Although its development has been somewhat plagued by delays, the action RPG
Sudeki poised to take the Xbox by storm finally this June. I recently sat down
with a preview build, and from what I saw, Sudeki is certainly benefiting from
the extra time in development. The game features some great action elements,
easy to learn yet deep gameplay, nice graphics and an engaging storyline.
Sudeki
starts you off by putting you in control of Tal, a young man who has recently
become a junior officer in the Illumina guard. You soon become a guardian for
the Ailish, and embark on a quest to lift the veil of secrecy and reveal the
truth behind the land of Illumina.
As you
progress through the game, your party will grow four strong, incorporating Buki,
a human/animal mix and Elco, a one armed scientist. Switching between these
characters is extremely easy, requiring a simple push of the black and white
buttons. All in all the party system felt like Knights of the Old Republic,
with you controlling one character at a time and the game’s AI handling the
rest.
The
combat system is very action oriented. You will often find yourself thrust into
the heat of battle against around a dozen enemies, forcing you to block their
attacks and attack them when you have an opening. Combos consist of pressing
three buttons in succession at the right intervals and filling up your combo
meter. Each combo has different effects, either dealing a large amount of
damage to one enemy or damage to several enemies. These combos also have some
pretty cool animations, prompting your character to do all kinds to different
Matrix-style moves as they complete them. Using items in the heat of battle is
pretty easy, as items are hot-keyed onto the directional pad. Spell casting
isn’t quite as fluid, as you’ll need to open the menu in order to queue up a
spell to cast.
The
game will also switch into first-person mode when using a ranged weapon
character like Elco or Ailish. This transition takes a while to get used to,
but after the learning curve, it feels very natural and fluid.
The leveling system works similar to many other RPG
games, in that you customize your attributes and build them up as you level. By
leveling up, you will also gain access to Spirit Strikes, which work a bit like
magic spells and deliver copious amounts of damage to your enemies.
Although the build is still in preview form, the graphics
are shaping up to be very good. The entire game has a great sense of atmosphere
and has a very unique aesthetic quality to it, feeling almost like a Disney
movie. The characters are very well rendered with very high polygon counts.
The environments are also very good-looking and extremely detailed. The only
technical problems in the preview build were typical issues, like camera
problems and boggy framerates, but these should be cleaned up before the game’s
release.
While it’s been a long time in development, Sudeki is
finally getting ready to be released with fantastic graphics, exciting
action-RPG gameplay and a great storyline. Look for it this June.
