Customer Reviews

Gauntlet Seven Sorrows

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

After hours and hours of fun play with Dark Legacy, my family and I eagerly awaited the release of the next Gauntlet. We were sorely disappointed. With a 4 player team made up of 2 adults, an 11-year-old, and a 7-year-old, we beat the game in 4 hours.

Overall play was fun, but the game was far too short. With a 4 player team made up of 2 adults, an 11-year-old, and a 7-year-old, we beat the game in 4 hours.

The minions and the bosses were far too easy to beat (this is coming from a mom who isn't a complete video game nut).

We are very upset that we paid the full price for this game.

Best advice: Rent it first.
First of all, there are few games I wait for. Gran Turismo 4 was worth it, Seven Sorrows is not. In Dark Leagacy you could buy up your abilities, purchase food, magic, and special items. In Seven Sorrows this is gone. You are given the opportunity to add to your damage (to enemies), your "magic" regenertion, or your health (reduction of impact) up to 20 points each.
You get only the original four characters, without the familiars of Dark Legacy. Distance weapons are a seperate button, and necessary only once in the game. You can purchase special attacks with the gold you find, but only one or two are essential and then only when attacked en masse, which is not often enough.
Now for why it got 2 stars. The graphics are great. But in getting good graphics, game play and experience is lacking. There is no real necessity to work together except to travel the game.
Over all, the game should take two experienced players about 4 hours to finish on normal level. Dark Legacy took about 18 hours to finish at the same level of difficulty.
This game was delayed in it's release and in my opinion, I am very very very glad I rented it first.

I bought this game hoping that it would be something like Gauntlet Dark Legacy, my favorite PS2 game. I was very disappointed.
Pros: Better graphics and more special attacks.
Cons: Where to start? The game isn't even fun. It isn't related to Gauntlet except in name and some background music. A small fraction of the rooms, no real information on the characters, just redundant fighting (kind of like the original Bards Tale). The special attacks aren't even useful because you get attacked by large groups in every direction. The graphics don't even stand out but instead all blend in with each other. What was Midway thinking when they designed this game?

gauntlet is what it is, hack n' slash, hack n' slash some more. The characters are pretty cool and the combos and moves are pretty nice to pull off. The graphics are improved over dark legacy and the characters look less "cartoony". I enjoyed the game, yes it is a bit repetitive, but sometimes you just want to jump into a game by yourself or with a friend, and just have some mindless button mashing fun.

If you go in knowing what to expect, you'll like it. If you're expecting a huge RPG with endless depth, yeah youll probably be dissapointed. The game is short, and there isn't much there besides the button mashing and hack n slash. The story is kind of thin but interesting enough to push it along. Baldaurs gate is really along the same lines as this, but gets bogged down in the downtime between towns. This is mudch more action oriented and fun in my opinion. I'd wait till the price goes down to about 30 or 40 though, like the others said it isn't worth a full 50 bucks for 10 hours of play.

Ah where to begin, so much was done wrong with this game.

1) The story line: It sucks! You are apparently an immortal hero who was betrayed by your king who attempted to steal your immortality. You are revived basically to fix everything that this king screwed up. No grand "Save the world from some horrible evil" plot line, just a fix the stupid kings mistakes by killing his advisors. Also, when you consider that these advisors are the ones who are responsible for your imprisionment you would think that this would be a good plot. Revenge is fun right, well this is one of the first times I've ever seen a revenge plot line screwed up.

2) Difficulty: The game is far to easy to beat. My brother and I rented it because the previews looked good in his gamer magnazines. It took us less then 5 hours to beat the entire game. About half way through our strategy changed from get any "cool" items (which don't exist in this game. No speed shoes, no multi-fire shot, no potions, no invisibility, no - well you get the idea.) to lets just end this level ASAP.

3) Boss Battles: The bosses are way to easy. The first one is a scare crow surrounded by flaming pots. Gee I wonder what you are susposed to do? I think I counted maybee two bosses that you actually had to fight. In all of the other boss battles you basically ran around, killed some of his minions, flipped some switches, and that killed the boss.

4) The generators. First they always look the same. The entire game through. The scenery may be completely different surrounding them, but they look almost, if not exactly the same. Second, the enemies do not come out of the generators, they teleport in around the stupid things. Even if they're's 6 generators 5 of which you have destroyed they still telleport in around the 5 destroyed generators until you destroy the sixth. If that was not annoying enough, even after you have destroyed all the generators enemies can still spawn in locations you can't get to but can see and walk towards you. The whole "I can't get to them, but they can get to me" thing gets really old and annoying quick.

5) Zoom Level - The zoom level for this game is similiar to that of Champions of Norrath: Return to Arms. Great for showing off artwork, sucks to play through though. Furthermore, it results in small levels - yet another problem the game has.

6) Camera Control - you have none. This wasn't an issue in the original Gauntlet Legends, or even Gauntlet Legends: Dark Legacy because they gave you a birds eye view of the battle field. In a game were you are zoomed in like this control of the camera would be very nice.

7) Buy Powerups - this element of the game is basically gone. Now you get to spend maybee one point - if you are lucky to improve your attack, health or mana regeneration. Sorry, but 1 point out of 20 possible translates into a 5% increase in any of these stats. That's not really enough to even bother with.
Additionally, what you buy now are different combo moves. This would be fine if any combo moves were that impressive. I played as the valkerie and the only good combo move she had was one that sucked enemies in damaged them and threw them out away from her. This move, however, also cost mana.

8) Combo's - While it is nice to rack up enough combo's to be called a demi-god or immortal, the fact that a combo basically seems to be defined by the game as hitting someone within so many seconds of hitting someonelse really brings a downer to the idea of a 40+ hit combo. Especially when you realize that the easiest way to get high combo's is just hit "x", your weak attack, a bunch of times.

