Virtua Quest is about the closest thing you'll find to Kingdom Hearts
on the Gamecube, to bad this is a really really bad RPG. The fighting
is really repetitive. The platforming is horrible, unreliable and
completely frustrating. The story and characters are unlikeable and
boring. Everything else inbetween is quite generic. The Virtua Fighters
only play a small part of the game, and they're easy to defeat. The
only remarkable thing about this game was the way you equipped your
Upgrade Tools to boost your stats.
This game was obviously directed towards kids, but I can't imagine them having any sort of fun out of this garbage.
----------Battle System----------
Virtua Quest is an Action / RPG. You don't gain experience after each
fight or battle, but you do gain money, which you then can buy various
forms of equipment (called Upgrade Tools) that boosts your stats. The
tricky thing about the Upgrade Tools (and one of the most interesting
things about this game) is each piece is actually a piece of a block.
To equip this piece of block, you must fit it inside of a cube, much
like a Rubix Cube, the bigger Upgrade Tools cost more money and have
more blocks, and it gets harder and harder to equipment, because you
only have so much space and you'll often have to move the Cube around
trying to fit the pieces.
Another similarity to Phantasy Star Online is Sei's companion Bit, who
is almost exactly like a Mag from the Phantasy Star Online series. He
gives out hints and fights sometimes. You can feed him too food that
boost his three stats (Courage, Intelligence and Kindness). Depending
on what his stats are, he might transform into another Bit.
The fighting is pretty simplistic, you guard with Y, attack with A and
use special attacks with X. You gain new special attacks by finding
"Virtua Souls" inside treasure blocks. You can only open these blocks
by using Virtua Soul attacks on them. Once open, you fight a Virtua
Fighter character, then learn a new special move. The moves range from
Attack 1 to Attack 3. Some blocks require Attack 2 or 3 to open, and
usually you don't have those until later, so you'll often have to
backtrack through dungeons to get them.
Another special move is a Snapsus Break with the R trigger, which kinda slows time down, so you can throw in some attacks.
Now let's talk about the absolute worst thing about this game.
Platforming in Virtua Quest is complete hell, and is freaking hard too.
I'll start with the basics. Sei can run, jump, double jump, run across
walls (like Prince of Persia), and throw a laser whip in the air to
attack to beams and swing from one to another. You learn all of these
skills in the tutorial of the game.
The problem with all of this is the crappy camera controls, which you
use ALL camera options with the L button. Do you remember how crappy
the camera was in Jet Set Radio for the Dreamcast? It's actually worse
than that. Also, if Sei walks to closely to an edge, he'll fall into
the abyss, unlike Link from Zelda.
There's usually a platforming section in each dungeon and they're usually all long and frustrating.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Sei, a rookie Hunter. Hunters are the people that go
"online" and search for treasures and Virtua Souls on servers. On Sei's
first quest, he finds out that he can't log out of the server, and
quickly realizes that there are bad guys there trapping Hunters and
stealing their moves or something. Yeah it's dumb, and each dungeon is
exactly the same. "Oh no, I can't log out, but WHY?". Blah.
There's no likeable characters in this game, it's full of generic RPG
cliches, but not the good ones. It has the mysterious love interest,
the goofy best friend, the mysterious tough guy that barely wears a
shirt, the Sephiroth clone, etc. The game is really short, so the story
moves way to fast.
----------Graphics----------
I thought the character models, between the lower level enemies, to the
NPC, looked pretty good. The Virtua Fighter characters look less
detailed than what they should look like on their fighting games, but
it's no big deal since they're just a small part of the game. Despite
all of that, I thought the main character, Sei just looks totally
stupid. He has the worst case of bedhead I've ever seen, he wears
stupid visors, and his outfit is completely ridiculous.
The most annoying thing about this game was the "overacting" by the
characters during cutscenes. I don't know if that makes sense at all,
but imagine you're watching a play, and all the actors are flailing
their arms, and moving around like they have ADD, while making stupid
gestures and poses. I had to look away most of the time because of pure
stupidity.
There's alot of short cuts they developers took in this game, for
instance, each Virtua Fighter fight is set inside the same area. All
three free-running areas in the game, where you can talk to NPC, is
exactly the same with a different coat of paint. The dungeons are
short, but the often fights and stupid puzzles will slow you down
making them feel long. There's only 8 in all, and all the side missions
are short sections within these dungeons. There's not very many
characters at all either.
----------Sound----------
The music is typical sci-fi, spacey, futuristic RPG crap. Not my
favorite style but it sticks with the theme of the game. All the main
cutscenes are voiced out, but when you talk to NPC they aren't. The
biggest problem I had is Bit doesn't talk while on the battle field. He
suppose to give you hints on things, but all that happens is text
slowly scrolls on the bottom of the screen which is annoying more than
anything. If he talked it would be less distracting and maybe helpful.
----------World Map----------
The map is quite similar to Phantasy Star Online. You are in a virtual
space station looking area, you can walk around talk to NPC, buy
things, or get hints from the secutary. There's a save point and
there's a portal that takes you to the "Main Servers" (which are the
dungeons) and "Missions" (which are sidequests within defeated
dungeons). After about every 3 dungeons, you have to advance a level,
and once that happens you get to go into another room with more things
to buy, more NPC people to talk to, and more missions to unlock.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
8:16:55
This was my time before the final boss, the fight and following
cutscenes were quite long, so there was a little bit more to the game
than what that time says. There was no unlockables that I noticed and
it doesn't save after completion.
