!King_Amazon!
2003-11-15, 10:00 PM
Well, I've already picked out Metroid Prime, but what else should I get?
!King_Amazon!
2003-11-15, 10:35 PM
I picked Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, and SSBM.
!King_Amazon!
2003-11-16, 09:01 AM
Talk to me about this "Eternal Darkness." Do you think it would match the kind of games I like?
I'm mainly into RPGs or adventure/action games. Not into the resident evil/devil may cry deal. Not really into FPS either.
Raziel
2003-11-17, 12:11 AM
Buy Eternal Darkness. You'll want to shy away from it at first glance, because the first impression that it will give you is "Resident Evil Clone." That couldn't be further from the truth. Here's a quick synopsis of the story.
Before any form of intelligent life roamed the Earth, our planet was dominated by a race of creatures called the Ancients. They were highly advanced, enormously powerful and infinitely greedy. Over the couse of millions of years, as our planet was forming, the Ancients killed one another off for the right of supremacy. In the end, only a few remained, and those few were forced to leave this plane of reality when they foresaw the ascendance of mankind and the arrival of the ice age. Since then, man has held undisputed reign over the planet.
In the year 2000, a young college student named Alexandra Roivas recieves a call one night informing her that there has been a fatal accident at her grandfather's mansion. She heads out to Rhode Island immediately and is informed by the state police that her grandfather, Edward Roivas (and since she has had no parents since childhood, the most important family member she has), has been brutally murdered, his head severed and innards destroyed. Alex refuses to leave Rhode Island, or her grandfather's mansion until she finds the person responsible.
While exploring the mansion, she stumbles across a hidden "study," and in it, a mass of very odd artifacts and valuables. The strangest of which happens to be a large tome, bound in human flesh and bone. The book is called The Tome of Eternal Darkness, and upon opening it, Alex is thrust into the middle of a 2000 year old conspiracy to resurrect the Ancients and give them dominace over the planet once more.
The game features 12 playable characters all living in different periods between 100 B.C. and 2000 A.D. All characters are designed with complete accuracy to their particular time period, and they use weaponry, armor, items and fighting styles that are accurate to the region and time period as well.
The game also features one of the best magic systems of any I've ever seen. By combining certain "grammatical" runes along with alignment runes, there are effectively about 120 spells in the game.
The combat system is extremely fined-tuned, allowing the player to target specific body parts and disabling his enemies with more finesse than a game like Resident Evil would allow for.
One of the coolest features in the game is the Sanity Meter. As your character encounters horrendous, demonic creatures, his or her sanity begins to take damage. The further the Sanity Meter drops, the more fucked up things become. The walls wil begin to bleed, statues will turn their heads and watch you walk across the room, and a painting that was originally a watercolor of a peaceful field of flowers will become a horrendous snapshot of a bloodsoaked desert littered with corpses. And those are just the "atmospheric" sanity effects. An example of a more active effect would be: your character walks into a room and as he steps across the threshold, one of his arms suddenly tears itself free. Then the next arm, then his head explodes, and as he's standing there bleeding to death, a white flash of light fills the screen and suddenly the character is outside of the room, holding onto the knob. He never entered at all. It was all in his head. I've played through the game three times and I haven't seen all of the sanity effects yet. I'm misssing one or two.
And to top it all off, the game has the absolute best voice actors in the video game business providing their talents for the game. Actors such as Michael Bell (Raziel from Soul Reaver), David Hayter (Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid), Richard Doyle (Moebius from The Legacy of Kain) and Cam Clarke (Liquid Snake from Metal Gear Solid) all lend their talents as well as numerous others.
This game has got everything you could possibly want. An incredible story (one of the best I've ever seen), an amazing cast, perfect gameplay, a great magic system, a seemingly endless supply of detail and it is an overall experience that you will never forget. Don't write it off as an RE clone, because it's not. Not in any way shape or form. If you like adventure games you'll love it. If you like RPGs, you'll love it. If you like horror games, you'll love it.
And the best part is, if you have access to a credit card, you can purchase this game for about 20 bucks from IGN, brand new, and it will be at your doorstep in two days. I know for a fact because I bought a friend a copy. Cost me about 20 bucks and I had it in two days.
I'm absolutely, totally, completely, without one shred of doubt telling you that you will love this game. If you don't buy it now, you'll buy it later, and then you'll wish you had bought it now. There is only one other Gamecube title that I would recommend over ED, and people have already been screaming Metroid Prime at you in this thread. Read any reviews you want, read any other player opinions you want, you won't hear a single negative comment. The only people that bash this game are people who didn't take the time to play it. Admittedly, it takes an hour or two to really get into the meat of the game, but once you do, you won't want to put it down. Buy it. You can thank me afterward.
Dan XIII
2003-11-20, 10:05 AM
Skies of Arcadia Legends is a fun RPG for Gamecube.Eternal Darkness is an RPG in my oppinion.
Raziel
2003-11-20, 11:53 PM
ED is not an RPG. It has an awesome magic system, but that doesn't make it an RPG. An RPG has to have at least one of these factors.
1. Turn-Based Combat
2. Character Improvement Through Experience or Levels
3. Multiple-Person Party Configuration
ED has none of those things. The magic system alone doesn't make it an RPG. It's a psychological thriller/adventure.
But, you're right about Skies of Arcadia Legends. If you like RPGs, KA, buy Skies. It's one of the coolest RPGs I've ever played.