So I’ve finally gotten a chance to do a serious sit-down with Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga, an action-adventure title from XSeed Games for the Nintendo Wii. The first part of the game is about getting the four major races (human, dwarf, elf, and halfling) cooperating again, and the second half is about fighting off an ancient evil with the descendant of your first character. Time to kill some monsters!
Eldar Saga is a spin-off of the Valhalla Knights series of games on the Sony PSP. This is my first exposure to the series.
1. Graphics [Meh] Brown. Muddy, murky brown. That’s the majority of what you’ll be seeing in Eldar Saga, washed-out blurry colors. No amount of tweaking your TV settings will make the graphics any clearer, either. I can only assume this was an intentional design choice, but it seems pretty daring. For example, at one point in the game my brown-clad character was running along a brown mountain pass against the backdrop of brown mountains, when suddenly I started taking piddly amounts of damage. Spinning the camera around me and squinting, I still could not discern what was hitting me. Turns out, a brown kobold was shooting me with a crossbow; I literally had to run into him before noticing his presence. Aside from the character designs, which do have a Japanese feel to them, the rest of the game looks like stereotypical western fantasy. All the monsters look somewhat realistic, and I imagine the dull color scheme may be tied into this design choice. That’s unfortunate, because the western fantasy games people like do not necessarily look ugly or color-less (Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, for example).
Behold...a wondrous fantasy land made of chocolate!
On a positive note, everything you put on your character changes his appearance. You equip a goofy hat on your character, and no matter how good statistically it may be, your character is still running around in a goofy hat. Unfortunately, when you are in the store buying gear, there’s no way to see these items until after you’ve spent the money. I ended up buying a huge, floppy straw hat, complete with flowers in the brim because of this. All you can do is reload and buy something different.
2. Game Play [Meh] God, how I tried to like this game. The game has you running around and killing monsters with one of three attacks – light, strong, and a spin-attack. The strong attack is slightly more damaging, but slower. The spin-attack requires you first land a number of hits, at which point your hand begins to glow. You then spin the Wii-mote (or press X + B on the classic controller) to spin around with your sword. My problem with this is that the damage output to time spent performing this spin-attack is probably less than just spamming light attacks. Also, you better be committed before hitting the attack button too much – quite often your character will be stuck performing a three-hit combo against the air, as the target nimbly side-stepped your initial attack and is now chewing on your ass. A ‘lock-on’ feature helps you stay focused on the enemy, but it makes you painfully vulnerable to the attacks from others.
Ah, yeah, out of the plains and into the darkest forest ever.
A major part of the game is upgrading your gear, but the store is not helpful at all. Not only are all the gear prices amazingly high, there’s no stat comparison of what you’re looking at in the store to what you’re currently wearing. The best you can do is write down the stats of what you’re wearing, and then compare this note to the displayed stats in the store. Another frustrating quirk is the sheer number of stats to track; all armor items have a rating for ‘Slash,’ ‘Thrust,’ and ‘Strike,’ but according to the instruction manual, those stats represent attack power…?
The complicated button layout was hard for me, something of a gamer veteran, to memorize. Hours after starting up the game, I was still discovering sub-menus. I didn’t realize immediately, but one of the good things in the game is the customizable way you level up your character – you improve your ability scores and spend skill points. You can also switch jobs mid-game and equip skills from previously held jobs; in this way, although it starts off with the classic “Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard & Bard” setup, you can make your character any way you want. More jobs open later on, allowing you to punch, shoot, and do other sorts of harm to enemies.
There are also ‘guild quests’ you can perform, sort of like mini-missions that you get paid for. I love this type of feature in adventure games, sort of a formalized side-quest that makes you feel more a part of the game world, earning money in a respectable profession. I’ll be honest, though, beyond the character customization possibilities and guild quests, there isn’t much game play draw in Eldar Saga for me. I’m a big fan of rogue-likes (sort of a level-grind experience with randomized dungeons), but I still wasn’t having much fun. It really seems to me like this game could’ve used like another year of development (in every aspect, but most importantly game play) to tighten things up.
When things die, they sorta fall down and *bamf* away, Nightcrawler-style.
3. Grab-Factor [Trash] This story is pretty basic fantasy fare, nothing you haven’t seen before in various formats. The super-customization of your character is a cool draw, but ultimately crippled due to the very lacking shop presentation. The generational aspect is sort of interesting, something I haven’t seen in a while (Phantasy Star 3, perhaps?). The world, story, characters, even the monsters….nothing here really held my attention. I was fighting the urge to skip cut-scenes as early as the third cut-scene. Let’s hope there’s something innovative or just a really cool hook to get people interested in the next Valhalla Knights game!
4. Soundtrack [Meh] The background music in places is pretty nice. I do like the ‘outdoors’ theme when you first leave civilization – it has a sort of adventurous feel to it. The town themes are sleepy and almost hypnotic. But then there’s the sound effects, and it’s amazing how thoroughly they sabotage the soundtrack. For some reason, your footfalls are shockingly loud, and no matter what type of surface you step on, it sounds like somebody noisily chewing on a spoonful of Cap’n Crunch. The other sound effects are either serviceable or bizarre; apparently, both small birds and large dragons sound identical, with the cawing of a bird and the heavy beat of a dragon’s wings. When you are charged up and ready to use your excruciatingly slow spin-attack, an audible reminder lets you know. This reminder is similar to how other games let you know you are about to die. Long story short, I typically would just use the move ASAP just to silence it.
Hey, it's a snowy area! Trade in that brown for some light blue!
5. Replay Value [Good] There’s potential for replay here, with so much character customization built into the game. If you liked playing the game the first time around, there’s plenty of options for going back a second time with a different character.
Overall Game Rating: 1.25/5 [Trash]
Action Adventure By: XSeed Games System: Nintendo Wii
(Special thanks to XSeed Games for providing the review material!
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