I’d been looking forward to playing Sands of Destruction since it first came out in Japan, but it’s only last week that I finally bought it and settled down to play. What stopped me from playing it earlier was an Amazon.co.jp review I read that said the game’s story was impossible to understand without watching the anime. Having finally played the game I find this was a lie (though it’s easier to enjoy the story if you’ve watched the show), but back then I believed it, so I held off until I had the time to watch the anime.

And I should just say, the Sands of Destruction anime is pretty good. It’s nothing deep or profound, just three people having one episodic adventure after another. But Taupy is adorable (Yappi!), Morte actually has good reasons for wanting to destroy the world, and Kyrie…well, Kyrie will always be Kyrie. The anime Kyrie is a little better because he tries to talk Morte out of destruction from the start, and it takes him a long while to warm up her romantically.

Now then, so I finally played the game in four or five hectic sessions last week, and I just finished it last night. The ending was awful, but I’m getting ahead of myself here. I have quite a bit to say, so let’s see if I can break it down in an easier to read format. Massive spoilers included, read at your own risk.

What I liked.

• – The battle system concept. Not the execution, the concept. I’ve seen a similar idea in games like Chrono Cross and Xenosaga. You know, you have weak but accurate attacks, and strong but inaccurate attacks, and you can combine them to maximize damage. I also liked that each character had a custom moveset and his/her own buffing and debuffing attacks.

• – Buffs/debuffs actually work. And how! In most games, if you’re doing 100 damage and you use an ATK-UP potion, you go up to, say, 150, or maybe 200. In Sands of Destruction, you can be doing 1 damage against a boss, drink a Herculean potion and then boom, 300-400 damage, just like that! They’re overwhelmingly powerful, which is good when you use them and terrible when the enemies use them against you.

• – The character designs. Not the blurry pixels that showed up on the screen, but the designs as they stand. Not too garish, not too plain, not too sensible, not too dumb. And Taupy is the cutest thing ever, no question.

• – Distinct character abilities and personalities. Unlike some other RPGs, every character has his/her own moveset, abilities, stat growths, etc. so you can really feel the difference between using Taupy and Morte, for example.

• – The characters themselves – except Morte. More on her below. Did I mention that Taupy is awesome? Taupy is awesome.

• – The music isn’t half-bad. I hear Yasunori Mitsuda did some of the tracks, but I’m not all crazy over him like some people are. I do like him, though.

What I hated.

• – All fights are either too hard or too easy with very little in-between. One level too low and you’re doing scratch damage. A level later and you’re wiping the floor with the enemy, it’s ridiculous.

• – Too many useless skills. There are two types of attacks: flurries and blows. But after a bit of tweaking, flurries get so powerful that blows are completely useless. In the same way, magic does such piss-poor damage after the first few levels that you only need healing and buffing spells. On that note, some of the spells are broken, especially Taupy’s skill that revives and heals everyone, and his other skill that buffs every single stat. Not using Taupy would probably raise the game’s challenge by 35%.

• – Characters look tiny and terrible on-screen. The designs are great, but as with everything else in the game, the execution is horrible.

• – Too many enemy palette-swaps. In this day and age, that’s just lazy.

• – Encounter rate is a little too high. Even weak enemies keep jumping out at you when they really should know better. And there’s no spell or item to reduce it at all.

• – Last boss went down in two rounds of flurries, that’s how overpowered flurries are. Or how weak the bosses are . Or both.

• –  Too many dumb puzzle stages where you have to pass just the right place and step on just the right thing or else spend hours and hours wandering around the same place. I’m looking at you, Tower of Light! After the first one I went straight to GameFAQs and downloaded all the solutions. Nyaah!

• – Too many unexplained plot points! I can’t even remember them all right now, but let me list the few that really bugged me:

1. How did Lacertus Rex get his instructions to them wherever they were?
2. How and why did Lacertus select Morte to be his agent? Evidently they had never met or spoken until near the end of the game, but somehow she ended up as his lackey?
3. Why is it called the Destruction Committee when it only has one member?
4. Why was Morte stupid enough to blindly obey orders that came from who knows where?
5. Why would Morte want to destroy the world? The anime gave her a pretty good reason, but in the game she’s got good friends, a nice hometown, a cheerful disposition, and it explicitly states that nothing bad has happened to her to make her want to kill the world. So what the heck’s her problem? This is the biggest wallbanger of them all!
6. Why is Morte such a selfish bitch in general? There was no call for killing Elephas Rex, you know.
7. Why did the Creator create the Destruct Code? Why would she want to destroy the world?
8. How can the Creator have the power to create a Destruct Code, but not to destroy the world herself?
9. What was the point of giving Kyrie human feelings and sending him out into the world? What did the Creator hope to achieve by that? And having thrown him into the world with no memory of his real function, why is she so surprised when he won’t do what she says at the end? You had it coming, dumbass!
10. Why is Kyrie so selfish and so blase about the fate of the world? He destroys his village and everyone he loves, then forgets about it for ages while he follows a woman around the world, assisting her to destroy more things and put more things in danger for no good reason! When he finally does have an attack of conscience and decides the world shouldn’t be destroyed, it’s because “Then I won’t be able to be with Morte any more” and not for any good reason. And we’re supposed to sympathize with him? Who wrote this crap?!
11. When the hell did Morte fall in love with Kyrie? This has gotta be the most sudden turnabout since Rinoa and Squall in FF8, and even then there were hints that Squall could get to like her. Here it was like “BLARGH I’M DEAD” “Oh no, I was in love with you all along, boo hoo!”
12. Who sent the letter to Muffy? (not that it matters, all’s well that ends well)
13. Last, but not the least, what kind of world did Morte and Kyrie create at the end? It looked to me like all ferals were either eliminated or turned to animals except Taupy, and all the sand was changed to sea water. Whoopie. They killed off the ruling system of the world just for that? And what’s more, who’s going to rule the cities now all the Rexes are dead? Can someone say “civil war”?

Replay value? None. I will not play Sands of Destruction ever again. Not because I hate it or anything, though it could have been much better, but because there’s nothing to do after one playthrough and it’s not interesting enough to merit a second one. I’m glad I played it to satisfy my own curiosity, but I don’t see myself going through this ever again.