Gungnir
Sting | ATLUS USA
Now available for purchase on the Playstation Portable in the North American market.
Gungnir would change the boy into a hero of legend, and carve a revolution in history…
“From today onwards, you are one of us.” Plucked from the plundered imperial trade caravan, the Daltan noble Alissa is invited into the resistance by Giulio, a Leonican boy. Giulio’s ability to look beyond race and see people and people moves Alissa’s heart. Since ancient times, the Gargan Empire has never been truly free of ethnic and class warfare. The ruling Daltan class had long prospered under the wing of the Emperor, in stark contrast to the “cursed people”, the Leonicans, who were forced into the ghetto classed Espada. Alissa meekly accepts Giulio’s offer. But regardless of her desires, her noble blood will inevitably attract the Daltan dogs of war.
Esperanza heads to battle…
But the Resistance is vastly outmatched, and is simply throwing the lives of their members away. Resigned to death, Giulio lifts his head skyward in despair, when “it” descends upon him. The Magic Spear Gungnir – the ebony lance of the God of Battle, from an age beyond reckoning. “This is… Gungnir?” Giulio grasps the lance in his bloody hands and runs riot upon the battlefield. Guilio and the war god instantly turn the tide, delivering a swift, brutal end to the enemy troops. At that moment, Giulio strikes fear into the heart of an empire… Esperanza’s incredible stroke of luck generates a groundswell of support. And so the wheels of fate slowly began to turn. A Leonican with the spear from the heavens, and a Daltan girl. What does the future hold for these two youths?
Storyline
As you can read in the blurb above, the storyline involves a corrupt empire which has exiled the Leonicans from the main cities and into a ghetto by the name of Espada. The game provides a considerably-lengthed introduction expanding upon the core storyline elements about how there is an uprising rebellion ready to go against these forms of discrimination. The de-facto leader of one group of members in this rebellion is Giulio, who rescues a Daltan royal girl from a suspected slave caravan, convinces her to join their cause and gains control of a mythological spear by the name of Gungnir and goes on the rampage to gain equality for all.
The game is fairly long, and given its length it progresses a bit slower than I would have liked at points, but proved to have a number of innovative plotpoints with sizable character casting and never really sinking into the cliches other tactical RPG’s have fallen into in the past. Despite this, it deviates on storylines that you would have heard before in other games and its core storyline is nothing unique… but what they have done with this title is interesting and captured my attention during most of my gameplay.
Visuals
The games battles take place using your normal isometric battle system, and the visuals look appropriate to the world they are trying to develop and well detailed. The flaw with this battle system is that while the environments have been designed well and are not just simple fields of grass or stone, sometimes I found it agitating to move the cursor around the area to select a specific character or space… but this is only a minor gripe. Out of battle dialogue takes place through a visual novel style system with character portraits which also look comparably good to their respective battle sprites, however would have benefited from a greater range and implementation of emotions. Despite a couple of personal flaws, the visuals themselves are solid and well suited to a game of this style.
Music
As it was with Gravity Rush, Gungnir does not feature any voice acting in either Japanese or English. The soundtrack is sizable enough for a game of this size and has a nice array of instrumental music for battle and event scenes alongside a well animated opening sequence with a suitable instrumental number behind it.
Gameplay
On the outside the game looks like your standard tactical RPG affair with an isometric view, turn-based system and so forth… however once you dive into it they have made a few creative tweaks which should appeal to fans of the genre. The two major inclusions to Gungnir’s battle system are “Wait System” and “Tactics Points”, both of which if not planned out carefully can lead your party to their demise.The game features three types of special skills, “Scramble” which allows you to act immediately after use, “Beat” which are cooperative attacks and “Boost” which allows you to boost allied skills. While normal attacks do not pose so much of a problem as in other games, to use one of the three above skills you need to use “Tactics Points”, which progressively build up during battle and require balancing in their use but can be expanded through holding bases scattered around each of the fields.
However, the game also uses a Wait System which means the more power you use the longer you have to wait to attack (With any character) again while only moving or standing still allows you to attack much sooner. It all comes down to a balancing game between the two – especially considering that while you are given ample options in party members, you are required to select a leader “Ace” who will spontaneously end the game if defeated. Add the fact that non-storyline characters in either party can be killed in battle, ample opportunities to collect rare equipment provided you go “off the beaten track” and a New Game + with new storyline options… you do have quite a few options to further extending your gameplay. Apart from this, there was nothing particularly unique about the core gameplay system itself, but provided sufficient challenge and had enough content to easily last you 40 – 50 hours.
There are limitations with the gameplay however. At times the menu systems sometimes feel really bulky, where fulfilling most tasks requiring you to interact with different menus. In addition, there are no options to take part in random battles, with the entire game taking place along a set route of battles… meaning you need to grind through the same levels over and over again until you complete them – thankfully with the game carrying over EXP and other stats between failed battles.
But hey….. in the end the game shows that the Playstation Portable still has many RPG’s to offer the market, and hopefully despite the drop in licenses we will see more releases of them in the near future!
Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: B
Design: B
Music/Voice Acting: B+
Gameplay: B
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: B
Overall Score: B
