Customer Reviews

Avalon Code

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There is a lot of activity on the net about this title--but I've been waiting to see what it gets here on amazon. Guess I got a little too tired to wait--so I went out and bought it myself.

The graphics are very good and certainly engaging. The music is pretty good but, surprisingly, I wasn't wowed by it. The gameplay is very unqiue--I've never seen anything like it! While I think this game plays more like Legend of Zelda than Chrono Trigger or FF I actually would encourage more people to pick up this little gem even if you are not traditionally a player of RPG---if you like Zelda type puzzle/action games you should check this game out!

It's hard to really describe well the gameplay. Basically you have things like recipes and you "scan" objects with a book--and each object (could be character, weapon, flower, etc) is made up of different codes. How you work with those codes and re arrange them is what this game is all about. The story is o.k.-- a bit different. The fun comes in figuring out the codes for certain things. For example one of the beginning enemies (Mul) can be scanned and has codes. I replaced one of its codes with a code for ILL and that made the enemies easier to defeat. It also works the other way--early on there is an animal you need to "save" so you need to find specific codes to heal the animal.

Dungeon's are a mix of puzzle and hack and slash--with strategy thrown in at times. They were a little repetitive for me but again it's a dungeon--the fun is in beating up enemies and solving puzzles--regardless of whether they all look similar or not.

I will say this game REALLY needed a guide to go with it. And that's the downside for me. Although I'm sure some children could play this I really think it might be too complicated for the younger crowd. Exploration can be very tedious and some points are hard to find. As many other reviewers have pointed out the book itself needed a search feature. I'm not even 1/2 way through and it is a pain to constantly have to go through the book to find the code you want--again why I don't think I'd recommend this for young children. I am sure I'll probably come up with some level of organization for the codes but I would have preferred that this already exist as it really makes a difference.

To some degree I think Avalon Code would appeal most to fans of Zelda or other puzzle/adventure type games rather than those who go for old school JRPG (which this is clearly not!). Although I am enjoying it I must admit to finding it very frustrating in places--but what I prefer in my games is a bit more straight forwardness. I like RPG's where I can level up and use weapons and buy new weapons and equiptment and so on. A la Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest or even tactical's like Luminous Arc.

Overall though this is a very clever unqiue title. And there's the beauty---we all seem to want some level of innovation in our games--give us something new, something fresh, something that makes us think and challenges us. Avalon Code delivers on this in spades. I would have given it a solid 5 stars IF the Book of Prophecy had a search feature or you were able to hold more code,if it didn't cost MP to swap codes, and if there were more in game tutorials or other help as it can get pretty complicated. I think this holds it back from being a contender for best new game (like TWEWY last year). However, if you want something new, fresh, innovative and unique--Avalon Code is your game!

I picked up Avalon Code after trying a short demo version. The idea of playing around with the "codes", being able to choose the gender of your character, and naturally getting a boy/girlfriend, all sounded appealing.
Overall, I found Avalon Code to be an addicting, enjoyable game. There's always something new to discover, and I've played through several times already, both as a girl and a boy. The graphics are very well done, and I love all of the characters' and monsters' designs. The cutscenes,if you get as attached to the characters as I did, are very emotional. Avalon Code combines my two favorite kinds of games, puzzles and RPGs, into one!
The most frustrating aspect of the game is, as others have mentioned, finding the codes. I would also suggest carefully reading the instruction manual before hand, and getting hints from your Spirit guide as often as possible.

Most of the complaints you'll hear about this game are valid. The Book of Prophecy, while certainly a great concept, becomes tedious when you have to look through hundreds of pages to find a single code. The game spends a good chunk of its first part teaching you to use it, making for one extremely long, drawn-out tutorial that still manages to miss certain things, like how to use codes to hit colored switches. The lack of hit points means you'll die a lot, although you barely lose anything when you die, making it little more than an annoyance. The writing is a bit stilted and lacking; early in the game, a woman traps you in her basement, and after you escape, if you return to talk to her... nothing happens. Your character just ignores the whole attempted imprisonment thing. While each small area has its own map, the lack of a larger map to unify them makes navigation difficult. The fact that there are little things hidden in the maps, like plants or small creatures, is a nice addition, but searching for those little tidbits can be infuriating.

These are all relatively flaws, and they chip away at what would otherwise be an excellent game. Avalon Code's ability to mess with the fabric of reality, while not as cool as it sounds, really comes into force when customizing weapons, items, and enemies. Yes, that's right; if your enemy has too many hitpoints, chances are he has a Stone or Iron code you can remove to make him weaker. Also, the Book of Prophecy is used to give almost everything backstory and flavor text, making the game feel really open and alive in your hands. The level of control you have, given the limits of the medium, is pretty cool. I'd say I had more fun exploring, filling up the book, and messing with codes to create new items than I did with the game's actual plot. Rather than rehashing or retreading old ground, Avalon Code presents this as its core concept, and comes out the stronger for it.

