Review: Hybrid: Eternal Whisper
Hybrid: Eternal Whisper is an action game recently added to the iPhone / iPod Touch App Store from Gamevil, the makers of Zenonia. Like Zenonia, it's feels like an SNES action RPG, though the gameplay is closer to a beat'em'up, and there is almost no exploration or non-linear progress. But it's one of the best beat'em'ups I've seen on the iPhone.
Story
The story would go great with an RPG/anime cliché drinking game. The following things are mentioned only a few hours into the game: black holes, spirits, biological weapons, (human + spirits = monsters), "Only demons have that hair color!", the black knight of legend, "Maybe I'M a monster!", other dimensions, rips in dimensions, the space in between dimensions, a third dimension that's somehow different, telepathy, chaotic energy, demons smelling evil, etc, etc, etc. If you're into that sort of thing, it certainly delivers. If, like me, you can only tolerate that sort of thing (Hey, I liked Final Fantasy IX) then the story may be somewhat comprehensible, if not really the carrot on a string that it should be.
Unlike Zenonina, there isn't even really a hint of character or character development. The protagonist is named Grey and he might be a biological weapon from an ancient war, and he might also transform into a monster some day. And then there's Fairy, a sidekick that Grey somehow willed into existence from another dimension (but not THE other dimension, a different one, for some reason) and she's basically an invincible god, but her power is limited by headaches. One of the more interesting aspects of the story is that Grey can't fight an enemy unless he knows it's name. Fairy, being infinitely powerful, can read the names of enemies--it takes a moment for her to read a new monster's name before you can attack it in combat, but this is really more of an interesting narrative device than a gameplay device. But at the end of the day the story is entirely about saving the world, and if anyone does happen to fall in love or learn something, it's pretty inconsequential.
Controls
The controls are surprisingly good? You need to use the virtual directional pad to move around, and that's always frustrating because your thumb gets disoriented whenever you lift it up. But it's really not that much of a problem. It's surprising how many different attacks you can pull off with so few virtual buttons. There's a button to attack and there's a button to switch the way your sword is held, which changes your attack style from short range and strong to wide range and weak, and vise versa. But you can also use the hand-switching button in the middle of a combo to make Grey spin his blade with flourish before swapping hands, which both deals damage and looks cool.
Gameplay
There's not much more to the gameplay than the controls. There aren't really dungeons or puzzles or anything, it's a just a beat'em'up. The gameplay is almost entirely linear (sometimes you get to choose the order in which you clear a small block of levels, but this is pretty irrelevant) and the levels you clear just consist of killing everything on screen. There's a lot of meta-game stuff, potions, equipment, levels, stats, etc. But all of this is also pretty linear--you pick up all gear as random drops after killing enemies (the gear you can get and chance of getting it is fixed) and new gear linearly replaces old gear by glowing green to indicate it's better, and red to indicate it's worse. You have to equip stuff yourself, but it might as well be automatic. You can also choose to allocate points towards increasing HP, MP, or SP, and also decide how frequently you consume your potions, but come on, Super Mario Bros. 3 had more resource management than that. Something as simple as an item store would've gone a long way to make this game feel a lot deeper.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics are weird. The characters are really small and the stages are all Mode 7. There's a zoom in mode, but for some reason you can't use potions while zoomed in (every other virtual button is still available) so I never used it. There's cool transparent effects on things like fire and slashes, and all of the character animations are well done. The sound isn't anything special; It's just stock "BISH" and "CRACK" sound effects playing on top of standard video game music, though the map screen song is really cool. Sometimes the cutscenes or stages have pretty backgrounds, particularly this one:
Overall
Rereading this review, it sounds more harsh than I intended. But it's not meant to be--Hybrid: Eternal Whisper is a fun game to play and it's perfect for satisfying a need for a short burst of action gameplay while waiting in line at the bank. But it's not much more than that. Unlike Zenonia, it couldn't make me feel invested in the the world or characters in the slightest, and it has little in the way of exploration or customization. But who cares? It's fun.
7 / 10
Bradamantium
Posted to Hot Stuff, Reviews, Video Games on 21 September 2009
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: appstore, Gamevil, Hybrid, Hybrid: Eternal Whisper, iphone, ipod touch, Zenonia
Grey's pants appear to be from another dimension as well...they seem to be magically looooow@_@
FINAL FANTASY IX RULES, AND IS NOT AN INCOHERENT MESS LIKE THIS GAME! IF EVIL DID SMELL YOU'D REEK OF IT!!!!