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Review by: GenoForPrez
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Reviewers Score: 5 / 10
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Posted:
May 03, 2006 |
Title: Gulliver Boy
System: SNES
Genre: Adventure RPG
Overall Score: 5/10
Surprisingly fun gameplay, but everything else is terrible.
Story: 2/10
The story is pretty much terrible. You play the role of gulliver boy and
you set out to save the world from the dark angel Hallelujiah with only
your father's belt as a weapon. Along the way, you meet a slew of
characters that help you in your mission, but they always appear randomly
and their explanations for their behavior are always absolutely laughable.
And then, after they help you the one time, you never see them again for
the rest of the game. Basically, just imagine every stereotype about RPG's
you've ever heard, then magnify it to the point of being hilariously
cheezy, and you have this game. Bad story. Bad dialogue. Bad characters.
Just plain bad. However, it is so bad that you will sort of enjoy it just
because it's so funny and random.
Gameplay: 8/10
Despite everything else about this game being terrible, the gameplay is
surprisingly fun! The game starts out very slow with you only in control
of Gulliver and his belt swinging nonsense. Gulliver's style of attacking
is very reminiscent of the Secret of Mana games in that he gets one
powerful swing and then you have to wait for your attack to charge again.
You may still attack before your gauge recharges, but your attack won't be
very powerful. Soon you meet up with your friend Edison who is (of course)
an inventor. He has a completely different style of attack than Gulliver.
He attacks by throwing bombs which bounce forward and then detonate. He
only has a limited number of bombs though, so when he runs out, you have
to switch back to using Gulliver so Edison can build more (automatically
refills when he's not being used). Soon you receive the third and last
member of your troupe, Misty. She begins the game as a healer, but she
eventually loses that power and can attack. Her attack style is that she
throws a flaming ring at enemies which will remind you of the boomerang in
the Zelda games. She can throw it repeatedly and it has the same attack
power every time, but she gradually loses her strength (indicated by a
meter) and won't be able to throw any more if it depletes.
You have these three character who all have different attack styles and
you may only control one at a time. However, you can switch between them
by pressing the X button. When you're not using a character, their HP and
attack gauge gradually refills, but when you are using a character,
their gauges don't refill much at all. Also, they have different
strengths. For instance, Misty deals more damage to magical creatures
whereas Gulliver deals more damage to basic enemies. Edison can use his
bombs to attack most enemies, but mostly they are used for blow up doors
that enemies emerge from. So you have to switch between characters quite a
lot to make good use of their different attack styles and to let
characters recharge or heal. Also, enemies drop experience in small
capsules that are pink, yellow, or green. Each character may only pick up
their color of experience, so you have to switch quickly for that, too.
You still have collectable items like in any RPG, but there is a final
bonus. Gulliver also receives "minder disks" as the game progresses, which
allow him to use various summons. With all of these elements together, it
makes for very fun gameplay and some extremely interesting boss battles.
Graphics: 5/10
The graphics are not anything to get excited over. They resemble the
anime-style sprites you would see in games like Secret of Mana or Chrono
Trigger, only they are not near that quality. The characters and
animations are very loose and blocky and there are no little bells and
whistles to polish them. The best artwork in the game is the character
profiles above the dialogue boxes when characters speak to each other, but
even some of these are mediocre quality and they always have the same
expression. Not bad, but not good either.
Replay Value: 5/10
It was a pretty fun game, but the story and dialogue were terrible and the
levels were a bit repetitive. If you enjoy the gameplay enough, you might
find some replay value in it, but this player probably won't be playing it
again, though it was a decent play the first time around. |
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