Avalon Code is a good game, although bogged down by minor issues that keep it from being a great game. Hopefully, these could be fixed in a sequel someday, but until then, this is a nice little gem of a game that I'd say is worth picking up.

When I first heard of this game, I started geeking out. It sounded too good to be true. A game that let you mess with the very fabric of the experience. Unfortunately, the actual product is a bit of a mess.
First off, you are drooped into the game with no knowledge of the controls or even who the heck your character is or what he is supposed to be doing. This lack of information worked out well in the Rune Factory games, which are made by the same people, but here it just feels wrong. It doesn't even give you a reason why you as a player are kept in the dark. In Rune Factory, your character has amnesia. Here, your character has a life that seems familiar to him but totally alien to you. It's like trying to play the life of a stranger that you have never met. The story is almost nonexistent and the tutorials are terrible.
However, the main hook of the game works better than I expected. The ability to switch "codes" around to bring about different items and qualities is solid. It's fun just to mix codes and see what happens. My personal favorite is the flaming goblins. However, finding codes when you need them is a pain. There is no search engine to find them. You must go through page by page of the over 1000 page book of prophecy to find what you need. Inanely tedious, especially in boos fights and when you need to switch a weapons attributes on the fly.
Overall, the game play is fun, but hard. This is definitely not a game for kids. I recommend it to hard core RPG fans looking for something new. The level up system is strange, and the layers of strategy often end up creating a feeling of barely contained chaos. The map is also an issue. it is a cross between a world map and a map of individual areas that often leaves you with no clear picture of how one area connects to another.
My opinion: If your a glutton for punishment or a grand master of RPG's, give this a try. If not, try something else.

Major Annoyances I found in the game
(1) Fire Fairy that pops up on your screen saying that he would explain stuff, when in fact, most of the time, you are left to flipping the book yourself to find out about things. Also, the book has WAAAY too many pages.
(2) There is hardly any tutorial at all, even before you found out that the book explained how to move. I died at the very first enemy. Lame...
(3) Lack of Healing items for HP and MP. There is hardly any HP healing items and HP healing depends on MP which you don't have any healing items for either. And messing with the codes uses up MP (which you need to heal yourself with). There are so many times which I died simply because there was no way to heal myself and monsters respawn too fast and have too much HP.
(4) It is not obvious how much HP and MP you have left. The leafy vines that represent them are too vague. You have to click many times on the book in order to find out how close you are to dying.
(5) Getting lost in endless screens of similar maps. There is no clear direction on where you need to go and most of the time, you are wandering aimlessly on maps with monsters waiting to kill you.
(6) Codes were a novelty at first, but after the first hour or so, it gets annoying when you run out of space to put them. And messing around with them costs MP which you don't have.
(7) Puzzles are annoying after a while. How many times do I have to hit switches? (Even in the sword training room, I had to hit switches. What has sword training got to do with switches?) At least for Zelda, the switches are placed in strategic spots. For this, it is just hit this switch and hit that switch...over and over again.

Overall, I found this game to be tedious. I wanted to stop playing after about 4 hours. Which was a pity, as it was generally the sort of game I would have liked. Give it a go if you are really free, but I would recommend renting it first.

The only negative thing I have to say about this game thus far is that the maps are like of each individual room and there's no real collective map to show you where you are relative to another area, and I'm bad with directions to begin with, but other than that it's a very interesting, entertaining game.

Great game, great graphics, and best of all great storyline. Avalon Code is a game that will quickly suck you into a whole new world. Unlike most games you play, you are not trying to save the world, but help build a new one. You attain the book of prophecy and learn that this world is gonna end soon, so you have been chosen to help create a new one, and so your story begins. This game gives you a brand new way of playing, everything runs by codes that you gain by scanning certain things. (like weapons, people, flowers etc.)Through codes you can create new types of weapons weaken enemies and even change how the new world is gonna become. If your like me and enjoy fighting games with a great storyline, this game is perfect for you.

Avalon Code is one of the few really great action RPGs available for the Nintendo DS. Being able to "change the code" of the items you use really adds a lot to gameplay. I especially liked changing the code on characters to effect the story. I also liked that you could play as two different characters. I thought it offered a lot of replay value. I'd definitely recommend this game to a friend.

In case my title doesn't quite express my opinion of the game, let me first say this:

This is the best DS game ever released. Hands down.

