The Epic of Gilgamesh

Maybe it's because I've been watching a lot of Yahtzee's reviews lately, or maybe it's because my own game is progressing as swiftly as a geriatric whose waist deep in concrete and I wanted to kill some time, but today I'm performing my RMN duty of writing at least one review, poor grammar and all. And what better game to review than the Epic of Gilgamesh?

As a fan of both the final fantasy series and mythology the prospect of playing a game combining the two was a no-brainer, and having king Gilgamesh played by Final Fantasies raw ball of awesome of the same name almost made me squee in the grisliest way possible. But I'm going to be professional about this and so will be entering the game with the cynicism of a grumpy old man whose family has all abounded him for giving his children shovels and pickaxes for Christmas and telling them to get a job.

Now I won't be "scoring" anything in this review because I think that giving an arbitrary number to an experience that is going to be vastly different from player to player is rather redundant. Instead, I'm just going to say what I like or disliked about the various parts of the game and leave it at that.

I'd also point out that I haven't played the whole game yet, which really annoys me as judging complaining about things you haven't played (not that I don't think I'll be doing much complaining) is one of my pet peeves. I blame this in part to me being lazy, not partially feeling like playing any JRPs at the moment, and Skyrim.


Story:
No, I have not read the epic of Gilgamesh and I don't know anyone that has. If I ever wanted to read a long winded tale, with unbelievably long speeches that takes forever to get anywhere I'd just pick up Tolken. In this case, though being unfamiliar with source material is a good thing because if I had, I'd undoubtedly be silently judging the accuracy of the story rather than actually enjoying it.

You are Gilgamesh, ancient king of Samaria and the biggest badass to ever badass his way through Badassulvania. The game starts with Gil kicking the ass of three legendary monsters that have taken up residence in a giant tree that the Goddess Ishtar wants to convert into her personnel throne like the corrupt land developer she is. He then rules Uruk for a hundred years or so, with all the love and benevolence of Sadden Hussein crossed with Stalin. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it! Because, not only is he king, but if anyone does speak up Gil just punches them into the sun!

Hearing the plight of the people (and worried that Gilgamesh will usurp their position as biggest dicks in the cosmoses) the ancient gods of Samaria, the Annunaki, create Enkidu, a creature who is neither human nor beast (which in this game means he’s an elf) with all the strength of Gilgamesh, but with none of the ego in order to temper Gil's personality into something less tyrannical and to beat some sense into Gill if he decides to start eating babies. And so the Annunaki dump him in the middle of a forest nowhere near Uruk with only the flimsy justification of "It seemed like a good idea at the time" their only excuse for doing so.

So Enkidu roams the wilderness for a while, beats up some monster, rescues Cocobos from hunters (yes you read that right), hooks up with the local temple harlot because religion was like that back then, before finally running into Gil, and the two immediately become friends... after beating the absolute snot out of one another because real men express their friendship by ramming each other's faces into the ground about 20 times.

After recovering from their... hug, Gill and Enkidu decide to celebrate their new epic bromance by going on an adventure to kill the most powerful, deadly monsters in the world because they can and who wants to live forever anyway? And thus begins the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Of course the game isn’t getting any points for the story for the same reason the Harry Potter movies are never going to win an Oscar for best writing. If anyone was interested in just the story they’d just google it and read the original.

So the question isn't "is the story good," the question is; "has the Epic of Gilgamesh been adapted into a game well?" And I believe it has.

There’re portions of the script that seem to have been taken directly from the translation, and you can tell because it’s in that archaic, Shakespearian style that only a Literacy Major would appreciate. But it’s all done with a more modern, straightforward spin which, if you’re like me, makes the story far easier to understand and, if I may say so, enjoyable. You know what you’re supposed to be doing and why, even if the “why” is usually “because I’m a god king and I can”.

I like the dialog of the random townsfolk too (something that is usually overlooked, which is why I’m pointing it out). You’ve got the usual RPG banter, giving you hints and advice of where to go and how to kill certain monsters, but they also tell you more about the mythology surrounding the epic and of ancient Samarian culture, in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s been shoved down your throat.

All in all, I’m quite impressed with it. As far as I can tell it is “The Epic of Gilgamesh” which is exactly what I was expecting.


