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Its a ; flat out your hand and shake it game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The Graphics.Battle and Dungeons In this Game are good but the Storyline Is confuseing when you get near the end I suggest (when playing the game) you read and study the games past in the game wizard Libraries, thats the only way to get the hang of this game

By Adam Rees

Has its flaws, but overall good

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

One of the few RGPs made by an American company, Crave, Shadow Madness was widely maligned upon its release, ignored by players, and faded into obscurity. Contemporary players with $20 or less to spare for a game will nevertheless find it enjoyable enough if they approach it with an open mind. I know I did. The story of a ragtag group of wanderers out for revenge (yes, it sounds familiar) and seeking to free the world from an evil sorcerer, Shadow Madness is not perfect, but has many strong points. Here's the breakdown.

THE GAME'S FLAWS

GRAPHICS: 2/5
Shadow Madness was released 2 years after Final Fantasy VII, and with such tough competition the graphics could not look anything but adequate then, and they are somewhat outdated now for players of modern systems. Still, they do their job well enough, and some of the backgrounds are very nice. The use of the map, which features stylized drawings, is interesting, but as noted by other reviewers the drawings could have been better, and sometimes they are tasteless or downright ugly.

ARTWORK: 1/5
The character artwork for SM had been justly maligned. Of special note is Windleaf, who combines in her design all that is tasteless and mediocre, but the other characters do not stand out, although Stinger's is adequate (and do not, in my opinion, resemble FFVII's Cloud as greatly as often accused). All the characters in the game, including the 'townspersons', have portraits.

GAMEPLAY AND GAME DESIGN: 2/5
The game's biggest flaw (apart from the artwork) is the mundane gameplay and inconvenient battle menu. It features 3 battle styles, "aggressive", "normal" and "defensive" (hint to new players: do not use normal initially, when Stinger is alone-it lowers his defense and contributes to a quick demise.) Although the game begins on a medium difficulty, it quickly progresses into "very easy" due to the unbalanced experience system, which allows your characters to level up at a high rate, and the differences between the effectiveness of these 3 modes of attacks quickly become unimportant. Each character has a special attack which becomes available at some point of the battle- for example, Stinger throws knives- but again, they do not provides much variety to the battles. The magic system is the worst. The battles are 'real time', which means that the enemies attack without waiting for the player to attack. There is a lot of magic available for the magic-users, but it is a run-of-the mill magical attacks, and the list of the attacks (which are learned in 3s) becomes so long that the player often barely has time to scroll down during the 'real time battles', and often does not bother with it. (Although the game become so easy, and the enemies give so little damage, that eventually I could use the magic anyway). Worst of all, the inventory is tiny and the player wastes time sorting out and getting rid of the more useless items to keep it organized (and the game features too many useless items). Thus, the entire game is played without much variety, and the amount of time contributed to organizing the inventory is frustrating.

MINOR STUFF
The game is full of small bugs and inconveniences which attest to the inexperience of its designers. They never become frustrating, but they do hinder the smoothness of its execution.

THE GAME'S STRENGTHS

MUSIC: 5/5
Brad Spear's score is great- varied and melodious. Best of all, there is a great deal of variety in even ordinary battle music, so you do not have to hear the same music over and over again- something of an irritation in Japanese games.

WRITING: 5/5
Attesting to its American origins, the writing of the game is good to excellent, even today. There is a lot of humor in the exchange between the characters, and rarely awkward grammar or spelling.

STORY: 3/5
As a reviewer noted, SM falls into its own genre of fantasy-horror, which is somewhat gloomy initially, but becomes better as the story fleshes out and the world becomes more well-defined. (At first you do nothing but wander amid ruined towns and mad people, which is a little unnerving and somehow fails to define the world of the game, as if you stumbled into a formless madhouse). The story is smoothly executed and always keeps you interested, although never particularly shocking or exciting. Plot twists are few and often predictable. Still, it is a solid, well-developed story.

CHARACTERS: 3/5
Some complained that the characters of SM are two dimensional, but in my opinion the strong writing more than covers up for the lack of quirks and unique personality traits in the characters. The characters are meant to be ordinary, but most of them are likable, and their 'ordinary' personalities shine through the strong, humorous writing. Stinger, Harv-5 and Clemett are particularly fun, in my opinion, but I found myself liking all the characters. People who find them not sufficiently well-developed should remember that "characterization" is not always necessarily a collection of unique traits or a complex background or reactions to dramatically unfolding events. Sometimes a good writing can define characters simply because they are well-written, act 'natural', and amuse the players with the exchange of their conversation- as SM's characters do.

OVERALL: buy it. It's only $15 nowadays. You'll like it if you keep an open mind.

