Summon Night: Swordcraft Story – Blacksmithing Never Felt So Fun

It’s no surprise that there are dime a dozen JRPG’s out there for the handhelds, with 90% of them being complete crap. Most of them follow the (failed) tried and true practice of jamming cutesy graphics and overly dramatic plot with the most mind-numblingly annoying and unlikable characters down your craw until you choke and toss the game out the window. Now, while Summon Night: Swordcraft Story for the GBA (SN for short) does have a very poor story, it’s one of the few of thousands of JRPG’s that can hold a candle to being something good; but not quite awesome.

First massive ding I have to put out right now; anime design. This is a given, but for fuck sakes, ANOTHER RPG that has to have characters with eyes bigger then their head? To be honest, when I first looked at SN, I thought it’d be another crap-storm from the get-go, but once you get beyond the cliché story, it actually starts getting good. Granted, the idea that you play a blacksmith apprentice in a world where smith’s are the most respected people around, so much so that they have ‘kings’ known as Craftknight’s, this fresh idea falls flat when your character is the son of a Craftknight that goes missing, and decide to follow in his foot-steps, and yadda friggin’ da. It’s been done before, just with a different coat of paint. Thankfully, the plot development doesn’t last too too long before you can start gameplay (Only about 25 minutes worth of sprites yabbering back and forth), which is where the game starts getting good. As I said, the game revolves around you playing a blacksmith apprentice, so when you unlock your workshop, you can start crafting your own weapons right away… That is, if you have the right materials, which is where you start the dungeon crawling aspect of things. You’ll go from a town overworld to dungeon’s soon enough, where you run around bashing open chests and fighting monsters in a random encounter (*twitch*) system, where you fight on a 2D plain, attacking, guarding, and using skills and items supplied by your Guardian Beast (I’ll get to your Beast soon). After winning a fight, you and your Beast will gain exp, gain money, and occasionally win materials which you can take to your workshop, and smelt them down to make new weapons, which in turn, will allow you to learn new plans to make more weapons. Naturally, this takes some of the tedium out of grinding for the next level, as you now have an incentive to do grinding; gain materials, as more powerful weapons require far more materials before you can use it upside the next boss’ head.

Speaking of said weapons, there’s a clever variety in what you can use, as each weapon type has different abilities. For example, the classic sword-type is average all around, where the spear is long-range but slow as molasses. You can even use a drill to plow through enemies, even though its power diminishes the more you use it. At first, you can only learn new weapon plans through your mentor, but doing fetch-quests and talking to the right people in the overworld can reward you with more rare plans, even though after each chapter, it’s a bit bothersome to talk to every npc again. So far, I can probably bet I haven’t won you over with SN yet, and you may be asking what I see in the game. Well…

It’s the fact that being able to make your own weapons which is the shining light for me, since as mentioned, it gives you something to work towards while grinding, which is a genius game design idea in retrospect. Also, even though I talked shit about plot, the character development will slowly, ever so slowly, begin to interest you bit by bit. When you first start the game, you get a Guardian Beast, which is your sidekick in both conversation and battle, and depending on how you answer a list of questions will decide said Beast. The brilliant thing about this is, is that whichever Beast you get, decides how 80% of the conversations between you and other npc’s will go. If you choose a little robot to be your Tonto, his techno-gibberish will confuse people you meet, while your character understands him fine. If you choose the arrogant demon, his high-n’-mighty self-will annoy those who challenge you. And even other characters begin to develop over time; like why does your mentor, Bron, continue to semi-flirt with your mother, even though your father has vanished? Or why does Sanary, another tournament goer, act like a complete cunt in public, but is gentle when alone? While your character doesn’t develop much, the one’s around you do, which makes meeting (and eventually fighting) most of them is a real treat as you progress towards Craftknight status.

However.

The only thing keeping me from saying this is the best JRPG on a handheld ever, is simply the fact that the battle system can get old FAST. Yes, I praised the grinding since you can grind for levels and new weapons, but battling for two hours for that new axe will get repetitive, since certain floors of the dungeon will only open after progressing through enough chapters, which means you’ll be stuck on a floor for a longtime, facing the same handful of enemies, and wailing away on them in the same fashion, mashing the attack button, while occasionally getting aid from your Guardian Beast. It’s definitely not a game you’ll play for hours on end, but one to pop on occasionally and grind a few weapons out of it; but isn’t a JRPG meant to keep you hooked for hours on end? Another complaint is like I mentioned earlier; everyone but you develops, character wise. I mean, YOU are the star of the game, wouldn’t you grow and develop along with everyone else as the world spirals into monster-ridden madness?

I digress. With everything put together, SN is a very good game; just not the best ever. But seeing as it is a handheld JRPG, you can take it how you like; either working your way to making the most rape-tastic weapons ever will hook you, or the stale battle system will turn you off fast. Either way, SN is a GBA game you should definitely give a shot, because as I thought in the beginning, on the surface, it may seem dumb, but give it some time and you’ll find a real gem. It gets my seal of approval, anyway.

Technical Score – 7.1/10 Racha Score – 8.5/10