It doesn't take much looking around the gaming industry to hear the cries that video games are becoming stagnant. Despite the cavalcade of same-as-they-ever-were sequels drawing respectable sales numbers, many of the people who truly love video games think that companies need to start thinking outside the box more often. Atlus, on the other hand, is a company that has established a reputation for high-quality titles that are at least a little out of the mainstream. That reputation, combined with the prospect of shortages that a limited print run like their seminal tactical game, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, would cause me to pick up a copy of Riviera: The Promised Land in a hurry. It's no stretch to say that Atlus has, in conjunction with Sting, brought the world another role-playing game unlike anything that we have seen before. However, it may not have been wise to push so many envelopes all at once.
In Riviera, you control Ein, a warrior of the gods known as a grim angel. Ein is sent out with another grim angel, Ledah, on a mission to destroy the land of the sprites, Riviera, to prevent Ragnarok from taking place. However, during a battle, he is nearly killed, and wakes up in the town of Elendia in Riviera where two girls from the town are tending to his wounds. In gratitude, he helps them defend Elendia, meets a sorceress and an arc (which is like a sprite but with batlike wings) and must eventually decide whether to save their homeland or help to complete the gods' plan.
One of the major themes of the game is personal choice, and this is expressed by the interplay of the various grim angels who make an appearance. One becomes a grim angel by making a personal sacrifice to obtain a powerful weapon called a diviner. Ein gave up his wings in exchange for the golden sword called Einherjar, and over the course of the game, you find out what each other grim angel gave up and how it has affected them all. You also spend a lot of time watching Ein debate (either with his party members or with his telepathic cat familiar) what he should do about the orders to destroy Riviera.
In this vein, the game gives you control. This in itself is not unusual, but Riviera does not require complex conditions to trigger certain endings. Instead, you are given a number of relatively minor decisions to make over the course of the game which influence how Eins companions view him. After the final boss, you view the ending most favorable to the partner who holds Ein in the most esteem. There is also an ending that requires you to make all four of the party members hate Ein, but this is not accessible until you have cleared the game once with each of the other four endings.
Despite this theme, other than controlling what ending you get, the game is fairly linear. Needless to say, you don't get to decide whether Ein goes back to the gods' side. You're also restricted in how you move. The party is automatically transported from Elendia to each dungeon and back. In an area, the group moves from screen to screen, with a complete fade-out between each. Once there, you have no more than four choices what to do (each of which is either moving to another room or examining an item or location), initiated by pressing a directional arrow. There is no exploring to be done, and you have few meaningful choices within a level. Worse still, you are restricted in how many things you can examine by trigger points (referred to throughout the game, of course, as TP). You start each dungeon with a set number and get more if you do well in battles, and use one each time you examine anything labeled in red. If you run out...no more looking around the rooms you enter.
The designers used this set up to change the pacing. Rather than doing hours of near-mindless fighting followed by large stretches of plot, you get a little bit of narrative in each room. This means that neither the story nor the mechanical elements ever drift too far from the player's consciousness. It's refreshing to play through an RPG where you are expected to pay attention at all times rather than being forced through interminable cut scenes interspersed with long periods of running around and fighting insignificant battles.
The battle system is, in some respects, just like most other RPGs. Each character gets actions which happen immediately, and when they get the action depends on their speed and the last action they took. However, in Riviera, your actions are completely item-based. You are allowed to bring four items into battle, and your characters must choose one to use each round. What each item does varies based on a character's skill, although anyone can use any item in a pinch. Also, both sides are on a 3 x 2 grid, and position matters because some attacks affect an entire row or have effects that change based on where the victim is positioned. You choose three characters per battle, and place them in a 'V' shape on the battlefield at the start of a fight.
The most challenging part of this game is, surprisingly, inventory management. The game's designers took two concepts that are individually annoying weapon breakage and limited inventory space and combined them to create a constant headache. You have only 15 item slots, and with four of your five characters needing multiple weapons (Ein's diviner is the only item in the game with unlimited uses), you won't have much room for defense, healing or even alternate attack methods. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that you get a new item at the end of each battle, and won't know what it does until and unless you decide to keep it. Regardless of what you decide, the vast majority of fights will end with your party throwing something on the ground that will never be seen again.
The inventory problems in Riviera also tie into character growth. Most items have an experience bar for one or more characters. Each time a character with a bar uses it, the meter fills up. Once the meter is full, the character gains the ability to use a special attack, called an overdrive, with that item and gains some points in their stats. The game does provide a limitless number of practice battles, where using an item doesn't bring it any closer to being destroyed, but players will spend a lot of time plodding through easy battles wasting turns on useless items trying to gain a few hit points.
This title borrowed from the fighting genre to deal with special attacks. The party has a three-part "overdrive" gauge, which increases by both dealing damage and by being hit. Each weapon a character has mastered has a special attack associated with it that uses one to three levels of overdrive, and any party member can make such an attack once the bar has filled enough. Most skills only drain the energy from the gauge, although Disaresta, the skill associated with Einherjar, will shatter the gauge, preventing you from using any further special abilities for the duration of the battle. Changing your party's formation also requires the overdrive meter to be at least partially filled, although it does not drain any power.
The enemies get a similar meter, called "rage". Theirs is only in two parts, and it fills when they are damaged, but decreases when a monster attacks. After it hits the halfway point, each foe gets to use a better attack. Once full, the enemy will use its own ultimate skill, which depletes the entire rage meter. Killing an enemy will make part of the gauge permanently full, so you'll suffer more of the stronger assaults as a battle continues.
The graphics in this title are nothing out of the ordinary. Characters are very small and have a very minor amount of animation. There is a lot of contrast between people and things and the background; characters are colorful and mildly anime-styled, while backgrounds are dreary and ominous. There are a number of still images at various points in the game which are very pretty, but you'll spend most of the time looking at the backs of your party members.
There is one scene in Riviera which may upset parents. Ein spends a lot of his time in Elendia trying to see his traveling companions in the bath, and he can eventually succeed. If he makes it in, you get a still showing a number of females including at least one child nude. It's not hardcore or suggestive, and it probably should raise the game's rating above "Teen" (which it currently bears), but the image is there nonetheless.
The sound in the game is very well done. Each party member has a number of voice samples, and they all sound appropriate to both the character and the situation. They are used a little too often, but there are enough to keep gamers from getting too sick of them. The other effects sound just like you would expect from a fantasy game. The music is not catchy, but it is appropriate and adds to the experience admirably. All of it sounds good on the Game Boy Player, and the handheld does a serviceable job with it. Riviera probably boasts the best audio in a GBA game that doesn't have "Castlevania" in the title, and you'll actually want to listen to it while you play.
There are a number of extras in the game, though none is anything special. There is an optional dungeon available after clearing the game where you take the party into hell and eventually battles Hades himself. Oddly, you enter this level with fixed abilities and items rather than what you accumulated through the main game. There are also a number of collections to complete over the course of the game, such as items and their overdrives or character portraits. None of these features add much to the replay value of the game. Unless you really want to see all five endings, once through the game is more than enough.
I'll be the first to admit that the gaming industry needs innovation, but Sting flat-out got it wrong when making this title. They tried to cram too many unusual features into the game, and though each is interesting and has potential individually, the resulting hodgepodge is no better than the average RPG. Despite being one of the prettier-looking and sounding GBA games on the market, there's no real reason to add Riviera to your collection.
