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The Xbox's game library is slowly expanding to include every genre imaginable, but it's been a long time coming. With only Morrowind and KOTOR offering a satisfying experience, RPG gamers have obviously spent a lot of time waiting for some new games to take over their free time. Soon, the waiting will be over, as the upcoming quarters are filled with a variety of potentially great role-playing games. Sudeki, the European RPG developed by Climax Studios, marks the first anticipated RPG on the big black box since last year's Knights of the Old Republic, so it's easy to see why there were so many people looking forward to it. It's finally here, and while it's certainly a worthwhile entry into the Xbox's small offering of RPGs, Sudeki has several issues that ultimately keep it from being the game that many hoped it would be. When all is said and done, though, it does enough things right to help secure a top spot among the Xbox's RPGs ... for now.
Sudeki follows the adventures of four young heroes: Tal the soldier, Ailish the princess, Elco the scientist and Buki the huntress. Brought together by prophecy, they must investigate a recent wave of attacks by creatures that literally drop in from the sky. Their travels will take them through three very different worlds on their quest to stop the attacks, which soon becomes a simple battle between good and evil. Along the way, you?ll come to know the characters and where they come from, which all manages to feel very original and interesting. Unfortunately, their pasts are never fully realized throughout the game, taking as backseat to the tasks at hand once the game truly gets underway. It's kind of a shame that intriguing backgrounds were explored early on in the game only to be tossed out once the game's main quest begins. Still, Climax deserves credit for creating inspired characters and environments that set themselves apart from past RPGs. Sudeki feels wholly original throughout the duration, despite the inclusion of several RPG clich鳬 thanks to great art design and thrilling combat. It's not often that a RPG comes along that sets itself apart from the rest of the pack, especially on the Xbox.
Sudeki's gameplay still borrows much from other RPGs, though. Characters meet in cities and towns that are safe from danger, where they can interact with the many NPCs in the game. Here, they can buy or sell items and equipment from the shop, rest at the inn or upgrade their armor and weapons at the blacksmith. Every piece of equipment has a certain number of slots that can be used to add enchantments that produce varying effects, such as protecting the wearer from negative status effects or increasing the power of their weapons. While currency is hard to come by at the beginning of the game, it soon becomes much more plentiful, so it won't be long before your party is decked out in powerful armor and weapons. In an interesting twist, money isn't found on the corpses of your enemies like in most RPGs. Instead, killing a pack of wolves will instead yield wolf pelts, which can be sold to a merchant. Certain merchants specialize in different types of trade goods, so you'll earn more money if you pay close attention to where you trade your goods. Certain NPCs give out optional side quests, as well, which provide a small amount of amusement and give the player a few choices in the otherwise linear game. Every NPC has a very small tree of dialogue options, so don't expect to revisit locations to see how the local populace has changed after a major event in the story. You'd think the citizens of the capital city of Illumina would act different when speaking with a local soldier than they would when approached by the princess, but in Sudeki, you'd be wrong.
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