Rygar: The Legendary Adventure

[Dracos]

Or as I may call it, at the prompting of someone else, God of War Zero.  Man they swiped from here something fierce.  Out in 2002, it is a pretty old game by this, stemming from the early PS2 era stuff.  I don't think it was one of the first action games on the platform by any means, but it definitely seems to be in the middle of that technology step between the ps1 style action games and the continuous always smooth style of action games that have come to dominate the field to today.  Its rather close to the latter really, with only a few clumsy type motions.

Rygar: The Legendary Adventure is the first Rygar title in nearly 14 years, a pretty impressive gap all things considered and almost amazing that the IP was recovered and revitalized.  Much as I found the original, it is also consistently pretty bland throughout it, with a bland generic action hero good guy, a bland quest, and pretty bland writing.  It is very middle of the road and as much as its destructible terrain is pretty awesome (Hint: It totally kicks ass), I can totally see passing it over.  Rygar is an amnesic hero who lives just to fight (ugh), and be a good guy.  Armed with three diskarmors (They wanted to challenge Gunblade for worst named weapon), he faces off against the Titans.  or Demons.  I don't think the designers really decided which they wanted as they call them titans early and demons later and they all pretty much act and come across as demons or demonic versions of beats of legend.  Overall, they could've stuck to concept a lot cleaner, but the writing was clearly conceived, much as in god of war, as really shitty greek fanfiction.  Fanfic writers out there, be aware, there is clearly a huge market for your work in triple A game titles.

Graphically, Rygar looks nice.  Not much variety, but the art team clearly knew what they were doing and generally did most of the environments in a very fantastically way.  The destructible terrain, awesome enough to mention twice, is bloody everywhere and even includes a plot item that encourages you to beat the crap out of it.  I should mention my favorite moment with this game was the first and only time I got lost.  As a good action game, I generally did not have to worry about finding my way so much as finding secrets or beating the crap out of things or solving puzzles that were in my way.  This is good as it let beating the crap out of bad guys shine.  One time though, the path got convoluted and I did genuinely feel like I'd gotten lost in some strange side path.  I was even commenting on it annoyedly at the time, wondering if the game was going to stop here.  Out of randomness, I proceeded to kick a mountain that was in my way.  Not a small mountain, a "This is the entire mountainside that is clearly impassable".  It exploded.  And then caught on fire.  Maybe not the fire thing.  But at that moment, I stopped caring that I had been lost as I had just kicked a mountain and it had exploded, clearing the way.  Not that logical, but badass enough that I will give it a by.  Definitely my high point of the experience.

Musically, the game is nice.  I never really comment on music though if it doesn't truly catch my ear.  Good atmospherics, not boring, and generally pleasant, but nothing to write home about.  At least I didn't feel so.

Gameplay wise, the game is ninety percent fighting things and ten percent solving simple puzzles.  Yay for fighting things.  You get three of the mighty DISKARMOR, named of lameness, to fight things with.  Of which, you will only ever use one of them.  Sure, there are two others there, but they really are there to give faux choice to the matter.  You will have one maxed out and proceeding to be awesome from almost the beginning of the game on and with one boss fight as the exception, you almost never have a good reason to change.  Said boss fight is a classic 'you can't hurt me with that now, ha ha' thing, so really they just forced the weapon switching rather than made it a particularly valid choice.  That's fine though as the good one you get right off the bat and frankly is pretty awesome, feeling like how I would guess a spiked discus on a rope would feel.  Razory and all.

Overall?  Blandish.  Rygar needed a writer with some talent pretty badly.  Or someone letting the writer they have write the thing.  Oh look, its Aristotle!  Its Alexander!  Its Cleopatra!  What the hell?  Spend a bit of writing to make me believe that!  Good for a rental as being about 5 hours long, it can just be played and finished pretty easy, but not something to go out of your way for, unless you want to see what God of War decided it wanted to be.