Crusader of Centy
Sega's beautiful but shallow Zelda cloneGenre: adventure - overhead
Publisher: Atlus
Year: 1995
System: Genesis
Gameplay Score: 3
Gameplay Notes:
Nice top-down movement. It's a straight Zelda clone, so expect treasure chests, sword slash combat, flipping switches, and grass cutting galore. Unfortunately, the hit detection is atrocious. Your sword swipe takes a bizarre arc and takes way too long for the animation to complete. This plus the inconsistent hit detection cause your swings to routinely miss their intended target. Your sword also clangs against the environment unpredictably and obnoxiously. You obtain a useful jump ability. It's...almost good. Neutopia did the Zelda clone thing better, and many years prior.
Level Design Score: 3
Level Design Notes:
I'd like to praise this aspect of the game, but it's honestly pedestrian. The game is painfullly linear but your next step is not obvious or organic. It's...weird. I gave up and used a walkthrough to make it past a couple of bosses. I just felt like I was doing stuff without a clear short-term objective or ultimate goal. Completely forgettable.
Theme Score: 4
Theme Notes:
The world is lively and adorable. Your animal companions are mostly useless but they add to the fun world you inhabit. It's far from the compelling narratives in games like Terranigma, Zelda 3, Illusion of Gaia, etc., but again, this is a fun world.
Art Style Score: 5
Art Style Notes:
Stunning artwork, animation, and sprite-work. It's shocking that this was achieved with the Genesis color palette. The only knock is the dithering where the devs wanted to add a transparency effect, like the shadows of overhead clouds. Otherwise this is a beautiful 16 bit title.
Audio Score: 2
Audio Notes:
This games bucks the trend of Adventure/RPG titles with a great soundtrack. The music on display here is obviously trying to rival other games in the genre but it fails miserably. It has more rock than orchestra and I found it so annoying that I turned it way down, and then off. Disappointing.
Overall Score: 63
Review ID: 850
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