Product description
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Includes game, original case, and original manual. Also includes
bonus collector DVD case with reprint of original artwork to look
pretty on shelf next to current games! These items are in good
condition and complete but they are not like new. They may have
small flaws to the case and the game may have very small
scratches that do not affect game play. All ClassicGameStore
games are tested before being taken into our inventory.
Review
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Ever since Square resurrected the RPG with Final Fantasy VII,
the RPG genre has become the Holy Grail of system sellers
overnight. Climax Landers (which will be called Time Stalker in
the U.S.) is Sega's first real attempt to get an RPG on the
system, but the game fails in just about every way
imaginable--even after numerous delays.
Sent to explore an old clock tower, our hero stumbles on a
mysterious book. Upon opening the book, and the surrounding
terrain are yanked from the world and attached to a magical,
floating continent inhabited by several other such outcasts. The
master of this strange world immediately labels a "hero"
and sends him on a quest to unite the other heroes, defeat a
great evil, and return everyone to their respective worlds. The
story is traditional RPG fare--the kind of average ideas we've
grown to accept and even like. Every other aspect of the game,
however, falls far short of average.
Free advice to all you budding game developers out there: If
you're ever going to make a game that has high hopes of success,
please be sure you understand why people like that type of game
in the first place. While the story of Climax Landers is passable
enough, its contradictory dungeon, battle, and experience systems
undermine any chance the game has at being enjoyable.
Climax Landers, like Sting's Evolution, takes a development
shortcut and substitutes randomly generated dungeons for actual
design. As a result, all story development must take place in
the town, turning the dungeons into endless battle sequences. If
Climax Landers offered battles that were actually fun, this
wouldn't be a problem. The battle system is as stale as humanly
imaginable and even sinks to include ancient interface issues
that RPGs had supposedly long forgotten. You can only have one of
the main characters at a time in your party, which essentially
translates to having only one useful character in your party. To
fill the other two slots, you can catch monsters à la Pokémon.
When you encounter the roaming beasties in the dungeons, the
characters line up to fight. In each area there are four spots
for characters to inhabit, leaving one spot open for movement.
Each attack has a different range, meaning that the monsters may
not always be able to reach their nents. However, not all
monsters can move to another square, so they become blocked by
your other characters in a position from which they cannot
attack. This, in turn, also prevents the main character from
attacking in many situations. Additionally, when you give the
command to attack, you are giving the command to attack the
location the monster is in, not the monster itself. Thus, if the
monster moves before your attack connects, your character will
strike nothing but air. This is particularly amusing when you are
attacking the back row and the monster moves forward, causing you
to run right through the monster, swipe at nothing, and then run
back through it. Every weapon has multiple attack techniques
users can employ, each requiring varying as of vitality
points per attack. For the most part, these aren't balanced, and
changing weapons can sometimes be al to your character as a
result.
There is almost no point in gaining experience or developing
your character in Climax Landers, because every time you start or
finish a dungeon, your level drops to one. So the only reason to
go into dungeons is to advance the story and get items. However,
chances are you won't be able to use the good weapons and armor
at level one. Additionally, characters are limited to carrying
four items when entering a dungeon. Thus, the primary purpose of
getting items is to sell them. The only permanent improvements
you get from completing dungeons are spells and skills. However,
many spells and skills can't be used until the characters' stats
have reached a certain level. Thus, your characters essentially
start over every time they enter a dungeon. Every battle earns
experience for the characters, which in turn earns levels that
raise the characters' stats. Additionally, upon completing a
floor of the dungeon, you can allocate bonus points to your lower
stats to let the characters use spells and skills. Like in Final
Fantasy VIII, the difficulty of the monsters increases as the
hero's level increases, ensuring the game is a constant challenge
and never too easy. Given the monster difficulty system that's in
place, it's not clear why the developers decided not to let you
keep your experience from dungeon to dungeon. With the current
experience system, you don't feel like you're ever getting
anywhere.
There are plenty of interesting little side quests to do in
Climax Landers, but none of them make the game particularly worth
playing. Having a lot of excess development time on its hands,
Climax programmed 10 VMU games that can be bought and collected.
A majority of the games are pretty worthless. The most
interesting game is a miniature paint program that lets you draw
a picture and display it in the gallery attached to 's
house. can also upgrade his monster pen and his house, both
of which cost a lot of money. You can also sign up for bounties
with a leather-clad rabbit on the Wonderland-esque island.
--Peter Bartholow
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot
logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc. -- GameSpot Review
