Magna Carta: Tears of Blood for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

I just don't understand what happened here. Atlus' Magna Carta: Tears of Blood should have been one of the most impressive role-playing games of the year... but ended up as one of its most arduous instead. The amazing thing is, that on paper, Magna Carta has a number of qualities worth rooting for -- an original battle system, a high profile character artist, excellent graphics, and a visual style that's all its own. But despite that promising build-up, Tears of Blood sadly falls short of its grand potential... way short.

In all fairness, Magna Carta is a beautiful-looking game if nothing else. The Landscape and Concept designer In-Jung Jang did an excellent job in his portrayal of the world of Efferia and has taken a lot of RPG clichés (desert town, mountain kingdom, floating castle, etc) and somehow made them unique and interesting. Moreover, these appealing designs have translated well into digital form with sharp backgrounds and impressive environments ranking among the elite in terms of detail. The spellcasting effects and monster concepts are almost as notable, and there's even an undocumented progressive scan feature unlocked by holding X and Triangle as the game boots up (be warned, though... this feature wasn't translated into English -- so press circle to accept).

If Magna Carta does have a graphical weakness, it's with the characters themselves. Though there's nothing wrong with the models or their animations directly (they're decent enough), the character designs are way out of place. Don't get me wrong, character artist Hyung-Tae Kim is one of my favorite contemporary artists, and much like the KOF master Falcoon, uses a superb level of detail in his designs. Unfortunately, they just don't work in Tears of Blood. Nine times out of ten, it's incredibly difficult to tell what gender your characters are (nobody in the office believed that Calintz was a dude until I could prove it with cutscene voice-overs) and most folks were robed far too elaborately to fit their personality. There are a few exceptions, of course (Lehas and Reith come to mind), but not enough to really wow you.

Luckily, Magna Carta has a respectable storyline. As the aforementioned androgynous hero Calintz (first introduced in the Korean-only PC role-player Phantom of the Avalanche), players are thrust into the middle of a full-scale war that's been brewing for hundreds of years. As it turns out, the human race was forced from its homeland because of a serious plague before washing ashore in the land of Efferia. From the moment the humans arrived, they were at odds with the tribes of Yason (magical beings with strangely-shaped ears) and eventually went into battle against them. As Calintz, users are the captain of the "Tears of Blood" -- a deadly mercenary group hired by the government to help bring an end to the bitter feud. They're just the people to do it too, as the band was formed out of hatred for the Yason...as its members have all had loved ones killed by them.

Naturally, the super secret battle-ending mission undertaken by the Tears of Blood doesn't go according to plan, and after some swift ass-kicking, Calintz meets up with a mysterious priestess that's lost her memory (Reith). This sets up the rest of the storyline as Calintz takes off with his new companion and several others to find out who this woman is and how they can work together to stop the Yason. Happily the tale is told with a modicum of sophistication and some pretty cool plot twists, but does seem to drag on a bit in the beginning before it really gets going. Expect plenty of dialogue.

Despite its solid storyline, Magna Carta fumbles like Jack Tripper the moment any of the characters actually speak. With the exception of Calintz himself, the voice acting in Tears of Blood is absolutely horrendous. Ill-timed, badly-acted, and poorly cast, it's the worst example of videogame vocals since Last Alert in the TurboGrafix days. Granted, the sound team does try to hide this hiccup with a nice collection of musical tunes of the wind and string variety, but nothing can save your ears from the eventual speech-driven horrors that await them.

Given the game's strong points in its presentation and visuals, you'd think that the bad audio could be overlooked... especially if the gameplay mechanics stood out above everything else. Unfortunately, the poorly-executed battle system doesn't stand out at all and runs into too many problems for its own good.

To its credit, Magna Carta does try some interesting things with its concept. Sort of like a cross between Shadow Hearts's Judgment Wheel and the Deathblows from Xenogears, Tears of Blood employs a turn-based battle system that requires you to push the appropriate face buttons in succession. Three successful presses means a hit for your Trinity Circle and a hit on the enemy, and how well you time your sequence determines how much of an imitative boost you'll get. It's kind of neat in theory, but in practice it's way too complicated to be enjoyable for anyone but the most forgiving of RPG fans, and it gets worse the more you realize you have to keep up with.

To start, you'll have to command three characters at once. But instead of being able to swap between members while the AI controls the remaining two (ala Star Ocean), players can only manipulate one fighter at a time -- effectively rendering that unused pair useless until their next turn. What's more, is that getting to that next turn can take forever when facing off against multiple enemies because of a lame initiative slider that almost always guarantees that your enemy will strike first before your next opportunity. That factor alone makes the battles drag on for much longer than they have to

Combat is further complicated by the fact that characters can only use attacks if the area they're inhabiting is blessed with a certain kind of Chi (there are eight types, with complementary and opposing effects for all). This means that if you use an attack too much it'll drain the entire chi of that type from the area and take away your offense until it regenerates. This can make the battles drag on even more, but at least party members can switch fighting styles so that they can drain chi of other types while they wait. There's also a whole Talisman and Lantern sub-strategy that players can use to power up area chi to higher levels, but like the combat system itself, it can get tedious and overly complicated.

But perhaps the most unnerving thing of all is that despite the complexities I've already talked about, you're severely penalized for messing up even once. In other words, if you miss one button during an attack sequence, you'll lose that entire turn, some chi to go along with it, and the enemy gets an initiative bonus -- making it bad for you all the way around. I do like the fact that perfectly timing a sequence in order allows you to learn new moves for additional strikes, though -- it's definitely an incentive to get "Great" ratings every time (especially if the teachers known as Dojo Masters aren't around). But as is the recurring theme with Magna Carta, even this gets overly convoluted as you're forced to use Standard, Combo, and Counter versions of each style. Naturally, all of them employ different advantages and disadvantages, but all are accessed via a clunky interface, and most don't feel very needed.

As you can imagine, getting through all of these situations can be pretty time consuming... especially since you'll probably be moving at a snail's pace while walking around the overworld. You'll do that because Magna Carta employs a "Dash and Detect" system of movement. You can either "Dash" around a dungeon, not see the enemies in front of you, and be surprised for a combat penalty -- or "Detect" everything around you with your sword drawn. Not only will your vision be clearer making you less likely to be surprised, but you'll also get to move at speeds not seen since role-playing's 16-bit days before the sprint button was invented. Oh, and I also can't forget to mention the camera. It's static and can't be moved while traveling or participating in battle, so expect plenty of weird and hard-to-see angles rather often.

It's not all doom and gloom for Tears of Blood, though, as there are a few little mentionables that help it out a bit. A clever little relationship mini-game, for instance, allows players to grow closer to their teammates for more effective results in battle (re: better friendships mean better initiative). Players can also earn additional goodies (or punishments) by getting their fortunes told and the ability to upgrade your equipment through special quests. It's not much, sure, but it's something.

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