Review #725: Eragon(Gameboy Advance)

 As bad as the movie. Potentially worse.

 To think that this piece of garbage scored average reviews on release! Eragon on the Gameboy Advance is a turn-based RPG that gets everything wrong and does little right. Hideous graphics, bland story and poor gameplay make for one unforgettable game. For all the wrong reasons.

 The game follows the plot from the movie which follows the plot from the Book, and as it's wont to do, a little bit is lost every time they adapt the adaptation. But, long story short, Eragon is the main character and is NOT a dragon, he comes across an egg which hatches into the Dragon Saphira, and they form a weird mental bond. But the bad guy of bad guys learns about the birth of a new Dragon Rider and sets Eragon's village ablaze, so now Eragon is on a journey to fulfill his destiny and save himself from the bad guy's forces. The story is told very haphazardly and the dialogue is pretty bad, I think I got the gist of the story, but I'm not sure. There's little to no character development aided by dialogue that is flat as a board, there's no flavor or personality for each character! Plus, it lasts a scant 10 hours, and that's counting at least 2-3 hours worth of grinding.

 Turning on the game reveals that it looks horrible. I mean, I do have a strong dislike for digitized sprites, but these characters look terrible. Their dialogue portaits are even worse. As per any other RPG, it follows the tried and true formula of getting into a town, learning of where to go next, get there, probably through a dungeon, rinse and repeat. What is fairly novel is how poor the directions you get are! "The city is to the south". So you explore the south and find nothing. And hopefully you remember, because most of the time you won't be told where to go twice! The game does a brilliant job at keeping you on-track, because if you dare turn your character in the wrong direction, you'll probably trigger a random encounter you're too weak to survive. Oh, yes, it's bad. Progressing through the story is a huge hassle because I found myself saving frequently and often, since I never knew if I might just step into the wrong section of the overworld and trigger a random encounter that would cream me in seconds flat. Heck, the very second town you visit has a few sidequests. One of these sidequests is way tougher than you can handle right then, but there's no suggestion or hint that you're way in over your head! The game IS a grindfest, through and through. I grinded a bit, and this one time I felt I must've had done something wrong since mages could two-shot me, so I consulted a FAQ. I was doing nothing wrong, but the FAQ suggested grinding to level 100 before progressing with the story. I was level 52. The maximum level seems to be about 400, by the by, but regardless, expect to grind if you want to progress through the game. I'd suggest avoiding the game entirely, but that's just me.

 The combat, at first, is really fun. Which are some of my favorite JRPGs of all time? Legaia and Xenogears. I love JRPGs that cram in a few fighting game mechanics. Well, Eragon has you combining the A and B buttons to perform your attacks, with particular combinations unleashing super moves. Sounds great, right? At first, it is. But by the end of the game you'll be so tired of fighting battles, battles that drag on for too long since you have to input about four or more button presses per party member. Which is sad, because special moves have different properties. There are about 15 different(Not kidding!) status effects you could inflict on the enemy, or a few attacks that hit the entire enemy team! Heck, during enemy turns, you can time the B button to block melee attacks, or the A button to dodge arrows or magic. It's interesting, I guess, but battles drag on for too long, and the 'special attacks' don't look too different from basic A and B attacks, which makes combat lack any kind of oomph that could keep it exciting.

 Magic is all kinds of dumb, for starters, spell cost you HP, since there's no mana. When using magic, you have to navigate clunky menus in order to find the spell you want, but there's no description of what they do. Heil is a healing spell, so what is "Life Force"? Is it another healing spell? I don't know, the game won't tell me. Besides, using a spell will trigger a weird timing minigame, a blue gauge will unstably increase and decrease, and depending on when and where you hit the A button, the damage you deal(and the HP that'll cost you) will increase. Using spells with characters not built for magic will downright murder them. It's a bad system and poorly balanced too. For instance, I was building Brom and Eragon as melee/tank hybrids, with Angela as a Herbalist/Magic user. Angela can't be taken outside of towns, so she was underleveled. Later in the game you enter a mansion and get assaulted by wizards and other baddies. The wizards would one-shot Angela, my mage, and could two-shot both Eragon and Brom. And these spells would hit the entire party. Needless to say, I spent that entire section of the game running away from battles. This was the time I consulted a FAQ. Eventually, Angela leaves the party and you have to go through a six-battle gauntlet, a few which had these mages. I nearly gave up on the game since there was no way to kill the mages fast enough, even if I equipped Eragon with a bow. I almost quitted the game. I remembered I had a SLAYER item that was instakill on basic enemies, used it on Brom and performed a party-hitting attack and somehow got through the gauntlet, 8 tries later. It seems the developers knew how bad it got, because right after that section you get to exploit a bug that'll give Murtaugh as many free levels as you want. And you should, because the game is poorly balanced and, if you value your time, this is the best use of your time spent with the game.

 Building characters is very weird. You have to set a 'Focus' before a character levels up, between "Hunting", "Magic", "Herbalist", "Weapon" and "Endurance", which change how your stats develop between levels.  Herbalist is pretty much mandatory on your after-thought character(I had Angela and Katrina as Herbalists) because it's the only way to make potions, the most reliable way of healing. Because, by the by, you can't buy potions anywhere in the game. And you need Herbalist levels to be able to pick up herbs, and the level requirement can vary between 8 or 70 just because. Hunting also felt useless, but it's the only way to access a few equipment pieces. Regardless, I avoided Hunting entirely. Endurance is pretty neat, because once you hit level 25 you get free healing between rounds. Weapon is pretty much a necessity since it's the only way to get new combos. Regardless, there's no correct way to build your characters because the difficulty is all over the place. Just do whatever you feel is better and hope for the best.

 In what I hope to god was an attempt at parodying RPGs, characters have like 10 different stats, and every single weapon and piece of equipment you find will arbitrarily increase and decrease your stats. You might find a sword that reduces you 'STR' rating, yet, for whatever reason, increase your overall damage output. You may find a new armor that decreases all your stats but 'TUF', which seems to be a different stat than 'DEF' or 'HP'. There's no rhyme or reason behind the stat changes each weapon or armor provides. In the end I just gave up and only changed my weapon if it increased the "DMG" output or my armor if it increased my 'DEF' stat. It's so dumb.

 Eragon is a masterclass in how NOT to make a turn-based RPG. Horrible turn-based battles that take forever to finish, a poorly told bland story, boring, interchangeable characters, a horrible need to grind for hours, a broken difficulty curve and a near unintelegible stat spread. Eragon is as bad as turn-based RPGs can get. If there's anything good I can say about the game is that at least it's not glitchy, and the only bug in the game works in the player's advantage.
 2.0 out of 10