The Rebel Faction

I just beat the game not even an hour ago, so I thought I’d give a quick review of it.

Plot

The main character’s girl has died (or has been killed going by the opening dialog) and he wants to bring her back to life. To do this he takes her body to a sealed land that is forbidden for anyone to enter and basically makes a deal with the ‘deity’ there that if he killed the 16 colossi that roamed the sealed lands he’ll get his girl back. That’s all you know about the storyline until the very end, where there is a surprising plot twist, but even then it's rather 'empty'.

Graphics

Kind of sub par compared to what’s out there now, but despite that a lot of the environments are gorgeous. A lot of the ‘open plain’ areas however are very bright, almost to the point of blinding you due to the ‘sun’. The main characters horse is very well animated and the hair on it’s main and tail flow very realistically. However the main character himself comes off as a bit ‘blocky’ looking to me, however the tabard he wears does have a nice flowing animation to it.

Sound

The sound effects were fairly realistic and well done with one exception: the hoof beats of the horse were obviously off, especially when it was cantering and galloping.

The music is beautiful and my only gripe about it was that it wasn’t played very often. Music only played during cut scenes and when you are close to/fighting the colossi, including the opening and ending sequences.

Controls/Playability

Fairly simple and straight forward controls. Two big gripes first.

- Instead of using the same movement controls as the main character, you have to keep pressing a button to control the horses speed. I suppose they designed it this way to help prevent developing a sore on your thumb while running around: don’t they know that gamers already have a callus built up on that digit to prevent that very thing? On top of that, the horse will only gallop in a straight line: try to turn it even slightly, or get close to an object or cliff and it will drop down to a canter.

- The camera….dear gods the camera. More often then not it’s not right behind you where it should be, instead being well off to one side of you, especially when on the horse. It’s a bear to get it to look where you want it to while running around on foot as well, which is rather important when you are trying to climb up a beast’s back that wants nothing more then to squish you.

Speaking of climbing, when you’re holding onto a ledge and what the guy to pull himself up, he doesn’t always do it on the first try, or second or third try. This usually happens most often when, you guessed it, you are fighting a colossus.

Aiming the bow can be a little squirrelly, especially when riding on the horse. Fortunately there’s really only one colossi you have to shoot at while on the horse.

One actual good thing is that the horse does have a smart pathing system. You can let it ‘drive’ itself in certain areas, namely bridges and narrow canyons (another ‘thumb’ saving feature maybe?). However this same pathing system AI can get annoying at times: there is one land bridge I’ve come across where the horse will slow down to a walk and won’t go faster no matter how many times you spur it (in this case you are better off dismounting and running across on foot).

Ending

Rather bittersweet, if that’s the right term for it. During the ending sequence you do get a chance to control your character and you can manipulate the camera throughout the sequence. However I don’t think anything you do during those times you can control the character to change the outcome. Don’t hold me to that though as I’ve only been through the ending once.

Replayability

Other then messing around with the ending sequence and the hard mode and time attack mode you unlock after beating the game once I don’t see much in terms of replayability here. The whole game is basically ‘run to this location’, ‘kill the colossi’ and repeat fifteen more times. Granted each colossi takes a different strategy to beat, but that isn’t much considering there are only the colossi to hunt (unless that is you want to go on a quest to kill every lizard, bird, and bat in the landscape….).

The game lasted 10 hours (only a period of four days tops) for me and it felt overall disappointingly short. I honestly didn’t use any guides until the 12th colossi but even there are a couple of things I would have liked to have been different.

First off…that ‘guiding light’ function of the sword would have been nixed. It allows you to find the colossi far too quickly.

Second, the lack of ‘free range’. You basically could only find one colossi at a time and would have been much better if you were left to your own devices and had to find them completely on your own. There’s no leveling, no additional skill gaining, so a more free range means of finding the colossi would have made sense.

Last, additional foes to fight. Yes the colossi are imposing and deadly by themselves…but considering what you find out at the end, shouldn’t there be ‘minions’ attempting to stop you throughout the whole game?

I give this game a 7, over all.

SOmehow this just sound too bland. I mean, it is too straight forward. You kill sixteen colossi then you get your girl back. Hmm...

How 'bout this. To get your your girl back, you must get a band of outlsws, misfits, and other rogues, fight an empire, topple it, and then if and only you do this in the time alotted, say five game years, you can get your girl back. That sounds a whole lot better.

They need to make more Fable-like games. Fable was the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They need more exclaimation points!!!!!!! They make everything better!!!!!!!!11!one

Seriously though, an interesting review, Slaskia. Did you think the game compelling enough to keep your interest in the end, or was it just too many problems?

Was it PS1, dreamcast, or what?