Riviera The Promised Land

Attractive magazine ads, Atlus, GBA RPG, I was sold. Upon first starting the game up, I could only think, "What the is this?". No movement, movement choices are selected from a menu. Exploration also menu driven (and requiring Trigger Points [more on this later]). Dispite my initial urge to simply pack it up and return it for a refund I decided to at least get past the initial tutorial stage before rendering my final judgement. I am certainly glad I did, because this game is a treasure. The more I started playing I realized that this game is much like the old adventure games (text driven or Kings Quest style) I grew up loving. You are even given points for everything you accomplish, as these older adventure games used to do. In fact it turns out to have many features I had always wished were included in RPG games:

Interesting choices, the game is filled with choices at every step, and your decisions affect how the story plays out and how your party members feel towards you, a party member with a good mood may perform better in battle. For instance at one point you find a power up item, who do you give it to? Your choice will affect not only who gets the power up, but the party members will react favorably or disfavorably to your decision.

Combat requiring thought. Most RPG games consist of simple random combat encounters where you can simply keep hitting a single button and get through in a couple seconds leading up to an interesting boss encounter where you expend all your special skills and equipment to get past. Not so in this game, every encounter is a potentially dangerous one which can end in defeat if you take it lightly. You have to constantly switch up your equipment and time your special abilities based on each enemy configuration. There is a bit less combat than is usual, and each keeps you on your toes. And it is not simply a matter of defeating an enemy, but you are graded on how well you actually perform (time wise and how powerful your ending move is). Good performances mean a larger amount of Trigger Points awarded and a chance at an item reward. But be careful not to save up for a single impressive finishing move, or you may find yourself defeated.

Story pacing. Many RPGs these days feature an incredible story but require endless screens of text to read, that sometimes I get a little bored by the whole thing and just want to get back to playing the game again. This game does something very interesting. The story plays out as you play the game, meaning that there is a constant dialoge between your characters as you play the game. Rather than the game being broken up into story scenes and game scenes, this game is constantly doing both. Makes it easy to play the game in small chunks. I remember a certain other game I would hesitate to play because it required at least an hour investment to get to the next save point. This game is very well suited as a portable game, featuring numerious save points as well as a suspend feature allowing a save anywhere. The story begins rather dull and derivitive but has been steadily become more interesting.

Holds your attention. The game also contains numerous timing sequences in a couple different flavors which require the player to enter in a sequence of buttons within a short time period. You get a second to see the required sequence and less than that to enter it in. And succeed or fail, the story continues, you rarely get the opportunity to retry, and you are not punished terribly for failing. In one sequence you must hide from a patroling guard. Succeed and he passes by, and your party has a short exchange of relief and becomes happy, fail and you must fight the guard.

Cannot do everything. Some RPGs I feel like I must explore every level to its fullest, and find every hidden chest before moving on. In this game, sometimes it is smarter to let a chest stay untouched. To interact with objects in the game, you are required to spend Trigger Points, which are earned by doing well in combat. There are a lot of red herrings that will give no reward if you are not careful. It is important to listen to your party members and other clues. In one case there is a unusual chest that everyone in the party is sure is a trap, and is very suspicious. I decided to leave it alone, my party was happy that I listened to them, and I saved a trigger point. I still do not know what is in that chest and I do not feel the need to start from a save file to find out, I am happy to continue the game with the choice I made because I feel my choices influence the ending (which are many I have heard). Some treasure is even randomized, which I have always liked.

These are the main reasons I have found myself loving this game, but it is certainly not for everyone. There are some artificial limitations put in place to make the above work that I can see many people having issue with. First is the menu driven movement and exploration system. I did not care for it much at all in the beginning, but recalling old PC adventure games I am at home with them, and they do speed up game play. A limit to the number of items you can carry to about 19. This is not a game for hording items for that big boss fight, you will need them in every fight, and you will always find something new to replace them once they run out. All items have limited uses except some key items. That sword is only good for 40 swings before it will break, for some this is intolerable, but it really works well here, as it makes for some interesting tactical decisions and there is a constant influx of new equipment coming in. You are forced to choose a grand total of 4 items to take into every battle (remember they are not as numerous as in other RPGs), rather than having access to all your equipment. This is a very artifical limit used to make you think on what you will need for a particular battle. Choosing poorly can make an encounter very hard, and the best equipment to take changes with every battle you fight. I was just defeated by an encounter with 2 skeletons and a mage. The skeletons poisoned my characters and I had nothing to remove the poison. After killing one of the skeletons the mage (safe in the back row) merely summoned another. If I had chosen to bring a ranged weapon into the combat, I would have eliminated the mage first, now that I know the capabilities of these creatures, I will be more prepared next time. And yes, you do get to see the creatures you are fighting before having to make any preparation decisions. Weapons are among those items you can bring into combat, but they can be shared by all party members. As some characters fight better with certain weapons, it can be a tough choice, and getting each character experience with multiple weapons is important.

