I kinda liked Sudeki, but I was also frustrated with it too. The combat
was shallow, the worst parts of action rpgs and the worst parts of
First Person shooters. I never felt comfortable with using either hack
and slasher character, so I always ended up using one of the FPS,
despite it feeling like Goldeneye 64. I liked the graphics for the most
part, the character models and dialog scenes could of used more polish,
but everything else was good. The sound was overall forgettable.
Overall, if you're a fan of Fable, you may enjoy this.
Rant time:
My biggest grief with this game is getting stuck on a stage with no way
to backtrack, and another big grief is when your teammates leave your
party. So if you ever want to backtrack or just level grind, you're
screwed because someone left your party or you're stuck within a
dungeon or town until you finish off the storyline quest. There's very
few moments where you actually feel free with an entire party. My
biggest complaint with this is sometime within the game, I happened to
save in the middle of a dungeon, when my entire team was split, so I
only had one character. I had very few healing items left and my
character had no skills attached to his weapon or armor, so he was weak
and pathetic. He was completely separated from the team, trapped in a
room with only one exit, which happened to be a boss fight. I had to
fight this boss battle atleast 15 times before I finally beat it, with
2 HP remaining. After that fiasco, I learned to keep 2 save files at
all times (one in a dungeon and one outside of it).
----------Battle System----------
Sudeki is a weird Action RPG. You can have up to 4 party members within
your team. There's only two combat styles, one is a first person
shooter style, which reminds me of Hexen for no good reason, and the
other is a combo based button masher. The first person mode is playable
with Elco and Allish. Allish is a magic user, so she fights with a
staff and throws bolts. Elco is a scientist, so he shoots guns, they're
both quite similar though. Tal and Buki are the fighters. They use
combo or juggling attacks to fend for themselves. Combos are all about
timing, each character has 3 slots on the bottom of their screen. Once
you initiate an attack, you have to follow up a combo when the next
slot turns green. It's kinda weird but easy to get use to.
You
gain experience after killing monsters, but you can't official "gain a
new level" until you are 100% clear of monsters of that area. Once you
gain that level, you are awarded 1 skill point, which you can add to
various areas like Health (HP), Skill, Power of Essence (magic power).
You can also buy up to 6 different skills with these points as well.
You max your levels out at 30, so you can't max out your skills, which
sucks.
You can only use skills in battle, so even if you have
a small random health Regen skill, you have to wait for a battle to
start for you to use it. You also gain Spirit Skills, which you gain
through the storyline. Each character will gain 2 Spirit Skills,
usually one is a helpful item that will shield your character or give
HP to a character, but the other is a massive damage attack. These
Spirit Skills consume Spirit points, and the only way to gather them is
by killing enemies.
You can only gain armor through storyline
progression, much like the Spirit Skills. You can't swap armor, change
armor or anything. You can't even see what the skills or boost the
armor gives you. You can however go to a blacksmith and add up to 3
skills to an armor. For example, you can make add a Regen skill to the
armor, which automatically starts a Regen at the start of a battle or a
Combat boost which makes you Two times stronger at the start of a
battle, there's a bunch of skills to choose from. Weapons can be found
in treasure chests, and they have a similar skill system like the
weapons, but you can swap between weapons if you would like. Each
weapon will have a different power and critical percentage. You can add
skills to it to change those attributes though or add special skills to
it like with your armor.
Each member on your team has a
special ability that can be used to solve puzzles or to move through
obstacles. For example, Tal can move blocks, Elco can hover across
platforms, Buki can climb walls and Allish can view invisible items or
dispel obstacles. I like the puzzles within the dungeons, they're easy
to figure out, but it breaks up the monotony of fighting. They always
leave a few unreachable puzzles within the dungeons, which gives you a
little bait to revisit them.
Even though you have a party of 4
characters, every boss battle in the game is fought with a single
character. Boss battles are kinda Zeldaish, as they fight in patterns
or have small weaknesses that have to be exploited.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Tal, a new army recruit with sever daddy issues. You live
in a land with constant threat of invasion by an evil dark force. So
your first mission is to secure the bordering lands of your kingdom.
After you completed your first mission, the leader of the army (your
dad) forces you to escort the Princess back to the Kingdom for safety.
I don't quite understand why the entire army just left both characters
behind, but you have to make plot points somehow. Anyways, the Princess
is Allish, a rookie magic user. After getting in some trouble and
finally making it back home in one piece along with buddies Elco and
Buki, they find out about special crystals that will rid the world of
the invading dark forces.
The characters was boring as sin,
and the storyline was quite predictable and cliche, but it was enough
to get you through I guess. Even though you start the game with Tal, I
don't think there was any real main character. Each character have
their moments in the spotlight and you can play as any of them, heck I
barely played as Tal.
----------Graphics----------
The graphical style reminds me of a Western Developer trying to emulate
a Japanese RPG. Overall, it reminds me ALOT of Fable with more color
and flair. With that said, I love each land, they're all unique without
repeating backgrounds. However, I'm not a fan of the character models,
they seemed a little under developed and the faces just look weird to
me. The cutscenes are janky and could of used more polish. On the
positive side, when you equip a new weapon or piece of armor it shows
up on your character model and even in cutscenes.
----------Sound----------
The music is forgettable ambient sounds. I just beat this game 10
minutes ago within this writing, and I honestly can't remember a single
tune. However the sound effects are great, and just about every line of
dialog is voiced over. The voices are British, and I'll be honest,
they're not quite as well acted as you'll hear in Dragon Quest VIII,
which also featured a British cast. Some characters, like Elco are just
downright annoying actually. The only voices I enjoyed was the bird
that sold you goods in towns.
----------World Map----------
The world map is kinda open, much like any of the modern Zelda games
but much smaller and more linear. You can view an overview map that
shows you the entire country and how they connect. Some icons appear on
the map, but it only shows shops or blacksmiths, seems like a wasted
idea. Dungeons don't include maps though, which is another shame.
There's a warp system, quite similar to Chrono Trigger, where you
travel to a whole new world that only hosts these warps. The warps take
you to all the important areas in the game.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
16:43
I got to the final boss at the 14 hour mark, but I spent some time
level grinding and side questing for a couple hours before the last
battle. The game ends with a VERY short cutscene, and then credits and
back to the title screen. No saving after the battle or unlockables.
The credits was longer than the actual final cutscene.
