Baldr Force EXE review

[NFG]

I picked up Baldr Force EXE from Sega recently.  It's the latest Dreamcast release and based on the demo I played in Akihabara the other day, it's a top-down button mashing robot combat-fest in high-res, featuring 16-bit gameplay and wicked graphic enhancements.

They lied.

It's a visual novel of sorts, with absolutely astonishing amounts of dialogue between every battle.  Skipping the dialogue isn't an option, you can bang on the button as fast as you like and the dialogue will sail by at high speed, but you can't skip it entirely.  This results in a wait of up to, no kidding, five minutes between every thirty second action segment.



The 'game' is played from a top-down perspective which suits the arena-combat style very well.  The graphics are spartan but well realized, with lots of explosion effects and transparencies and other eye candy.  If you remember any top-down maze/combat game from the 16-bit era you know what to expect, but for one tiny detail:

You're never in control.

Except for the tiny, throwaway 30-second-max button mashing festival you do nothing but read the dialogue and pound the 'next!' button.  You don't get to explore, the characters all progress without your input (And they talk all the damned time too).  Your onscreen robots will babble away incessantly, while jetting from one location to another, getting lost, splitting up, rejoining and generally advancing the plot, and all you, as the player, get to do is press A.

A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A

How fun is that?  It's not.  The presentation is excellent, the music better than passable, the graphics very stylish and really quite nice if you like that sort of anime look.  But there's no game.  They should have made it into a video, they had the voice and artistic talent, and the writer clearly had lots to say, but this isn't a GAME.



Every battle can be won with only one or two weapons, and your robot auto-faces the next closest enemy.   When you finish a battle you get skill points which are automatically assigned based on the weapons you chose to use, removing yet another pesky instance of potentially engaging player control.  

To sum up, the game is an invigorating button mashing extravaganza that you can largely play with your eyes closed.  Smash A as fast as you can until the voice announces an Open Battle, then smash A and B! until everyone's dead but you, and carry on bashing A in your sleep.

It's 18-rated, so there's the promise of future boobies, but since you don't ever seem to be allowed to make decisions in the dialogue segments, I don't imagine they'll be very good boobies at all.  If they were good, they'd be hard to get, right?

There's no omake folder on the CD either, and the toy figure the game comes with is only entertaining for about twenty seconds.  It has large feet and doesn't easily fall over, which I think is the best thing that can be said about this game.

Oh, and it came with a poster, on which are a half dozen completely forgettable anime girls, fully clothed.

Wheee!!


The toy is on the left, the poster looks a lot like the image on the right (which is the telecard; the only difference is the placement of the logo).  I stole the image from Sega, I admit it.

Update: Looks like Segadirect is now sold out of these.  

[Chuplayer]

If you decide to trudge through the game, screenshots of boobies would be appreciated.

Thanks for this review. I was considering getting it. Now I'm not. Thanks for saving me money.

[NFG]

I've been hearing that a lot.  Maybe everyone who saved $75 by not getting this on account of my review could send me a few bucks to help alleviate the pain of the bullet I took for all of you? =)

[atom]

Pain? You're telling me you had a chance to see anime boobies and didn't take it?
A quick google shows the following:

[Souma Tohru]

I guess not everyone has played this game, so I guess I'll give some intro...

First of all this was a PC game made back in 2000. It was an H-PC game, which is where those scenes you found came from.  I'm not sure if the DC contains those, but giving the track record of DC games porting H-PC games but cutting out the sex scenes, I would guess no.  But anyways, Baldr Force was one of those "gal-get" games for PC where you interact with the girls and try to create a sucessful relationship with one of them. The text is part of the storyline and portrays the interactions you have with those girls along with points where you as a player can make decisions about what to do next, kinda like a "choose your own adventure" of sorts.  What makes Baldr Force EXE better and stand out from the multitudes of these games in Japan is the fact that it also has an awesome 2-D game engine in it as well, contrary to games where all you do is click, read, select, and read again.

The gameplay is really addicting.  You basically battle it out with a multitude of enemy robots/bosses.  You start out with a limited number of weapons and superweapons (specials) and as the game progresses and you defeat certain characters or meet certain objectives, you gain more weapons.  The neat part about all of this is you have 9 different weapons (short, medium, long range) and you can customize your weapons from among 30 different ones.  In this sense you can create a combo that would chain from one attack to the next, allowing you to deal massive damage in a short amount of time.

The fun comes from designing combos that deal more damage but take up less heat and finding new weapons to make new combos. Each time you use a weapon it levels up, allowing it to use up less heat so you have a shorter recharge time.  By carefully leveling up the weapons so that they have less recharge time, you can open up more time to place another attack in and creating a better combo.

As for the battles, once the story gets going and you get to the later parts of the game, there should be tons of battles for you to have fun with  B) To me the only thing this game really needs is a multiplayer option to be great, as I can imagine a game with 8 or so mechs jumping around doing battle  

The things that most of us who played the PC version were expecting was the rumor of CGI movies being added, and new CGs/scenes where the H-scenes have been cut out.  That and the cool action figure!  

Well hope that explains somewhat...

[NFG]

Thanks for your counterpoint, 'Souma'.  I'm sure if you view it as a gal-get game first it's an exceptional example of the genre, but the demo I saw was of the action-bits only.  As an action game this title is a complete failure.  While the gameplay may be addictive, there's not enough of it.  Anyone who loves gal-get games would probably enjoy this, but I sure didn't.  =/

[dj898]

unfortunately(?) DC port lacks any of those interesting bits  :angry:
probably getting the PC version is better option since I've seen few import shops selling PC version bit cheaper than DC release...

still DC release action figure is cool - although I won't be palying with it just like rest of my PG/MG Gundam & chogokin...  

cheers

[atom]

I also couldn't help but notice, that the Hentai was very well drawn out and the gameplay graphics were mediocre and cheezy. Perhaps two different teams made the two different part of the games. But the action part reminds me of a few fun genesis titles, too bad the game just looks to have gone down the tubes.