CIMA: The Enemy was a tiresome hack and slasher that got boring after
the first couple dungeons. Since there was no variation in the
dungeons, the game got pretty simple since you knew how to defeat the
dungeons with ease. The only challenge I had with the game was some of
the bosses, but after you knew their pattern you could defeat them
pretty easily.
I really liked the Idea of this game, the RTS elements intrigued
me and it started off strong with the opening storyline. The game was
just really bad though, there was terrible hit detection, especially
with the bosses. You could never tell if you're close enough to hit the
enemy or not, and eventually get to close and hurt yourself. Repetitive
gameplay and a storyline didn't help the game at all. I can't recommend
this to anyone.
----------Battle System----------
CIMA: The Enemy is an Action / RPG / RTS hybrid. The game plays
similar to a Zelda game, except alot more mindless. You control the
character Ark in most of the game, he uses a sword and has 2 moves,
hack and slash. He can build for a bigger attack by holding down the
attack button, but it's just a quicker hack and slash. Arc is followed
by fellow teammate Ivy, she mindlessly follows Ark and usually gets
stuck on walls, gets hurt and rarely ever attacks neverending
regenerating enemies. The AI in this game is very stupid. There are
times in the game where Ark from the team, and that means you have to
take over another character. Ivy has a gun and can shoot at a distance,
and really that's about it with weapons. You either have a melee attack
weapon or a weapon with some distance, you can't change equipment for
your characters other than accessories.
You find accessories in chests through out the dungeon, each
character can equip 4 of them. Most accessories can only be used once,
like to prevent a poison attack, then it will break. It wasn't until
about half of the game when I found an accessory that was useful and
won't break, it would heal the character holding it after a period of
time. There's no money in the game, but when you kill monsters they
drop gem called Majesties. There are four kinds in total, and you can
use these gems to make new items or even accessories. You can only make
items if your character trusts you though, if you let a character get
attacked then they'll lose a trust heart, if you go below zero, then
they won't help you.
You don' t gain experience in the game, but you can find crystals
that can upgrade your armor or weapons. I wasn't able to upgrade
anything until half way through the game, what kind of crap is that?
The dungeons are pretty generic, there's really no difference
between them other than the backgrounds. They might add a new trap here
and there, but the dungeons are still repetitive and boring. There's
always a point in the dungeon where you meet a new person, your team is
separated, you need to find a boss key, and then go to the boss area to
talk to a bad guy where he runs away and sends a big boss at you. Every
dungeon is like that, it's hard to stomach. The only goals in the
dungeon sections is to get from point A with your team to point B.
The RTS elements in the game is controlling a team of up to 14
characters through the dungeon. This is where the game can get pretty
ugly. At first the controlling the team is very simple, since all you
have to do is press the R button, and a pop up will come up showing the
4 characters in your team. You then hit the R button again, then mark
on the map where you want the characters to run to. You can place 3
markers on the ground to show them where to run, and then zig zag
through the dungeon how you make them. They'll fight if they have to,
but other than that they will just move where you tell them, that means
if they clip the side of a wall, then they'll get stuck. They won't try
to go around it. So you have to reset the markers if you mess up, while
trying to protect the team from regenerating monsters.
After you get more than a team of 4 is when I had trouble in the
game, no it wasn't hard controlling the team. It was just hard getting
to change which team of 4 I could move. Normally you tap the L button
to change the teams, but sometimes the pop up on the L button would
show the characters on your current team, and not the book or tent icon
of the other teams and I just couldn't do anything until I had to move
all my characters at once into a small point and start over. This
probably doesn't make sense unless you had to play this yourself.
Moving the teams to your points of destination is pretty simple, but it
was completely frustrating for me trying to switch the teams I wanted.
----------Characters / Story----------
The game starts off with Arc and Ivy, the Gate Guardians
protecting a train on route to the Frontier. The train is eventually
hijacked and sent into a different dimension. Everyone but Arc and Ivy
is separated from the coach, so they much retrieve all the passengers
and head back home. The CIMA captured the passages to feed off their
hope and despair. I enjoyed the initial plot, but it ran thin after a
couple dungeons. Before the game really starts you get to meet and
greet with all the passengers, which are all full of personality. The
ending is pretty strong with a couple twists. Everything in the middle
is just extremely predictable and tedious.
----------Graphics----------
The character models look great, including the main villains of
the game. Since there's no towns to visit and NPC to talk to, there's
really no repeating character models. The models look more detailed
than most SNES RPGs. In the dialog box they'll show a character avatar
on the side showing who is talking, they don't change expressions or
anything, but it's still drawn out pretty well. The enemies are boring
looking for the most part. The dungeons look good, but there's not
enough variation between them. The bosses are big and impressive
looking, but nothing screams "classic rpg boss" out of any of them.
----------Sound----------
The music isn't terrible or anything rememberable either. The
characters will scream if they get attacked of if their health is low
you'll hear a constant beeping sound telling you to help them. There
will be a beep sound that will tell you when your group as made it to
their destination too. You pretty much need sound to work this game.
----------World Map----------
CIMA uses warp portals to go to each dungeon. During the entire
game your character's are stuck on train cart in an unknown
destination. The game starts off with one portal that warps them to a
dungeon. Each dungeon has a new character that was separated from the
train cart, each time you defeat a dungeon a new track will be laid and
a new dungeon portal will pop up and repeat.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
12:14:59
The game doesn't save after you beat it, so that time is before I
fought the final boss. The final boss was extremely easy, I didn't have
to use a potion during his battle. The mini-bosses before him was
harder.
