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The Legend of Alon D'ar
Score: 49%
ESRB: Teen
Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment
Developer: Stormfront Studios
Media: CD/1
Players: 1 - 2
Genre: Miscellaneous

Graphics & Sound:
The best way to describe Alon D'ar's graphics is Summoner, only well fed and healthy. Except for a few minor things, such as no shadows and a lack of shading on characters, I enjoyed the character designs. It is hard to describe, but the 'fullness' of the characters just appealed to me. It seemed like the designers were more concerned with letting the polygons do the work, resulting in more organic looking characters instead of flat, texture heavy ones. Alon D'ar takes the low road in the eye-candy department, which is disappointing because the game presents some chances to do some cool things with lighting and weather effects. The environments were also nice, but really begin to look repetitive after awhile. Because of this, eventually everything looks the same, and since you are given no map (unless you draw out your own); many times you will find yourself going back the way you came.

Sound is good - but does suffer from some rough spots. The music is repetitive, but enjoyable. The voice acting is okay, but the hokey, stiff dialog ruins it.


Gameplay:
Despite the decent visual package, Alon D'ar begins to fall apart when it comes to the story and is decimated when it comes to gameplay. The story is one that any RPG player could recite by heart. A great, unspeakable evil is revived, and it's up to an unlikely, 'chosen' hero to save the world. As clich' as the set-up is, Alon D'ar does manage to keep the story interesting enough for you to want to know more, but some questionable, okay - outright bad - gameplay decisions hamper you from wanting to play more.

The biggest problem is the half-baked combat system. Instead, of the menu and turn based systems we are used to seeing, Alon D'ar tries a modified, real-time system. While I will always applaud a company for trying something different, I will also be one of the first to point out the flaws and question why. As I played through the game, two glaring problems continued to pop up with the system. The first was that it didn't look like the monsters used the same combat system as you. After swinging a weapon, your character has to wait to 'charge' his attack. During this time, which varies depending on your proficiency with the weapon, you are not allowed to move or access your inventory. The problem is that enemies do not seem to have this problem and in the time it takes you to charge up a swing, they will pummel you. As the game progresses and you gain more powerful weapons and proficiencies, things become a little more tolerable. However, since you are so woefully under-powered at the start and it's so hard to level up, it's not very likely many players will make it far enough into the game to reap the benefits items like the 'Dragon' weapons.

The second problem is that combat itself is way too complicated, especially when you add members to your party. I had no problem flipping through the belt menus, but doing so while the enemies plug away at you is not fun and adds an unwanted sense of haste during battles. This is a problem however, that could be improved - but not fixed - with the addition of the multiplayer option. Just plug in another controller and then you only have two party members to worry about and not four.

Unlike other RPGs, Alon D'ar has no 'overworld' map and relies more on a 'real world' map - like in Aidyn Chronicles for the N64. Simply put, if you want to get from one town to another you better get to walking - something that is hard considering you have no map and just a vague sense of where to go, so count on blindly searching around for areas.

As dire as it seems, there are a few bright spots in Alon D'ar, like the weapons, magic, and 'hunt' quests, the bad just overshadows them so much it is hard to derive much enjoyment from them.


Difficulty:
As I have already mentioned, Alon D'ar is a hard game - really hard. Again, this mainly stems from the combat. Throughout the game, the one question I continually asked was 'At what point did this seem like a good idea?'. While things became much more manageable once I got some powerful weapons and leveled, the journey was very slow going, and many times, I was ready to quit out of frustration. What really got to me was that the problems could have been fixed easily. The most obvious would be to allow you to move your selected character during combat and have the computer move the other ones. I can understand the 'charge bar' because if you are not good with a weapon, it is going to take some time to use the weapon, but you are not going to stand in one spot while waiting.

Game Mechanics:
Getting around the land of Chandar is easy and straightforward; if you have ever played an RPG you will know what to do. Again, as I have mentioned a few times already, things get complicated during combat. When your character is done 'charging' his swing, the belt menu appears. Then you can then cycle through and choose your weapon/potion. The problem is that you are being clobbered by monsters while doing this and when you have four characters, it is even more hectic. The best way I found to deal with this problem was to level up a character in one weapon skill and just press X during combat. Sure, it takes some of the 'tactics' out of the battle - but considering the disarray of the combat system, there's not much to begin with.

I also ran into a bug that became deadly and frustrating. After finishing a battle, the game went back into 'combat mode', only there were no monsters attacking. If this wasn't bad enough, for some reason or another, I began to take damage and since I couldn't stop it, I died. While this thankfully didn't happen often - when it did I wasn't happy.

If you are in the market for an RPG, then The Legend of Alon D'ar should be at the bottom of your list, especially considering the other RPGs you have to choose from.

On a side note, The Legend of Alon D'ar is part of Ubisoft's Great RPG Giveaway, a 2 for 1 promo. By purchasing any two of either The Legend of Alon D'ar, Grandia II or Jade Cocoon 2, you'll receive the third free. Check it out at The Great RPG Giveaway site.


-Starscream, GameVortex Communications
AKA Ricky Tucker

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