After 10 hours I hope I’m almost done with Summon Night Swordcraft Story, but I have no way to tell. I’ve reached level 33 in the dungeons, reached the semi-finals in the tournament and just returned from Fort Mirana story-wise. It hasn’t been a bad ride, but I’m ready for it to end now. The story is meh, the encounter rate is crazy unless you spend all your money on Amulets, the localization is rather poor and the blacksmithing part is no fun. I like the characters, but you go for long stretches without seeing those I like best so it’s not enough to make up for the meh-ness of the rest of the game.

Let’s take all the points one by one.

Story: Cleru, our hero, is taking part in a tournament to become a Craftlord. This tournament is quickly sidelined in favor of exploring the mystery behind Cleru’s dad’s disappearance 3 years ago. For some reason Cleru knows almost nothing about his dad despite them living in the same town and the disappearance being quite recent. On the other hand the people who did know his dad are being all vague and ambiguous when they talk about him and what happened. “Could it be… But it’s not… I can’t tell you now… You’ll find out eventually…” I HATE THAT. Either tell me now or just shut up. Right now there’s some stuff about swords and an evil empire and a spirit sealed away, but I already lost interest hours ago. Just let me finish already.

Encounter rate: The battle system itself is kind of fun. I suppose you could just mash A all the way through and heal frequently, but I’ve been having fun jumping, slashing, guarding, dashing across the screen and doing all the other stuff that makes an ARPG an APRG. It’s just the encounter rate that is unconscionable. I’ve played worse, but this is definitely up there with Persona 2 and Arms’ Heart. Fight, walk five steps, fight, walk five steps, fight, walk five steps, repeat. What makes this better than the other games is that running away is fairly easy – just run into a corner and stay there a few seconds – and encounter-reducing Amulets are effective and readily available. I’d rather not spend all my money on them, but now the shine has worn off the battles I don’t have any other choice.

Poor localization: Not only are there blatant grammatical errors dotted throughout the script but also in-game conversations are frequently stilted and unnatural, not flowing smoothly from one line to another. I remember a similar problem with Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, another Atlus offering, but MKJS was way better. There, at least there were only a few places where you could point out something wrong even though the text was just ‘off’ much of the time. Swordcraft Story was not so lucky. Fun exercise: see how many  errors you can spot in the screenshots below.

I know my own posts are riddled with typos, but at least I don’t charge anyone $24.99 to read them. I suspect Atlus used the ancient and time-(dis)honored technique of using cheap, non-native translators for a first draft and then tried to clean it up in-house but didn’t go far enough. The results are plain and sad to see.

Blacksmithing: I generally enjoy crafting systems in RPG, but this barely counts as such. Grind for materials, take them apart and reconstitute them as weapons. The grinding isn’t fun, the dismantling process is dry and methodical, the reconstitution process is bland and automatic. Skill needed = zero. Fun = zero. Usefulness of weapons = 1/5 because I mostly use swords. I used to use drills to try and break opponents’ weapons, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Getting weapon materials is a pain, getting new recipe ‘techniques’ is an even bigger pain because you have to 1) Waste time breaking weapons or 2) Bug your master for them or 3) Talk to everyone in the city in every chapter in the hopes of triggering a new technique. Or just FAQ it, but I couldn’t be bothered. If I could have just bought swords in the store and ignored the whole smithing aspect I would have done so.

Characters: I like Sanary and Razzy, but they don’t have much to do with the main story. It’s always a little weird when they insist on tagging along and poking their noses into my affairs, because they’re always unavailable and unfazed when the inevitable fallout happens. The events at the lighthouse are one example. They were all gung-ho about going, then they got captured for no good reason (for the second time), left me to deal with the big mess at the end and haven’t shown up since. It’s not much different for other major characters like Amariss and Rondeau who should be doing something important but just don’t show up half the time. However since I’m not quite done with the game, the jury’s still out one this aspect.

Getting to see the main characters of Summon Night 1 and 2 at Kagro Volcano was nice though. I saved and reloaded when it was time to pick a hero and got to see them all, though they look much better here due to the improved character designs. It was a nice treat, I guess. Now back to the grindstone.

UPDATE, since I probably won’t write a proper review for Swordcraft Story

Finished it in one more session. 12 hours 58 minutes total. I like it when mediocre games know their level and tailor their lengths accordingly. My opinion of the game hasn’t changed, though I am exceedingly glad to be done with it. I got many more screenshots out of it as well, so that’s all good. The battles are decent, the characters are likeable and the game itself is nice and short. It’s worth a try for anyone who likes ARPGs, but that’s about it.

Related posts:

Summon Night X ~Tears Crown~ Summon Night 2 DS review Summon Night 3 – Fine game, but a little too long Dark Cloud 2 – Great, but slightly grindy