Games PlayStation2 Ephemeral Fantasia

Ephemeral Fantasia

Written by Toma-kun December 29, 2008 Hits: 295 Favorites

Game Info:

Platform:

PlayStation2

Developer:

KCET

Publisher:

Konami

Players:

Format:

1 CD

Gallery:

PlayStation2 » Ephemeral Fantasia (6)

Editor review

A bland and boring experience that's ok to miss...

Ephemeral Fantasia (Reiselied: Ephemeral Fantasia in Japan) is a traditional RPG that was originally being developed for the Sega Dreamcast, but apparently ended up on the PlayStation 2. It features ten different characters with various abilities, 160 different kinds of enemies, night and day time cycles, and a "surround battlefield system."

You are Mouse, a famous musician and thief who seems to have a way with the ladies. One day, he's invited to the Island of Eternal Summer by a person named Panduri. Mouse accepts and heads to the island and meets up with Zeharupolis, who would like Mouse to make a song for the wedding celebration for him and Princess Loreiyu.

I think it’s safe to start off with the part of the game most obvious at first, the graphics. The game looks very bland. It has some quite blurry textures and everything looks pretty simple all around. The stiff character models look rather generic, but really aren’t all that bad. Still they’re hardly anything to get excited about. The world itself is really simple looking and the textures seem to be reused quite often. So expect a lot of the town to look just like itself – over and over.

You’d think the gameplay would make up for the so-so graphics wouldn’t you? Well guess what, your half right. The battles, well still not amazing, are rather well done. When you start, party members and enemies are randomly placed in different positions around the battle area. That could be good or bad for both the enemy and your party depending on where everyone is located. It has some nice camera movement and decent animations compared to when just walking around and chatting with the people in town. Well other than battles what is there to be said about gameplay? It is an RPG after all, right? Well that’s partially true in this case. The characters move around fine and buttons seem responsive. There is also an interesting guitar mini-game which I found to be a enjoyable distraction from the simple island and quite un-imaginative cliché dialogue from the locals. But the thing that stood out the most to me was the load times. It seems to need to load every little part of the town. While it’s not a long load time, it can be a quite an annoyance.

So it's a bland looking RPG with few redeeming qualities, I must say this game really isn’t worth your time. Maybe only a rental if you only plan on spending 10 minutes with your Playstation 2 at a time. Go play Dark Cloud or something else instead.

Highs:	Decent character models; enjoyable battles; and a rather fun guitar mini-game
Lows:	Blurry and often reused textures; constant load times; some cliché dialogue
Bottom Line:	It’s not worth your time…