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Black and White (not the god game): A Review on Black and White
Review by eien_tsubasa
Not that many of you care to know, but I have played many rpgs in my twenty years. When you played them as long as I have, you experience a lot of different battle systems, characters, and soundtracks. My experience in said games brought me here, to this web site. So far, the games in RRR were exactly the same; cheezy storylines, sideview battlesystem, and horribly detailed reviews that wound give Bubzy the Cat as much popularity as Halo Reach.
Then, I came across this game: a game with a cheezy storyline and a horrible review. BUT WAIT! A FIRST PERSON BATTLE SYSTEM?! It was as if I was reborn again. With that, I decided to give the game a shot, not knowing that this would be the prelude to my everlasting torture. But I've said too much, so let me just review "Black and White: The RPG".
Now you might have noticed that I called it Black and White: The RPG. Well the answer to this leads to my first problem with the game: It is named after the popular god game Black and White for the PC. An honest mistake, but if I was the creator of the original Black and White and came across this game, I would have hounded him for lawsuit.
Alright, now to get back on track. Normally I'd describe the backstory, but it pretty much speaks for itself, and I'll summerize it as simply as I can: THE GOOD GUYS FOUGHT THE BAD GUYS 1500 YEARS AGO THE GOOD GUYS WON PALADINS CONTROL WHITE SPIRITS DARK NIGHTS COMMAND DARK SPIRITS THEY HATED EACH OTHER AND FOUGHT IN A BIG WAR THE GODDESS SPEAKS TO THE PEOPLE TELLING THEM OF ANOTHER DISASTER. The back story I thought was pretty basic, and, as I stated above, can pretty much be summerized in one breath. I mean, its not like this is different than other stories: The good guys fighting the bad guys a bunch of years ago, magical beings, demons causing disasters. This gets really overused. I don't know if its just popular, but this backstory doesn't exactly break the wall here.
But anyway, the story continues and changes perspective. The main character, a Paladin named Lughan (I think) is woken up by his adopted sister, a club wielding cat girl, who bothers him about going to the town near the castle where they're stationed. After listening to her annoying cattisms, they go to the town and meet with Lughan's other adopted sister, who I think has a crush on him. She's found caring for an angel (I forget her name) whos origin (as far as I played it) is unknown. And after two random party members, Lughan sets out to got the the other nearby kingdom to help the angel deliver a message that could make or break the worlds fate.
While playing, I came across a few problems, not so much with the battle system, but with the story and the way its presented. After the easy battle with Team UNKNOWN and the evil robed guy (from the intro battle), it tries to force feed info about the worlds history. While I normally don't mind this, you feel like the text boxes are treating you like a Special ED student( e.g. THE GODDESS RULED HEAVEN WHILE THE DEMONS RULED HELL), opposites that you could more or less figure out by yourself. I mean, in a game that centers around good and evil, I think we could grasp the fact that Heaven and Hell are fighting each other, or that the Paladins and the Dark Knights hate each other equally.
My other problem comes from the way the party is introduced. I could understand the catgirl joining you, but the other two characters (a doomsaying priest and apparently your sensei) seem like they just randomly join invite themselves into your group. They come up during the angel event almost randomly without character development. Lughan and catgirl seemed to know the know the priest for some time, but where did the meet him? When did they meet him? And why did he run through the door screaming about the end of the world? That had to be the most over the top way to introduce a character ever. The Sensei, she seemed harmless enough. She wasn't a bad character, but she didn't have any story other than "she's your teacher". When a character is introduced, you should try to add some character development, or at least explain how X character knows X character to avoid randomness.
The other problem I have is with the battles and the party abilities. Every party member in an RPG has a role: they're either damage dealers, healers, mages, something that gives the a reason to be in the party. Almost every party member in Black and White: the RPG don't start off with anything. The only two characters with skills were Lughan (with a damage attack) and the angel chic (with a heal spell). Everyone else just took up space. The catgirl was more or less pretty useless with the exception of damage, but the Priest and the Sensei just couldn't do anything. I could understand if they had at least one skill, but even the priest had nothing: he was the slowest character in the game, he had no damage, little HP, a ton of MP with no spells, and the defense of wet tissue paper. Give him a skill so that hes no entirely useless.
And, as I stress time and time again, BALANCE THE MONSTERS! The monster difficulty was random at best. Fist you fought slimes, rats, bees, you know, the start of any bad adventure tale. Suddenly you would encounter scorpions of near boss like difficulty that take nearly four turns each to kill. BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE! I can't stress that enough. This could have been easily remedied if the creator just chose an overall difficulty for his monster and rode that curve. Monsters in RPGS are either easy or hard, THEY CAN'T BE BOTH.
I also hate how the game never prepares you for any of the monster battles. I spent most of my money on antidotes, hoping that I'd get hit by a poison attack. I mean hey, it was one of four things in the shop, right. Then I fight a Goblin that hits me with a blind attack.
D:
...
WUT?
Its like the creator did it just to troll you. They should either have it so that you start out with a few items to prepare you with different situation, or add the, to the shop.
And lastly, the games soundtrack. Now this was the biggest clusterf**k soundtrack I have ever come across. I mean, I ran into some songs from Castlevania: SotN and Final Fantasy (as if no one ever uses those), but then I ran into Metroid Prime, the Paprika Soundtrack, Rhythm Tengoku, Blazblue: Calamity Trigger, I didn't even know you could find that! Well anyway, the soundtrack was complete collage of unoriginality. It shouldn't be possible for the player to go: "HEY THATS FROM FINAL FANTASY! COOL METROID PRIME! BLAZBLUE? TOTALLY BOSS!" Unoriginal music makes the game that much unplayable, and tortures the player. How you might ask? Well, despite the music coming from other games and movies, they're in the RPG, forcing the player to forcefully sit through songs they already had the pleasure of listening to once. A throwback reference is good, but this game twisted it into a throwback of discontent and ear torture.
So, I gave this game a 3.5. Its for the most part unoriginal and dull, boring and near brain dead character development, unbalanced monsters, and predictable story plot. Its only saving grace was that it was bold enough not to use the sideview battle system, an act of bravery that I give a thumbs up to. Note to Creator: start utilizing the tutorials for monster balancing. I recommend "Bricks and Doilies: A monster Tutorial". And try to improve the character development, that way you can draw the player to the sotry and the characters.
Reviewer's Score: 3.5 / 10, Posted Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:34:30 -0500
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