Employing gorgeous visuals tied to an imaginatively crafted world, Sudeki offers gamers the classic RPG adventure with plenty of new twists and features that will attract even the most jaded RPG fan. The well-developed combat system keeps the pace fresh and exciting while significant character customisation and NPC interaction provide depth and long-term addiction. Cinematic-style, real-time combat with dozens of moves, slow-motion bullet time, earthshaking spells and hundreds of destructive melee attacks.
Genre: RPGDeveloper: ClimaxPublisher: MicrosoftRelease Date: July 20, 2004Buy 'SUDEKI':I’ve been recommending Sudeki to people all week, but it’s not an unqualified recommendation.Sudeki's a “But if” game, which are always the hardest ones to review. The “but” comes from a handful of mitigating factors: it’s fun, but easy; interesting, but derivative; initially engaging, but soon begins to feel rushed. Every positive facet of Sudeki comes with an accompanying drawback.The “if,” of course, is that if you like action-RPGs, there is nothing in Sudeki that will actually harsh your mellow. It’s not a bad example of its genre by any stretch of the imagination, and is often really entertaining despite its flaws, presuming that you like the genre in the first place. Sudeki is set on a world of the same name, which warring gods have split into opposing realms of light and shadow. The game begins in the kingdom of Illumina in the Light realm, where a soldier named Tal splits his time between defending the countryside from berserk Shadow monsters, flirting with the princess Ailish, getting yelled at by his father, and being the lone survivor of any mission he’s sent on.In the aftermath of a battle, the god Tetsu appears to Tal, and lets him know that an end is coming; the current troubles between the Light and Shadow worlds are just the beginning of a larger struggle. Tal, Ailish, a demihuman warrior named Buki, and Illumina’s head scientist Elco have been chosen by the gods to combat the forces of the Realm of Shadows, whether they like it or not.Sudeki will frequently allow you to control at least two of your characters simultaneously.
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Like Knights of the Old Republic, any PC who’s not under your direct control at the moment is controlled by the CPU; unlike KOTOR, you move your active character in real-time. Tal and Buki are short-ranged melee fighters, controllable in third-person and attacking via a timing-based combo system, while during a fight, Ailish and Elco move and shoot in first person.You can switch between the members of your current group at any time using the Black button, which is excellent for micromanaging difficult battles. Each character brings a unique mix of skills and statistics to the table; Tal is basically a meatshield, Buki is a mobile attacker, Ailish wields spells and high-damage magical staves (one of her later weapons is not so much a magical cane as a two-shot rocket launcher), and Elco provides covering fire using a variety of pistols. The fun of Sudeki is largely in the combat. A battle’s usually a chaotic melee, full of flying projectiles, charging opponents, devastating spells, and unpleasant surprises. A lot of people have claimed that Sudeki is a button-masher, and if you want, you can hammer on attack buttons all damn day. If that’s your kick, go to it.The reality is that Sudeki's combo system is actually designed to punish button-mashing.
Tal and Buki’s melee combos depend largely on timing, forcing you to land two quick hits in preparation for a devastating finisher or a series of juggles. Anyone who’s trying to get through the game just by hammering on X or A isn’t going to do as well as a player who studies opponents, looks for an opening, and lays into them with a careful string of hits.Meanwhile, Ailish and Elco’s job is to hang back from the melee and rain death upon anyone who isn’t looking. The more powerful their weapons, the more recharge time they’ll generally have between shots, which means you’ll need to dodge and weave to stay on your feet. Once again, you can just hold down the trigger and spray death at your enemies, but the low hit strength of the weapons with a high rate of fire means that you’re really spraying minor annoyance.Out of combat, each character has a further unique ability which allows you to discover secrets and solve puzzles. Tal can push around local designated Shoving Objects, such as crates. Buki can climb up walls using her claws, Elco’s rocket pack lets him fly as long as there’s a yellow crystal handy to power it, and Ailish possesses Second Sight, allowing her to penetrate and dispel illusions.When you level up, you can spend advancement points to raise each characters’ stats and teach them up to six skills.
In villages, you can further improve a character by welding magical runes to his armor or weapons, providing power boosts, special abilities, or immunity to status attacks. (The latter’s important, since everyone and their mom in Sudeki can inflict status ailments on your party. It’s not unusual to have two or three going at once.)This is usually the point where I ineptly segue into discussing a game’s flaws, but aside from some dodgy character design (I hope you like Buki’s ass, because thanks to the gods of Sudeki, you’ll be staring at it for a long time), Sudeki plays just fine. The biggest problem it has is that there isn’t enough of it. For one thing, Sudeki is dead easy. Part of this is because Elco gets his best weapon about four hours into the game.