Awesome game.... could have been better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Shadow Madness is a truly amazing game. Being one of the RPGs I ever played, I really couldnt tell you that there were many flaws. The only major flaw in the game is the graphics. They are the worst I've ever seen. But a side from that, this game is absolutely amazing. It holds one of the greatest and one of the creepiest storylines I've ever seen. People say that it's just a basic capy of FF7, but it's nothing like it. One of the coolest elements of the game is the music. All of the music is just right for the situation, making the gameplay even cooler. Above all, despite the graphics, Shadow Madness is a truly magnificent game. You should really try it out.

Worthwhile

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game at a friend's behest and had enough fun to go through twice back-to-back. The world setting is great, the characters are likeable, and the dialogue puts many games' attempts to shame. The downside is the easiness associated with SM's horribly unrefined, generic battle system. Luckily, battles can be pre-empted on the field so it's not hard to completely phase them out while still maintaining a harder (comparitively) difficulty. The dialogue alone is worth the purchase to me -- it's obvious Craveyard really worked hard on it -- and it's replayable, although there's a lacking of sidequests and other things that would keep one coming back for more. A fun Doom-like minigame called "Gadget Madness" can be played also, and it's held up quite well. Given how cheap it can be found, blind-buying may not be such a bad thing...although renting is preferred to those who want slambang excitement every ten minutes.

This is not FF7

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: December 28, 1999
Author: Amazon User

What it is, though, is a well done game. Instead of the game that it simulates in small ways, it has well done characters that are unique and deep, unlike FF7. It is a game with a story line that is somewhat cliche, but full and damn enthralling, unlike FF7. It has exellent humor and good jokes that increase the character's believability, unlike FF7's bland humor that only exploits the characters to be flat and utterly dumb.

Yes, the character designs are a bit out of proportions, like FF7's, and the FMV's aren't terribly good. But the Music is worthy of notice, as is the environments.

Yes, this game may not be a enthrolling as, say, Grandia. But it sure as hell beats the c#@p out of FF7.

Waste of time...waste of money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: January 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game when it first came out...big mistake. I've heard some people say games like Legend of Dragoon are the worst the PSX has to offer, but nothing can touch this game in sheer lack of effort. Are graphics important to an RPG? Yes, if they weren't, we'd all still be playing pen and paper RPG's. They aren't everything, but this game is just horrible, as well as the character designs...c'mon the Cabin Boy would've been a better choice of hero. "My family died, so I'm on this wisecracking adventure to save the world."

I've given this game plenty of chances, played through it plenty of times, but after every time I just feel "dirty." It's horrible, nuf said.

Awful!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: August 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I would never recommend this game to anyone. It's boring and slow. The art looked sloppy and the story line was lame. I've played an extensive amount of the rpg's on the market and this had to be one of the worst.

Isn't what I expected

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: January 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Shadow Madness sounded good,but it isn't.The graphics are O.K. If I were you I wouldn't buy it. I rented it and I was only about 15 minutes into it till I relized it wasn't very good.If it got a grade it would be a C.It is 2 disks long.If it was a rating 1 being the best and 100 being the worst it would be 70th.So far of what I have played Final Fansty 8 was the best.

c'mon you can do better

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: November 24, 2000
Author: Amazon User

well this game started out ok, but as it turns out, is the first 5 hours of the game is just in memory, or story being told to someone? But, you still can be killed in memory? The graphics are VERY BAD, the storyline is reeealy boring and there barely is one. The character develpoment is also bad, I mean like some person just walks up to you says a few things and they just join you for no reason. You can only hold a certain amount of items too, and that really stinks and gets very annoying. Oh, and I almost forgot the battle system... heh..heh..heh..this was the [worst] and horrable battle system i've ever seen. one more thing, the world map lools [bad] and once you leave somewhere they dont give you the slightest idea where you have to go next. there usually is nothing on the map that keeps you from going to somewhere you dont have to be at yet..like (i didnt do this really) you can go to the last place were you fight the last boss right after you leave the first village (i'm exaggerating). And it has the same old basic event of an RGP, which is your home village is destroyed at some point in the game but this one is destroyed as soon as the game begins , gee i think i'v seen that some where before hmmmmm.also, one last thing-the music isnt that good either. overall i hated this game but maybee some of you out there like it but i just doesnt suit me. if you want a real good game try Xenogears or most any final fantasy game.

If you love RPG's, you should definitely check this out

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 15, 1999
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of my favorites. It's got an engrossing story and the characters are definitely original, and so is the battle system. It also has a great feature (that I think other RPG's should have in the future), where the monsters make noise just before they attack you. If you are quick enough, you can duck and avoid battle. If you're an RPG fan like I am, you know how frustrating those random battles can get. The atmosphere in the game is kind of dark and eerie, which I'm sure some people won't like, but all in all, this is definitely a game worth buying.

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