| Them's Fightin'
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What happens if you attempt to make a game and focus entirely on an interesting battle system? Dimensions 4 endeavors to find out, though I wonder if that was point.
Storyline- In most cases, I'd explain the story here. Unfortunately, in Dimensions 4, the stories set up in much the same way that a flow chart is. Now in theory, this is a good idea, so you'd be able to cover the basic points and then flesh them out. But D4 follows exactly like a non-fleshed out flow chart, for the areas it even has story at all. In fact, when the hero Gran wakes up from his bed, he comments on how excited he is that it's a new day, and that's it. The player is forced to wander around he activates a plot point. I didn't think it was possible to get worse at something, but Cube manages to do it in D4. Here's the story, flow chart style. (As if a flow chart had any style.) Gram wakes up->Falls in hole in forest->Discovers bizarre secret -> Tells government -> Government agents try to kill him -> Goes back in time -> Joins up with Kyle -> Fights bad guys -> Demo doesn't end, but you can't do anything else. Actually you can. You can take Gran and Kyle back to future, and if Kyle's in the future when he was originally the person who founded Gran's town, the whole universe should collapse on itself at this rip in time, thus making the last hour of the players life pointless. >_<
Graphics- Very decent. Maptiles are drawn pretty well, and the town is pretty, in a simplistic way. Enemies aren't very impressive, but not bad. Walkabouts are okay, better then D3's certainly. My biggest complaint is how the tiles don't blend into each other at all. sand tiles and grass tiles are separated by a straight line, and it's very...boring.
Gameplay- Very well tuned battles. I spent most of my time leveling Gran up, and I actually enjoyed it, even with the boring enemies. However, this doesn't make up for incredibly banal townspeople. Really, I've met doorstops with better conversational skills. Items were priced well, and I enjoyed the idea of magic weapons.
Music- D3 had music ripped from FF8. Following this, D4 has most of it's music ripped from FF9. "yawn"
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Final Scores
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Graphics: 6/10.0 |
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If you played D3, you've seen it all before.
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Storyline: 1/10.0
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Story? Haha! Liar! |
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Gameplay: 5/10.0 |
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Great battles. To bad the townspeople are as dumb as rectang'ular building objects.
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Music: 7/10.0
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It's good music, to bad it's more interesting in FF9. |
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Overall Grade:
D- |
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| Final Thoughts |
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Got Plot? This game doesn't. |
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