That said, prepare for a Zelda experience as much as for an RPG. From dungeons filled with puzzles to a main character with little expressed personality (and in green even, should you choose the boy) to an actual charged sword spin attack--yes, they even went that far--this game has more of the most classic Zelda trademarks than you'd really expect to find in a supposed RPG.

It also doesn't feel a bit like a Zelda game.

To start with, you're given the Book of Prophecy, which comes to a new owner every time the world starts to decay. Your task, even should you choose not to accept it, is to travel the world and find what's worth recording for the new world that will come after this one's death. This involves a lot of smacking plants, enemies, and people with a giant book.

This NEVER gets old.

The book is where the game really shines. You don't need to pay too much attention to it if you just want to get through the game, but the level of customization and detail that it allows is incredible.

Everything and everybody you smack with the book gets recorded in it, and they all have "codes"--chunks of raw materials that you can map together on their page to produce different effects. These codes fall into four categories - Attributes (Fire, Forest, Lightning, Ice, Light, and Shadow); Material (Stone, Copper, Iron, Gold, etc.); Concepts (Freedom, Justice, Fate, Fame, Illness, etc.); and Animals (Dog, Cat, Snake, Fish, Bug, and Bird). You're given a three by three map to begin with (which by the end of the game has expanded to four by four), and you can put these codes together on the map to get different effects. It doesn't have very much impact on the NPCs you scan (which is what the game calls smacking people with the book); but it does affect monsters and your weapons quite a bit. For instance, putting iron on a weapon will generally strengthen its attack, and putting it on a monster increases its HP; while putting the ILL code on a weapon or monster will have the opposite effect. Combining codes creates other kinds of effects--two metals together will make an alloy, for instance, which are weaker than the metals taken separately. Fire and stone together will make the "Bursting" effect, which greatly strengthens weapons or monsters you add it to. And there are specific combinations, called metalizes, that you can use on your weapons or items to make a unique weapon or item. Adding a specific combination of shadow, iron, and snake to your default sword, for instance, makes it into the Black Sabre, which, if balanced correctly, continues to be one of the most powerful swords in the game well into the final chapters.

The major problem with the book is probably the biggest problem with the game, being that there's no system present for locating a specific kind of code. Unless you keep detailed notes or a specific system of organization (which I don't), you'll often find yourself hunting through every page in the book that has a space for codes before you find exactly the right size of the right kind that you need--and late in the game, this can take a while. The game is flexible enough to allow you to simply ignore this feature once you've gotten yourself a good enough weapon, though, and you can generally come back to mess around with the codes any time you feel like it, so it's not a hindrance to the flow of the game--unless you want it to be.

I don't want to spoil the plot, but there's a brief period where you're deprived of the book, and the game does a really excellent job of making you feel just how devastating that actually is, while not making the gameplay absurdly difficult without it. One of the boss battles you have to fight during this period can be annoying, but once you've recovered the book, you can actually go back and repeat any non-secret boss battle you like, giving you ample opportunity to smack any offensive bosses around again once you've gotten the hang of how to kick their bottoms out their faces.

The plot's good. It's no Persona 3 or Final Fantasy VIII, but it's a solid story with some twists that you won't see coming. The characters are a little simple, but a lot of them are likeable, and there's a great deal of honestly funny comedy that's been put into the character interactions. The world, the characters, and the story are fun, and that's one of the most important aspects of any RPG.

The graphics are excellent for the DS--probably the best three-dimensional polygon-based graphics I've seen for the system. The artstyle is well represented, and things are generally cute without being offensively cutesy.

The music for the most part isn't really outstanding, but it's a good complement to the world, and not really irritating anywhere. You won't find yourself humming it on the plane, but you'll probably still have your headphones on.

Gameplay, the book aside, is relatively simple. The X and Y buttons are your default attacks--X for your left hand, Y for your right. There are four basic kinds of weapons--swords, hammers, projectiles, and bombs (though you can also fight barehanded, or use a shield). The four schools each have a special attack (that you'll unlock usually as soon as you gain access to that kind of weapon) that you activate by holding down the relevant attack button until the charge is complete--for swords, a spinning attack; hammers and axes allow you to fly around the screen in a chosen direction; projectiles produce a homing... pigeon; and bombs will charge to become remote controlled mines. The weapons aren't that well balanced, unfortunately--aside from some enemies (and bosses) that have very strong resistances and weaknesses, and certain kinds of switches that can only be flipped by a certain kind of weapon, the sword is by far the most useful, thanks mostly to its ability to quickly combo and its charge attack.