With a little work and a few levels, he’ll be popping conventional enemies like a grape with one or two shots. This comes in handy, since Elco gets one of the hardest fights in the game all to himself - Sudeki’s bosses always seem to contrive a method to make sure you fight them one-on-one – but it also means that any group with Elco in it skates through combat.You can also easily get all the best skills early on, since none of the spells or abilities in Sudeki come with a prerequisite. You can easily grab all the stat-boosting or protective skills first thing, then use them at the start of any fight to stack the odds in your favor.In addition, any given boss can be defeated with the use of a simple trick, which looks more like a glitch than anything else. Every time you use a skill, your character enters an invulnerability window that lasts until the end of the move. There’s at least one boss fight where you can completely ignore all of its attacks and instantly counter, as long as you keep casting spells.Combine that with a few runes, some decent weapons, and Ailish’s tendency to obliterate anyone who looks at her funny with Celestial Circle, and Sudeki's main characters wind up looking less like heroes and more like exterminators.In addition to being easy, Sudeki is ridiculously short, clocking in at twenty-five hours max. For a game that was purported to be the first real epic RPG on Xbox, this is almost incomprehensible.Playing through the endgame, one wonders if Sudeki was meant to be far longer, but was rushed to completion.
Many plot threads are abandoned or tossed aside, including a major life-changing event right before the final battle. Both Tal and Ailish have major issues that simply aren’t resolved, involving his father and her mother, and Elco is the focus of a major plot twist right before the finale that, unfortunately, doesn’t wind up meaning anything.Combined with its length and lack of difficulty, Sudeki's fractured plot – like a Neal Stephenson novel, it doesn’t end so much as it stops – relegates it to rental status. It’s a fun rental, and it’s not a bad game, but it’s over right when most RPGs are just getting started.Score: 8.0/10.
OverviewAlthough the Xbox has been around for a number of years now, the one genre that it still lacks some quality titles is the RPG genre. Apart from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Baldur’s Gate series, we have seen many promise a lot but not come out with great results. Now Microsoft has tried to take matters into their own hands by teaming up with developers Climax Studios to bring us their latest RPG Sudeki for the Xbox.
GameplaySo many games have set out to do great things on the Xbox and many of them have been flat out bad. Sudeki was one of those games that got a fair amount of publicity and enough notoriety for people to look forward to the release. Sudeki really set out to become a solid RPG to fill the whole that was missing in the Xbox library. Can it do that?
Read on and find out!Right from the beginning, you might feel how ordinary and uninspired the game is. But hang in there, as things do start to become more interesting as the hours roll on. You start as Tal the token warrior of the game, and quickly thereafter you meet up with three others who include the magic skilled Ailish, the scientist Elco, and the intelligent Buki. These characters are found throughout your travels in the game.This is a game that’s storyline that follows the battle of good vs. Evil gig very well. I really can’t give out much of the story without ruining parts of the game so I will just mention the fact that the game has plenty to look forward to and plenty of twists and turns and interesting moments. One of my favorite parts of Sudeki was the storyline, which proved to be quite interesting from start to finish.The game has a pretty basic character leveling system, which is very similar to almost all RPGs out there today.
Your characters gain experience for victories on the battlefield, as well as completed different side quests. With this you will have the ability to place on her base statistics or to purchase a new ability. The choice is yours but you must make sure to choose wisely.This is the part of the review where I know I will lose some fans and gain some others. The game is not a turn-based RPG but rather a real time RPG.
So instead of strategy you will be doing a lot more button mashing in this game. Which in my eyes is a whole lot more exciting.
Tal and Buki are your melee fighters, so you will see them get up close and personal with your enemies during battle, whereas Ailish and Elco who use more magical skills will just hang back and hit with long-ranged spells.Throughout the game all of your characters will get there hands on plenty of different weapons. The game has plenty of assortments when it comes to the weapons that you will be using, and they all seem to be quite interesting.
These weapons cannot only be purchased but taken after battles.So how does the game end up in the long run? Well the combat system works very nicely and the storyline is good.
The one thing that is really holding back Sudeki is the mere fact that there is nothing overly interesting in the game. There is nothing in Sudeki that we are going to find new or something we haven’t seen before.
Sudeki combines RPG elements that we have seen before. And although it does work nicely in the game it just feels like a game that doesn’t have any big selling factor.The gameplay itself is solid but nothing more then this. This is not a great game. I like the combat system that is in place but I also wish they could have added some new elements that haven’t been done before. But instead we are left with a decently solid playing RPG. GraphicsThe RPG’s that have been successful on the Xbox have all been great looking games. With Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic we saw a game that had gorgeous environments and solid character models.
So how does Sudeki match up?There is one word to describe the graphics of Sudeki and that word is colorful. Climax Studios did an amazing job with all of the colors they placed in this game. The game is full of colors, in the environments, the character models; everything about the game has a very light and colorful feel to it. The environments themselves are a mixed bag, some are great, and others are not.
I found that the game looked good at times and at other times the graphics could have been better. The character models seemed pretty good, with a fair amount of detail, and all had a very unique feel and look to them.Overall the game is one good-looking game. There were some areas of the game that could have used some touching up but besides those minor areas the game was very nicely done. Fun FactorSudeki starts off very strong with you meeting the new characters, but the more and more you play through Sudeki the more you wish there was more to the game. The combat system is effective but there is just something missing from the game that holds it back from its full potential.
When Sudeki is at its best the game is a ton of fun to play but there are times where the fun just isn’t there. OverallSudeki is a game that is solid is all departments. It has some great RPG elements but nothing that is going to catch the gaming market’s eye quite like Knights of the Old Republic. For those looking for a new RPG for the Xbox I would recommend Sudeki if this is your kind of game. For everyone else it makes an excellent rental!