The Final Word game review

Dark Arms: Beast Buster 1999 -- SNK

R.I.P.
Of all of the NGPC games I have played recently this was the most addictive up front. The game is basically an overhead, action-RPGish game. You have to kill lots of monsters, and build the stats on your weapons. As you build up your weapons, they can evolve into other, stronger forms... in some ways the weapon system is very pokemonish (if you can look at the pokemon as weapons).

Gameplay is great, and right on the money for the demands of an action/RPG (have I mentioned that I think the NGPC's joystick controller is probably one of my all time favorite controller types?). Graphics, sound and music are pretty straight forward, although not very memorable. Everything in the game is well rounded though, including difficulty.

In the game itself there are essentially two missions. The first is the RPG story mission where you have to visit everywhere, talk to everyone, complete goals. The second is a survival/endurance mode game where you have to descend 50 levels of dungeon floors, each featuring atleast one of the monsters you battled in the main game as well as each of the bosses. This can be a great place to work on maxing out your weapons though, and is a real challenge for even the best player to complete flawlessly.

The other thing I really liked about this game, and something that I feel is a requirement for any pocket RPG title, is that you can save you status at anytime. Sure it's not flawless, since when you restart you begin back at your base. But, since the world really isn't all that fantastically big, you never really have to travel very far to get back to what you were working on.

All-in-all, this game is a real gem for the NGPC, and alot of fun to play. Keeping that in mind though, I should point out that this game isn't terribly long, so if you're looking for a sit down game that is going to last you a couple of weeks of dedicated play, this isn't it. The bottom line though is that I would strongly recommend this to any RPG gamer who is looking for something portable, that can be played in small bursts (like on your lunch hour).

(12/2001)