Saiyuki:
The Journey West

Review by Chi Phan

Koel is a company that is most known for their Romance of the Three Kingdoms series. A pure strategy game that is base on Chinese history. After all this time, Koel has finally release an rpg of their own. Not surprisingly it's an rpg base on strategy and continuing the true traditional Koel spirits, base on Chinese history or should I say Chinese Gods Mythology. Let's see how this game stack up.

The long journey to India. May Buddha guide you... The power of the Were. I have to say that I was hoping and expecting a very good story in this game. What I actually got was more of a disappointment. The story not bad but it's not actually that great. Basically the story starts off with you, the main character, getting a message from Lady Kannon to deliver a staff to Thunder Temple in India and free the guardians of Earth along the way. Who Lady Kannon is?? You don't really know. The game never really define her role or presence in the Saiyuki world. We know that she's from heaven and serve Buddha. With the mission or quest set about you, you then head off on a journey west to India. Along the way, you will meet up with strange and usual friends that will become your party members as well as enemy bandits. Even some mysterious foes that will try and steal your staff. These mysterious foes are later revealed as devils that oppose Buddha in heaven. Why do the devils what to steal your staff?? You don't really know, not until later on in the very last chapter of the game. That pretty much summed up the story. Just deliver the staff and find out the rest once to you get there. That's the problem with this story. The story itself doesn't give the gamers any clue as to what the story is about. You know what the quest is about but not the story. For the first, second, and third chapters, you are attacked by bandits and devils with absolutely no idea why. You'll be scratching your head along with all your characters trying to figure out what's going on. There's nothing wrong with a little suspense and mystery but a good story is one where the storyteller gives you some interesting hints to keep you glued to the story before the big revelation. Here the game doesn't even provide that. It's basically we'll tell you everything once you get there. Problem with that is unless the gameplay is totally awesome, you're going to lose interest in the story by the time you finally make it all the way to the end. That's what happened with me. The story was so boring throughout Chapter 1 to Chapter 3 that I basically lost interest in the story by the time Chapter 4, the last chapter, came around. Another problem with the story is that it really didn't provide much information about Buddha, Weres, and Devils or anything in regards to Chinese Mythology. Later on in chaper 4, you'll learn alot more about the Devils and why they oppose Buddha and the fight between heaven and hell but the game doesn't even tell us about Buddha himself/herself. Buddha is an unkown faceless entity that doesn't even make an appearance in this game. The only thing we know about Buddha is that Lady Kannon serve him/her. We don't even know much about Lady Kannon herself. That brings up to my point. The fact that the game didn't provide enough information to the gamers on what they need to know inorder to understand it better is what makes it a hit and miss story. It could've been good but ended up more as a better than average story. Too bad too.

Mother Earth graces upon you. There's a total of 12 characters you can get in this game. 6 main characters that the story focuses on with 2 characters that will join you and 4 extra characters that will or will not join you. Lets start with the 6 non main characters. These are called supporting characters I guess. Most if not all of these non main characters were your enemy when you first meet them but after meeting them, they became a part of your group. Once they became your member, they seem to just disappear from the story altogether. It's like they're not even part of the story anymore. This is really disappointing as this is a signal that these characters are unimportant in the game and you don't need to use these characters at all as they have no effect on the story. The game from the beginning to the ending spend most of their time focusing on the 6 main characters. This isn't too bad off as I've seen game that spend less time with supporting cast outside of the main character. The only thing is that the game doesn't give you the kind of info that you would want. See this whole game is base on Chinese Mythical Characters. Unless you're an expert on Chinese Mythical Characters, you're going to be pretty clueless on these characters. While the game gives us insight on what these characters personalities are they don't showcase their role in the Legends of Chinese Mythology. There's a whole lot of mentioning of Guardians, Devils, Weres, and Buddha but they don't really tell us anything. The entire cast with the exception of the main character are base on animals representation. Dragon, Monkey, Pig, ect. You know the stuff that chinese new year is name after. For example, one of the key character is Goku, a monkey that uses a cloud to travel around. Now Goku is a key character in chinese mythology but most of today's gamers would probably think DragonballZ when they hear the name Goku. The game could've introduce gamers to the world of chinese mythology but it fails to do that. I guess the gamemakers felt that's a subject too deep to be put into a game. That's the only real disappointment in the whole character aspect. Other than that, it's a pretty good class of characters.

This is it. Final Boss! Graphics in this game is quite good. Let's start with the anime. At the start of the game or should I say right before the start of the game, there's a 1 and a half minute anime introduction to Saiyuki. This is a very good piece of anime film. A little too short but good. At the start of each chapters you have anime stillshots instead of a small film sequence. This is a disappointment as gamers would rather see full anime sequence instead of screenshots or stillshots of anime. But the stillshots are nicely drawn though as you can see from this review. Now the gameplay and story graphics are pretty much the same way as FF Tactics and Vandal Hearts. Basically you have a 3-D battlefield/story environment with small hand drawn sprites. The sprites are drawn excellently. The characters picture icons are drawn beautifully are well. The colors in this game are great too. The only disappointment is that some of the spell could be more better looking but for the most part the spells are nicely done.

