Indeed,

Sands Of Destruction, the brand new game for your DS, is one heck of a game. But, like most games, it has it's faults. I'm simply here to discuss some of them, as I've been with them for the last 10 hours.



The Cast

The best way I can describe Kyrie, or "Hero", is by one of his quips, "It was probably my fault". There's just something about him, and the whole cast so far, that just scream mediocre. The only person of value, both artistically and game play wise would be our friend Taupy:



I won't go into detail for people who haven't played the game, but he's one hell of a surprise. Let's just say I wasn't expecting him to be so much...man!


The Customization Points

Yea, it's Xenogears alright, but that's hardly a bad thing. What I don't appreciate is way you power your characters. After defeating your foes, you earn CP, which you can then use to make your singular moves stronger and more accurate. This, in turn, make your combo's something to be feared.

The problem is that I have powered up my characters, and taught them everything I possibly could, at level 20. I don't know if I'll be learning more techniques, but if I don't, what's going to keep me playing? What's going to keep me coming back? Isn't one of the major points of a RPG seeing your characters grow ever more powerful?



The Voice Acting

I know this is more of a personal complaint, but why don't developers spend more budget on decent voice actors? I know SoD isn't Sega's major concern, but they could at least allow me the choice of muting the voices completely( instead only letting you lower it to minimum volume). I'd like to play the game with sound, but the voice acting is just terrible, and ruins the entire mood. I'm looking at you Morte.

I could go on, but the review isn't even up, so I'll let you all decide if it's worth your time. Overall, it is a very nice game, and a great opening to this years portable offerings. But sadly, it suffers from things that, personally, keep me away from a lot of portable outings.

SoBS.