Monster MadnessĪzure Dreams' colorful, vibrant graphics never look ambitious, but they suit the overly innocent style well enough, as does the score.
Insufficient instructions and complicated controls also result in a steep learning curve and confusion. Your biggest challenge, though, is overcoming the poor Japanese-to-English translation with its vague item descriptions and bewildering doublespeak. This aspect, in addition to the hidden traps that can permanently handicap your weapons, makes your success or failure the frustrating result of blind luck and chance encounters. Because you don't retain these points, however, your progress hinges more on collecting randomly placed weapons, eggs, and treasure than on skill or smart fighting. Leveling and Language BluesĮach time you enter the tower, your experience, hit points, and attack and defense levels reboot to the minimum, foreing you to level," or kill enemies repeatedly to attain status.
On your 15th birthday, you must venture into the tower to help your village and to woo a love interest who's being courted by another. The locals will pay well for the tower's monster eggs, which are hatched to produce "familiars" (or fighting companions), ranging from flower beasts to mini-dragons. In Azure Dreams, you live in a village on the cusp of the Monster Tower, a dangerous, sky-high labyrinth. One thing's for sure-it'll be hard to pass up when it hits stores in May, even if just out of curiosity. With all its different gameplay styles, Azure Dreams could very well be the "mutt" of RPGs. Minigames abound, too (like bowling, monster racing and more), and we're sure there's plenty more we've yet to see. You can even save different romances to the Memory Card and play out each episode separately, which can result in completely different endings. You even get to work on acquiring a love interest! There are seven eligible ladies who you can try to win over. You might choose to help someone at one point, while at another you'll ignore a plea for assistance. Decisions you make anytime during play will directly affect the game's outcome. Two monsters can travel with you at any time, and how they grow depends on how you nurture them.Īzure Dreams also offers a fairly non-linear story. Battle takes place in real time in these dungeons, and you can enlist the help of numerous kinds of monsters that you first catch (as Monster Eggs), and then breed into full-grown critters.
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For example, in the tower, each level is randomly generated, making for a new and different experience every time you play (similar to the Mysterious Dungeon series in Japan). This alone sounds rather basic, but the depth of gameplay involved with everything you do is what makes this game so enjoyable. Then you use that hard-earned dinero back in town to create more structures and buy better equipment. Inside, you seek out treasure and destroy monsters to gain experience and make money. The tower is where the bulk of the game takes place. Azure Dreams (abbreviated from its Japanese title, Other Life, Azure Dreams) is an interesting game that can best be described as a new-school dungeon dweller with a variety of unique and innovative twists that set it apart from anything we've seen thus far.Īzure Dreams revolves around a town called Monsbaia, which you help develop, and a huge nearby tower called the Tower of Monsters. Konami's latest RPG is a bit different from its last two PlayStation ones ( Suikoden and Vandal-Hearts).
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