I managed to play this Camelot-made RPG for Game Boy Advance. I was very excited to play it because this game has one of the most intriguing storylines I've ever seen. In a nutshell, the evil Saturos and Menardi take possession of the stones which control the elements, and plan to use them to light the beacons atop the four elemontal lighthouses across the world. If they succeed the world will dissolve into chaos, so it's up to you, Garret, Ivan, and Mia to stop them!

The game sets off on the right foot with a great plot, but does the rest of the game stack up? Read on and find out! I have judged all categories on a scale of 10. 10 means perfect, and 1 means it made me sick, or worse.

Graphics: 9

Although I still feel that Game Boy Advance is underachieving, this game made full use of the 32 bits of processing power that the system offers. You won't find these graphics on SNES! The graphics in field mode are fairly standard, but the graphics in battles are amazing. The battles look 3D, everything is rendered nicely, and the animation is smooth. I took off a point because Camelot took the easy way out by reusing nearly all of their enemy designs, only with different colors. While it's not at all uncommon, it does show a lack of effort. For the record, I don't expect every villager to have a different design, and they didn't.

Sound: 8

Like the graphics, I could have given a 10 for this category if it weren't for a lack of effort. With the exception of one cave music, which I hate, all of the music is terrific. I really like the battle theme, which is lively yet simple. I feel a good battle theme is important because you hear it so often. Unfortunately, Camelot reused all of their tunes, so the tune that I would like to call the villains' theme is also used for some bandits and for a cave. Some more variety would have been nice. The noise you hear when characters speak is really annoying, but I didn't take off points for it because Camelot graciously lets you turn it off.

Story: 4

Why only a 4, given my raving review of the storyline in the introduction? Although the story sounds great at the beginning of the game, it flops miserably at the end. I can't really explain why without giving things away, but no game has left me hanging as much as this one. I mean, I'm hanging so high, I'm probably outside the planet's gravitational sphere, and am now floating away. The game ended way too soon (I'll discuss that more in the length section), and it left so many questions unanswered. If that was truly Camelot's intent, as the To Be Continued at the end suggests, it was incredibly misguided.

Characters: 7

First, the run-through of the main characters:

Isaac (you): Alligned with ground, you're another one of those silent heroes. Not much is known about Isaac, but his mother says that he never breaks his word. Unfortunately his word often sends him on side quests that won't help him reach the next lighthouse first.

Garret: Alligned with fire, Garret joins you within minutes of starting the game; you never fight an enemy alone. He is the most practical member of the group, as he insists that you need to chase after the villains, rather than to delay by going on side quests to save people and stuff. Unfortunately it is also his fault that the villains got the Elemental Stones in the first place.

Ivan: Alligned with wind, Ivan is a servant to the kidnapped Lord Hammet. However, he is actually destined to participate in some kind of adventure... do you think this qualifies? He has the power to read minds, which is great for catching thieves.

Mia: Alligned with water, Mia is a great healer. She joins you once she finds that she needs your help to get through the first lighthouse while chasing after the mysterious intruding party of six.

Saturos and Menardi: The main villains of this game, Saturos and Menardi are powerful, clever, and evil. They'll stop at nothing to take over the world by lighting the four beacons. Both are alligned with fire, which will end up being significant. They lead the sixsome you're chasing.

Jenna: A member of your party in the beginning of the game, Jenna is captured by Saturos and Menardi and held as ransom for the four Elemental Stones. Garret hands over three of them, but chaos erupts before you can hand over the fourth, prompting the villains to take her with them on their journey to the first lighthouse. You follow them in an attempt to save her, but if you hand over the fourth stone and mess up, the world will be destroyed. It seems to me that you really just need to forget her and sit on the stone.

Kraden: An expert on all things related to the stones, and your teacher of old, Kraden is kidnapped along with Jenna, for convenience more than anything else.

Felix: Believed drowned in a flood, Felix owes a debt to Saturos and Menardi for saving his life. As luck has it, Felix is Jenna's brother, so he ensures Jenna's co-operation. While it seems at first that Felix is a harmless follower, it turns out that he may have evil intentions of his own.

Alex: Rounding out the party of six that you chase all game, Alex is alligned with water; Saturos and Menardi need him so they can get into the water lighthouse. However, he appears to be traveling with them of his own free will, as he even helps save Saturos when he could have escaped or finished him off. He may be the most mysterious character of the game. In fact, based on the picture you see when he speaks, and the fact that his name could be short for Alexandra, I'm not even sure if he's a he.

