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Summoner summons the fun within you.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 45
Date: July 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game will rock!The team Vilition is making great strides with their first crack at an RPG.Hey,they solved the anti-alising problem with thr Ps2,and the games id in Hi-Res!Its unique because you can summon(or call out)monsters to help you fight.You can control 5 people at once(and monsters)! The battles are all done real time and you can chain attacks to make combos(think of Vagrant Story with this feature).Very nice!

Really Strong Strenghts...Very Strong Weaknesses

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: January 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Volition's Summoner is a game in which it is easy to get lost...lost in the unnecessarily huge locations, lost in the insane amount of side quests, lost in the insanely slow pace, or lost in in the insanely high amount of text and story detail that means little or nothing; or in my case, all of them. Those, teamed up with somewhat shallow characters, a horrible frame rate, and a small scene count make Summoner one that any and all impatient RPGamer's should probably steer clear of.

However, during the last 10-15 hours (of a 40 hour quest, mind you), the game, while somehow getting slower, got much more interesting and increased in intensity very sharply. Also, later on, the game made sense finally, and from what I hear, Summoner II plays off of this game's plot beautifully, and also, from what I hear, Summoner II is so good that it's actually worth playing through this one just so that you can understand it better!

The graphics are totally a mixed bag, and actually a contradiction. You see, if you play this game with the camera zoomed in all the way, not only will the spell effects, mainly the projectile and summon effects be much more impressive, but also the textures, when viewed from up close, actually surpass any textures I've seen on even the XBox, all except for the Cube's Resident Evil titles. However, in order to win any battles, or find your way through countless obstructions, you'll have to back the camera up all the way, turning the textures to practically single colors, and turning the 30FPS to about 12FPS or so.

The sound effects are not only mostly recycled from PSX RPG foley discs, but also, during the whole second half of the game, the sound effects are almost cut out, and you hear one every few seconds, and that's while in intense combat! It's as if the programmers weren't sure if the polygons, textures, music and sound effects were too much for the new PS2 system, so they reduced the sound effect quantities to make sure it'd make it. For whatever reason, they did it that way. The voice acting is also a mixed bag, ranging from horribly dead, to perfect, to horribly overdone.

The music on the other hand, while commonly really just "ambient" music, is sometimes quite grand...I can think of three examples: the Lanelle Sewers, which is a sort of epic creepy theme, one of the forest themes, which sounds much like the Lord of the Rings themes, and the World Theme, which is simply incredible. Overall, every time you hear music, it's either good or better, but commonly the "music" is just a sort of beat or random notes.

The gameplay is cool enough with an original battle system, based off the chain attack idea, only where you can keep the chains neverending until you win if you're good enough, but that's nearly impossible, and the interface is nice and clean, with several types of equippable armor peices, a great special skill/magic system, and a great level up system (except that each character will probably only level up about once every 30 min of action, and with all the non-action parts of the game, that could stretch out to less than once an hour).

All in all, Summoner is something that's rewarding if stuck out to the end, and has certain merit, but also has severe weaknesses. Let's break it down for the end.
Plot Movement/Revelations: 6/10, Storyline: 10/10, Characters: 5/10, Battle System: 7/10, Interface: 6/10, Music: 7/10, Sound Effects: 2/10, Dialogue: 7/10, Graphics: 4~8/10 (Distant~Close), Voice Acting: 5/10, Replay: 4/10.

Both fun and frustrating.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The game summoner is the first game that I bought for my playstation 2. Ok let me first get the bad parts of the game aside.This game has the worst loading of any game I have ever played on all the game consoles. The game takes about two minutes to load each time. The game loads every time you go to a new area which is about every half-hour or so. The most annoying thing about the game is that the world map is really hard to travel on. First of all it is really hard to see where you are going. The character also moves very slowly on the world map and every other minute he/she comes in to battle which means more loading. Also when roaming around one of the towns it literally takes about an hour to get from one side of the town to the other. While you travel the towns it is very hard to find out where you are going and the maps dont seem to help very much. Now that I have said all the things I didnt like about the game let me explain the things I did. The towns and other various areas in the game seem very realistic and immerse you into the game. The voice acting goes very well with the characters in the story. The graphics are also good, maybe not spellbinding, but good. The fighting is semi-fun and the magic(especially the summons) are beautiful to watch. The use of chain attacks would normally be good, but its just repetative. The overall fighting is much like many of the PC games fighting styles. The story itself is very good and the people and enviorments go along with it perfectly. Just be ready to read alot of text explaining the religion and other aspects of the story. Overall this game is pretty fun, but has many problems to overcome. I suggest that all you RPG fans out there(like me) wait for a better RPG for the PS2 to come out.