Are you my parents?? Like with most strategy rpg, Saiyuki doesn't possess an abundance of tunes. There's like a total for 30 tunes overrall. Okay maybe 30 tunes is alot so I'll take what I just said back but what I will say is that when playing the game, you feel like there's only 3 tunes involve. In fact there's probably only 3 or 2 memorable tunes out of the whole game. You don't even notice the other 27 tunes at all. But then again, music was never been a strong part of a strategy rpg game. I say a 6 out of 10 would be okay. Good tunes but nothing that will give you a lasting impression. I do like the asian influence on the tunes though. I would like to make a note that there's a small bit of voice acting in this game. At the beginning of each chapter, there's a small english summary narration of what happened in the chapter. The narration is very good.

Your reign of terror is over.. The evil that is Asura! The gameplay is pretty much like any other strategy rpg game. The basic combat stuff with some added unique features in it, straightforward progress, and battlemap to battlemap combat. What the game gives you is short story cut sequence followed by a battlefield map. Once you complete a battlefield map, you just follow the dotted line to the next story cut sequence and battlefield map. Once you reach a city/town you have the following option: shop, smith, chemist, post, and dojo. Shop is where you buy accessories. Smith is where you upgrade weapons. Chemist is where you buy items. Post is where you can play cards or take assignment to deliver items to other towns for a sum of money. Dojo is where you train your party up if their level is too low. Since the game doesn't have any random battles you may need to visit the Post or Dojo to level your character up. The Card game in the Post is nothing more than entertainment value for you to win items. The card game is fairly easy too. Now for the battle system. For the most part, all the fights are fairly easy with the exception of the last boss fight. Most of the objectives are to defeat the bosses. Like with any strategy rpg game, the fights are turn base in a checkerboard style battlefield. You have the option of attack, magic, potion and Were. I don't think I have to explain what attack and potion(use items) are. Each character comes with their own elemental magic attack. Basically all of your characters have the Were option with the exception of the main character who has the summon option instead. Basically the main character can summon Elemental Guardians to help the party out. Now for the Were option. If a character chooses Were then that character can change into a powerful beast with high hp/mp and Were Powerful attack. Now this makes the game very easy if all your characters can change into Were. So the gamemakers did a handicap and made it so only one of your characters can be in Were form at a time. This isn't too bad as one character in Were form can be a big help. All you have to do is have the Were character attack the boss and the battle is easily won. The gameplay after that is pretty much like any other strategy rpg game. If you're a big strategy rpg fan then you would definitely enjoy this gameplay. I do wish however that the game could've been more challenging.

Goku, transformed. Dragonball Z?? Okay, the game gives you an option of playing as a male character or female character in the beginning. I guess this helps on the replay as you can then play as the character that you didn't choose on your second game. Although the story and everything is pretty much the same with the exception of the main character. Extras is really a disappointment. There's like only one optional character that you can get in this game while all the other characters can be had if you go to all the routes. Off course you can miss out on some of the extra characters if you do decide to miss out on some routes. There's also no bonus dungeon or sidequest that you can do. None that I can find anyway. You can get some extra secret spells or items but that's about it. Nothing to get excited about though. Kinda disappointing really.

This is a fairly decent strategy rpg game. Better than say Vanguard Bandits but not as good as the classic FF Tactics or Vandal Hearts series. I would recommend this game if you are a strategy rpg lover despite the fact that it can be too easy and too short. Hell, with so few strategy rpgs as it is, having a game like Saiyuki isn't all that bad. This game could've been a 7 or 8 but I'm going to give it a 8. More like 7 and a half but I don't give half so 8 should be good enough. Final Score: 8/10 Time to complete: about 20 hours or less. Difficulty: Easy to Medium. Favorite character: Son Goku Least favorite character: None Most useful summon: Mother Best Were form: Goku Best spell: Chef's Paradise Also try: Vandal Hearts 2 or FF Tactics Up next: Tales of Destiny 2

STORY A slow pace story with somewhat confusing plotlines. Need to explain better the world of Saiyuki from Heaven to Hell.	6
CHARACTERS A good selection of characters but lack any real character depth to each character. The game should try and showcase more of the non 6 main characters though.	8
GRAPHICS A very good looking strategy rpg game from Koel. Good colors with excellently drawn characters and world maps.	8
MUSIC Decent selection of musical tunes but nothing that makes you want to listen to the tunes over and over again.	7
GAMEPLAY A simple basic strategy rpg gameplay with a unique feature in the Were option. Could be too easy for the hard core strategy rpgers out there.	8
EXTRAS/REPLAY The only value here is the replay value as there's virtually nothing on the extra front.	5