Riviera – The Promised Land (GBA)
This is an odd game! For starters, it didn’t cost me anything, and that can’t possibly be bad! It’s a turn based RPG (just what I like) but, well, odd. Rather than freely wandering around world map and dungeons, your characters wander into static screens on their own. At this point, icons mapping directions to directions on the dpad appear. So, to move to the next room to the west, you’d press the right dpad. Pressing A bumps you into look/quest mode, where notable items are mapped to direction keys. Some of these things are marked in red, so you need to expend action points to examine them. Action points are got by defeating enemies. The combat is pretty much your standard affair, with one major exception. You have to choose four items to take with you, and that includes weapons, healing items and armour / buffs. You can also only take three characters into battle. This really takes a lot of getting used to, but that’s not a chore because….
The game is truly beautiful. The sound and music are superb. The story, is standard RPG fare, but the overall production quality is breathtaking. For the first five hours or so, I’ve had a very love hate relationship with it – it’s more tactical than the average RPG. Now that I’ve done the early stages, though, things are starting to look up 🙂 There’s a strange relationship thing in there too – a bit like Harvest Moon, where you have to keep your girlie companies happy.
So, so far – my little bloke has arrived in Riviera to destroy it, been thwapped around a lot. Lost his memory. Met some girlies. Gone to a castle. Done some thwapping, and is now back at the village. I have a Wise Old Elf(tm) to visit now, so I’m sure some exposition will follow.
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