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AUTHOR: Climax / SEGA RELEASE: 1997 TYP: RPG SPIELER: 1 LEVEL: - SPRACHE: Englisch WERT: 70€

Hier kommt die Revolution der Rollenspiele! Das neue Action-RPG von den Landstalker-Machern: Dark Savior beginnt dort, wo Landstalker aufhörte. Mit Climax´ einzigartiger Hyperion-Grafikengine und einem Mann-gegen-Mann-Kampfsystem, das alle anderen in den Schatten stellt. Dark Savior ist voller Handlung, voller Action und voller Überaschungen - eine neue Legende!

SEGA Magazin Ausgabe 3/1997: ^{[Grafik: 83% Sound: 69% Gesamt: 90%]}
Dank technischer Klasse und famosen 3D-Effekten sehr sehenswerte Grafiken, die von Level zu Level schöner werden. […] Ein grandioses Action-Adventure, das wochenlangen Spielspaß garantiert. Tolle Steuerung, spannende Story, exzellente 3D-Perspektiven.
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Today’s video games leave little to the imagination thanks to rich, realistic 3-D worlds, nuanced voice acting, and polished writing. In a modern Japanese RPG practically everything about the universe is revealed, from where the villain went to daycare to the hygiene secrets of your love interest (but you don’t ever find out why the characters all dress like they’re in an ‘80s Flock of Seagulls video). But SEGA was different. Games like NiGHTS into Dreams, the Phantasy Star series, and, Night Trap minimalistically allow you to draw conclusions about the nature of those universes without extended exposition and hand-holding. (OK, maybe not one of those. Phantasy Star IV was pretty talky.) Which brings us to the Saturn’s Dark Savior by Climax Entertainment. Climax is more famous for creating the Shining series and Landstalker, but this 1996 narrative-within-a-narrative (should have) changed how gaming stories are told forever! Dark Savior sets you as bounty hunter Garian in a Salvador Dali-meets-Mobius world of mutant talking animals, isometric platforming through nonsensical architecture, and Street Fighter-inspired 1-on-1 battles. Depending on how poor a job you do controlling Garian in the first, frantic five minutes of gameplay (and it will be not be easy until you master the in-game camera), you set in motion one of multiple story arcs of distinction and intrigue. Dark Savior as a video game definitely does its own thing and that alone makes it worth a look. The stories taken individually are really cool, and it’s a creative idea to play through the same world multiple times with totally different stories. Some characters have slightly different lines; some have completely different attitudes; some die in one parallel and survive in others. You get to explore different areas, too. Each story path has a completely different theme. In one, you track your mutant enemy Bilan’s reign of destruction: You’re always a step behind, and death is everywhere. But what if you slay him in the first four minutes? That story explores your character’s lineage and ancient link to the monster; the island’s political corruption; and of course a new love interest. Shortly into the game, Garian is stopped before committing a crazy act by a shower of blue roses – which only grow on the island you’re visiting for the first time. Yet at the start of every new or completed adventure, you wake up with a blue rose on your besieged ship to begin the game anew (and the game saves which parallels you’ve completed, and you play the same save game forever). Sounds like an interesting diversion, right? Well, Dark Savior never explicitly says this, but that the main character is frozen in carbonite and experiencing endless nightmares as a result of murdering a kid while drunk on “jalapeno juice” about 15 minutes into the game. This isn’t a hero character dying gloriously and you miss their witty banter – this character is inventing a never-ending story is his head to as a mental escape attempt from a terrible atrocity he committed in a moment of weakness. That’s some Greek tragedy, baby. Dark Savior is not “New Game+”. Each path you choose by your speed is a linear story with references to the other parallels but no experience/item carryovers (outside of the blue rose). You play through multiple surreal, nightmarish fantasy settings and with lots of talk about “parallel worlds” colliding. In Parallel 3 you actually see yourself imprisoned in carbonite for killing that kid – and your clone breaks out and tries to shatter “reality”. You also hear a throwaway line that being frozen in carbonite gives you endless nightmares. Awesome. More clues to regarding the nature of the game universe reveal themselves if you die in the game’s initial encounter. You go through fight club in purgatory against most of the game’s good and bad characters and hear their innermost thoughts — and a bunch of them, even the game’s monster-villain who can’t normally talk, say something about how you are the real villain. I’ve read Silent Hill stories try things like this (and I just wiki their stories because they’re too scary), but rarely do you see Dark Savior’s approach structured into the fabric of a game’s narrative. Each parallel is only three-five hours long, too. (SEGA always has known how to tell a story without 60 hours of cutscenes). So you can beat this whole game in less time than it takes your brother to final evolve his legendary Pokemon. Or something. Metal Gear Solid 2 is an infamous troll on the player’s expectations and thoughts on the nature of reality. Dark Savior’s story is an even more subtle subversive, rarely achieved or even attempted in video gaming. You can take it as “oh, everything in this game literally happened!” if you like. But to me it’s one of the most interesting gaming stories ever told. For me, Dark Savior’s story is dark, ballsy, and a somber lesson that mistakes in life can have ever-lasting consequences. And the soundtrack is totally badass, Saturn-powered glory. So I hope this helped shine a bit of light on a great, unheralded SEGA game. Like Garian, maybe we SEGA fans are also caught in an endless cycle, with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo pumping out an army of AAA epics while meanwhile our beloved big blue corporation is sticking Sonic in exciting new mobile-phone diversions. Well, as long as we have classics like Dark Savior to continually unearth, I’m content with the SEGA oldies. www.Seganerds.com

