The Midnight Avenger :: Director's Cut

Review by Justin:

To start playing, I thought I was in for a medicore gaming experience. I saw the default graphics, moderate story telling and came to this conclusion quickly, not even letting the game kick into gear. After playing for about 20 minutes I arrived at the point where the demon Krakken and his two minions were plotting the destruction of the young hero's village. Eh, still nothing original. Now, when the village was destroyed, I thought "Man, here we go into another menial Rpg quest. Hero's village = destroyed ... ergh oh God. Well, my opinion changed after that. I saw a 'superhero' type story that evolves as you go along. Midnight Avenger was an anti hero of sorts. Well, a dark hero. The towns and villages were nicely made, as I didn't see anything exceptionally breathtaking, I saw a few maps that were pretty good (ie: the final scene Krakken vs. Jin ... wow). Along with the graphical annalasis of the game, I noticed that DK (darkknight) created a lot of really great custom images to further the story. Also, character animations (where Jin jumps and does flips, or swings his sword) always add to a gaming experience. Each hero character of the game (Jin, Elana, Khar and Jehred) had a back story. From Khar who was a grizzled warrior, who had a seemingly soft side, to Jin and Elana who's village was destroyed and they seek retribution, each one developed very nicely. The point which I was most surprised in though was that Elana was actually alive! I thought that from the start she was dead (seriously lol). Then even more of a surprise was that she was the Moonlight Angel. Blue hair should have been a dead give away, but eh. LOL I thought that all of the enemies had excellent personalities. Each one made you hate them more and more. At the end of the game, I was actually cursing Krakken for killing Master Cassos! I didn't expect that at all! To close, if you are looking for a very well made, well thought out Rpg experience, check this game out. If not .... uh, then don't play Rpg's.

• GRAPHICS: 8/10 - GOOD: Custom images, character animations - BAD: Hmmm ... probably some of the village designs (very forgiveable)
• MUSIC: 6/10 - GOOD: Guns n' Roses ... need I say more? - BAD: Music wouldn't end with event, so if you encountered a demon, you would go to the world map and it would still be playing even after the demon was killed.
• SE: 10/10 - GOOD: Sound effects were well placed - BAD: Nothing really.
• STORYLINE: 10/10 - GOOD: Great development, semi-open ended, Great from start to finish - BAD: I had no qualls with the storyline (a game will always do good in my reviews unless the game doesnt have one or it's really repetive)
• COMBAT: 6/10 - GOOD: If you bought a bunch of stat items, you could breeze through combat - BAD: If you didn't a lot of the combat (field battles) were unnessesarily hard
• Difficulty: (out of 5) 3/5 - Right down the middle, eh.