As a writer, there's not a lot that bothers me more than repeating myself. I don't like it because it means someone got paid to repeat the same mistakes that should have been fixed. Am I seriously going to have to put up with games having the same bungling mistakes for the rest of my gaming days? Plus, I have to find new creative ways to make fun of developers and publishers for making the same mistakes. (Even though I make this look easy, it's actually very hard work to come up with new insults for each bad game.)
Like everyone else, I figured with the Namco published Sigma Star Story, that any problems it had would be due to its uniqueness. I haven't every really seen a full hybrid of a side-scrolling shooter and an RPG before.
To my unamused surprise, I could have basically cut and pasted my complaints about all the other Namco games I've reviewed this year, and had it end up being a strikingly accurate review of Sigma Star Story.
Why aren't you guys over at Namco able to head these problems off in discussion? These aren't problems that only become evident once you're got pixels and polygons. These are flaws that should be obvious to a competent (not even good...just competent) producer and designer from that moment pencil hits paper. On top of that, you've seen them before...THIS YEAR!
For whatever reason, nobody stopped Sigma Star Story from shipping in this lackluster form, and what we the public end up getting to play is a flicker of original thinking encased in a gameplay vacuum that denies that flame any life.
Story
You're Recker, commander of Sigma Group. During your first mission out, your entire squad gets wiped out by the invading, and therefore evil, Krill. You're the only one who survives, and as such you get sent on a special mission. Your boss wants to send you on a "secret" mission. It's so secret other people that you don't know about don't even know about it. He'll make you get captured by the Krill, who will then use you for their military. Then you can destroy them from within. You agree to the plan, and then your commander slips a roofie into your drink, and then has his way with you...surgically.
When you come to, you get assigned to a backwater Krill outpost, and you get a parasite attached to you that allows you to pilot their craft. After you prove that you are skilled, you start to rise up their ranks, learning more about their plans, and totally not suspiciously broadcasting them back to the commander who, as time goes on, you find has violated you even more than you initially thought...surgically.
Gameplay
A side-scrolling shooter and an RPG sounds awesome, right? It's like peanut butter and chocolate! You level you character or your ship up, gain attack and defense bonuses, new power-ups and the like. UN Squadron (Area 88 in Japan) has a system that was pretty much like that, and it was a pretty good shoot 'em up. (Don't ever say 'schmup. It's dirty, and it's wrong. That's one to grow on.)
Ok, well, the difference between UN Squadron's successful hybridization and what the guys over at WayForward came up with is that WayForward decided to take it a step further. In addition to the ship leveling up, gaining new powerups, the handy leather carrying case and the set of steak knives, you have an isometric field map for traipsing about through the field maps. All story progression takes place in this area. You need to find items, and do all kinds of very important, very monotonous fetch quests that are simply an excuse to stick you in a random battle every 15 steps you take.
The random battles? Those are the shoot 'em up stages.
This is where WayForward's version of the RPG/Side Scrolling Shooter hybrid goes from "very interesting" to "you've just proven that you should never come up with an idea again". Sigma Star Story takes the biggest flaws of both genres, and fuses them together, much like the miserably bad Namco x Capcom did. You know the design team needs to get a clue when the game goes as far to include the hideous run/walk system that absolutely nobody likes. Just have the damn character move max speed all the time. There's nothing inherently fun about walking around, as I stated in my Death by Degrees review.
These things take from anywhere from a minute to three minutes. You have to kill a certain number of enemies before you can progress. Killing enemies and picking up the XP nodules are the only way you actually gain XP. All that killings stuff on the field maps? Completely freaking useless. (Although for some reason, killing things on the surface gives you bombs...that are conveyed to your ships.) It's all a big time wasting chore to artificially extend the life of gameplay, and break up the monotony of the constantly recycling shooting stages by switching it with tedium of a different type.
But wait. It gets even less fun. The game rationalizes the random shoot 'em up battles by saying that the ships and your parasites have a relationship. They communicate to one another. When a ship is in trouble it beams you up to take control of the ship. Notice it's "a ship" and not "your ship". You don't pilot one particular ship, you pilot them all, from things that look like troop landing pods to the troop transport itself. The only difference they have from one to the next is how fast they move. Absolutely no change in attack power, the number of guns, rate of fire, special attacks, nothing. It's all just how fast they move. This makes it really, really lame when you end up fighting a mid-boss who just likes to move from the ceiling to ground and from the ground to the ceiling. Certain ships just can't move out of the way in time, and you die.
The fact that your ship assignment is completely random, and the fact that these random battles get uninteresting within 10-20 minutes of gameplay due to the insanely high random encounter rate (I think they borrowed it from Suikoden IV.) render all of the interesting elements, like customizing your guns via three different component pieces, and your ships gradually getting stronger completely meaningless. Eating a bacon wrapped filet mignon encased in manure is not a pleasurable net experience. Just the same, it's impossible to enjoy any of the good points of Sigma Star Saga in light of all the fecal matter you're forced to encounter on the way there.
Unless there is something to be gained from the field map sequences, that part of the game needs to be completely excised for a player to be able to have any chance of enjoying the satisfaction that arises from this crossover of the RPG and the shoot 'em up worlds. Without it, that entire RPG combat aspect of the game is very, very obviously filler, (much like the horrid Arc the Lad: End of Darkness) and what's worse is that it reduces all the shooting sequences to mere filler as well. Awful, awful job there, design team.
There's not even a need for me to discuss weaknesses of the plot or the other constructs that have to be installed into the story to allow this whole cockamamie system to even get off the ground. When the game is this unenjoyable, you don't have to go into details about it.
Graphics
In the field, the sprites actually look quite nice. Inside the shooter engine, it's a different story. Pretty much everything in the shooter is bland, bland, bland. They very definition of a mixed bag. The game does, to its credit, handle everything without too much slowdown.
Audio
The audio fares better than the graphics. Even though it's kind of cheesy for them to just have the various members on board the craft your stationed on respond with the same word or spoken dialogue, but it does add that old throwback feel. The music isn't memorable, but it isn't deplorable either.
Overall
A good idea ruined by a design team that tried to get too cute. This game would have been a classic if they worked the upgrade system on your craft's gunnery into your planetside firearm, and gave you, the character stats and upgradeables as well. In addition, they needed to drop the space battle encounter rate by about ¼, give you one ship, and one ship only to take into combat, and come up with less contrived fetch quests. Alternately, they could have just stripped the field map portion of the game entirely and had a solid shooter, a la the previously mentioned UN Squadron.
They didn't, and instead, seemed to be actively attempting to form a pastiche of all the flaws from other Namco published titles released this year. In its released form Sigma Star Saga is a game that is devoid of any compelling reason to play through it. Gamers, look elsewhere for your GBA fun.
