Hello! I’m the Eternal Optimist!
For today we're looking at Sands of Destruction, a relatively little known JRPG developed for the Nintendo DS by imageepoch and published by Sega. More than anything else, it feels like a game of unrealized potential. Like a chocolate cake made out of low-fat chocolate. It's good, yeah, and a light experience, but there's just this depth of flavor that is missing.
Story:
The world of Sands of Destruction is one in which powerful human like animals called Ferals rule the land and treat humans like second class citizens. Our hero in this tale is Kyrie, shounen hero Archetype A: the cowardly dimwit who learns to be badass. Within his body he holds a mysterious power that can turn everything in a huge radius into sand. He is later forcibly recruited by our heroine, Morte, to help her in her quest to destroy the entire world. Morte being the first non-NPC female Kyrie meets, he automatically falls in love with the sociopathic wonder girl. Together with a few other party members, including a martial arts practicing teddy bear, they go on a long sprawling journey, discover truths, withstand betrayals, and eventually face off against a force beyond understanding.
Obviously, very typical stuff. What it has going for it is an occasional good bit of dark humor, mainly thanks to Morte. The girl really, really loves killing. To the point where it stops being frightening and starts being hilarious. Unfortunately, the game seems more fond of the odd bit of very silly slapstick style humor, and tends to fall back on it more than the more subtle dark stuff. This results in some terrible whiplash in a few places. Most notable is a scene in which Morte, in a rare serious moment, takes her time slowly killing a recurring foe. Two seconds later, silly music starts up, and a few rather forced jokes are traded.
This can probably be traced back to a bit of meddling by the producers. The scenario writer, who had previously worked on the acclaimed Xenogears, had wanted a much darker story, which would have involved Ferals using humans for food instead of just slave labor. The producers wanted something they could market to a younger audience. Out went the darker tone, and in came silly, forced humor. This ends up giving the entire game a terribly uneven tone, and it never feels quite as epic as it should.
One final nitpick. The closest thing we get to a main antagonist gets a tragically short time in the spotlight, and basically gives the player an infodump on his motives right at the eleventh hour. Hidden antagonists are good, but it helps if they are hidden in plain sight.
Gameplay:
The gameplay in Sands of Destruction is, like the story, full of good ideas that were somewhat poorly implemented. Combat is turn based, but the amount of actions each combatant is allowed are dictated by a point system. Each attack or spell takes one point, and using items immediately ends that characters turn. Points are gained by chaining together combos and critical hits, and when enough extra points have been gained, a limit break style attack becomes available. Physical attacks are divided into Blows and Flurries. Flurries are weak, multi-strike attacks that have high accuracy. Blows are single powerful strikes that have low accuracy.
Obviously, there’s the idea here that Blows and Flurries must be mixed together in combos depending on the enemy at hand. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Characters gain customization points from battles, and these are used to upgrade attacks. After a certain level is gained, attacks can be fortified and chained together. Chained flurries break the game in half. With chained flurries, the faster characters get to use their limit break style attacks every time they have a turn, and most battles turn into your characters chaining flurries until the enemies die.
If a player chooses not to chain flurries, however, they must deal with the enemy AI abusing the system, especially as the enemy attackers seem to get far more critical hits on average, so the game turns into a masochist’s joy. In short, the way the battle system is structured, the game will either be far too hard, or far too easy.
Graphics:
Graphics are one of this game’s strong points. Characters are detailed two-dimensional sprites walking on rather gorgeous 3D surroundings. In battle animations are fluid and detailed, and the super attacks are accompanied by a quick portrait of the character, along with some glorious visual pyrotechnics. Especially beautiful is the first part of the climactic dungeon, which incorporates some truly psychedelic vistas into its construction. There are a couple of brief cgi FMV’s throughout, including at the beginning, and once again, they truly push the DS to it’s fullest potential.
Sound, Voice Acting and Music:
There is nothing too special about the sound effects used. They serve the purpose well, and are neither annoying or distracting. Voice acting, on the other hand, is an occasional mixed bag. Kyrie’s voice, especially when flustered, is incredibly nasal and annoying, but he thankfully loses that a bit as his character develops. Morte and the rest of the characters are mostly mediocre and inoffensive, although Morte’s actress does get to ham it up occasionally. If somewhat mediocre voice-over work offends you, turn down the voices, but don’t turn off the music.
Music is undoubtedly the strongest point of the entire game. The trio of composers, headed by the legendary Yasunori Mitsueda(best known for Chrono Trigger, among others), spins out a series of memorable tunes ranging from tearjearking, to comic, to epic. Of special note is Time’s Arm, the main theme, a beautiful recurring melody that is first heard on the title screen performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic and an angelic choir. The battle themes do their work as well, although there is a bit too much reliance on the normal battle theme in many early boss battles.
Final Verdict:
I bought Sands of Destruction at the Nintendo World store in New York. I played through the entire game, sidequests and all. And then I traded the game in to Gamespot to help pay for KH: Birth by Sleep. Sands of Destruction is a good game, and that would be fine if it were not for the hints of a greater game that could’ve been lurking around every corner. The story and battle system contain good ideas that were just not implemented as well as possible, and the graphics and music are wonderful. If you get a chance, and have a few days to play through it, give it a rent. Or not, I’m not partial.
To all you out there in the wide sea of the internet, I’m the Eternal Optimist.
Happy thoughts!
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