basically how you level up.  Some medals increase HP, some SP, and some Max Attack.  Depending on what hit the enemy, and how many time the enemy was hit by something, the Panic meter has a higher countdown.  

The bosses overall weren't extremely hard.  The battles can however take quite  bit of time to do.  I died a few times on quite a few, but thats only because I couldn't figure out what to do to harm it. Once I figured out how to stun the boss, it was pretty easy.  

Graphically the game is beautiful.  This is definitely where the Dawn of Mana shines.  The Mana series has always been known for lush environments, and Dawn of Mana is no exception.  I had a lot of fun just wandering around looking at the world.  Its also really fun to look at 3D renderings of my favorite Mana series monsters, such as Rabites and Mushbooms.  I just wish they made more monsters from the series, like Sahagins and those ducks with the helmets.

Being a Mana game, the story reflects that.  Mana Tree is being destroyed, Mana Tree is destroyed, Mana Tree is reborn.  All in a tragic story revolving around Keldy and his friend Ritzia.  There are a few twists, though kind of predictable.  The game is quite short, which does make character development nearly non-existent, yet somehow you still feel for the characters.  My only complaint is that the story is very linear, so there really isn't too much replay value, apart from collecting all the ribbons.  A ribbon is a reward that boosts your abilities, you can only equip so many at a time at the beginning of a chapter.  I've never been one that must have 100% in a game, so I can't be bothered to get all the ribbons.

The music is also another shining point for Dawn of Mana.  Again the Mana series is known for good music.  All the music fits seamlessly to what is happening in the game.  Fierce boss battle music, calm tranquil ambient music, and emotional music in tragic scenes.  The music in the very end nearly made me shed tears.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the game.  I personally hate numbering systems for reviews so I won't put one.  Although quite different from the previous installments, this is not a detractor.  The game is still as fun as the rest and I definitely recommend playing it.  Dawn of Mana is not for the casual gamer however, so if you do get it and play it, save points can be few and far between, so be warned.  Despite its lack of replay value, the gameplay itself might make it worth playing again.

Talentless Troll has spoken!