| Game Reviews From a Parental Perspective! | |
|
|
|
| Home | Forums | Review Archive | Columns | Feature Articles |
|
Home >
Review Archive >
Video Games
> Results: Summon Night: Swordcraft Story
Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Scroll down for our Kid Factor. 
What GamerDad says about the ESRB Content Descriptors:
Suggestive Themes: GamerDad didn't anything worse than on a typical Pokemon style cartoon. Mild Fantasy Violence: Most missions required a series of battles. Language:some mild language used for expressing exasperation. Summon Night: Swordcraft Story tries to do a bunch of different things, and does all of them pretty well ﾖ it is a traditional exploration-based role-playing game, it has a decent story with interesting characters, it has a crafting system integrated into the combat and exploration, and has a massive dungeon crawl component with bonus areas and replayability. It is very fun and engaging and a reminder that not only is the GBA still alive, it continues to push out role-playing games better than just about anything available for the ﾑnext-gen' DS or PSP. The story of your quest to become a Craftlord is better integrated and fleshed out than most dungeon crawl games, and does a great job of providing motivations behind crafting, battling the labyrinth, competing in the tournament and then continuing to fight for the causes of truth and justice in the world. The real-time side-view battle system is simple but offers some strategy ﾖ you can switch weapons and use your Guardian Beast to cast spells during the battles based on your opponents' strengths and weaknesses. And because weapons can break is overstressed, in tournaments you can defeat more skilled opponents by getting them to break their weapons. Combat is fun despite the unavoidable random battles throughout the dungeons. The rest of the game was also surprisingly fun and engaging, with solid visuals and an overall experience that was uniformly positive and definitely recommended for anyone looking for a good handheld role-playing game.  
The majority of the content in Summon Night: Swordcraft Story is typical of games in this genre, in that there are simple characters and situation and there isn't anything inappropriate. You play as a young boy or girl in a coming of age story that requires you to leave home and grow in skill and maturity as you battle your way through more and more difficult beasts and opponents. Some of the people you meet along the way are friendly, others are harsh or coarse, and still others are hostile. The dialogue from these characters occasionally includes some mildly inappropriate expressions, but nothing out of place or gratuitous. There are relationships that evolve over the course of the game that are also well done and bring a surprising amount of life to the characters. It isn't often that this type of game has any characters you care about, let alone several. There is playful banter and some light flirting that is fun and further endears many of the characters.
There is nothing inappropriate or overly violent in the combat system ﾖ you battle monsters in the labyrinth in order to destroy them, and battle opponents in the tournament to win and advance. The stress placed on the importance of preparation and use of tactics and appraising the situation are well done and something that is a refreshing alternative. Forcing a stronger opponent to break his blade is a key tactic, as is having the right selection of support items and spells ready for combat. Getting kids to think this way is a nice change from the typical method of loading up and blasting their way through dungeons. The crafting system is nice and varied but not particularly deep, so there isn't anything that is added to the difficulty in terms of the complexity managing recipes and components. This is a good fun game that approaches things a bit differently than most games appropriate for kids at this age, and gives them a taste or several different game types and settings all at once. Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Summon Night: Swordcraft Story |
Read the GamerDad 2007 Holiday Guide!
|
Please Note: GamerDad is not intended to be read by anyone under 18. We stay clean, but be warned! Content Management System developed by Redbird Solutions. |
