Story
To be honest there isn’t much of a storyline to this game. If you watch the cut scene at the beginning of the game you see the Pioneer 1, well most of it, it has been dismantled and made into a city because your home planet is dying and you have to find a new planet to live on. Great concept, I thought it was awesome when I first played it. Anyway in the cut scene you see the wonderful city and the Pioneer 2 in orbit. They connect their … networks…. or something… I dunno. Basically, beam from city joins with beam from Pioneer 2. Then there is an explosion caused by an unknown entity, which I’m guessing is the “I’m trying to be invisible but failing because you can see me thing in the background” thing.
-Loading screen…-
Your character starts off on the bridge of the Pioneer 2. Something has happened to the Pioneer 1. They’ve lost all communications with the city, which may have something to do with the explosion. Just a thought. The Principal of the Pioneer 2 then asks you to go and investigate the abnormalities and report back, and on a personal look out for his son who went down to investigate the planet for himself. So you gear up and head down on a training mission with a high level AI who helps you kill the suddenly-gone-insane-wildlife and gain exp.
After that you can do lots of extra missions and gain Meseta (money) to spend in the very limited shops and exp. OR you can go down to the planets surface and try and get through the suddenly-gone-insane-wildlife to get to the first boss. A dragon!!! … Then you can get to the next level underground caves. Boss-giant shielded worm. Then a weird robotic factory of some sort. Boss- obviously insane computer centre AI with a post box attack system. A red post box looking thing springs up n the middle and you have to attack it but it can hurt you so be careful. Anyway final level is a weird alien ship/rock that you can only access by touching 3 pillars that you will probably stumble upon in your quest. I don’t know what the final boss is but its huge, and powerful so bring lots of trimates and be a very high level (for easy mode) with the best armour possible, or just until you get bored levelling up and go on a “I must finish this game winning spree”. The story is not that interesting but try and keep up because it adds a beautifully executed twist to the end of the game which would make no sense if you didn’t know what the story was going on about.

Gameplay
To be brutally honest I LOVE THIS GAME., but there are major faults I have with the game play.
First is the exp system, it takes forever to level up your character so you spend ages on one level trying to get to the next area. This lengthens the story out but it makes the game very repetitive and you begin to know the “spawn” point of the enemies so well.
Second is your camera angle. It’s difficult to adjust so targeting an enemy is a pain. Then you have to run and try and get a sight on it so you can kill it.
Third is attacking, once you start you have o combo to make the attack worthwhile. This is because there’s at least a two second gap between your first attack and you moving if you didn’t want to attack. Accuracy is also a problem so at the start as a ranger (will explain later) you need a high accuracy rifle to actually be able to shoot the enemy. You accuracy does increase with the combo though so that makes up for it. (I never knew that until I looked in the manual before writing the review to find out what the name of the playable fighting characters is called… Hunters I think I never did find out…).
Finally is the speed of your character. Especially when fighting the first boss you’ll be shouting at the screen “GO FASTER” because that attack hurts. You can upgrade speed (“evasiveness”) later on.
Apart from these faults the game is awesome to play. I haven’t actually played it online but I have played multiplayer and I can see why it would be so much better with more players with having to sacrifice viewing space. Your characters are highly customisable so you can adapt it to your playing style. You can decide whether you want speed, strength or high technique capability just by items etc you equip and the items you feed your Mags (will explain later too in the same bit as the other explain later).
Each level increases in length with 2 areas for the first level, 3 for the second etc. These are separated from each other by teleport systems. The enemies get stronger and come in greater numbers in each area so each level doesn’t have the same boring level of difficulty all through the level.
Armour has upgradeable qualities to. Depending on what armour you get, some have slots. These lots can be used with items bought or found but these are usually available after later levels. These can be used to upgrade specific stats that you want upgrading.
Weapons can be upgraded by finding –grinders. These can upgrade you gun by +1(mono-), +2(di-) and +3(tri-). Each level up increases your guns power and accuracy etc. Weapons do have a maximum upgrade though but they are very high (I think I used to have a level 25 Varista pistol on my old character).

The loading screens are quite unique as well. They offer the player something to do while loading. It’s not much, the ability to change the colour of the loading screen for the quests, the direction and speed of the teleporting device which takes you to the surface and you can control a little dot around the screen. Not interesting but a cool feature. Hopefully we’ll see more of this in other games.

Combos are also time controlled. You can’t stand there hitting the shoot button repeatedly, you have to press the button like: fire, wait, fire, wait, fire. This does get annoying when you have a group of enemies running towards you but I think it makes the game because it would be too easy if you could just rapid fire your enemies to death.

I know this is the PC version but you try finding a decent screenshot of it on Gamecube.

Characters
Characters are split up into 3 main groups and 4 sub groups so you have plenty of choice when creating you character.
Hunter: Are very skilled at melee and can wield all melee weapons. They can only handle very basic firearms. Not that easy to use as you can get damaged by other enemies that are close whilst attacking with melee based weaponry.
HUmar: Male Human Hunter, Most balanced character at levelling up. Can use techniques, can’t see/use traps.
HUnewearl: Female Newman Hunter, Low HP but high technique power and melee combat. Can’t use/see traps.
HUcast: Male Android Hunter, Very high melee attack but unable to use techniques. Can see/use traps.
HUcaseal: Female Android Hunter, High accuracy and evasion and can see/use traps.

Ranger: Are experts with gun but can use only very basic melee weapons. Not easy to aim but I would recommend rangers as a beginner character.
RAmar: Human Male Ranger, Great Accuracy and balanced abilities. Can use techniques but can’t see/use traps.
RAmarl: Human Female Ranger, Low HP but strong technique to support ordinary weapon attacks. Can’t see/use traps.
RAcast: Android Male Ranger, High attack power but can’t use techniques. Can use/see traps.
RAcaseal: Android Female Ranger, High defensive capabilities but can’t use techniques. Can see/use traps.

Force: Are expert technique users but they are very hard to use as they are very difficult to aim, they have low HP and TP runs out quickly. Androids can’t be Force’s as they cannot use techniques.
FOmar: Human Male Force, Low Hp and defence mean you have to kill enemies fast or you’ll die. They have fast combat skills but low attack power. Can’t see/use traps.
FOmarl: Human Female Force, Balanced techniques and attack power. Not many weapons available. Can’t see/use traps.
FOnewm: Newman Male Force, Powerful attack techniques but can also use many other techniques. Can’t see/use traps.
FOnewearl: Newman Female Force, Very Weak combat skills but very powerful techniques with the highest amount of TP. Can’t see/use traps.

Mags are small creatures created by scientists on your old world. They aid you in your fight but they need to be upgraded to be of any use. To upgrade Mags you feed them items you buy/pick up on your quests. Once upgraded you gain abilities like it heals you during combat or you get photon blasts, which deal high amounts of damage to enemies in range/direction. Their stats also help your stats so the further you upgrade the Mag the more your stats are upgraded when equipped.

Overall I give this game a 9/10 because it’s just awesome and I would recommend anyone play it on the Gamecube…

Playing this game on the Wii though, I would give 0/10. This is because I had a hugely powerful level 35 account with all the glitch items used for tonnes of money and very powerful weapons. Until I got the Wii and decided I would play it on it… THE STUPID THING DELETED ALL OF MY DATA, EVERY SINGLE GAME!!!!!
So don’t play it on the Wii play it on the Gamecube.

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