9) Lets see anything else? I am sure I am missing something else I hated about the game, but I'll end this with stating what happens when you beat the game: The king states that he will forever haunt these lands to attone for his misdeeds and that it is your job now to guide the people of these lands.

In summary if you want a game that is easy to beat rent it, do not buy it. If you want a game that is fun. Get Gauntlet Legends: Dark Legacy. My sorceress is level 99 in that game. Or you can get Champions of Norrath. The only thing that might possibly help to redeam "7 sorrows" is online play. I never tried it, but then again if I wanted an online game I'd buy Final Fantasy: the chains of promethia or some other online only game.

If you're an old school Gauntlet fan and if you're expecting something as good as Dark Legacy then DON'T buy this game. It took me about 7 hours to beat this game. If you're buying it just for the online experience then I guess that it's okay. Nice graphics and nice variety in attacks. However, there are no real puzzles, the levels are extremely short, the bosses are easily defeated, and there is nothing as far as special items. The only good thing that I can say about this game is that I can return it. Very disappointed in Midway Games on this one.

I love the Gauntlet franchise, from the classic arcade game that I have sacrificed hundreds of dollars in quarters playing, to the Playstation release several years ago which has provided hours of fun playing with friends. It's what we play when we get together to hang out and share a little fun together. Most of it's draw is that it's multi-player, and friends can all play together, be snarky at each other while playing - an excuse to be social while indulging our inner geek.

After played through a few levels of it last night with a friend, and we agreed that the new release was pretty fun, but nothing overly groundbreaking.

We liked the combos, the graphics, even if the storyline is a little cheezy. But, hey - it's Gauntlet, that's almost a requirement.

Our only major complaint is that you choose one of 4 characters to play, and you don't get to choose anything about that character .. Valkerie (the only female character), Elf, Warrior and Sorcerer are it so far .. unless you get to unlock new characters along the way (but I doubt it, the storyline they've created doesn't support alternate "hero" characters). But, even with that limitation, it's still a fun game to sit and waste an evening playing (and heckling) with a friend.

I've been looking for a fun 2-player game ever since my girlfriend and I romped through Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance in June of '05. What better place to look than Gauntlet, the original dungeon crawler that spawned the entire genre?

So with that, I went out and purchased Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (hey, it got better reviews than Seven Sorrows so I started there). Although the graphics were a bit dated, I had a great time with Dark Legacy. All of the famous Gauntlet goodies were intact: keys, potions, food, barrels, levers, switches, power-ups, generators and treasure chests (some of which were booby-trapped or had Death waiting inside). Sure, it was repetitive at times, but overall Gauntlet: Dark Legacy was a fun and truly classic gaming experience.

When I turned to Seven Sorrows, I wanted that same classic gaming experience -- but with better graphics. And I got it; except for the gaming experience part. Simply put: Seven Sorrows isn't "Gauntlet." It has wonderful graphics and amazing artistic design, but the game just doesn't feel right. You no longer collect keys or potions. There are no power-ups ... no speed boost, no x-ray vision, no three-way shot ...

Probably what distinguishes Seven Sorrows the most (notice how I'm not calling it "Gauntlet"?) is that enemies can no longer be quickly dispatched with one or two ranged attacks. Nope, in Seven Sorrows, ranged attacks are significanly weaker than melee attacks and, even at that, each enemy requires a handfull of "hacks" before it will die. Generators require a dozen or so hacks too, which significantly bogs down the gameplay. If you're a fan of Golden Axe, you might enjoy this format. But if you're a fan of Gauntlet ...

It's a shame. Seven Sorrows has enough graphic and artistic pizzaz to make the Gauntlet formula really shine. Unfortunately, Midway decided that the formula -- as popular and classic as it is -- needed to change.

Bad move.

Even though I received this game for Christmas, I still feel as if I've been cheated. Talk about the dullest, unimaginable game in history. I'll admit the graphics are upgraded, but the puzzles are about as complicated as connect the dots, and the characters have slightly different play styles...and I mean SLIGHT. Their combos, seeing as hacking and slashing is all they improved on Gauntlet, are almost identical. Oh, and forget magic. Each character gets one radius spell, and a couple, silly moves. They completely eliminated elemental magic and collecting vials. Unlike any other Gauntlet game ever made, there are no secrets. NONE. There are no power ups. There's no evolution of the characters either, except minimal changes when you find golden chests. Problem is, once you find four for each armor and weapons, the changes stop. What confuses me, is how 'Legacy' could be so entertaining just holding down a button and 'Sorrows' can be so boring. Seeing as I don't have Online, I can't comment on how that is, but I doubt the game is somehow expanded. If you get this game, expect two areas per level and a boss fight, which are extremely short, instead of Legacy's five areas and a boss fight which involved finding magical relics. That gives Legacy a total of about fifty levels to Sorrows' twelve. Having waited so long for this release, I'm embarrassed to be a Gauntlet fan. Great job, guys. I'm gonna go chain myself to a tree and wait for the Apocalypse.

Don't do it! Save your money, and save your time. I think the other reviewer's estimate of 4 hours is overly generous - you can beat the game in two. Otherwise, I agree completely. It's a button masher with only one button needed - hit square until everyone dies. The levels are tiny, the story is non-existent, and there isn't even replay value since you've bought all the special combos before you clear the game the first time. I would have given this game zero stars, if I could.

If you think you want this game, think again. Go replay Dark Legacy, or get one of the Baldur's Gate or Champions games. You'll be glad you did.