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Alot Better Than Expected

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: January 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

E.G.G. is a pretty decent game. This is the first RPG that I have played for Dreamcast, and I am for the most part satisfied. The graphics are good, not exceptional, but good. The game play is terrific for a playstation, but I expected a little more out of the dreamcast after all the hype. If you are looking for a good solid RPG for the dreamcast I suggest you check it out.

Great Premise, Horrible Execution

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: May 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Your character, called "the sleeper," awakens from a slumber several centuries old to find the world being overrun by tentacles and sentient plant life, all sprouting from an enormous temple named "Fogna." Equipped with a ten foot tall suit of robotic armor named "Elemental Gimmick Gear," he sets off to fight the evil and overcome his own amnesia. It's a bargain basement story at best, and aside from the introduction and a brief revelation halfway through the game, the writing really grinds to a halt right there. You're given no continuing motivation to play.

There are a total of three cinematic cut scenes in Elemental Gimmick Gear. One is played at the onset of a new game, and serves to introduce the storyline (or, perhaps, lack thereof). The second is a montage of scenes from that cinema, and plays when you power the game up and fail to press the start button within a couple seconds. The third is your generic "reward" video, and is played every time you defeat a boss and receive a new power. Eight hours into this game, I'd watched that same cinema half a dozen times. No minor nuances were altered, to differentiate between my reception of the ice beam as opposed to, say, the fire beam. It's all the same, horribly compressed, video scene. I'm sure there would have been an equally uninspiring CGI at the game's conclusion, had I been granted the willpower to make it that far.

Perhaps the only factor in which EGG doesn't completely lag is the impressive originality within the overworld's graphics. There's a beautiful, stylistic, thick-lined detail in the backdrops of the game's overhead battle scenes that, with a little finesse, could have been really well done. In today's world of 3-D rendered surroundings and polygons, polygons, polygons, it's nice to see some legitimate linework making its way into a game. Unfortunately, programmers managed to turn even that slim positive element into a non-factor, as despite their beauty it's incredibly difficult to navigate your way around the detailed sketches.

When you enter a boss battle, the game abruptly shifts from the traditional overhead adventure format (a'la Zelda: A Link to the Past) to a strange, polygonal 3-D battle. In addition to the jerky shift between vantagepoints, the visual style shifts just as abruptly, giving way to a poorly textured 3-D battle zone. Bosses are poorly designed and far from intimidating, to the point where they're almost comical. Your surroundings look vaguely similar to the overhead screen they're meant to be molded after, but lack the fine detail and linework that made those scenes even remotely memorable. The characters are simplistic to a fault, and would've been just as much at home with the first wave of Playstation titles as they are here, late in the Dreamcast's life. Add to that an unforgivable load time prior to each boss battle, and you've got an unhappy camper 97% of the time.

Gameplay in EGG is a chore, full of inconsistencies, quirks and bugs. I honestly don't think this game was playtested before its release. Moving around the screen varies from difficult to impossible, and collision detection is way off. Enemies are either too powerful or too weak, with nothing landing in between. I've watched, several times, as my ten foot robot fell to the almighty power of a trout. Yeah, I'm thinking the same thingý you put a fish and a robot in the same room and tell them to fight to the death, my money's most certainly not on the fish.

Your robot also has a love for sailing off ledges and cliffs, an action which actively returns you to the last doorway you walked through and takes 20% of your life as a toll. It's beyond easy to accidentally sail into the abyss, as the machine assumes you've stepped over a ledge every time you're within a couple feet of doing so. Pair that with the horrendous controls, which, instead of following your instructions and heading north, often lead you alternately northwest and northeast in a bizarre drunken swagger, this is a big drawback.

Even the soundtrack is horribly lacking In EGG. Though obviously influenced heavily by the score to Final Fantasy VIII (complete with the soft plucking of violin strings), the game relies all too often on looping and then looping once again. Each individual song is comprised of MAYBE a minute and a half of original music, which then loops back upon itself infinitely. Considering you'll spend about an hour in an average dungeon, this means you'll hear the same obnoxious tune looped upwards of fifty times before you finally complete your work and return to the overworld.

Thinking about Elemental Gimmick Gear makes me wonder what happened. Hudson Soft was chasing the Holy Grail with EGG, the thought of introducing a new type of game to the masses, something which would forever serve as the mold from which entire franchises were crafted. Instead, they released a product which can only be described as overly flawed, incomplete, uninspiring and often painful. I wouldn't wish Elemental Gimmick Gear on my worst enemy.

The years have been kind, depending on your perspective.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I passed this title by when it was first released. There was a virtual flood of next generation RPGs on the market at the time, and they all seemed flashier.

Now, all these years later, I've picked it up, and I must say, it feels fresh and unique, which says a lot about game design.

One of the biggest gripes I've heard, is about the graphics. The 2D graphics to be exact, as there is 3D game-play here as well. I've tried to remain un-jaded over the years, and being a gamer for so long helps. I find the hand drawn graphics to be beautiful, and well done, and in no way do they take away from the rich experience.

Not to repeat all of the positives that have already been posted, let me just say that playing it now that the 'me too' flashier RPGs of the time have passed, I find it a deep, refreshing, singular experience. The likes of which, we could use more of.

If you have an open mind, want to try something new, and don't mind a game with almost an older PC-type feel, give it a shot, you may be glad you did!

Fun action RPG that takes a good deal of patience

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you're into action RPGs, this is a fun game, hands down. The gameplay is a nice mix of 2D and 3D (2D for main exploration of the map, and 3D for boss battles and such). The artwork for the 2D portion is excellent: the 3D portion is dated (compared to newer generation visuals), but still runs smooth on the Dreamcast.

There's also a whole variety of enemies to go after and many locales to visit. Fighting consists of punching enemies or using your "spin mode" to spin the E.G.G. around the screen to destroy things (both of those fighting actions are available in the 2D and 3D modes). The E.G.G. concept itself is funny though: a bi-pedal war/utility machine? Shaped like an egg? That spins? Seeing the E.G.G. spin around the screen destroying everything in its path might be reason enough to see this game in action.

The storyline is really interesting as well: you wake up with amnesia and are given the E.G.G. machine in order to find out who you are, and what's going on with the planet. Probably most importantly, the amount of CG video is kept to a minimum, and used appropriately(so you can actually play the game instead of sitting there, wondering when you'll get to play again).

One important tip: find Luckie and beat him early in the game. You'll be glad you did, and it'll save you a lot of frustration throughout the game.

Overall, I'd recommend this game to any action RPG fan!

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