The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion
Publisher: Bandai • Developer: Nihon Falcom
ESRB: T • Genre: Traditional RPG
Story
If you've ever played an RPG before, you know exactly what the story is at it's heart: Rescuing the girl and saving the world.
Your character is Avin, a young boy living with his sister (Eimelle) in a place known as Cathedral. One day Cathedral is attacked by the apostles of Octum, the God of Darkness, with their objective being Eimelle, claiming she is "Durga's Daughter." Avin and his sister escape, but are separated and so the story is set into motion!
The story is good and fairly engaging. The story might even be better if it weren't for the numerous spelling and grammatical errors strewn throught the dialog. If, however, you've spent considerable time in online chat rooms, you should have little problem actually deciphering the text.
» 5.5/10
Gameplay and Controls
The default button configuration is all backwards for an RPG... ⃝ to confirm, ✕ to cancel, ⃞ to bring up the main menu, and ∆ to bring up the pet menu. The secondary button configuration fixes this (✕ to confirm, ⃝ to cancel, ∆ for the main menu, and ⃞ for the pet menu) but when you try to save, your ✕ suddenly cancels and the ⃝ button confirms!
The pet system is interesting, but not tremendously useful. If your pet is happy, there's a chance he'll show up at the beginning of a battle and raise the defense of your party. If your pet is angry, he might come in and drop a boulder on the enemy party. Whether or not he shows is random though.
There are also two currencies in the game. The first is Roze, which is what you spend in the shops. The second is Pia, which you get from defeating monsters. Pia itself has no use at all, but it can be exchanged for Rozes at a shop... Which makes the whole concept of Pia useless altogether. While it may not be realistic for a creature to be carrying a sack of money, it's also not realistic to find a treasure chest in the middle of a forest, and yet that happens often enough.
Another feature that is useful, especially to those new to RPGs, is the icons above things. These indicate the general level of monsters, if someone will speak to you, if someone has something important to say, if there's something to read, if there's something important to read.. it allows you to talk to only those people that you -have- to speak with to move along if you so desire.
» 6/10
Graphics and Sound
Crisp and colorful, but decidedly "old school" style graphics. If you missed the days of 2D sprites, then this may be right up your ally. During dialog segments (no CG cinematics in this one) the good ol' text box comes up with a nice anime style representation of the character, which will have a slightly different expression depending on tone, emotion, etc.
Spell effects are also quite nicely done in the game and the environments are nicely detailed with lens flare effects from sunlight. The towns, though, are somewhat small and difficult to navigate at times.
Sounds are not too bad in the game. If you run over snow, you hear the unique sound of snow under foot.. If you run through puddles you hear the water splashing.. however it's the -exact- same sound with each step. The repetition makes the sound effects get old very quickly and could have been reduced with about 3-5 slightly different sounds and a randomizer for them.
Music in the game is nothing special. Nothing well orchestrated like in a Final Fantasy, but nothing bad either... just very standard RPG music.
» 8/10
Overview
All in all, I'd have to say this is a good game. The graphics are nostalgic, yet clear and with good lighting effects. The sound effects, while repetitious, do add to the atmosphere of the game. The storyline, while standard fare, is pretty solid and engaging. If you're looking for something new and inovative, this is not the game for you, but if all you want is a good RPG to pass the time, look no further!
» 7/10
At a Glance
Positive:
+ Great lighting effects
+ Sound effects ad to the atmosphere
+ Old School style brings back memories of the good ol' days of RPGs
Negative:
- Poor translation
- Sound effects get repetetive quickly
- Unintuitive button configuration issues