Summoner

Review

by Jason White

Summoner by Volition is a role-playing game that doesn't quite hit the mark as a must-have title for the PlayStation 2. It is a huge game with a fairly engrossing story, but thanks in part to a few design flaws, it's hard to keep playing all the way to the end.

One bright spot is the storyline. Joseph, your character, is a man gifted and cursed with the ability to summon horrific creatures into battle. When he was a young boy, he summoned a demon to defend his village, but because he didn't possess enough power, he lost control of the creature and it destroyed everything he loved. It was then that he vowed never to use his abilities again. That was until he discovered that the evil king Murod was hunting him.

In a prophecy, it is said that a Summoner will destroy the king. However, Murod intends to stop him. The town he has lived in quietly and secretly lies in ruins because the mad king is looking for the Summoner. Now he is forced to find a way to master his skills and destroy king Murod before he destroys the world itself.

You start off as Joseph traveling around your burning town, talking to people, and killing the guards that were left behind to find you. You have no summoning abilities yet, but you do have a short sword and very little in the way of armor. Magic powers are available, however, and fall into six categories: heal, dark, energy, holy, fire and ice. You have only the bare essentials when you start out, but your powers will grow as you gain experience.

The combat system has a bit of a learning curve at first. It's a strange mix of real-time and turn-based fighting. If you're facing more than one enemy, you have to select which one you want to attack, and you will continue to attack that specific enemy until you either select a new one or it dies. The same holds true for the rest of your party members. They will simply follow Joseph's lead until the enemy is defeated, unless you assign them a certain function (such as healer or support) to protect you.

Having to select an enemy can sometimes be a pain when you're in control of more than just Joseph. This is not too much of a hassle at first, but wait until you're facing six enemies and you have to scroll through your war party of five to get to the healer before you get killed. While it takes some time to adjust to this method of combat, it doesn't ruin the game.

A nice addition to the combat system is something called a chain attack. When a character strikes an enemy, he or she is given the chance to perform additional attacks. All characters have their own set of attacks that gradually increase in strength with repeated success. Characters can even learn new attacks as time goes on. Initiating a special attack involves pushing the directional pad up, down, left or right. It doesn't matter what sequence you start with, but you must go through all of them to continue the chain. As long as you have good timing, you can perform chain attacks without the enemy ever getting a chance to hit you.

As you progress through the game, just like in any other RPG, you will find gold, weapons, armor, magical items, rings and so forth. It can come from a random encounter, a chest, or anything you can search. Things are hidden everywhere, so time will be spent looking into everything and talking to everyone. This is a huge world and just about every character has some type of side quest they need you to help them with. Complete these quests and your rewards will be great.

Like most games in the genre, your character earns experience points as well as skill points. As you advance levels, your powers grow and with the skill points you can enhance certain abilities, like sword skills, healing, magical power, and so on. While each character has a different set of skills, there aren't enough points to become a master in each category. So you'll end up choosing a few skills to enhance, depending on what you think is important for you to succeed.

This brings us to the first problem with the game, which is the lack of a decent auto-mapping feature. It wouldn't be a big deal if the map weren't little more than an area locale, but that's essentially all it is. The map just shows where you are at any one time and doesn't save any information. So even if you go through an entire town, leave, and come back, it's like you were never there. For a game this size, the map should also show you places and people of importance. This omission makes the game much, much longer than it has to be. And it actually takes some of the fun you'll have while playing.

The other problem is the aforementioned combat system. Since certain elements are in real time, having to switch between people in the party in order to get them to fight the right enemies can be very annoying. Combat continues around you even though you have the menu open, so there's no way to take a time out to regroup your party or to quickly switch roles.

In the end, Summoner is a decent first effort on the part of Volition. It looks beautiful, contains many hours of gameplay, and can be fun. Is it one of the top role-playing games available for home consoles? Hardly, but those hungry for an RPG on their PlayStation 2 should be able to live with the faults.