Sands of Destruction (DS)

[Qalbert]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...estruction.jpg
Anyone played this yet? I put it on my cyclo, and am maybe 45 minutes into it, so a bit too early to judge, but some awesome people were involved with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sands_of_Destruction

The development team of the game comprised over fifty people and includes key designers who previously worked on Xenogears, as well as former staff from Grandia, Drakengard and Etrian Odyssey. The game was directed by Kyoki Mikage of imageepoch and produced by Yoichi Shimosato of Sega.

The score of the game was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, Shunsuke Tsuchiya, and Kazumi Mitome. The opening theme was performed by the Czech Philharmonic. A promotional album titled World Destruction Premium Soundtrack will be offered with pre-orders of the game.

North American version
At the Tokyo Gameshow, Ryoei Mikage, the president of imageepoch confirmed that his team is working to localize World Destruction, to be published by Sega USA. A new/rewritten musical score will be created by Yasunori Mitsuda, and the difficulty may be tweaked for the North American release. On December 10, 2008, Sega officially announced its plans to release the title in America under the title "Sands of Destruction". The game was released on January 12, 2010

I will post more impressions once I play it some more, but was curious if anyone knew it/had played it yet.

[Kaisha]

Seems alright, I'm only 3 hours into it. So far the story is kinda cliche (sheltered boy from small town ends up in deep shit, now everyone is after him as he goes and explores the world for what it is), and the battle mode is badly paced. The devs should have just ignore the whole jump-towards-mob-before-attacking, it would shave half the time off of the battles in general. Gives me bad memories of Septerra Core's battle mode.

Will be keeping at it for a few more hours though, my DS hasn't been used in ages, and this title (which I'll be considering 'average' from what I've seen) is decent enough to keep at it for awhile longer.

Maybe it's just me also, but I didn't dig the music much so far, it's very synth sounding (well, because it is, but there are ways of making it not so damn obvious), and the battle mode music doesn't really do it for me once it's into its main chorus.

[Caiyuo]

Just started it last night and only got about 20 minutes in before I crashed, but intend to give it some attention in the coming week. The Xenogears link is all the incentive I needed to give it a shot, reaaally.

[Yuri-G]

I like it, but it's not what I'd hoped. Certainly nothing you'd expect from a dream team. The soundtrack is the best part; of course, that's to be expected when you're working with Mitsuda. The graphics I actually like, though I seem to be in the minority. It's like Xenogears-style sprites on polygons, only much more detailed and colorful. The story I don't mind, it's not incredible but nothing too bad. Some akward lines of dialogue here and there (Do you honestly expect me to believe that a guy like Rajik walks around saying "Poppycock!") but nothing game-breaking.

The faults, on the other hand, range from obnoxious to unacceptable. The battle system is completely unbalanced, making most enemies complete cake while certain bosses suddenly stomp your party into the ground. I've heard that later on it gets even more unbalanced, but this time in your party's favor, when you fortify your flurry attacks (whatever that does, it supposedly makes battles a cakewalk). The voices are a big problem too - not the voice acting, which I really don't mind, but the pacing. Several big problems with the pacing:
- First, you can't skip voiced dialogue unless you skip the cutscene completely by pressing start. Sometimes I've already read the line and just want to move on.
- Second, there are big pauses after the voice acting in many places, making you wait even longer. This is nothing but laziness on the localization team's part, or at least that's my guess - I'm thinking the Japanese phrases took longer to speak, and they didn't fix the pacing for the English voices. That's the only possible explanation I can think of, unless maybe the DS cart takes that long to load each voice clip (I doubt it).
- Also, voices in battle pause the action. This isn't always noticeable, but when it is, it's highly annoying. The earliest and most obvious example is Morte's "It's time to bring the pain!" or whatever she says before an attack (it's not a Quip, just a regular voice clip). You're left sitting there for two or three seconds while she says that, for no apparent reason. Why can't I be selecting her attacks and pounding the enemy isntead of waiting for her to stop speaking? It's minor, but it's a problem that shouldn't have been there, and when it happens every single battle, it starts to get under my nerves.

On the other hand, while I'm on the subject of voices, I will say that I really love the Quips. What a cute and innovative way to combine voice-acting more with the actual gameplay, rather than leave it stuck in the realm of dialogue and story.

Overall I really wanted to like this game more. I'll still play through it, but now I'm glad I downloaded instead of buying it to support the developer and publisher. Some of the flaws are so small yet so glaring, I just don't understand how/why they let them slide.