- Konami
- Action Puzzle
- Release: Jan 28, 2010 »
- ESRB: Everyone 10+
You play as a barbarian whose tribe has been enslaved by a horned daemon who rules a distant land. Determined to free your people, you journey from region to region, doing favors for chieftains and kings, to amass an army large enough to assail the evil empire. This plays out across a sequence of map screens in which points of interest are marked with a floating question mark or exclamation point. You select one and, with a sound of shuffling feet that you'll soon grow tired of hearing, the little representation of your warrior moseys over to that location. When you investigate it, some text pops up indicating what you find, and if an enemy lies in wait to attack you, a lengthy load time is triggered, followed by a puzzle battle, followed by another lengthy load time. There are some brief side quests you can undertake to acquire useful items or to access minigames that help you strengthen your character, craft or hunt for valuable items, or train your faithful warbeast companion, but for the most part the game is linear. There's never any question about exactly where you need to go to advance the story, and there's nothing of interest to do outside of that story, making the thrust of the game feel focused but also very narrow. And the load times are frequent enough to cripple any sense of momentum you might try to muster as you carry out your quest. Your character is as dull as he is muscular, and the story plods along predictably until it ends abruptly with one storyline resolved and another one maddeningly unresolved in a blatant setup for a sequel.
The battles play out in a puzzle game that will feel familiar to those who have played Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. Stacks of three colored gems enter the playing field from the left side and essentially fall sideways, toward the wall that divides your area from your enemy's area. You can rotate the stacks or press a button to drop them toward the wall quickly. Special gems called battle gems will shatter any like-colored gems that are linked horizontally or vertically to the battle gem. Then there are colored skulls called rage gems, and for every five of these you destroy, your character attacks, pushing the wall toward your opponent, giving you more room and him less. By clustering four gems of the same color into a square, you create a power gem of that color. Destroying a red power gem activates your equipped weapon, generating rage. Destroying a green power gem activates your equipped shield, making you invulnerable to enemy attacks for a brief period, while yellow and blue power gems activate your equipped ring and trinket, respectively, which can bestow all kinds of other benefits. Shattering gems of each color also contributes power toward a different type of attack from your warbeast. These can grant you rage, stun your enemy, jumble your enemy's gems, and so on. The battle ends when one combatant has no room in which to maneuver the gems entering his or her area.
