Summoner is a pretty well done venture, though it is not without its shortcomings. The basis of the game is that you are a young farmer named Joseph, whose village is attacked, and this attack sets into motion a series of events and circumstances that reveal a destiny of power.

Sound familiar? Herein lies the first shortcoming. This story line is so old and tired that it is almost unforgivable. I can't count the number of RPGs with this premise, and I very nearly lost interest because of this. Lets face it, the story line is what makes a RPG a RPG, and without something new and refreshing, the story can get old before the game even begins.

Now, on the plus side there are a few twists and turns in the story that really do make up for the poor beginning. Friendships are formed and lost. Betrayal, loyalties, redemption – all are here and pretty well done. Even in this though, there could be improvement. You have no choice in any of the story line. It is all pre-written, and often I felt like a mouse running through a pre-determined maze. I had no options or control over the story-line, and this lapse makes it tough to get emotional or even interested to any great degree in the story that unfolds.

The game play itself is much like Baldur's Gate, though the on screen characters are huge, and as a result you cannot see as much of the area as you can in Baldur's Ggate. This to me is a positive thing. The expanded detail makes the game much more immersive, and the detail is pretty well done. Lots of cool spell effects and creatures make this aspect of the game very engaging indeed.

Battle is real time, and control over those fighting is marginal. There is a series of attacks that you can develop, called chain attacks, but I had trouble getting excited about it. The results seemed boring and unimpressive, and the fact that I could only control one party member with any effectiveness at a time was disappointing. I could, of course, switch characters when I wanted to, but the danger there is that the artificial intelligence of the others is really poor. I watched while one of the party members that I wasn’t controlling stood in front of a monster, and got pummeled to death without even raising a weapon or running away. This kind of poor artificial intelligence is a definite liability in today’s gaming market.

Another liability is the main power of Joseph. As a 'Summoner', he can summon increasingly more powerful monsters as the game progresses. Graphically these monsters are well represented, but I found them to be pretty weak in battle. This could be overlooked, but if a summoned monster dies in battle, Joseph loses the summoned monster's life points from his own total life points. Permanently!! As a result I virtually never summoned anything to fight with, as they almost always died. Why design part of the game so poorly as to make me not want to use it?? This made little sense, and is probably the biggest problem I had with the game.

Now I have to ask myself after reading this, why did I play it to the end? With all of these lapses, how did it hold my attention? Well, the answer here is in the story line, and the graphics. As I mentioned, the story is pretty interesting, though hard to get excited about. The graphics and spell effects are very well done, at least enough to hold my attention.

Even though I did play it to the end, I have to admit that I did so more out of a sense of duty than out of any over-riding enjoyment of the game.

by Galen