Sudeki (PC) Review

The Light and Shadow realms; two parallel dimensions that are in war with each other, with the Shadow being the "evil" side. Sounds clichéd and generic? Oh, you have no idea. Those expecting a SquareSoft-like epic will be disappointed, as the storyline of Sudeki is a few steps above the original Final Fantasy... minus the charm of the 8-bit graphics and music. Yes, some twists are involved, and, as it turns out, those two worlds have many things in common despite their vast differences, and the real evil in here is someone else entirely... but, meh. As always, though, it's not the story that matters the most, but the presentation - and it's this part where this fails the most.

Apart from a world that feels as artificial as possible, due to movie set-like towns, and NPCs that offer awesome world-building, with phrases like "I like fish" or "good morning," the protagonist quartet is quite the forgettable one. They start as a pretty promising bunch, with their unique design and personality traits, but they haven't been given much care, and, as such, never evolve past their character tropes. As an example, Tal, the warrior of the group, seems to have a bad relationship with his father, and after some irrelevant quests his "arc" ends with the father saying something like: "Sorry son for blaming you for my mistakes. I love you," or something along this lines.

At least everything looks quite good, although, a bit too plastic-y for its own sake. With that being said, there are couple of flaws in here as well. For starters, while the Light realm is bright (duh!) and colourful, the Shadow realm is just... well, dark and boring, rather than atmospherically bleak. The faux-manga character design is a mixed bag, too, with the vast majority of characters, even main ones, looking as generic NPCs, with the only two that stand out being the two female protagonists, evident at how they were the biggest strength of the game's marketing. At least the annoying camera control of the Xbox version is no more in this one.

As for the sound portion: the various effects are decent; the music is mediocre at best (that is if you can actually manage to hear it); and, finally, the voice-acting is a few steps above atrocious. Without any exaggeration, juts gather a bunch of your - vocally untalented - friends, and have them do a variety of different accents (that often don't even have a place in a fantasy setting such as the one at hand), and the end result will surely be better than how lines are delivered in here. Couple that with the subpar writing, as well as the anime-ish habit of characters constantly shouting their moves, and you are in for quite the auditory experience.

In conclusion, don't come in Sudeki expecting a great, gripping plot, or visually appealing, and immersive world. Should you come for the exploring and fighting usually found in the genre, though? Well, starting with the exploration bit, this is one of the most linear RPGs ever made, literally obstructing paths by throwing garbage at them to block you. A consequence of that kind of world design leads to the majority of your equipment being given to you at set intervals, rather than being found. Not that there is any variety in items either. You can add runes to weapons and armour to increase their stats, resistances or whatever... but Materia runes are not.

It should also be noted that this is quite the short journey; one that won't last more than 15 hours, and that's stretching it a bit. Obviously, this begs the question: if there's no exploration to be done, is this all about fighting? Well, each character does come with a unique ability that can be used while roaming around. So, Tal can push blocks, Ailish can dispel magic, Buki can climb, and Echo can fly... kind of. This adds a minor puzzle element to it all, but in the end it all feels extremely simplistic, and, most of all, mind-numbingly easy. In other words, and to return to the previous question, yes, Sudeki is all about fighting.

Rather than random encounters, this has predetermined areas where fights begin, and as this isn’t a turn-based affair, you will be able to control only one of your heroes and heroines, with the rest being controlled by the AI; an AI that won’t do wonders, but won’t create problems either. Of course, you can’t sit back and relax, as the one you control will do most of the hard work, which involves using the various special abilities of each character, changing the party’s AI behaviour, and do most of the fighting, with melee characters making this a third-person action game, with the rest turning it into a simplistic FPS.

Does fighting save Sudeki? Unortunately, the answer is a big ‘no.’ While not full of problems or something like that, it’s one more part that never manages to captivate the player - it’s just there, and, as a result, it can feel somewhat repetitive, as it doesn’t require much skill or tactical thinking from the one pushing all the buttons. Long story short, Sudeki is the ultimate mediocre RPG, with not any big issues, but not anything good to say about it either... and that’s not exactly the best way to spend 10-15 hours - especially since the cliffhanger (if it can be called so) ending is even worse than the one in Ghostbusters on the NES.