Graphics:
This game was made on VX so naturally everything is as blocky as hell! All the sprites are tiny as well, and I have particular contempt to Gilgamesh's sprite. He looks fine walking left/right, but when he's facing up or down the way his cloak is presented makes him look weird... tiny and weird.

The monster sprites are all taken from Final Fantasies four and five, which considering everything could actually be a feature, although some of sprites really pixalated, especially in full screen. The spell animations aren't much better and are all pretty standard and generic and why does no one mention attack animations when discussing games? Although I did like that when performing a regular attack the monster would move up to hit its target which I thought was really cool.

But I’m blaming this more on the system than the designer and graphics are superficial anyway so let’s move on.


Sound:
Once again everything is taken from FF5 with one or two tracks from numbers 4 and 6. I know it's supposed to be a feature, but I feel that only using music from one game is limiting. But I do like the FF5 soundtrack and all the tracks are used in appropriate areas and situations well so I have no reason to complain.

The tracts are all midis, so if you're a person who wouldn't touch anything with a midi track in it because the only music allowed to grace your ears are the soothing sounds of Metallica I would love nothing more than to kick you down from your pedestal of self important superiority. I would like to, but I can't, since a lot of Midis out there are just terrible and there is enough justification for not liking them as there is for you to hate that bully who used to steal your lunch money. Fortunately this is not the case in this game as all the tracks are of pretty good quality so there's no reason I've found to condemn it for that.

Now where was I going with this again? Oh yeah... I like the misc... Probably should have just said that.


Gameplay:
And now we come to the heart of the game and sadly it's the game's greatest failing.

Now to most people "Gameplay" in RPGS means battles. Now there is more to game-play than that, but it's a good place to start because the battles in this Epic are underwhelming.

The problem is the random encounters... Oh I can hear the groaning of the masses already. Yes the game has random encounters, no I don't like them either, but they're not that frequent and you can run from them fairly easily so shut up! The problem is the random encounters, in fact all the fights I've had so far, are just too easy. There's no challenge. It's rare that you won't be able to wipe out an enemy party in one turn.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to wipe out a group of monsters by glaring at them correctly, and considering who you're playing as I'd be complaining far more if I couldn't kick things into the stratosphere. But stratosphere punts and death glares should be a reward for playing the game well, through the form of level ups and fantastic special attacks. It should be beautiful thing achieved after playing the game for several hours when I've earned my right to obliterate lesser foes with a single blow and where childish glee can be found by going back to the starting area and fighting level two bite bugs and summoning Bahummit, not the means to which I win every battle!

It wouldn't be so bad though if the enemies didn't hand you the means for an easy victory like parents giving out candy at Halloween. For example; early in the game, when you're playing as Enkidu for the first time, you have access to some powerful attacks with a fairly high MP consumption. All fair in my book, I still had some more MP friendly attacks the enemies were strong enough to be a challenge and that made it fun to occasionally nuke everything with high level magic, so I didn't see any problems. That was until I realized that a spell casting enemy would drop ethers, an item that restores most of my MP, at a high drop rate, and I would usually fight them three at a time. All of a sudden I didn't have to worry about MP! So I just started casting Thunderja on everything that crossed my path because there wasn't any reason for me not to, and making what probably would have been a challenging area trivial.

Another example: later in the game you can fight Flans who in grand Final Fantasy tradition are epically weak to one specific element, in this case their own. They also drop scrolls. Scrolls that deal good elemental damage (at that point in the game anyway) to all enemies. And the scroll they drop is always to the element there weak too! So when I ran into a Flan I just opened the appropriate scroll and watched everything die without thinking twice because I was likely to get that scroll back. And if I had to fight more than one I would often end up with a net gain of two scrolls. By the end of that area I had so many Ice Scrolls I started using them on encounters without Flans because one would usually still kill everything! Its one thing to nuke everything with a spell or ability, there is usually some cost involved, but to do it with an item that I can get for nothing, I believe the term is game-breaking.

OK, I might be griping a bit too much. The battles do get harder later on and, those exploits are not always available, but I've never really felt challenged and I partially blame that on the skill system.

