Summoner has times of graphical brilliance. It also, unfortunately, has times where you start to wonder if the game's really a PS2 game and not a first-generation PSOne title. Some of the areas that you visit (the cities and villages, for instance) really convey the feel of a bustling location. Lots of people meander about with absolutely no purpose, simply looking cool by being there. But then you go to the overworld map, which reminds one more of the atrocity that was Shadow Madness' map than anything else. Blurry colors, blurry locations... blurry everything. Ugh. The character models are generally well-detailed, but they often have a real sallow look that makes them feel more zombie than human. Most of the enemies look cool, as do Joseph's summons, but some of them come out of Generic Monsterland as well.

The frame rate also has a very bad habit of dropping low when there's lots of stuff on the screen, which is generally only a minor annoyance. The rendering distance, on the other hand, can sometimes obscure just what you're trying to do. Moving the camera to a higher or lower angle can sometimes help, but it's still somewhat disturbing to see buildings appear out of nothing only a short distance away. Different areas have differing levels of draw-in, though, so it's not always bad.

The music in Summoner is quite nice, actually, with wonderfully rousing music for the various battles and other tunes for different locations in the game. It usually matches the mood quite well, which is nice. The sound effects, on the other hand, are straight from generic-land as well, with tings and bings when you attack, and the occasional grunt or scream. The voice acting is generally quite good, although Joseph's voice grates on my nerves. Most of the other characters sound pretty much like I felt that they should. It's not Metal Gear Solid by any means, but it's certainly passable.

Much the same can be said about the gameplay itself. Summoner is a good RPG buried in a whole bunch of Bad Things, and in the end, the bad drags down what good the title has. While it's playable, it's not all that enjoyable, which is rather sad -- Volition's other games have been uniformly excellent.

At the beginning of Summoner, you take control of Joseph, a young man who, at the age of nine, destroyed his hometown by summoning a demon he couldn't control. Your new town has been destroyed as well, as the Emperor searches for the child with the Summoner's Mark -- you. After a daring escape, Joseph must make his way to a nearby city and palace, and find his original tutor in the Summoning arts, Yago. That's where the story starts, and as stories go, Summoner has a quite enjoyable one. There's your fair share of cliches (challenging an Emperor? Oh, my!), but there are enough plot twists and little tweaks to the formula to keep you interested the whole way through. That is, if you don't get bogged down in the game itself. With its fair share of inane dialogue, wonky interface, and niggling issues with everything from scripting to environment interaction, Summoner damn near shoots itself in the foot. What could have been a truly solid RPG experience (and you get hints of it, at times) turns into what often amounts to a dull fetch-quest of epic proportions.

First, though, there are things that Summoner got right. The combination of skill and magic into a single type of point, which regenerates over time, is a Very Good Thing. The combat system, which with its Combo Chains reminds me of a simplified Vagrant Story engine, is nice as well. And the large array of items to generally poke around with and whatnot is a pleasant change from the standard console RPG. In fact, Summoner plays a great deal like a computer RPG -- which is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which camp you're in.

But most of Summoner's problems seem to stem from the fact that the game just isn't quite complete. You can do such nifty things as open doors and chests through walls (no kidding!), the load times are often absolutely horrendous (10-20 seconds), and there are a few dialogue bugs that can have you gain experience multiple times from quests you've already completed. There are tons of quests in the game, and it's often difficult to keep track of what's going on; an automap that you could mark on a la Ultima Underworld, or one that marks itself, would be very nice. It seems as if Volition was a little too expansive for its first PS2 offering, and the game ends up falling flat on its face rather often. The battle system, which at first seems quite cool, ends up being rather monotonous. It gets interesting again once you get the ability to Summon, but even the novelty of that wears off.

Summoner often uses what I refer to as the Cheap FF2 Trick (and this is referring to the Japanese Final Fantasy 2, not Final Fantasy II/4j) to keep you from going where you'd like. Instead of simply keeping you from going to a location, the game puts enemies that you absolutely cannot beat at that point in time in the way, and you die horribly after a few seconds of battle. Ugh. Yes, the game's quite non-linear in its subquests, but such shepherding is more painful than the normal RPG 'go here because the bridges to everywhere else are out' method.

The game itself isn't terribly difficult, although some boss battles will have you fighting for your dear life -- which is a good thing. Spellcasting is simple enough, as is attacking, although sometimes characters stop attacking for no apparent reason. Sometimes fighting to make the game do what you like is more difficult than the game itself.

The game has the aforementioned problems with manipulating objects that you shouldn't be able to. The camera also has a bad habit of clipping through objects into the Vast Nothingness under the levels. As for game mechanics themselves, the skill system is actually quite good, although it would take some getting used to for non-computer RPG players. Many skills are local to only one character, so you need to make sure that they get those skills as high as possible. (Hint: Flece needs to jack up the skills that let her sneak around and, even more importantly, identify objects.) The menus are clear and understandable, and it's easy enough to save the game -- even if it seems to use the wrong time.

With a nifty skill system and intriguing plot reminiscent of all good computer RPGs, Summoner really tries to be a good RPG. Unfortunately, the wonky camera, weird interactivity issues, and scripting issues keep it from being really good, and instead make it mediocre. Unless you're a completist RPG collector, or really need that PC-RPG-on-a-console fix, you're better off buying one of the many excellent RPGs for the PSOne and playing it on your PS2 instead.