Silver is an average or slightly below average RPG at best. I don't
think I can recommend this to anyone, because the story, graphics and
battle system was all weak. There was a few shinning moments in the
game though, I like the Zelda isms that can be found with this game,
like leveling up after a boss, killing each monster to advance stages,
and to find all 8 Orbs to advance the game. Silver had a few bugs with
it, towards the end it would often lock up on me, and even before
fighting the final boss the game actually reset on me! The AI is
extremely stupid and they become more of a problem than help. The
battle system was painfully easy, including all boss', but figuring out
where to go next was to much of a pain in the butt. While I like
challenging games, this is just to hard. Unless you're hurting for RPGs
for the Dreamcast, then skip this game.
----------Battle System----------
Silver is an action RPG. You must play as David at all times, but you
can take with you 2 extra characters to form a party. If you warp back
to your rebel camp you can swap any of those 2 extra characters for 3
others if you please.
You don't gain experience for each
time you kill a monster, however the system is closer to a Zelda game
where you gain a level after you defeat a boss character.
The biggest problem with the game the fact that the story doesn't give
you any hints to where to go most of the time. The first few hours was
kinda linear and easy to follow, then the leader of the rebel camp says
"Go out and find the 8 Orbs" and that's it! You'll often get keys or
new Orbs, but little direction on what to do with them or where to use
them. Just about half of the quests in the game I had to look up on a
walkthrough. Otherwise this game was easy.
Another huge
problem with this game is the dumb AI by your teammates. For the most
part, your team members will just stand there, not even budging to help
you. I have no idea why they didn't just make this a single character
game.
Silver uses a "Pie" menu, which is easy to use once
you know what easy piece of Pie means. Each of the 8 pieces of pie
leads to another pie menu under it. It makes for quick weapon switching
but the only problem I had with it is each time you equip a new weapon
or use a health item it warps you out of the pie menu, forcing you to
open it again. If you want to eat a bunch of Carrots to replenish your
health, you'll have to open the menu each time.
The game only
has quite a few weapons, like 8 swords / blunt weapons, 8 Magic Orbs
that can be used as weapons, 8 Summons / Magic weapons and 8 Projectile
weapons. You'll be uses normal swords about 90% of the game though. The
only armor in the game is shields. Your weapons and magic orbs will
gain levels alongside David and his party, but I didn't figure out how
that really worked.
So with all of those weapons, David and
his team will also learn 8 special moves and with the power of the
Right trigger he can use 4 extra moves on top of that. So with all of
these moves you'll still be hacking and slashing your way through
monsters until the very end of the game.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as David, a married man that is training to be a warrior with
his grandfather. As he was training, a group of soldiers came into his
home and kidnapped his wife. As David and his grandfather chase after
her captures, they realize this small army is kidnapping the entire
town's women. David eventually hooks up with a group of rebels that go
on a quest to get the women back and to stop the evil Wizard Silver
that is behind the whole plot.
The story is not great, mostly
because of the lame dialog. Most characters in the game are very
underdeveloped with little reason to care about them.
----------Graphics----------
The character models are in similar quality to Final Fantasy 7, but
only the models within the towns and dungeons, not the battle scenes.
With that in mind, for an early Dreamcast game, this is pretty poor.
The backgrounds are nice looking, slightly grainy at times, and there's
little scanning involved, but I enjoyed them mostly because they never
repeated over and over again, so each new screen was a new design.
That's one thing that bugs me about most Western Action RPGs like
Baulders Gate and such is the recycled levels. Because of the unique
levels designs, there was less levels and a short quest.
At
the start of the game you will get to watch a quite lengthy CGI intro,
not quite on a Final Fantasy level of quality, but close to Legacy of
Kain maybe. You won't see any other CGI cutscenes until the very end of
the game though, and they're very very short.
The dialog
scenes are lame lame lame. There just is no emotion shown by the
characters at all. All they do is stand there and a little box is shown
in the corner showing who is talking. That's IT. The characters rarely
move within these scenes. I eventually learned about two thirds into
the game that I can turn the "Dialog" box on. This box is ugly to look
at and read. The colors contrast and the text is in an ugly cursive
that's hard to read.
----------Sound----------
Every
piece of dialog is voiced out in the entire game, which is very
impressive considering this game is only one disc long. On the other
hand, the voice actings are terrible. The main character David sounds
like he was voiced by the actor that played Dante Hicks on Clerks, and
he's a terrible actor. The music is minimal ambiance or light keyboard
work, nothing to bad but also nothing rememberable.
----------World Map----------
The level designs are similar to the PS1 era Final Fantasy games or
even Legend of Dragoon. The levels are pre-rendered backgrounds, but
there's no marking on the exits until you hold the L trigger and then
tap the R trigger to find exits you otherwise have a had time seeing.
David will get the world map early in the game once he visits a few
areas. Each time you visit a new area it will be marked on your map.
You can open the map at any time and warp back to any of these areas
for fast traveling.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
Roughly 15-20 hours. The game does not record your time or open up any secrets or bonus' at the end of the game. blah.
