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Well, it all started in 1215, when King John and Pope Innocent III
signed a series of documents...oh wait, I got confused again. While
that Magna Carta set up the end of monarchy as the world then
knew it, that's not why we're here today. Instead, the subject of
this article is something near and dear I've taken a little time to
simmer over before finally bursting -- Softmax's Magna Carta: Tears
of Blood for the PS2.
Now, this series captured my heart long before I ever had a
chance to play it. Several years ago, while browsing through a web
forum, I came upon some fantastic character art that simply blew
me away. I asked the person who posted that art about it, and he
proceeded to tell me about a little-known Korean company called
SoftMax, and their wonderful but (at that time) relatively
unheard-of RPG titles, War of Genesis and Magna
Carta. Further research found a number of fantastic looking
games with beautiful character designs, deep stories, and some
interesting gameplay ideas. I mourned the fact that they would
likely never see the light of day in the US.
Then the day came. A friend of mine mentioned a blurb he saw on a
gaming website (which would turn out to be the very same one I
write for today), mentioning that Atlus was bringing Magna Carta
to the US. I don't think I've ever been that excited for a new RPG
release ever. I was ecstatic! The first screenshots and movies
came out, and the game's graphics floored me. Absolutely
breathtaking. I learned soon after that this game, titled Tears
of Blood, would not be the original Magna Carta but an
unrelated title (they share the same name/design for the lead, but
are otherwise completely independent of one another.) This failed
to faze me however, since I learned the design team was largely
the same. With any luck, this game would become a classic that I'd
enjoy for quite some time. Eagerly I awaited the release day, and
even went so far as to buy the "Special Edition" version with the
artbook. Then came the pain.
Softmax, Atlus, where did you go wrong? Such a gorgeous-looking
game with such great promise, and yet such an utter disappointment
to me in so many ways! This game ranks as one of the worst
RPG purchase decisions I've ever made (Suikoden IV being the only
worse I can think of), and it breaks my heart. Let me share my
grief with you, in its myriad forms. Mourn with me, fellow
gamers, for what could have been. Perhaps future developers can
learn from the mistakes made here, and make a better game for the
next generation.
First, let's get the good out of the way. Visually, the game
really is fantastic. Hyung Tae-Kim's peerless artwork
comes to life in a series of imaginative, often quirky designs.
While it relies heavily on pretty-boy bishounen metrosexual "is
that a guy?" types, what Asian-produced RPG made since FFVII
hasn't had its share of those, I ask you? And at least it
pulls them off well, and has some really original designs. The
backgrounds are well-made and detailed, and effects like lighting,
water, and fire are handled superbly. I really was satisfied with
this. Too bad it's about the only thing that went right. The
characters are wonderful...until they begin to speak, that is.
Now, if there's one thing companies are usually guilty of when
casting voice actors for their RPGs, it's overdoing it. One only
has to look at FFX, Tales of Legendia, or Shining
Force Neo to see some of what the current RPG voiceover trend
is like. Words like "hamfisted," "over the top," and "please God,
make Meryl shut up!" come to mind. Atlus didn't follow the trend
with this one; if anything they did the polar opposite. The voices
in Magnta Carta: ToB sound like Ben Stein did the entire
cast. They were bland, unemotional, and completely and utterly
done in monotone. One of the important things needed of any
ensemble cast is the ability to emote well, so the player develops
a rapport with the characters and their moods, and so tense
situations seem more realistic. Instead, the game reads like a
troupe of sleepy valium addicts reading Shakespeare. There's
no chemistry apparent, no spark.
Speaking of chemistry, this game is one of those ones where you
have relationship meters that measure how well Calintz and his
band of not-so-jaunty mercenaries are getting along. This was a
great replay feature in games like Star Ocean: Till the End of
Time, since you could tweak the character's affection ratings
to access extra cutscenes and change the game's ending. In
Tears of Blood, the affection system directly relates to
your team's effectiveness in combat. The more they like you, the
faster and better they fight. What this means is that instead of
using the system to your liking to develop relationships with the
other characters and add to the fun of the story, you find
yourself optimizing your responses, trying to find the best
combinations to keep everyone happy. You can also flood your team
with expensive gifts to keep this rating high, but that negates
the fun factor as well.
Basically, all making someone like you does is enhances the speed
that their ATB-esque combat bar fills. When the bar hits certain
points, the character can attack. So filling up fast is a good
thing right? Well...let's talk about the combat system a little.
First off, as before mentioned, each character has a bar that needs
to hit a certain point before an attack can be made. What's more,
more than one of these points exists on the bar, and waiting for a
later one can achieve better results. Here's where it goes bad
though: Only one character can be controlled at a time, and only
that person's bar fills during that time. So it doesn't matter how
fast everyone else's fills, since you're only worrying about one
person at a time. Unlike the Action Time Battle bars of the FF
series, you can't have party members queued up in the wings to
attack while one is doing their thing. In fact, they won't do
anything! While one character is controlled, the other ones
literally stand still staring off into space. Since the combat is
in "kind of real-time" (the enemies and the one character being
controlled move freely about a 3D battlefield and attack as soon
as they are in range and have their bar active), that essentially
means two-thirds of your party are paperweights at any given
moment. One viable yet stupid combat tactic is to position two
party members between your controlled character and the enemy and
use them as meat shields! Not to mention the fact this tends to
make you rely on the same character over and over, meaning the
others have a harder time getting new skills. If for some
reason you need to switch to another character to win a fight
(rarely needed with the sadly idiotic monster AI and low overall
difficulty level), it doesn't matter that they spent the first
three minutes of the fight doing nothing. They still have to
wait for their bar to fill! And then suffer through the horrendous
combat skill/ring system.
