Guardian's Crusade

What would happen if an eight year old child found a mysterious but friendly monster and set off to solve the enigma? Not just any child, mind you, a spoiled brat. The sort of wretched, snot nosed little bugger who constantly pokes into other peoples things and affairs, who whines until he gets his way and who thinks he is God's gift to the green Earth. The answer is, obviously, Guardian's Crusade.

Guardian's Crusade is a role playing game in which the player assumes the role of Knight, who seems to be about ten years old. At the beginning of the game, Knight meets Baby, a baby monster, and the two set off to return Baby to his home and, naturally, to save the world. What is original and innovative about Guardian's Crusade is the relationship between Knight and Baby.

Good Baby, Have A Candy Bar

The developers at Tamsoft have integrated the concept of virtual pets into the game. Baby is that virtual pet. Knight can speak with Baby during combat, give Baby snacks, ask Baby to carry items or send Baby to fetch items. When Knight and Baby are on good terms, Baby is a great ally. Baby can find useful items, carry extra equipment and by transforming into more and more powerful shapes throughout the game, become a powerful combatant. If the relationship between Knight and Baby goes sour, Baby will refuse to fetch and ignore commands in combat. Baby may even get irritated enough to attack Knight instead of enemy monsters.

This virtual pet aspect of the game is an excellent addition. Players will find themselves talking to the television as if Baby were a real pet. Getting on Baby's good side can take some work. In fact, I found it difficult to keep Baby happy. Lacking the patience for virtual pets, I did not want to spend too much gaming time flipping through menus to give Baby snacks. (The way to Baby's heart is through his stomach.) There is precious little guidance on how to keep Baby happy and the player is left to experiment on his or her own. Baby feels like a real, interactive character and this adds greatly to the game.

Living Toys

Another refreshing change that Guardian's Crusade brings to the RPG genre is a departure from the standard party and spell systems. In Guardian's Crusade, Knight finds and collects Living Toys. These Living Toys can be deployed in battle. Some of them act like other party members and attack the enemy. Others have effects very much like the magic spells of other games. Having this big sack of potential party members and spells makes for an entertaining battle system as well as fitting nicely into the current infatuation with opening up sacks of "whoop ass." Different strategies of Living Toy deployment can be tried. The combat system is a standard turn based combat system but the ever changing list of Living Toys livens things up. Most toys can only be deployed in combat which I found frustrating as it means that healing out of combat is only possible by using healing items from the inventory.

In our preview of Guardian's Crusade, the game's producers indicated that the idea of Living Toys was drawn from card collecting. This collecting element carries over into the game. It is always exciting to get and to try out a new Living Toy.

Finally!

Guardian's Crusade succeeds in doing something that I have been begging for in console role playing games. It gets the monsters on the map where you can see them. As you explore any area of the game, you can see all of the monsters in that area but you can't tell exactly what monsters they are unless you enter into combat with them. Powerful monsters are bigger and more aggressive than weak monsters. Monsters that think they can take Knight, will chase him around the map. Monsters that know they can't win will run away and if Knight is insistent on killing them, he will have to catch them first. This system of having monsters on the map allows gamers to pick and choose some of the battles that they wish to engage in and grants a feeling of responsibility over random combats instead of having monsters in fixed locations or just random encounters. Chasing or being chased around the map also adds an element of excitement to exploration.

So What's Wrong?

Guardian's Crusade features a great convergence of role playing and virtual pets. The combat system and Living Toys are excellent and the on map monsters are marvelous. In fact, the game system ranks among the very best. Where the game stumbles is in tone and story.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!

Guardian's Crusade treats the player like a spoiled child. Spoiled because the game dishes out constant gratification. A child because of the shallowness of that gratification.

The constant gratification of which I speak comes in a number of forms. Most obviously in the color and sound of the game. Guardian's Crusade is bright and pastel. It looks much more like an N64 title than it does a PSX title. This is nothing to hold against the game and the bright graphics are pretty and a pleasure. They are simply indicative of the constant assault of sugar over substance. The sound on the other hand is positively painful. Every menu selection creates a horrid electronic bleet. The music is an even worse, tinny perversion of Sesame Street themes. None of the sound options are adjustable so I played this one in total silence whenever those sounds became too painful.

As for gameplay, Guardian's Crusade so assaults the player with a constant string of level ups and magical equipment that it ceases to be a reward and becomes a punishment. When, after every two battles you have to flip through the menus to see the level up improvements and then again to equip new items, it gets to be too much. Especially since you already have to flip through menus constantly to keep Baby happy. If there had been a one button give baby a snack option, I would have gotten much less tired of flipping through menu screens.

Much of the story, as well as making you feel childish, feels like busy work added to make the game longer. Going on wild goose chase quests that result in watching a non player character do what you had intended and then drop story hints in half finished sentences is common. Personally, now that I am old enough not to have people condescend to me, I try to avoid it. Of course, if I had a real job instead of playing videogames full time, people might be less likely to talk down to me.

Guardian's Crusade is also extremely linear and has very specific event triggers. Nothing can be done out of sequence. The dialogue is childish. The story does improve in the second half of the game and after about level 32, level ups slow down to a better pace.

As fantastic as the game system of Guardian's Crusade is, the childishness hinders it. Younger RPG loving gamers may better relate to the constant gratification and kiddie dialogue. If you can suffer through the first third of the game, the story and dialogue do improve and somewhat reflect the in game maturation of Knight, but as the saying goes, first impressions are hard to break. The actual game system really is excellent though.

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