Ephemeral Fantasia

Ephemeral - lasting for only a short time
Fantasia - a piece of music with no fixed form, or one consisting of well-known tunes

Okay - now when your friends confusedly ask, "What the heck does that mean?" - you have the answer. Actually, it’s a fairly good summation of the most important elements of the game and it’s main character - Time (as your friend or foe) and Music (in honor of Mouse, the hero and traveling musician). If you really want to have some fun with your vocabulary, you can also note that in Japan the full title also included the word Reiselied - which is German for travel song.

But enough of language lessons, let’s get down to the review on Konami’s newest RPG, shall we?  Ambitiously touting terms like "surround battlefield system" and boasting over 160 monsters, 10 playable characters, and a life-sized world - EF’s packaging and preliminary game info looked to promise gamers a unique and intriguing new title for RPG-hungry PS2 owners.

There’s trouble in paradise. You are Mouse, a traveling musician (and thief) who is invited to the paradise island of Pandura - also known as the Island of Eternal Summer. You are to play for the wedding of the beautiful Princess Loreille. Only one problem, she doesn’t seem so happy she’s getting married, and, well, you fall in love with her. In the midst of your personal observations, an evil sorcerer casts a spell on Pandura causing the last few days before the wedding to repeat themselves. And you thought you’ve had long days! It’s up to you to solve the mysteries, remove the curse, and do your duty to save the princess.

Visually, Ephemeral is bright and colorful. The graphics are fairly simple (perhaps too simple, anime style aside) for the PS2 system. There is no transition between town and wide open land which is a nice touch. Surprisingly, there are a lot of loading times (albeit short) even early on in the game. This wouldn’t be frustrating if there weren’t so darn many and they came in places you’d expect. Instead, you encounter one “every block” or so in the city and every maybe 2-3 screen lengths on open land. I don’t mind a couple in a heavily graphic intensive game, but the frequency didn’t make sense.

The control system is solidly designed, but often requires you to go into one room, change several proximity views height-wise from your character and rotate your view up to 360 degrees just to see everything in the room. Searching becomes quite involved as you will be forced to constantly change your angles in order to see and search everything. If there was more to look at visually, or if the hunt and search wasn't so involved, this might not be so cumbersome. This flexibility in control is nice in battle though, as you can change your view preferences from several different selections. Whether you like a dynamic view that moves your viewpoints through various angles during the attack, or you just like a bird’s eye view - you can find something to suit your style.

On the positive side, once you get to battles, they are organized fairly well and as long as you stay on your toes, the real-time battle system won’t hit you too many times while you are making your decisions. You have a fair array of physical attacks, magical attacks, items, and other standard options to choose from - very reminiscent of some popular and successful RPG’s. Like many RPG's your characters have special skills they either have or will learn as the game goes on. Mouse, your lead character, may even learn some new moves from his companions if he sees them often enough, but at a cost to his own HP. Each character has a status bar that automatically regenerates depending on the character’s agility scores and, when full, allows their attack. The "surround battlefield system" basically means the placement of the monsters (to the side, all around you, etc.) may effect how and where you cast your spells or place your attacks and also how it awards placement advantages/disadvantages to you and your adversaries. As fun and as fast paced as the battles might be, the only problem is, the random battles happen everywhere (in town and outside of town) and sometimes do not offer much variety. 

The real sticking point with playing EP is simply that it’s hard to stay involved and motivated in what’s going on. The actual plot of the game doesn’t really get all that involved and you are basically left with your anti-hero (musician/thief), the bewitching princess who our anti-hero falls for, and an evil sorcerer who casts a spell to harm the people. This could be fine if the character dialogue and other plot scripting is fully explored or is entertaining, but it just seemed like a very plain translation with the exception of several bawdy comments here or there  thrown in rather conspicuously. I had really been hoping for more of the musical aspects of the game (I'm a big fan of music - both in real-life and in games) to distinguish EP from other titles, not just a "Guitar Freaks"-esque mini game.

So, from here, we turn to gameplay. After all, I can think of more than one game that had a pretty plain plot but was good for mindless RPG game sessions. However, gameplay anywhere outside the battlefields was tedious and sometimes frustrating. When you are trying to navigate from point to point you must frequently refer to the map and sometimes the land or town is convoluted and often very hard to navigate. To make progress slower, you are either confronted by (A) very frequent loading times (a couple seconds each) or (B) an almost unnerving number of repetitive random battles. Regardless of whether you are focused on your next goal or meeting your next appointment, these deterrants can often wear away at any excitement or involvement you have in the plot. On top of all that, if you miss your appointment at any time, or the appointment is far off - you are forced to kill time or find a place to wait (sometimes up to 5 days of game time) until you get your chance again. 

All in all, I saw great potential with EP, but for each part of the game I enjoyed, there just seemed to be another point of frustration that kept me from truly immersing myself in the game. It does have a very novel look to it and it does actually follow through with the unique music mini games to tie into your lead character, but it both literally and figuratively "loses something in the translation." Give it a rental first.

Gameplay: 6
Gameplay outside of battle is very slow and there are just a tad bit too many loading times and random battles. The plot isn’t particularly compelling – even with a few bawdy remarks here and there to perhaps catch the gamer off guard. Character and plot development is very basic. Controls occasionally require too much attention as searching becomes perhaps a bit overly involved - the flexibility is both a blessing and a curse.

Graphics: 5.5
The color schemes are refreshingly bright and airy and the characters are anime-like in appearance. However, this game doesn’t take too much advantage of the capabilities of the system and it seems like the game may have been suited for a previous console.

Sound: 5
For a game based on music, I was a little disappointed in the soundtrack. The score was very unassuming, albeit not annoying or too "loud". The guitar mini-game does have a few charming numbers, but that was about it. The characters do not have voices and the sound effects were pretty standard.

Difficulty: 7
The battle aspects of EP are based on solid game play ideology and were fairly easy to get used to. There is an automatic AI option for those who are not comfortable with the battle aspects of gaming.

Concept: 6 
Ephemeral Fantasia had a fairly unique idea going, but it never fully explored it. The character and plot development were very basic and the good RPG elements of the game were somewhat nullified by the actual game design. 

Multiplayer: N/A