Tobenai Tenshi game review
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Hagane no Renkinjutsushi: Tobenai Tenshi
(Fullmetal Alchemist: Flightless Angel)
Publisher: Square-Enix
Platform/Format: Playstation 2, Japanese
Based on the hot new manga and anime, Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (HagaRen for short), Tobenai Tenshi is an angst- and cliché-filled, stand-alone action-RPG game with little relation to the manga or anime’s storyline. The player does not need to know the series this game is based on, since basic ideas and histories are sketched out by several characters early on in the form of flashbacks or speeches. Just control your character, Edward Elric, through the strictly linear gameplay alternating between 3D brawls with rogue army forces or rampant chimeras, and 2D hand-drawn stills or animated sequences accompanied by excruciatingly long text or spoken dialog.
Teen brothers and army alchemists, Edward and Alphonse Elric are traveling on a train with their comrade, Armstrong, when some shady looking guys hijack the train. Well, an attempted hijacking. The shady guys make the mistake of calling Edward “chibi” (“shorty”). He’s a little sensitive about his height, or lack thereof, and decides to obliterate the hijackers. In his zeal for justice, or more likely, revenge, Edward accidentally obliterates an upcoming train tunnel, derailing the train. Thus begins the Elric brothers’ journey, on foot, to Hiesengard, where there seems to be an abundance of chimera, an alchemical product which fuses animals together to create a new beast.
In Hiesengard, the Elrics meet Armony Angelstein, a cheerful girl who lives alone with her wealthy father, Wilhelm. Ok, by “meet” I mean she falls off a cliff and lands on Edward. Same thing. They escort her back to her father, but along the way, they meet, and fight, more shady guys who try to kidnap Armony for reasons unknown. These shady guys happen to look just like the goons from the train.
Meanwhile, Wilhelm has meetings with his associate, Greta. It seems they are working on a secret project about chimeras. Also, the army has expressed interest in the curious events at Hiesengard, but choose to leave their fellow officer, Edward, out of their plans, and just use him to ferret out just who is behind the chimera appearances on his own.
Adding to Edward’s confusion, there appear to be three main antagonists working independently: Nemda, an officer in the army; Genz, a rogue with an automail arm (a metal prosthesis with extraordinary mobility due to direct connections to the body’s nerves); and Kamilla, an eye-patched woman controlling giant chimera, and who looks very much like Greta. The Elrics fight constantly in order to get some answers to this mess.
Sound: 4
Uninspiring and uninspired is the best that can be said for the music. During gameplay, I was hardly motivated by the music, usually just left wondering what relevance (sometimes accompanied by a mental “wtf??”) each theme had to the area I was in. The compositions are not very imaginative, even though a wide variety of music styles were used. Sound effects use a lot of voice. Most effects sound muffled and unclear. I found only three songs worth listening to, at the opening, midpoint and ending, sung by various female Japanese recording artists. Each set a different mood, appropriate to the tone the story had approached. The acoustic version of Kesenai Tsumi is especially nice, and depressing, perfect for the game.
Video/ FMV: 7
After clearing a section of melee play in a boring and bland three-dimensional environment with your zombie-faced character, you will be rewarded with either hand-drawn stills of the characters in various poses that match their text dialog, or hand-drawn animated sequences accompanied by spoken dialog. The game’s video animation quality matched the quality of the anime series, minus the computer-added effects, such as rays of sunshine, softening of backgrounds, etc. Frame rate was down from what was used in the anime, making it easier to see skips and pauses in motion. There are not as many animated sequences as one would wish, and far too many action breaks with the stills.
Voices/Dialogue: 7
The voice actors from the anime are used in the game, and they are excellent. It lends a nice familiar feel. Too bad the characters they portray happen to be moving their mouths well before any dialog is actually heard, and sometimes after the characters are done saying their piece. No doubt this mistake, at least, will be rectified in the American ‘port of the game.
Controls: 4
Frustrating. Everything seems to move in slow motion. Ed jumps up so slowly, you would think he is in The Matrix (Ed is The One!). When he’s knocked down, he stays down for a bit. When he receives a blow at a point you were trying to power up some alchemy, you lose your momentum, and there is a noticeable pause before you can actually try to power up again. Also, you cannot access the menu while Ed is receiving blows, so you have to wait a couple beats before trying to use a healing item.
In addition to controlling Edward, you must give orders to his brother Al, through the use of one button. A very important and helpful button, I might add. Al trails along behind Ed, and depending on Al’s proximity to Ed, or Ed’s proximity to an Al-related item, Al can carry out different actions. Al’s action status is noted to you onscreen what he will do if you press Al’s button. Press it often!
Pretty much every other button on the controller has it's own unique use. It takes a while to master it all, but that is the key to mastering the game. Manual camera control is probably the best feature, as it is actually allows you to see everywhere around Edward.
Gameplay: 6
There is not a lot of variety to the gameplay. You either fight in brawls with simple-to-defeat goons and lesser chimeras, or fight with the incredibly difficult bosses. No strategy is required for fighting goons, and for the bosses, you just have to figure out a weak spot, and follow one strategy. There are two saving graces to gameplay.
One is the alchemy. Simply fun and totally awesome, as an alchemist, you are able to instantaneously transform objects in the world (with the process called “transmutation”) into items more useful to you, like katanas, electric daggers, machine guns, steamrollers, land mines, squeaky hammers, bubble wands, pogo sticks, and tricycle-riding cows, among other things. I had made a list, and tallied up over 55 different weapons you can create. It’s unfortunate you can’t inventory any for later use, but there is stuff lying all over the place, all of it ripe for transmutation! Muhahahahaha!
The second is Al. Al is a powerhouse. His attack, defense and HP stats are far above your own, so if you really wanted to, you could have Al do most of the fighting in the game. It would take longer, and be less fun, that way. His AI is very intelligent. He is almost always doing something, and doing it perfectly. He will leave you and go off to fight enemies on his own. If you equip him at one of the stationary weapons, he will use it with his perfect aim, far better than you could ever do. He has two alchemy attacks that combine with your own which pretty much obliterate everything on the screen. Al has defeated bosses for me. Thank you, Al.
Replay: 3
Once you beat the game, you can save it, then start it all over again, the exact same story. You are back to level one. Nothing changes, except your inventory will have everything you had accumulated the first time you played. As you play again, you may unlock the stills and movies from the game, and have them placed in the gallery, to be viewed again and again at your will. It’s not really much of an incentive though.
Overall: 5
This is only worth buying if you are a rabid fan of the HagaRen series, and even those fans will be somewhat disappointed with Tobenai Tenshi. It’s angtsy and depressing, low on fun dialog and interesting plot twists. And the ending… well! The first stage of the final boss was the easiest in the game, the second I just ran away while Al did the work, and the third pissed me off because I was hoping to {censored for foul language} that {and spoilers} since in the anime {more spoilers} and he {extremely foul language}!!!!! Very unsatisfying. And then, after the credits are done rolling, the game creators decided they didn’t make it sad enough, so they have Lieutenant Hawkeye give a painfully long summary of the game in the form of a report, followed by yet another depressing animated sequence. Crud.
It took me six months to get through this game, yet I only racked up 20 hours of play time. Why? I was so bored with all the dialogue, that I would set it down for weeks, despairing of ever getting to a good part in the game PLAY. I want to play my games, not read them. Worst of all about this is that you CAN'T skip past any of the dialogue/story segments. Not at all! Press all of the buttons you want, you won't bypass the conversations in a leap. The only reason I see that this is being released in the U.S. is because it’s Square-Enix, and they are probably hoping the Final Fantasy fans will pick up this weak title.