Time Stalkers

by Sega

Product Details

• ASIN: B000035YBP
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,469 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

GameSpot Review

Ever since Square resurrected the RPG with Final Fantasy VII, the RPG genre has become the Holy Grail of system sellers overnight. Climax Landers (which will be called Time Stalker in the U.S.) is Sega's first real attempt to get an RPG on the system, but the game fails in just about every way imaginable--even after numerous delays.

Sent to explore an old clock tower, our hero Sword stumbles on a mysterious book. Upon opening the book, Sword and the surrounding terrain are yanked from the world and attached to a magical, floating continent inhabited by several other such outcasts. The master of this strange world immediately labels Sword a "hero" and sends him on a quest to unite the other heroes, defeat a great evil, and return everyone to their respective worlds. The story is traditional RPG fare--the kind of average ideas we've grown to accept and even like. Every other aspect of the game, however, falls far short of average.

Free advice to all you budding game developers out there: If you're ever going to make a game that has high hopes of success, please be sure you understand why people like that type of game in the first place. While the story of Climax Landers is passable enough, its contradictory dungeon, battle, and experience systems undermine any chance the game has at being enjoyable.

Climax Landers, like Sting's Evolution, takes a development shortcut and substitutes randomly generated dungeons for actual map design. As a result, all story development must take place in the town, turning the dungeons into endless battle sequences. If Climax Landers offered battles that were actually fun, this wouldn't be a problem. The battle system is as stale as humanly imaginable and even sinks to include ancient interface issues that RPGs had supposedly long forgotten. You can only have one of the main characters at a time in your party, which essentially translates to having only one useful character in your party. To fill the other two slots, you can catch monsters à la Pokémon. When you encounter the roaming beasties in the dungeons, the characters line up to fight. In each area there are four spots for characters to inhabit, leaving one spot open for movement. Each attack has a different range, meaning that the monsters may not always be able to reach their opponents. However, not all monsters can move to another square, so they become blocked by your other characters in a position from which they cannot attack. This, in turn, also prevents the main character from attacking in many situations. Additionally, when you give the command to attack, you are giving the command to attack the location the monster is in, not the monster itself. Thus, if the monster moves before your attack connects, your character will strike nothing but air. This is particularly amusing when you are attacking the back row and the monster moves forward, causing you to run right through the monster, swipe at nothing, and then run back through it. Every weapon has multiple attack techniques users can employ, each requiring varying amounts of vitality points per attack. For the most part, these aren't balanced, and changing weapons can sometimes be fatal to your character as a result.

There is almost no point in gaining experience or developing your character in Climax Landers, because every time you start or finish a dungeon, your level drops to one. So the only reason to go into dungeons is to advance the story and get items. However, chances are you won't be able to use the good weapons and armor at level one. Additionally, characters are limited to carrying four items when entering a dungeon. Thus, the primary purpose of getting items is to sell them. The only permanent improvements you get from completing dungeons are spells and skills. However, many spells and skills can't be used until the characters' stats have reached a certain level. Thus, your characters essentially start over every time they enter a dungeon. Every battle earns experience for the characters, which in turn earns levels that raise the characters' stats. Additionally, upon completing a floor of the dungeon, you can allocate bonus points to your lower stats to let the characters use spells and skills. Like in Final Fantasy VIII, the difficulty of the monsters increases as the hero's level increases, ensuring the game is a constant challenge and never too easy. Given the monster difficulty system that's in place, it's not clear why the developers decided not to let you keep your experience from dungeon to dungeon. With the current experience system, you don't feel like you're ever getting anywhere.

There are plenty of interesting little side quests to do in Climax Landers, but none of them make the game particularly worth playing. Having a lot of excess development time on its hands, Climax programmed 10 VMU games that can be bought and collected. A majority of the games are pretty worthless. The most interesting game is a miniature paint program that lets you draw a picture and display it in the gallery attached to Sword's house. Sword can also upgrade his monster pen and his house, both of which cost a lot of money. You can also sign up for bounties with a leather-clad rabbit on the Wonderland-esque island. --Peter Bartholow

--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An average Role Playing Game, March 30, 2000

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Time Stalkers (Video Game)

I had greater expectations of the Climax Team, coming from earlier games such as shining in the darkness, etc, I expected a wonderfully rich, enhanced experience. While the richness is there, the actual plot of the game and the almost complete lack of story whatsoever really shot this game in the foot before it got out of the gates. Like evolution, this game also has the random dungeon layouts, making it bsically a graphical M.U.D. (Multi-user-dungeon.) Basically a text based hack and slash world where one travels around, exploring and looking for treasure, wtih basically no plot involved. This may be good for some, but I appreciate games like Suikoden II, and a few of Squaresoft's games for giving me an actuall intellectual plotline to follow, as well as giving me the funky treasure and fabu eye-candy. Time stalkers' characters leave little to be desired. While some of the various designs were well done, I particualry love Rao (lion man), they severely lacked any sort of thick personality. Sword is bossy and arrogant, Rao tends to be more reserved, etc, but that is basically how far it goes. No real character developement to be found. Overall I would have liked the Climax team to almost completely forget about the random dungeons. I mean give me a break, it must have taken very little time at all to program the random algorithims, what did you all DO with the rest of your development time? Add some more depth and richness to your games, take a cue from Square or Konami. We LIKE depth.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly enjoyable, June 18, 2004

By 

Eirinjas (Ocean co., NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time Stalkers (Video Game)

Let's see, Diablo 1 & 2 made uber-leveling fun but did it matter? No. You gained levels only to have more powerful foes charge at you. So, what's the difference if you start at level 1 in each dungeon or if you walk in and have to fight enemies that are tougher anyway? You still gain skills that you get to keep, you gain items you get to keep, you gain allies you get to keep, you gain creatures you get to level up/train and keep. Anyone who can condemn this as a terrible RPG because of the leveling system in the game is a superficial, half-wit that's probably better off listening to their Britney Spears & Eminem whilst playing their fruity PS2.

This game has wonderful character design, colorful and original world settings, and a bevy of dungeon-stomping to be done. It's a great game! No, it doesn't have a stellar story but then neither did Diablo and you smacktards played that!

Very entertaining and great for all ages. I highly recommend this especially in light of the lack of Dreamcast RPG's.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best RPG for the Dreamcast, EVER!, February 19, 2004

By 

Jamie (Daytona Beach, Florida USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time Stalkers (Video Game)

I've read quite a lot reviews on here, and some if not all, complain about the level 1 bit when leaving a dungeon. Well while at first it upset me, it was some hours later that I found it fun and just part of the game, instead of a problem. If all you want is to play some 'good' RPG *coughs* go play Grandia2, but if you want a one-of-kind RPG that actually makes you think and have fun while doing it, grab Timestalkers. Stick with it, and you'll see just how much fun this 'lame game' can be, and if anyone is curious, I still play this game even after all these years, and have yet to get tired of it. So those of you that _tried_ the game and didn't give it enough time..go back, play it, even if you think you hate it, give it another go. Timestalkers is a game that has to grow on you..and while yes Evolution 'n Grandia2 ARE great games, Timestalkers is a great game too, but you just have to play it more, to understand it! ^_-