High Points:
Best RPG on PSX
Has best soundtrack
Great story
Unique battle system
On and on…

Low Points:
Battles get tedious
Large chunks of story
Choppy graphics in areas
Did I mention large chunks of story?

The graphics in this game are “semi-incredible”. It includes a 3-D rotatable screen (maneuvered by pressing L1 and R1) which is quite helpful to get the right view. What gets in the way, though, is the choppy graphics. Have you heard the term “highly pixelated”? This game is perfect example. Although characters are highly detailed, they look really choppy. They look the same in battles. The “gear battles” however, are different. They are almost 3-D (I would go as far as to call them 2.5-D) and the polygons show their smoothness here. They are about as smooth as I have ever seen (in an RPG). The spells during the battles are quite impressive themselves. Nice and colorful. The cutscenes are very nice during this game also. They are a blend of Anime` and 3-D computer graphics.

In any game, the sound is just plain ol’ sound, but in this game, the sound is FANTASTIC sound, EXCELLENT sound even. You do not know how good the music is in this game. Possibly the greatest RPG soundtrack ever composed. I even took the time to make a copy of the soundtrack onto a tape. If I do that, you know the music is good. There are many ballads. They make you feel for the main character – feel their pain. It’s not all sorrow. There are plenty of tunes to lift you up (there is that one song… can’t think of the name) and it just makes you feel good. I tell you, the soundtrack for this game is so good, I recommend importing the Japanese soundtrack. – excellency.

The gameplay. So different. So unique. It’s fun. There are two different styles of battles in this game: Normal, and Gear Battles. Normal battles consist of your characters fighting on the ground against “small enemies”. What sets this game apart from the others, is the battle system. Instead of choosing commands from a menu, you input button commands. For example:

Triangle = Weak attack
Square = Strong attack
X = Fierce attack

Each attack varies for each enemy. You can’t just tap a bunch of buttons, though. Each button is asigned a number of “Action Points”. For example: Triangle = 1AP, Square = 2AP, and X = 3AP. You, yourself only have limited AP. You might start with only 4AP available for use. With this you could do:

Triangle, Triangle, Square (or vice versa)
Square, Square
X, Triangle

Those are some of the combinations (actually all of them for 4AP). By using the combinations repeadiately you can earn “deathblows”. Deathblows are “flashy attacks” that do more damage than the normal attack. Each character can gain a variety of deathblows. Each character also has their own type of magic for use, such as “Chi”, “Arcane” and “Ether”.

The second type of battle is the “Gear Battle”. Gear battles take place in a giant robot called a “Gear” (kinda like those Anime` flicks). The battles are for the most part, the same, except instead of consuming AP, the attacks consume “Fuel”. Fuel is limited, and can run out, unlike AP. Here is what each attack uses:

Triangle = 10 fuel - weak
Square = 20 fuel - strong
X = 30 fuel - fierce

You can also learn deathblows in a gear, but you can only use them about every other turn. You have to buy the deathblows for the gears (I’m not going into detail). Deathblows will consume more fuel than normal attacks. If you start to run out of fuel, you can always “charge”. Charging will literally re-charge your fuel – slightly, like 10, or 30 fuel at a time. Don’t depend on charging if you are dangerously low on fuel, because you are pretty much done for, so plan carefully. There is another option to use magic in your gears through the “ether machine”. It allows you to use some of the magic you can use on the ground. Another option is to turn the “boosters” on. Boosters speed up your ATB (Active Time Battle) clock so you may attack more often. Sometimes this gives you the advantage over the enemy. You can always upgrade your gears too by buying new parts for it. You can upgrade its HP, and fuel storage – you can even give it the ability to heal it’s own HP.

There are no cool mini-games like in Final Fantasy 7 to play, but plenty of tedious puzzles. The puzzles will keep you going for a while…

The story is the best. Best of the BEST. It revolves around a young lad named Fei, and his misfortunes. Upon returning from his friends house, Dr. Citan Uzuki, he discovers that his village is under attack by Gears, gigantic robots. He quickly hops into a vacant Gear and trys to defend his village. But all of a sudden he has a flash back reminding him of a past unknown to him. It results in him destroying the village. Dr. Uzuki recommends that he leaves the village for the time being – to mend.

Other aspects of the game (major ones) include a “evil god” created by a human as a bio-weapon, a floating city, and a strange religion (beware devout Christians!). The story really criticizes the Christian religion, but doesn’t make fun of it. I am a Christian, and I wasn’t offended by the story, but you might.

Control is fairly good. You can use the L1 and R1 buttons to move the 3-D environment, and use the Triangle button to jump to those hard to reach places. No complaints from me.

The challenge in this game is great. The bosses are VERY hard at times, and the puzzles can be VERY frustrating. It took me 56 hours to get to the final boss, but it might take you a bit longer. Good luck…

OVERALL SCORE
Graphics (7/10)
Sound (10/10)
Content (8/10)
Story (10/10)
Control (9/10)
Challenge (8/10)
Overall (10/10)