Developer/Publisher: Studio Ashcraft / Graffiti Entertainment
Price: Around $29.99
Platform: DS
Genre: RPG
Verdict: A wonderful 16-bit era RPG that is easy to recommend to fans of the genre.
Pros: Good combat, strong characters, interesting story and good music.
Cons: High encounter rate, some bugs and crashes with a minority of copies.
Immediate comparisons between Black Sigil and Chrono Trigger are inevitable, but after playing the game for 30+ hours I can say that it diverges from SquareSoft’s beloved 16-bit RPG in a number of ways while keeping the charm of Japanese role playing games from that era.
The comparisons first come from the graphics which seem like they were lifted from a high quality late-era SNES RPG such as the aforementioned Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI. The sprites and their animations have an uncanny resemblance to those used in Chrono Trigger with frames of animation that seem to mimic those of Chrono’s characters almost exactly. If you’re going to rip something off, might as well rip off from the best. It isn’t an exact copy however, as the character designs themselves are rather unique and set themselves apart from the typical spiky-haired protagonists, demure females and tomboy troublemakers found in your typical JRPG. The concept art and portraiture for each character is well designed without being typically anime or being an awkward western mimicry of Japanese character design. In short, the character art is attractive. Monster design leaves a bit to be desired however.
Other similarities between Black Sigil and Chrono Trigger can be drawn from the battle system. The same character sprites used for travel and conversation are used in combat in an arena of terrain with an overhead view. Unlike Chrono Trigger, the encounters are entirely random and separate from the environment that you’re exploring. Positioning and obstacles affect the flow of battle to a great degree. This means there is a good amount of tactical planning involved in each battle as opposed to just jamming on the “attack” command repeatedly and waiting for the fight to resolve itself. You have the ability to manually position your characters in the field to set up optimum situations for area-of-effect spells and multi-character combos. All of these factors keep the combat interesting throughout the entire game even with the absurdly high encounter rate.
The story isn’t exactly your typical Japanese RPG tale. Sure, there is your evil empire trying to take over the world with nefarious means while a rag-tag group of freedom fighters tries to prevent this from happening with their special magical powers. There’s also your omnipresent joke-antagonist that seemingly never dies no matter how many times you beat him down. Many RPG story elements like these you can find just about anywhere. However, in Black Sigil they put some emphasis on smaller details and twists on old ideas. For example, when you get to interact with the citizens of this “evil empire,” you find that they’re not bad people, just misguided by a corrupt government.
The strength of the characters’ personalities and the well-written dialog between them is entertaining and sometimes funny. I found myself chuckling out loud from some of the interactions. As this is a western-developed game there is no chance for a loss in translation between the native language to English. What you read is what was intended. No awkward Engrish to be found here.
You may encounter game-halting glitches while playing through Black Sigil. Be sure to save often as you may lose your progress to these nasty bugs. It has been found that in rare cases your game may freeze up while playing, preventing further progress. I am one of those unlucky few who have encountered this problem. Reading various forums for Black Sigil has show other complaints that this game crashes on DS Lite and DSi, and reports of less crashing on the original DS. I haven’t been able to test this game on a DSi so I cannot confirm this. I can say that I experienced none of these random crashes with Black Sigil while playing on the original DS. As previously mentioned, those who are crashing this way seem to be in the minority. [Ed note: the developers of this game have been extremely helpful and pleasant with us, stating that they have not heard of this specific bug in any retail copies. The review copy is being returned for them to check and see what's going on with it. ]
Another weakness I would say are the sound effects. There are just a few generic monster growls and weapon slash effects. Sound effects also seem to be canceled out by each other. I would have liked to see (hear) more work done with the sound design on Black Sigil as it feels like there’s something missing while playing. This is a minor quibble, however.
There are a number of other shortcomings and oddities lingering within this game that make me question some of their developmental decisions. For example, on the top screen you’ll see a very tiny map of the world with little colored dots indicating towns, dungeons and other points of interest. The map is so small that it makes it difficult to make out those little colored dots, or even tell the difference between those colors. Next to the map there is a meter named “Monsters” which, according to the manual, will fill up when as use the spell “analyze” on different monsters. Except this meter never fills up, ever. I haven’t seen one pixel of the bar fill in the meter. Plus, what purpose does it serve other than letting you know relatively how many monsters you’ve identified. There is no indication that you will be rewarded in any way when it gets filled up. But you won’t have to wonder about that given that it never fills up anyway.
At points Black Sigil adds gameplay elements and conditions but never adequately explain that they have just happened. Early in the game the main character, Kairu, gets a cursed mark on his hand and has headaches and other symptoms throughout the game. What the game doesn’t explain to you is that now Kairu gets random negative status effects within battle. When I encountered this I was asking myself “how the hell did I get poisoned AND blinded before the fight began?” I was thinking that it was a glitch. It wasn’t; it was part of the game’s design that wasn’t explained to the player.
Another section has you go through a dungeon that strips magical powers away from your characters which, again, the game does not explain to you at the point of entry. Imagine if, in Final Fantasy IV, you went into the magnetic caves and the game didn’t explain to you in any way that metalic armaments on your characters made them immobilized? The first fight you got into you would probably be very confused and possibly decimated. If you’re not adequately equipped with curitive items, you are screwed. You cannot use your healing spells and you cannot go to a store to buy more items.
I must stress the fact that, despite Black Sigil’s shortcomings, I have found this to be an immensely enjoyable RPG experience; more enjoyable than some more recent big-budget RPGs that I shall not name. It’s easy to nit-pick the failings. But, if you dig past these small frustrations, you will find a fantasy world full of adventure, danger, and memorable characters. The combat is fun and engaging because of the amount of strategy involved in each encounter. Buy Black Sigil if you want a great throwback RPG from the 16-bit era. Fans of Chrono Trigger or other retro RPG titles should not pass this up.
Popularity: unranked [?]