Tears of Blood is not the first to use a timing-based
combat system to deliver attacks. Sony's lesser-known Legend of
Dragoon title, as well as the Shadow Hearts series, made use
of similar methods. In ToB, once you are in range of an enemy and
your attack bar is at the right point, a ring will appear with
circles at certain spots along it labeled "X" or "O". A marker
will spin around this ring, and the key to attacking relies on
hitting the appropriate button (X or O) at the precise time. And
believe me, it's very unforgiving. The slightest miss and your
attack fails. As in, nothing happens, and you have to wait for
your bar to fill up again to try again. Not to mention your
character suffers a small delay to the refill thanks to missing.
Oh, and let me mention this isn't for super special attacks, this
is for any combat action. You can also learn alternate
combat methods that allow you to do more damage by changing the
pattern on the battle ring, or even obscuring the X and O symbols
on the ring (making each battle require guesswork or a good FAQ!)
While these allow you to be more effective in battle, they also
require a lot of work and missed opportunities, unless of course
you get a good guide and have it with you at all times. And
there's nothing more painful then screwing up the second or third
hit of a combo and having to start over.
Now a word about skill scrolls and schools of combat. Each
character can learn from more then one school, and each school
teaches different moves (up to a max of four per school). At any
time a character can only use moves from one school, though they
can change them at any time, even during battle. The menu system
for doing so is clunky and confusing though, so expect to waste
time in a fight trying to remember how to make your priestess stop
whacking monsters and start healing you. Now once you do use a
skill, several successful uses will open up new skills in that
same school, up until that fourth one. But you can't access those
skills immediately, oh no. The first attack your character will do
will always be the first in the school. Then you can choose
to do the second one, then the third, etc. If you should at any
time miss a hit on the ring, you have to start over again from the
first. And if you use the fourth skill and the monster is still
standing- yup, that's right. You start over again at the weakest
attack in the school. It doesn't take long before this gets
frustrating.
Oh but wait, if there weren't enough things to limit your
characters in battle, there's the Chi system! Chi is the spiritual
energy inherent in all things in Magna Carta, and is the
equivalent of mana for your characters. Except everything uses
chi, even physical attacks. Each school/skill uses a different
type of Chi (there's about a dozen). Now here's the kicker:
instead of your characters having a pool of Chi, they draw on the
ambient energy of the surrounding area to use their skills.
Depending on the terrain you are in, there might be more or less
of a certain kind of Chi available to use. Also, there are lanterns
scattered throughout the world that can be imbued with special
items to change the surrounding area to a different Chi type.
Proper use of these lanterns can help you and hider your enemies
(who also need Chi to fight). The downside is Chi takes a while to
regenerate, and when a certain type runs out, all skills using
that type are unusable by any of your characters. This is where
switching schools comes in, but you're in trouble if the enemy's
weakness or your healer needs a form of Chi you don't have around
you. Then there's the Chi meters themselves, a series of hexagons
with kanji representing the elements of each Chi type. Sadly, they
did this all wrong. You have a dozen different icons on the
screen, with symbols most Westerners aren't equipped to
understand. And all of them are the exact same color as well.
Atlus would have done well to change the colors for each one and
use more universal symbols (a triangle for Mountain, flame for
Fire, star for Celestial, etc.) so that Western players wouldn't
look at the screen and say "Ugh..I forget which one of these
squiggly things is which!" every five minutes. I know a few
Chinese and Japanese characters myself, and I was stumped more
often then not. Once again, a game that needs a detailed guide by
your side just to play is no fun.
Out of combat, the game has moments that fall short too. First
off, moving around the world is a pain. Your party can be in three
modes when not fighting: Reckless (moves fast, but your visual
range is reduced), Careful (can see around you better, but moves
very slow), and Rest (cannot see anything around you unless
it's attached to your head, or move at all, but regains health at
a quick rate). Monsters roam the world freely much like the
Xenosaga series (and can be avoided just as easily once you see
them), but chances are they'll be able to sneak up and attack you
if you don't use the "careful" exploration mode. Which moves about
as fast as a hamstrung moose, making travel frustrating. The
game's many chests and Chi lanterns are also harder to find
without moving at a snail's pace. There is a minimap on which most
items show up, but it really doesn't help at all. Also not a help
is the game's item system, which is confusing at best. Most items
aren't named in a way that indicated what they do, and there's no
tooltips that help you in that regard. In fact, many items are
listed only as ?? when picked up and require you to pay an NPC to
identify them. Not that you can make heads or tails of them half
the time once IDed. Once again, having a FAQ around is
practically a necessity.
It's a shame. A low down, dirty cryin' shame! The game is
beautiful and the story really had me hooked! But how in the world
can anyone play a game so clunky and confusing? It seems as though
Softmax and Atlus brought us a unique game with a number of fantastic
innovations. Unfortunatly, it was a case of too many new
ideas at once, and not enough explanation to keep it going. Throw
in the weird, unwieldy combat system, and you get what could have
been a remarkable game, but instead feels like a total letdown.
Sadly the game's poor sales and reviews will most likely lead to
us never seeing the War of Genesis series or any of the
other Magna Carta titles on this side of the world, so
there's little chance these two companies will have a chance to
make up for past mistakes. I say it again: It's a real shame.
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