Comments on: Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled review

By: Stephen Greenwell

Stephen Greenwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:59:23 +0000

Thank you for the profound and insightful comments.

By: boom

boom — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:56:57 +0000

chrono trigger sucks haha i played it for 6 mins and got so board i wanted to cut myself instead and the character looks like hes from dragon ball z

By: Blast - The roleplaying slums - Boston's Online Magazine

Blast - The roleplaying slums - Boston's Online Magazine — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:35:50 +0000

[...] as I mentioned in my review of Black Sigil last week (yay for self-pimping!), one of Beyond the Beyond’s major characters is cursed for a good [...]

By: Stephen Greenwell

Stephen Greenwell — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:39:36 +0000

Al and Tom, I do realize that you can run from encounters – I thankfully managed to find that on my own Heaven forbid that a game from 2009 have a decent tutorial or a “training room”, a la Final Fantasy 3/6. Or, better yet, just handle movement automatically while attacking like most every other RPG of its kind.

I definitely don’t think the encounter rate is on par with other games. To cite a game from my review, the battles reminded me of PSX RPG Beyond the Beyond, in terms of tediousness, frequency and length. However, I can’t really prove this without putting a stopwatch to a variety of games between battles. Could be an interesting blog post at some point.

I am quite familiar with old school RPGs, owning actual copies of DW1 through DW4, the original Final Fantasy and even PC stuff like Might and Magic 1 through 5, but comparing Black Sigil’s gameplay and encounter to them is a cop-out. The battles aren’t as tedious in those games because character skills are better balanced, gaining levels has more of an effect and basic actions (the attacking thing again) are easier to carry out.

Competition also plays a role – In ye olde days of RPGing, if you couldn’t stomach the high encounter rate of Lufia 1, or the weird weapon requirements of Robotrek, or the aimlessness of Ultima, then you didn’t have as many alternatives. The DS / GBA has a slew of RPGs (original and remakes) I would recommend over Black Sigil: the Chrono Trigger, DQ4, Fire Emblem, FF4 and FF6 remakes, The World Ends With You, Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, Retro Game Challenge (it has a fun RPG that’s essentially a copy of DQ2), or even Etrian Odyssey and The Dark Spire if you’re looking for something “old”.

As far as playing an RPG all the way through, I can see your point; they are normally more complex and rely on story more. However, I enjoyed Sigil’s characters and plot, so it wouldn’t pick up any more points in that area from story revelations. And unfortunately, if the game magically gets better in hour XX, that didn’t prevent me from disliking the previous XX hours. At what point do you say as a reviewer, “Enough is enough,” and throw in the towel and write the negative review? My personal breaking point is normally around 10 hours, which if you’re playing in chunks of two hours a night, is about a week.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:38:02 +0000

Also, you can run away from the battles holding the B key. But in order to build your stats, you need to have a high encounter rate. That is what the old school RPG’s had.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:39:54 +0000

I disagree, It sounds like you didn’t play it enough to even experiment with the controls. Been playing it for about 2 weeks off and on. Encounter rate is on par with other rpg’s. You can run through most encounters with out a major headache. I think all game reviews should disclaim how far or much they have played of the game. Unlike most games rpg’s are in fact for those willing to play all the way through.

By: Stephen Greenwell

Stephen Greenwell — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:42:50 +0000

Hey King, thanks for pointing that out! I updated the review to reflect that. I wish I would have known that as I was playing, since the game doesn’t really make it clear, and I didn’t stumble upon it in my various button presses. Le sigh! It still doesn’t make up for the other flaws in the game though, IMO.

By: RPG KiiNG

RPG KiiNG — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:10:46 +0000

“As a result, a single battle can drag out for an extra 15 to 60 seconds because your characters apparently lack the intelligence to properly position themselves.”

Im pretty sure that you can move you character(s) at anytime during the battle by holding the L trigger thus making it easy and strategic to battle you enemies.