Sheba: Alligned with ground, Sheba becomes the seventh member in the party ahead of you near the end of the game when Saturos and Menardi need someone to get them into the ground lighthouse. Unlike Alex, she is not willingly in the group. She has little to say, but her character is important as it spawns a fracture between Felix and his two evil benefactors.

Now for the Review itself. I usually like to see more than four characters in your party so that you can choose who can fight, although four isn't too bad given the length of the game. Most of the three points I took off are due to the fact that the characters aren't developed very well, despite the many conversations you get during the course of the game. The supporting cast is fine, but I'd like to know the main characters better.

Field Mode: 7

This is where you find items, further the plot, and find out where you need to go next. This is fairly impressive, as you will become involved in many conversations, have the opportunity to find many hidden items and the occassional Djinn (more on them in the Battle Mode section), and try to figure out what is going on. Although Field Mode is fairly smooth, I took off points because the clues about what you're supposed to do next are sometimes vague, so I often left a town with very little idea of where to go next, and the world map doesn't help much because it only lists places you've already been to. I also took off points for the annoying conversation style. I enjoy a good convo, but they all seem so long, to the point where I am anxious for them to end so I can get back to exploring. Conversations are drawn out because Camelot made characters twitch before they speak. I assume they did this so you know who's speaking, but usually there's also a picture of them in the text box. The anime expressions draw things out too, and they're only cute for a while.

Battle Mode: 6

Poor Camelot. This section could have received a 9 1/2 if they had only made it easier to use Djinns. As promised, I will now explain what Djinns are.

The best way I can describe Djinns is, they're a cross between Pokemon and Espers (Final Fantasy 3/6). You'll find them in Field Mode, usually hidden well, and often you'll need to defeat them in battle before they join you. When a Djinn does join you, you can use it in battle. It's not like a Pokemon, which fights and takes damage for you, but more like an Esper in that you can use it to unleash a powerful attack. If you "set" a Djinn you can release it in battle, which will cause some helpful effect depending on the Djinn. After you release it, or if you did not set it, you can summon it. The effect of the summons is more powerful if you summon more Djinns of the same type (ground, fire, water, and wind) at once. After a Djinn is summoned it will need to rest for a turn before it's automatically set and you can release it again.

On the surface, it sounds like a simple three-round pattern: release, summon, rest, repeat. And it is simple... when you only have one Djinn. When you start to get more it becomes difficult to coordinate them all, especially if you want to prepare a powerful summons. All of your battles will be different, not because there are tons of enemy arrangements, but because your strategy will be largely determined on what your Djinns are up to at the moment. Your Djinns are not reset to the start position between battles, and sometimes a summoned Djinn will recover between battles, and sometimes not.

It's a good thing you have no time limit to pick your moves, because in some sticky situations I have needed to take a few minutes to prepare my attack while I figure out what Djinns I can use. Adding to the problem is that, when a Djinn is set, the character it is set to will often end up with different magical abilities (known as Psynergy). Sometimes I'll try to call on a character to heal, only to find that he no longer has a heal move... then I need to rearrange my entire attack pattern for the round and find someone else to heal, or go without it. It's very difficult to get things straightened out, and you can enter a battle with a serious disadvantage if you forgot to set an important Djinn, which becomes increasingly easy to do as you get more of them.

So, if Djinns are so confusing, why didn't I just stick to regular attacks and Psynergy? Although a guide I looked at said it's possible to win without Djinns, I'm not interested in trying. Djinns are much more powerful than your attacks, even your strong Psynergy if you use them right, and that's saying a lot because you can use Psynergy often since you recover Psynergy Points just by walking around. You can't expect to fall any serious foe with your regular attacks, not even if you buy the most expensive items like I did, and you will eventually run out of Psynergy Points to use. Sure, it's probably possible to win without Djinns, but you'll probably need to train a lot. Best to just figure out the Djinns, I think.

That's my big complaint for Battle Mode. I also took off a 1/2 point because the beautiful animation is marred by pauses so you can read the effects of your attack. For example, your character will lunge forward, attack, and then suddenly pause on the way back so you can read how much damage was dealt. Although it's only graphical, it would be much nicer if the effects of your attacks were shown as numbers over the enemy's head, like in Mario RPG, so that the action doesn't need to pause.

