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Great RPG story

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I loved this game. Initially the graphics disappointed me but the game is heavy on mood and story and that is what makes a good RPG. RPGs are meant to have a certain length to them and this one delivers in spades. By the end you really feel as if you have taken an epic journey. It makes me wonder how much better games will be down the road when the technology catches up with the storylines and produces games that are as visually attractive as they are imaginative. This one is very imaginative but the graphics are primitive by todays gaming standards. That has generally been a problem with all RPGs. They take so much longer to produce than an FPS or adventure game that the graphics are never as good.

If you don't mind the graphics and like a true RPG this is your game!

The bad reviews are accurate, but so is mine

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: February 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I thought this game was great, for the same reasons that other reviewers hated it.

I'm a father now, mid thirties, and frankly, I'm too old to judge a game by dazzling graphics. I don't care if this PS2 game has graphics that are at a PS1 level of quality. Although I must admit, the main character does look a bit like a corpse. :) So other reviewers can complain about dated graphics, but it doesn't bother me.

And other reviewers have made mention of the long, lesiurely plot, overly big areas to explore, and over-abundance of NPCs. Again, the reviewers are accurate -- those things do exist, and if they hate them, that's fine. But for me, a guy who likes games like BG1, BG2, and Arcanum, it was sooo nice. I get home late from work, I'm tired, and I don't want to play a game that requires lots of button mashing. I enable the options for auto-chaining my attacks, sit back, relax, and stroll through the game world, chatting with random characters, taking out a few bad guys, and working on my character's stats and inventory so that the next battle will be even better.

Of course, a few times the game's size did annoy me. I probably talked to each merchant in the Lenele market twice, just because I couldn't recall who was who. I looked online for a full complement of printable maps but never found anything. It would have helped me a lot to just have printed maps with each NPC flagged. But for some reason, that really didn't bug me that much.

What did bug me was the locked camera view in the cities. Out in the open, you can set the camera to high (overhead) view, or low (over the shoulder) view. But in the Lenele market, for example, the camera locks to high view. And since I couldn't pull the camera back far enough to see a lot of surrounding buildings, I had a horrible time getting oriented. If I had been able to use the low view, I could have at least used the horizon to know my general direction and place. This alone caused me to knock 1 star off the review.

Anyway, to conclude: Summoner has lots of characters, tons of dialogue, joinable NPCs with a little bit of party banter, plenty of stats and inventory management, lots of areas, many non-linear quests, and dated graphics with a (sometimes) annoying camera angle. And battles are very configurable -- you can button-mash with chained attacks and turn-based play, or you can do like me and set the battles to continuous mode with auto-chaining. Since I care less about graphics and more about story, this is a great game for me.

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.

Summoner

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: September 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is an awesome game. My daughter and I love it. I'm not a very good role model, because we are always at the computer. We have summoner 2 but were unable to find summoner until now. It was worth the wait!

Not Very pleased, at all

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 16
Date: April 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game ... is very bad. 2 get 2 the point.
A. The graphics were awful, looked like something from early N64, not PS2
B. The story plot was bad also.
C. world was huge, you could easily get lost and that took any of the little fun out of the game.
and D. It was confusing, there were a lot of little mini-quests, but the problem was, even finding how to solve them.

Anyhoo, i could go on and on about how bad this game was. But if you want 2 figure it out 4 yourself, rent it, don't waste your money on this cheap piece of garbadge

Are we having fun yet??

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 12
Date: February 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game simply stinks. The controls are terrible, the plot.. what plot? I got a couple hours into it, and had to stop, simply because my brain was shutting down to stop the pain. I can't believe a sequel was made....

Bottom line, if you enjoy playing games... avoid this one like the plague.

Not too good

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The graphics on this game were very disapointing and the gameplay is not too great either. Only reason I am giving 2 stars instead of 1 is because there is a storyline, something many games are lacking now-a-days. I would not have bought this game if I had taken a closer look at the graphics.

Summoner

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Not very good. Sort of vacant in places. Graphics are blocky. Dont judge a game by its cover. :)

Story or Gameplay?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Summoner is a game that you will either love or hate within the first 6 hours or so. It really depends on what you look for in an RPG. If you need a good battle system and flashy graphics, you won't find that here, but you can expect to find some of the best and biggest level design around. The places you explore are beautiful and interesting but not graphically stunning. You will fight some well designed monsters and bosses, but don't expect to be stunned by their flashy looks. In fact, the entire game looks drab and dark. The music is some ambient filler, with the exception of one or two asian themed songs. What really pushes the game forward is the story. Once again, it depends on what you are into. There are four races and two of them are involved in this game. You will hear complicated histories similar to Roman mythology. If you can't read a novel, you can't play this game. I enjoy novels and mythology, and I enjoyed this game.

I loved this game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: November 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This was the first game I've played in years. My friend lent me her copy when I finally bought a computer.

After a few hours I was completely hooked and played it non-stop for days. Then I went back and played it again to complete all the subquests. Yes, the combat could be a bit boring, perhaps because I had it on auto-chaining. And Joseph did look somewhat cadaverous. But the graphics were amazing, the load times were no problem at all, and I loved the story.

The water around the Temple of Urath, the music in Iona near the end, and the falling snow were particularly beautiful. The Caverns of Wolong are incredible and have the most haunting music, but you have to spend a lot of time in there before you stop getting lost. The first few acts in Lenele have a powerful sense of impending danger.

I read some of these reviews and bought games like Baldur's Gate that everyone is raving about. I just don't get it. The graphics were gloomy and flat, the characters whine when you move them, and they all get stuck in rooms and can't move around each other. I spent so much time reorganizing my characters so that they could all get up various staircases that I gave up. How can you say this game is better than Summoner?

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