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GAME REVIEWED: The Granstream Saga
RELEASED BY: SCEE
PRICE: £34.99
REVIEWED BY: A.K.
REVIEW: -
It's been a long, long time since Final Fantasy VII was released and ther's a while to go yet before Final Fantasy VIII is released. For the ardent RPG fan, someone needed to release an RPG to fill the lengthy gap. SCEE, who had RPG success with Wild Arms, decided to be that company adn have released The Granstream Saga to satisfy RPG fans for the moment.
In The Granstream saga you play the role of a youth, who's main objective is to save four floating (yes, floating, in the sky) continents from their descent into the water below which would result in all the inhabitants of the continents drowning. You are asked by a wise old guy to find some magic stones to keep the continents afloat but all of them have recently mysteriously disappeared and the whereabouts of the magic stones is a mystery also, which you have to solve
The only good thing in the game is the detail on the neat and colourful characters, they look great from the distance but when the camera is close in you get to notice the disturbing fact that the characters have no facial detail at all, the only time you get to see a character's face is when your having a face to face conversation with them, the detail on the faces at this stage is not too bad although it makes the characters look 2-dimensional. Whenever your having a conversation with one of the characters, the dialogue appears at the bottom of the screen which can be helpful at times but most of the time it tends to be annoying and has no relevance to whats going on in the game. During the game you have to take on bad guys to progress in the game. When you are about to fight there is a bright flash of light then it's back into the game with you standing face to face with your enemy and a shield that just appears out of thin air and a sword which just suddenly appears onthe end of your arm.
This is a dire game compared to Wild Arms, Alundra and definitely nowhere as good as FFVII. I thought Sony would have done a lot better, the recent sucess of Wild Arms seem to show that they were going to challenge FFVII, but instead they seem to have taken a backward step in making an RPG tocompete with FFVII. The only group of Playstation gamers who might like this would be those eagerly awaiting the release of FFVIII or hardcore RPG fans, but I don't think this would appeal to just any gamer, maybe if they were bored, maybe!
SCORE:
56%
LINKS: www.scee.com