Difficulty: 7 1/2

The difficulty for Field Mode is perfect; there are many puzzles, some of which require you to use Psynergy out of battle. The puzzles are just right, the kind of puzzles you need to think about but will probably be able to figure out eventually. If you do resort to a walkthrough, you'll probably slap yourself on the forehead when you see the obvious solution. Only one puzzle I can think of had a solution I would never have thought of on my own, and it was really due to a graphical problem... I couldn't tell from the screen that I was able to walk behind something, which then set up an easy solution. One problem is that the Psynergy you need may not be visibly present due to the set-up of your Djinn... but at least you can get it back by rearranging them.

On the other hand, the difficulty for Battle Mode is very iffy. If you find lots of Djinns and use them well, you'll be able to breeze through nearly all of the battles without much effort, so that the difficulty errs on the side of too easy. If you don't find the Djinns, or if you don't use them well, you'll have a very difficult time and you'll probably only get through if you train extensively, so then the difficulty errs on the side of too hard. Somewhere in the middle, I suppose you might get lucky and find the difficulty just right, so I gave an average difficulty score of 5 for Battle Mode.

Length: 2

Either I'm misunderstanding the size of the Game Boy Advance cartridge, or Camelot got incredibly lazy. We already saw some slack with the graphics and sound, but that was nothing compared to this. When I started the game, it looked like it was going to be a race to get to the fourth tower first... I mean, what fun would the game be if I beat the villains to the very first tower? No way that was going to happen. Unfortunately, that is nearly the way the game ended up, not at the first tower but at the second. I was stunned to battle the final boss at the top of only the second tower, and then reluctantly watched the "ending". I refuse to call it a true ending as there is so much left undone. Felix has the power to light the third beacon, and he wants to. Saturos and Menardi are supposedly dead, but I doubt they are. We don't really know what happened to Sheba, and you have yet to save some of the people you promised to, a man named Babi in particular.

The game is To Be Continued, according to the "ending", and a sequel has already been released in Japan. However, that sequel is not physically connected to this game... it can't be, because no password was issued. That means that even if the next games starts where this one ends, right after the second lighthouse, you'll need to start at level 1 again, and you'll have lost your Djinns, items, and everything else. How is Camelot going to explain that? If the two games were connected I'd be more forgiving, but now it looks like two adventures, both of which have been sliced in half. Two ok games does not a great game make... or something like that.

Replay Value: 4

If you liked the game you'll probably want to play again, as you're sure to have missed lots of secret stuff. However, I can't give a great score because much of that "secret stuff" are Djinns, and you'll need to find many of them to beat the game the first time unless you trained a lot and got through on brute strength. Also, I'm much more interested in completing the game... you know, the real game, which will hopefully be completed in the sequel, than revisiting the first half. Maybe I'll play again after I finish part two.

Fun Factor!: 8

First, a slight explanation of what I mean by Fun Factor!. This category refers to how fun the game is to play. A game can have lousy graphics, awful music, even a non-existant storyline, and still be fun to play. Just look at Mario 3; although the graphics don't stand up anymore, it is still a lot of fun. Ultimately, isn't it the fun value that counts? Everything else is really just icing, it's the fun that matters.

This is why my Reviews don't include an Overall section, like some others do. The overall section basically balances all the scores together, but it doesn't tell you the most important thing, which is how fun the game is. Fun Factor! already does that, and so I find it fit to end the Review with that and a recommendation, which will almost always be positive if the game receive a high Fun Factor!, say, 8 or higher when out of 10.

This game is a rare exception to the rule I just stated. The 8 listed above suggests that this game is, indeed, very fun to play. Frustration, coming from learning how to use the Djinns properly and trying to find your next destination, pulled the score down a bit, but there's nothing wrong with an 8. However, when the game was suddenly sliced short, my opinion of the game overall was knocked down about 5 points. I have never seen a game that seemed so incomplete, so... wrong, when all was said and done. Therefore, although this game is fun to play, I cannot recommend it.

Recommendation: Camelot came very close to releasing a first-rate RPG, one that could rival the great games of the genre. The only thing stopping this game from reaching that pier is a lack of effort, in the graphics, music, and most importantly, length. Perhaps when combined with Golden Sun 2 we'll have one excellent game, but I can't say for sure now. I do intend to play Golden Sun 2, but only so I finally get a chance to resolve all those loose ends. Don't leave yourself hanging by getting this game. I would really skip by this game, despite all the good things going for it. If you have a weekend with absolutely nothing to do then maybe you can rent it, as I beat the game in three days... but even that I don't really recommend.

See? I do give negative Reviews!

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