This is not your typical RPG, and that will either endear it to you, or repulse you. This is definatly a "love it" or "hate it" sorta game.

It's different and somewhat simple, but it has an 8.7 rating from 10 from [...] and for good reason. It's one of those RPGs that stay interesting.

Storyline wise it's a little odd. Your Ein and Grim Angel from Asgard sent on a mission by a fortold revelation of the god's that left asgard in your care 1000 years ago after a war with Urgard, land of demons. The gods barly won the war with the help of the Grim Angels and sealed the demons way in a mysterious location in Urgard. However, soon after the gods also left, leaving asgard in the Grim Angel's care. For 1000 years everything was okay Grim Angels lived without the gods in Asgard and the remaining sprites freed from the demons in Urgard lived peacefully. Now, for some reason demons have started appearing from the boarders of Urgard and Ein's mission is to stop the demons from reaching asgard no matter what the cost...
It's one of those games where you make a choice that effects the storyline, basically. Anyway, Ein has moral conficts and somehow winds up in the company of four female spirts that are also dreading the return of the demons, these are your party members. Many decitions you make with decide what the other party members think of you so, of course, all of them being females there is some of that who will be Ein's future girl stuff going around, but if your like me and don't care about those type of choices, don't worry, it doesn't really distract from gameplay or storyline quality. In fact the storyline is surprizingly lighthearted and at times cartoony funny because of the girl's unique personalities and Ein's little troubles with leading a bunch of squabling previously untrained girls through a warzone.

Combat in the game can also be challenging, because you can only use up to four items at a time for all three members in the group and all of your items are disposable, including weapons. In practice mode you can train your party members to unleash super moves with these items without the risk of using them up, but in real combat the decition of which items could benefit the group the most is a difficult part of the game sence you usually have no little idea of what your decitions in the story will throw back at you. It might sound kind of annoying having to monitor your weapons and spells, but believe me in this game it's part of the fun.

Please note that as of this the date I am reviewing this, Riviera game may be extremely hard to find in stores. It was graciously released in the US by ATLUS (known for bringing Ogre Tactics to the US). I finally managed to locate a copy, though I had to hit 6 different gaming stores first. (Prior to getting a copy, I pretty much was told by all retailers that my best bet would be to try online because the production run for this game was EXTREMELY limited).

The graphics include nice anime-stylized characters, and the backgrounds are bright and colorful (but not overly so). Graphically, it reminds me of some of the SNES RPG's I've played in the past (think Chrono Trigger).
The character animations are typical in the scheme of things, and I say this because this game is more oriented towards battle animations (which are very simple, but none-the-less effective), and as far as the graphics of the characters moving on screen-- well, this is something I feel is hard to give a rating to due to the unique way you "move" your characters through environments. Character movement is something different than many other RPG's you may have played. It's best described as: let's say you are in a dungeon: You are not able to freely move around, but rather you are presented with different directions (shown on-screen by arrows, but don't confuse this movement with a 'turn based' strategy game!) for the next "step" or "direction" you can take. In my initial playing of the game I was somewhat put down by this style of movement. However, after playing upwards of 6 hours now, I can safely say that this is not a deterent by any means- it cuts to the chase (so to speak) as this way of moving simply allows you to progress a tiny bit quicker to the next battle.
The battles are where it's at (naturally so, as it's an RPG :D).
Your characters gain experience through battles (building up the stats), and you also gain increased skill with an individual weapon with repeated use of that weapon. Also, some characters are better wielding one weapon over another- which gives better play depth. Also, there is an "overdrive" meter which builds with each hit you or a party member takes- once these overdrive bars fill-up, certain charcters can use their breakout "special" power moves, in battle these are effective and you are greeted with a screen showing that character in profile before using said "special" power move- this screen after awhile will annoy you slightly as you can not skip it & have to wait for it to end before moving back into the battle-action (enemies have the same ability and you'll have to wait through their 'breakout' move also).
I'm only a little bit into the game, but you do fall in with the character storylines pretty quickly- and certain decisions will affect how the characters interact with you. (ie. deciding if you should pick that flower or open that chest).
I'm trying to think of another RPG that this is close to, but I'm at a loss at the moment. It's not filled with the deep turn based strategy like Fire Emblem, on the other end, it isn't overly simple in it's battle system (ala FF1&2 for GBA)- although Riviera does obviously share certain elements with each.
If you are an RPG fan there is no reason not to grab this game.

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