At first the "sacrifice system" as the game calls it, intrigued me with the game page proclaiming that it "allows player's to exchange spoils from battle for equipment and skill upgrades". Now when I read this what I thought it meant was I was able to use item drops from foes to increase my stats, upgrade my equipment or learn new skills, sort of like in daemons' soles. But no, how it actually works is by visiting one of the temples of the Annunaki and spending items dropped by monsters you can level up your equipment which, when equipped, gives you your spells.

Of course it’s still a cool idea, it’s fairly original and I don’t think I have the skills at the moment to program something like that. But what of that whole “blaming the difficulty on the skill system” thing I mentioned beforehand? Well allow me to explain.

Very early on I managed to have enough resources to fully upgrade an early piece of equipment that ended up teaching me Cura and Curaga, the former of which is enough to heal both my party members for most of their Hp for a minimal MP cost, bringing down any challenge that remained in the game to effectively 0.

I also have a problem with all the strong spells being linked to equally strong equipment. "How is that a problem?" you ask? Well it's not actually, but I don't think it's using the system to its full potential. Allow me to explain.

Let's say I start with a sword that gives me stage one fire magic and the next weapon I obtain gives me ice and lighting magic. OK, that's fine, I don't really need Fire anyway since my partner has it. But then I get to the next town, buy the most powerful weapon available, level it up and get second stage Fire, Ice, and Lightning spells. So now I might as well sell my other two weapons because my current one is universally better.

I keep going and come to another village, buy their most powerful weapon and level that up and learn a bunch of spells from it. I lose Fire, but gain access to more powerful Ice and Lighting and a bunch of other elements. I have no need to keep any of my old equipment, despite what the game tells me because the new stuff is always better. So I sell my old stuff, just like I would in EVERY OTHER RPG!

Now things would be different if say, I was able to get weaker gear to high levels than high end stuff because than there's a trade off beaten either having good equipment, but weak magic or poor equipment with fantastic magic. Or maybe having different types of weapons give accesses to different elements, like swords giving Fire, spears Water and Lightning, Axes with Earth ECT, because then you'd have to change equipment depending on what you're fighting.

My ramblings aside however, the Sacrifice System is still pretty solid and should at least be applauded for its originality.


Level Design:
I've done enough complaining about the combat and now it's time to stat complaining about the level design, which I believe you RMN veterans call mapping. The towns aren't bad and the world map, if compact, is OK, but the dungeons. The areas and dungeons in this game are all very labyrinthine. You know the formula; large rooms connected by several smaller passages with one space wide roads branching off to the sides usually ending in a treasure chest. The graphics do not help either because when everything looks like it's made out of Lego it just makes it everything look more like a maze.

The forest was the worst of it though. For starts it doesn't look like a forest, it looks like a hedge maze with all the walls being trees one space tall. By the way, I hate those one space high tress! Trees are not three feet high and even if they were I doubt they'd grow in perfectly strait, parallel lines with just enough room for your character to walk though. I don't let that crap fly in the Pokémon games I'm sure as hell not letting it fly here! I did like one section of the forest, it was a nice open are where the forest met the coast and it was a really nice break in the monotony. And then the next area turned out to be an even bigger maze... Gah!

In a way I’m glad the random encounters are so easy because if they weren’t you wouldn’t be reading this review because my gamepad would be firmly logged into my monitor!


Final Verdict:
Well I've had fun dissecting the game into pieces and then ripping those pieces to shreds with my scorn, but how does the game stand as a whole? Well after copious amounts of super glue and duct tape I can look back and say... yes it was a good game, not a great game, but a good game. I still don't believe in giving scores, but if I had to I'd give it a 3.5. Oh what I do have to.

No, the game didn't reinvent the wheel, in fact I'm pretty sure the wheel was stolen, or at least cobbled together from bits of other wheels with a nice shiny spoke in the middle. But it does what it sets out to do. It lets people experience the oldest legend in the world in a modern, entertaining way. Now I wouldn't recommend the game to someone who has to do an essay on the epic, but for people like me who hate to read long stories it's just what the doctor ordered. I got to enjoy a good story, lent about ancient Sumerian culture and despite, all complaining I actually had fun. There's no doubt that I will go back and complete the game, probably sometime after I finish Skyrim... So in about six months then.