It started out so well too...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 28, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Summoner is a good example of a game that starts out wonderful, then seemingly loses the interest of the people producing it. I honestly loved this game when I first got it. If I had written this review the first week, I'd have given it 4.5 stars. 45 hours into it however, finds me hating it more with every pixel. Here's why:

CONS: 1) Highly irritating choppy draw in on the scenary. Really kills the suspension of disbelief. 2) TERRIBLE camera controll makes you lose much of the granduer of the settings the creators put in. Case in point: the city of Lenele, where you spend most of the first part of your game, locks your camera angle in at a high, directly above view, making navigating the streets and seeing signs and people highly difficult and irritating. Tie that in with the fact that you spend most of your time going from point A to B, and that's alot of boring time spent staring at the top of Joseph's head and the pavement. It also SEVERLY detracts from enjoying the often great scenery they put together. 3) The advancement system breaks down at higher levels. In the beginning you are frequently leveling up, aquiring new skills, getting new armor and weapons etc. This is what makes RPG's fun. After level 20 (which is reached under halfway through) leveling up requires HUGE amounts of experience which is not made up for by larger rewards from creatures and quests. The weapons and armor you aquire also tend to be at best as good as what you have, and very rarely are better. This lack of character advancement leaves the weight to be carried by the story alone, and it doesn't cut it.

I am running out of space. ... ... ... for the rest of the review.

Not so impresive but some people like it

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is a typical RPG. There is nothing special about it. It tries hard to be both Diablo and Zelda all at once. While I dislike the game, my wife loves it. Perhaps it's because I'm a Diablo fan while she leans toward the Zelda side of things. I don't like the perspective the game uses as I feel it is hard to see where you are headed. Talking to NPC is tiresome because 99% of it is useless text information. If you are desperate for a PS2 RPG go for it, if not, wait for something better... Rent it first, because I think this is a love it or hate it game.

almost as good as Baldurs Gate!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

this game rocks!you can explore a lot of different places,although,as the other guy said,"the npc's are annoying.they say the same thing.talk to someone only if they have an exclamation mark on top of they're heads.(thats the best advice you will get)i do also wish the traders would have more weopons instead of fish and salt for sale!,and whats up with the doors,THEY WONT OPEN!oh, i almost forgot,the monsters are easily defeated.watch out for thieves,it gets messy.even though i said a lot of bad things about it,everything else is great!

Good Graphics, Storyline, etc. Above Average RPG

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

An above average rpg, nothing of Final Fantasy or Lufia fame, but definitely worth the hard earned money. Graphics are good, camera angles occasionally are annoying, but then again what game doesn't have that problem. Storyline is occasionally hard to follow, but very interesting and it sucks you in. This game is hard to pull away from. Buy it if you are an RPG fan, not if you are an occasional, fairweather fan.

A lackluster experience reinforced by miserable programming

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

As Summoner was one of the PS2's few somewhat attractive launch titles, I picked up a copy of the game for myself with my system. I wanted to like it. I really did. Unfortunately, there's little to like about this game.

First, you'll notice that the PC version of the game is, six months later, still in development. Saying that the PS2 port of the game was rushed would be an understatement. As in most American Action/RPG's the characters are uninteresting and completely without personality. They don't interact with anything in their world, and become dreadfully boring after a few hours. A compelling story is nowhere to be found.

The gameplay is hack-and-slash, and the controls are passable. The player AI, however, is laughable. Your allies do little but get in the way, and with up to five members of your party on screen at once, all hell can-and will-break loose.

Ah, and the graphics. Oh, yes: the lovely graphics. While Summoner performed poorly in the other categories, its graphical features are nothing short of embarassing. The game chugs along at a 10-15 fps crawl at times, making action sequences barely playable and every sequence in the game barely tolerable. On top of that, the environments take literally 35 seconds to load, and there can be up to 5 different environments in each town. Texture detail is lousy, and there are plenty of flaws as well: textures seem to just disappear from time to time, and some of the images used on the world map look truly awful.

In short, Summoner is lousy to play, has no interesting story or characters, and looks uglier than Janet Reno in the morning. You're better off burning your $...: at least that will produce some heat.

Could be better...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: December 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

There are some cool ideas, but overall... the execution seems weak to me. The storyline is complex, but the gameplay very thin. Basically you spend most of your time fighting boring encounters and wondering around trying to find the summoner rings to complete the quest.

Graphics are average - Mapping is terrible - Gameplay is average. - Replayability is very low.

Great RPG game for the PS2

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I really enjoyed this game. The plot took many twists and turns, and really helped keep me in the story. There were lots of quests that will keep you busy for sure. The one disappointing thing was the ending movie. It left me saying "That's it??" and feeling a little unsatisfied. As RPG games go, this is one of the better ones.

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