Phantom Legacy (Part 1)

Disclaimer: The structure of this review is different from the standard. Please, read it all to understand why i gave this score to the game.

Today i finished Phantom Legacy and god… It wasn’t what I expected. First, the game was too short. When I opened the game folder I saw 220 Map files, so I expected at least, 2-3 hours of gameplay. I was wrong. I finished the game in 1 hour, and I wasted 20 minutes trying to FIND what I had to do. After Nero’s dream, I couldn’t find what I had to do next. First, I explored all Dalmar trying to find any clue, but the only thing that I found was the place where you play the organ and fight and enemy what escapes at the end and gives you a total useless item (You can’t even sell it). Then, I went to the other “city” on the world map, because it was the only other structure on the world map that looked like a tower. There, I tried to enter but my character said “We have to find a town” or something like that (something odd, I was on a town and cleaned it from top to bottom) so I supposed I didn’t trigger something important, so I came back to the Dalmar. Didn’t find anything again, so, I tried to collect 2100 Serras to buy the tickets from the guy who sell its. He didn’t sell them. Then, I tried to “kill” the Organ ‘Ghost (He always Escape). How??? I killed The Ghost first and then the Clone. Nothing Happened. For that moment, I was pretty upset, because I really wanted to progress. I said to myself “I inspected every single square of the game. What is the only place I haven’t inspected again??”. The beginning point. I went to the cave of the beginning and OhhH!! Alistar activated a secret switch and I could progress. When Alistar did that, I was mad. First, we didn’t have any clues to go here. (The only thing that Alistair said was “We have to go Tower of Babylon”). Second, HOW IN THE HELL THE TOWER WAS CONECTED WITH THE CAVE!!! The world map design is awful. Nightblade, why you didn’t put 2 caves ( One in the palce where you start and another at the side of the Tower) on the world map ?? With that, it would have been MUCH easier to find what we had to do. But the worst thing wasn’t that. I entered the tower and … oh god… a puzzle. Guys, you have to believe me, this is the most challenging puzzle of the game (if you thought the puzzle of Mummies was hard, please give up). I like challenges, but this puzzle was a hit on the balls. And you know why??? In a paper I wrote ALL the combinations. NO ONE worked. I was MAD. I TRIED EVERY POSIBLE COMBINATION AND I COULDN’T REACH THE KEY. After that I tried again with all the combinations, and now one of them worked. Guys, I was upset. I lost 10 minutes trying with all the combination and then one of them randomly works. I said to myself “Ok, at least I could resolve it. Let’s progress with this”. I fell on the trap, my friends weren’t with me blablabla Jericho gave me the key to escape and he gave the chance to escape. I saved and escaped and I got the Bad Ending. I think it was ok because I had the chance to save before, so, it wasn’t bad at all. Again, I said to myself “Oh, a bad ending, ok, I will not escape this time”. I reached Jericho and I battled him at the top of the tower. Oh …. My…. God… First, I tried to hit him with all I had. He kicked my ass. I thought it was the typical battle where you have to die to progress. But the game over appeared so I said to myself (again lol, I always speak to myself on my mind) “Oh, ok, let’s try the opposite, I will do nothing (like in Final Fantasy 5, where you fight Gogo)”. I did nothing and he still kicked my ass. I said to myself “WTF!!!!! WHAT I HAVE TO DO”. This time the only thing I did was heal myself. It worked. I battled Jericho with my party and I didn’t have problems (The Boss battles on PL are pretty generic, hit, heal, revive if someone dies, hit etc... ). Then Shadar appeared, Nero remember everything that happened, Shadar destroy him and after that we see a scene of Shadar on his castle, talking to the guy who raised Nero and a scene of Iris walking to find his daughter. And after that, a “to Be Concluded “ screen appears. Yes, a to be continued screen appeared. This was my face when I saw it:



Serious. I COULDN’T BELIEVE. I KNOW IS ONLY THE FIRST PART BUT COME ON!!!!! MY RESIDENT EVIL FANGAME DEMO IS LONGER THAN THIS!!!. I FINISHED THE GAME ON LEVEL 11. ELEVEN. This was the most disappointing aspect of the game. Overall the game is good, the graphics are pretty good, , the story is not too clear… but is still intriguing and the music is good (One detail, the battle music doesn’t loop, it fades at the end and start again).This is my Score for the game:

Graphics: 9/10

The majority of the chipsets are from Chrono Trigger. The characters fits incredible well with the chipset, and the animations are almost flawless. This is the most solid point of the game.

Sound: 9/10

Another good point. PL uses music from a variety of games. We can hear song from Resident Evil to Final Fantasy. The sound effects are good too. I recognized Sfx and Music from the Following games:
• Final Fantasy IX
• Heroes of Might and Magic 3
• Chrono Trigger
• Final Fantasy VI
• Final Fantasy VII
• Skies Of Arcadia
• Super Robot Wars
• Fable
• Breath Of Fire
(I know, I missed a lot of games). In general, the game have a pretty solid Ost.

Story: 5/10

The story of the game is not bad, is pretty intriguing, but is ambiguous, I think I only understood about the half of it. When I discovered Jericho was Alistar’s brother, I felt bad. It was unexpected, but it was bad twist, a pretty bad one. I expect more for Part 2

Gameplay: 6/10

The gameplay wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t excellent either. One thing that I hated was the battles. They where too monotonous. They only consist about Attack, attack, heal, heal, attack, attack, revive wounded ally and repeat. The same runs for the boss battles, with the only difference that you have to heal twice often.

Total Score: 29/40 = 36.25/50

3.5 Stars Is my score for this game. The game itself is good, but I expected more.