Alundra (PlayStation)

• Average user rating: 4.5 stars out of 2 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 8 stars

  It has flaws, but it's also a unique on its system

  by Daavpuke on April 24, 2010

  Pros: Storyline
  Unique adventure
  Dark and grim
  Platform elements

  Cons: Really hard
  Sometimes unclear

  Summary: An elf with pointy ears and a sword, going about a forest rich environment slaying orcs and other weird creatures, where have we seen that before?
  
  After you've had ...

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  Summary: An elf with pointy ears and a sword, going about a forest rich environment slaying orcs and other weird creatures, where have we seen that before?
  
  After you've had your first taste of dialogues, met some characters and solved a few puzzles, you'll undoubtedly notice one thing. Alundra is a Japanese game! Publisher 'Working Designs' was a company that specialized in bringing Japanese based games to a worldwide audience. It's a bold move to try and bridge a gap like that and I wished more companies would have followed their path. You can see by the personalities of the characters and strange story lines, amongst others, that this wasn't meant for Western standards.
  
  There is one thing that Japanese people do very well and that's creating a nice world. All-round, this adventure game looks beautiful with simple, more cartoon-like graphics, like the days of SNES. They didn't trade the power of Playstation for polygons and I think it made for a better, vaster and more believable world. The adventure sense is just more present this way than it would be with square blocks and monochrome caverns. They also add a few more modern and flashy aspects that merge perfectly into the older world, much like an early Disgaea game. I think Alundra is even superior to a bunch of more popular Playstation franchises, in the way it's nicely drawn and there are no rough spots. Even for a present day game, it would be well done because of that. There are a few problems with the perspective aspect however, as sometimes it isn't clear where blocks fall or how far a jump really is. In some cases even, this will be very annoying.
  
  The controls for the game work adequately, but aren't rock steady. For instance, dashing is silly and always ends with sliding. Also, most hard jumps have to be taken exactly right. Often your character is required to stand on the last pixel possible, making him seem standing in the void. This is extra embarrassing due to the fact that our hero has gargantuan feet! You can also only attack in 4 directions and that will lead to problems over the course of the game. In a tough boss battle, surrounded by baddies, it won't always be simple to hit or fend off enemies.
  
  There are some personal aspects to this game that make it stand out. One main aspect in the story is that Alundra can enter people's dreams and nightmares. There, he can fight the demons within and rescue people from there dreaming peril. It might sound innocent, but it really isn't, because these demons can kill the dreamers and make them suffer horribly. The fact you can enter a person's mind and solve a dungeon in there is very well made. It's also a nice way to make twisted and bizarre settings.
  
  The storyline itself is another masterpiece. Much darker than you would expect it to be, it unfolds misery after tragedy. Not all will go well if you solve this dungeon, in fact, things might get worse. There is a lot of death that follows you and dire outcomes will make people turn on you. It certainly isn't what you'd suspect at first from this game.
  
  Original music and platform elements are other features that separate this game from the flock. Although the platform gameplay isn't always up to par, it's a welcome addition; even if most elements are only used to solve puzzles in dungeons.
  
  The blessing of the oriental touch might also be its downfall in the Western civilization. Alundra is a hard game; too hard even. Not only because the puzzles are very frequent and difficult to solve, but they also sometimes seem impossible. In every dungeon there are at least 1 or 2 puzzles that have such an odd solution, you'll likely have disregarded it until the very desperate end. There's a specific puzzle I couldn't get through, because the jump I had to make was inconceivable. Only after retrying a million things for the millionth time, I passed a jump that was absurd to do. It doesn't help you one bit that the perspective screws with your basic judgement and assessment of platforms. In particular, up and down platforms or different levels are messed up to view and more than once, you'll miss a jump.
  
  Despite the obvious link that can be made, pardon the pun, Alundra is a game that stands out on its own and even is unique on Playstation. It borrows a lot of aspects of Zelda: A Link To The Past and a few from Secret Of Mana, but it does so well and those are impressive references to have. In addition, it builds a few layers of its own on top of that, such as dream walking and platform jumping, to stop it from being a mere clone.
  **Edited to fit - read the full review on Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/ps/rpg/alundra/player_review.html?id=717467&tag=contributions%3Breview1

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• 10 stars

  GREAT GAME my sister got it when we were younger and we couldnt stop playing it,we still have it too

  by on November 6, 2004

  Pros:

  Cons:

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