You take the role of Garian as he searches for Bilan, an escaped prisoner. Explore more than 300 lush, 3D environments and solve a variety of puzzles. Once some puzzles have been unraveled, new weapons and items become available. Those objects and artillery are most useful against the monsters and enemies Garian will encounter. When fighting breaks out, Garian will have to defeat an enemy in a three-round fight. Over 8 different endings! www.Mobygames.com

Dark Savior is a sequel to the popular Genesis RPG Landstalker, and plays almost identically, with the exception of the obvious 32-bit enhancements. Make no mistake: This is an action-based role-playing game that's similar to those before. But Dark Savior contains a heavy platform element, and therefore a good portion of the game is spent running across bridges, jumping over rivers, and pushing blocks out of the way. But the rest of the game contains far more depth (and makes up for the occasionally monotonous wandering). An improved feature over its predecessors is Dark Savior's camera control, which will greatly help you guide the hero through some of the tougher jumping sequences. This feature makes good use of the analog controller, but it switches back to the original camera angle after each use, meaning permanently changing your view is impossible. The diagonal perspective of the game is nice, but it sometimes leads to trouble when it isn't possible to see around certain obstacles. Despite the ability to change camera views, controlling Garian, the hero, can be a chore because he must come to a near-halt before he's able to change direction. Pushing him in another direction while walking at full speed does absolutely nothing - he just keeps on truckin'. This makes accurate direction changes a total nightmare. And while multiple views aid otherwise quirky navigation, the feature that truly sets this game apart from other RPGs is its fighting mode. When a battle takes place, the view switches to a zoomed-in area. And the fighting itself then mimics a traditional fighting game, complete with special moves, finishing moves, and a capture move (which allows players to control the captured character and use him in later battles). While this is a neat feature, the fighting mode unfortunately suffers from a dearth of variety. The result: Players simply end up sticking and moving until the monster in question meets an untimely demise. It's also worth noting that the graphics in Dark Savior are good (though they get a little blocky in the fighting mode), and though the sound is tolerable, the music is outstanding. All in all, Dark Savior is a good role-playing game, though the control problems make this game difficult to wholeheartedly recommend. The fighting game aspect is an interesting feature, but it isn't done nearly as well as it could or should have been. Prospective buyers will definitely want to rent this one first to see if they can stomach its inadequacies. www.gamespot.com