Eternal Poison (PS2)

Eternal Poison, Atlus hurls another strat RPG at me. A note before I begin, This game was not design for your everyday time of gamer it was made to cater to a specific type of arty, mildly pretenious strat rpg player. So I will review it in that context.

Story: Alrighty happy little kingdom, it has a king and a pope and a princess yay! Bam giant evel demon world spews up from the bowels of god knows where and takes over a large part of the happy little kingdom. The Princess runs off the dungeon known as Besek, and is followed by her love the commander of the knights. A strange girl with a wolf companion appears and also enters. As well as a Priest girl looking for her master. Basically you'll run through the roles of these characters and one addition character if you can unlock him and their travels through Besek. each story progresses as you battle from stage to stage and release small details about the characters as you progress. Though in the end unless you clear the story all the pieces never fit which is an excellent motivator. 4/5

Gameplay: So the game plays like your standard tactical RPG. You progress from stage to stage entering a town that acts as your hub where you equip characters recruit charcters and use the demons you capture during battle to create items and skills or assign them as party members. Before battle there is a selection screen where you can chose your team and place them on the field. Enemy units which other than specified battles always consist of demons called majin, by injuring a majin beyond the point of death to a certain level causes overkill which allows you to capture them for said uses. Battles handle well and follow at a nice steady pace. You can easily select any unit to view their stats in a menu or scroll through to other units friend or foe. A designer note was that all the typical flashy animation and status icon we're made simpler. Status effects are displayed on the character window when you scroll over to them having a space for physical and magical effects. 4/5

Graphics: The game is intensely artisic designed to me more of a living painting than a flashy 3D game. The battlefileds, characters and scenes are all displayed in a muted toned almost oil painted set. It gives the game a sort of flare that's uncommon these days. Animations in battle are either cutscene style where the game cuts away to 3D graphics area where the characters interact. This can be toggled off to do a simpler animation to lessen battle times. The animation good have been done better and the characters not of the main story are a bit plain looking in-game. 3/5

Audio: The music is slightly limited but the stories are only a few stages long so you don't really see alot of songs being rehashed. The acts as your hub has an interchangeable them more which can be unlocked as you progress thru each story. Battles are fairly standard from normal, boss and important story. Voice acting was good tho the dialogue can be a bit dry. 3/5

Replay: There are several pathes you can take through Besek though as you play each story they don't differ to much you may get a view sparse dialogue changes but nothing grand. The nice feature is each story seems to be just right not too long and not too short and the story does a good job of making the play through of each character enjoyable. YOu may find one or two story worth playing through a second time. 4/5

Overall: All right this game has gotten alot of flack but like I said it wasn't made for everyone so be honest are you a pretenious tactical rpg player if so then get this game it's good. No its not flashy no the attacks are giant meteors consuming earth and no there's no blond hero saving the world with sarcasm and giant sword. There's simplicity and challenge. No grinding means you need to get things right so some stages you'll find youself doing a second or even third time but this never feels like its dragging the game down as you get a great sense of accomplishment for doing it better. There's a good about of unlockable arts and music just for the player to look back and enjoy. Either way take it ass it is and it's...4/5