Latest Game in GBA SP
Atlus brings a not-quite-usual RPG to the Game Boy Advance. Our
full review.
by Craig Harris
June 30, 2005 - There's a bit of expectation when popping in what's
believed to be a Japanese-style RPG. Riviera: The Promised Land
from Atlus, however, strays from the formula with a decidedly
different approach on the game genre. It still contains the usual
RPG offerings in the form of turn-based battles and wide-eyed
anime-style character design, but the way it's been put together is
something decidedly different. It's uniqueness both works for and
against the production, but overall it's a really nice surprise and
an enjoyable experience during a time where original IPs have all
but dried up on the Game Boy Advance.
Riviera: The Promised Land was obviously created for people who
want to skip all that exploration rigamarole and dive right into
the meat of the story and the epic battles. There's no wandering
around aimlessly to track down the hidden treasure chests or to
trigger the inevitable random fights. Everything in Riviera is laid
out in a specific, rigid manner, making it so that players spend
more time unfolding the usual "good versus evil" plot like a novel,
instead of creating gaps in the storytelling due to the familiar
aimless wandering to find the next point players need to go. How
this is done is by a simple controller interface that assigns a map
direction or items to a direction on the D-pad. This interface
brings back the feeling of a point-and-click adventure, without the
need of randomly clicking every little location on the screen to
bring up the triggerpoint. Everything is laid out clean and
straightforward, making it very easy to navigate through the things
to look at and navigate to.
The game is also made for people who love the exaggerated battles
of a Japanese RPG. Riviera has plenty of opportunity for
over-the-top flash thanks to the ability to power-up their
character in fights and using that level up engine to lay the
smackdown on the targeted enemy. A combo system shows just how
badly you or your enemy got whacked during an attack, and it's a
slight thrill to watch the beating rattle up some combo points
especially when the adventure rewards players who push as much
power as possible during battles. The battles are standard RPG
turn-based fashion for the most part, although they emphasize a bit
of strategy by requiring players to assign no more than four items
to the players at each fight. And since many items found during the
wandering phase only have a limited amount of use, a bit of thought
must be put into the fight beforehand, especially if you're up
against an enemy with certain strengths and weaknesses.
When players aren't navigating the grid-map or partaking in the
battles, the game pushes some very Shenmue-like Quick Time Events
on the player to pick up the pace a bit. Open up a chest with a
trap, for example, and the game will kick to a mode where you'll
have to push "Up, Down, Up, A" before the timer expires. Or, to run
away from harm, you'll have to rapidly push the A button ten times
to escape. These events are scattered all throughout the Riviera
storyline, mostly to keep players on their toes.
The issues within the adventure are minor, but problematic. Even
with the easy-to-navigate interface, and with the ability to
actually see things to investigate, the game enforces an unnatural
point system to limit what players can interact with. If you see a
chest sitting there, don't think you can just walk up to it and
open it up. Nope, you actually have to have a "turn point" to
interact with it, something that's earned during the battle phase.
If you didn't lay enough smackdown on the enemy in a previous
battle, you might not have earned enough points in order to open up
the chest and score the goods inside. It's clear why the point
system is in Riviera, since without it the streamlined navigation
would make it far too easy to grab items in areas. But that doesn't
mean it doesn't feel awkward and forced upon the player unfairly.
Because it does.
The game is a surprising treat in visuals and audio. The soundtrack
in particular is quite pleasing and fits the Japanese RPG feel with
SNES-like music accompanying the adventure. In terms of graphics,
the game features a really nice anime art style with talking heads
that slide in to represent who's speaking which line. Sprites
aren't quite as detailed as these individual stills, and
backgrounds, while nicely rendered, are repeated frequently, so
it's pretty common to leave one room and enter another that looks
exactly the same.
Closing Comments
Riviera isn't going to set the RPG world aflame with its unusual,
more rigid and straightforward design, but it is a nice change of
pace from the usual RPG designs coming out of Japan. The plot takes
a bit to get going but it eventually does move along, even if it's
a story that you've probably experienced in some fashion in nearly
every other Japanese RPG game in the past two decades.
From Ign.com