The A Button tosses your enemy up into the air, and by following that up by hitting one of your attack buttons, you can juggle the enemy higher and higher into the air, until you've killed it, if your timing's good. The game calls it Judgment Link (and there's a minigame based on it). This is frequently a way of getting a bonus score for puzzle rooms, so it's a good idea to devote some time to perfecting it early in the game; plus, it's pretty satisfying once you first start knocking the enemy so high that you can see the entire earth. It's also the only way to get money (called Mystic Jewels) out on the field, though since there's very little that you actually need to buy (and since winning money by gambling is so easy), you don't typically need to worry about being strapped for cash. The B button allows you to scan things, and you will find yourself spamming it around town. As I mentioned before, smacking things and people with a gigantic book never gets old.

With most NPCs, you're given three options of interaction--speaking, offering presents (important for raising their affection, which unlocks secret events and sidequests), and challenging them to a round of Judgment Link, in which you toss a monster up in the air back and forth between the two of you. I don't think there's actually any real point to the minigame, except practising for the Judgment Link tournaments, which allow you to win recipes for items you wouldn't be able to get otherwise. A few NPCs give you another option, depending on their specialty (Kamui will examine different flowers that you've scanned, and Vis will give you love advice, as examples); and there are four each of "heroes" and "heroines," who are your love interests (depending on whether you've chosen to play as a boy or girl). They have little real impact on the story or gameplay, but interacting with them often provides comedy gold, even if (and sometimes because) the development of their romantic interest in you is sometimes a little stilted.

Your life develops much like heart containers in a Zelda game. Everytime you beat a plot-related boss (and most secret bosses, too), a tablet appears. Scan the tablet, and your hit points increase by one (represented by leaves on a vine). Most enemy attacks deal one hit point of damage to you (which is a little disconcerting late in the game when you're dealing 999 damage a hit to some enemies), though there are a few enemies that can deal more damage per hit. Your MP will increase by scanning those same tablets, as well, but it works in a more traditional RPG system--you've got lots of MP (I've currently got 300 towards the end of my second playthrough), which you deplete gradually moving codes around the book, casting offensive spells, or creating items to heal yourself with or to give away as presents. There's no MP restoring items, but you can get some back through Judgment Link. You don't level up, but your proficiency with weapons does the more you use them, so that you deal more damage, have shorter charge times for their special attacks, and can 2x charge. There's a point in the game at which you can choose between the different schools, and I believe this affects which one you want to specialize in, allowing you to level in it more than the others. You can die, but death is handled in the same way as a Zelda game--you start back at the beginning of the room you were already in, with half health and low MP. It's not something you generally have to worry about at all, except with the more difficult bosses.

The book also levels up as it gains CP, though I'm not sure it has any effect on gameplay. I'm not sure what CP stands for, actually, but every page (maps, character, weapons, items, monsters, flowers, etc.) has a certain number of "max" CP (which you can frequently go beyond, actually), and a current CP count that you have for that page. For characters, weapons, and items, this is generally affected by the kinds of codes you have set; similarly for monsters, though successful Judgment Link tosses and defeating them can also raise it. Maps are generally raised by either completing a relevant puzzle or task to that map with a good time (or by fulfilling certain bonus requirements), or by finding hidden tidbits of knowledge around that map (some of which are essentially impossible to find without an guide). Increasing CP for a certain page--especially maps--can have individual benefits, such as giving you access to new metalizes; and increasing the book's CP as a whole gives you access to various secrets, sidequests, or new rewards for minigames.

So, I guess a summary of pros and cons would look something like this:

The Good:
- Simple, but deeply customizable gameplay options.
- A fun world and story.
- Decent soundtrack, even if a little forgettable.
- Excellent graphics (as far as the DS goes, anyway).
- Dating sim elements can be cute, and are often hilarious.
- Smacking items, monsters, plants, and people with a giant book.

The Bad:
- Finding codes and navigating the book can be tedious.
- Though it never feels too much like it, there are some classic Zelda elements very obviously ripped off.
- Some bosses aren't very challenging.
- Most mini-games aren't very interesting.

This game creates new feelings for old gamers. It has classic rpg elements while adding new systems for added adventuring fun. However it needs to improve on its basis on a large number of points. First off is with a search system this game would be far more fluid with a search function instead of having to flip about through numerous pages looking for a specific code you should be able to search for specific codes left on random pages. The story line isn't horrible but it isn't a chrono trigger or an FFVII this game needs to improve here in order to be considered a classic or even to be considered worth the time for most players. The battle and collection system need heavy refinement they feel unpolished and make me want to reach the end of the game rather than the next fight. I also feel that the leveling system should be more in depth though that is a minor issue of preference. These are all criticisms I see need to address with this almost an epic game, but do not be fooled I had fun playing it while the novelty lasted and beat it in due time. Hopefully they create a new title like this just better.