Summon Night: Swordcraft Story

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story puts the player in the role of a young apprentice Craftknight, who has entered himself in a competition to become a Craftlord. Craftlords are the governing body of the island of Wystern, and besides having the ability to create powerful weapons, they control the goings on about the island. The main character, who can be male or female, is the child of a Craftlord who died three years before, and the competition is being held amongst all the apprentices to find a successor. The main character gets paired up with one of four guardian beasts who will assist him or her on his quest. A guardian beast is a monster that assists in battles by being able to use magic and support attacks to help the player. With one of the four unique Guardian Beasts in tow, the player character sets off to ascend the ranks of the competition. However, there is much more at stake than meets the eye in this competition, as earthquakes begin to shake the island of Wystern, rivalry between the two guilds of apprentices begins to climb, and unforeseen forces begin weighing heavily upon the competition. Soon the player must embark not only to become the next Craftlord, but also to save those he cares about.

The story may be generic, but the game play is quite fresh and entertaining. In order to compete in the competition to become a Craftlord, the player must forge new weapons in order to compete with the next combatant. Axes, swords, drills, spears, and knuckles create the five different classes of weapons that the player will create throughout the course of the game. Each of the five different classes handles differently and has their own strengths and weaknesses. Using the right weapon against the right combatant in the competition can be beneficial and even change the tide of battle.

The game does not entirely consist of battling in the competition, though. In order to forge weapons, the player must acquire techniques for different weapons. Techniques are basically recipes for the weapons, giving the amount of each material necessary to make them. In order to gain the appropriate materials, the player must harvest them from the massive dungeon that lies in the center of the island of Wystern. Much of the game will be spent scouring the dungeon, fighting the many different enemies, and gathering items which can be turned into materials for forging better weapons. Fortunately, the dungeon-crawling sections rarely become tedious, as they are broken up by story segments which can lead to other dungeons, tournament bouts, or even some of the myriad of side quests throughout the game which can allow the player to gain new, powerful techniques or items.

Graphically, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story is nice but nothing spectacular. The player will spend the vast majority of the game wandering through the large dungeon in the center of the town, or completing side quests throughout Wystern. In that respect, the same buildings and architecture will be seen over and over again, and the design of the dungeon, although interesting, lacks variation. When the player does get to leave Wystern to see the other environments, they all look nice and offer decent variation, but nothing in the game is jaw dropping or too original. In battle, the spell effects and sprites are all nicely designed and well animated, with some of the bosses being tremendous in size and having very interesting attack animations, but once again are nothing to marvel at in the later years of the Game Boy Advance. This could be due to the fact that this game is over three years old, but even given that, the graphics in this game are pretty standard at best.