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Beautiful But Deadly

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 18
Date: May 07, 2001
Author: Amazon User

There is much to admire in THQ's latest release of "Summoner" for the PC. This RPG has some of the best graphics and three-dimensional visualization I've seen in the past year. The sets are quite complex and offer some breathtaking viewpoints. Opponents are well animated with a variety of moves. Cut scenes are abundant, and are a major source of continuity. Sound design is exceptional as well.

The story itself is straightforward. Joseph, born a summoner has fled to the village of Masad after his undisciplined use of his summoning skill calls a demon that destroys his home village of Ciran. Unfortunately Murod, the evil emperor of Orenia has heard a prophecy that a summoner will destroy him and is searching for Joseph. The story opens will Masad's destruction at the hands of imperial forces and Joseph's flight to the capital city of Lenele where he will seek his old mentor and try to regain control over his own fate.

The first part of the story takes place in Lenele's streets, sewers and buildings as Joseph gains in skill and power while he begins to assemble his party. Soon thought he is out in the world of Khosos traveling to other cities and facing random (and not so random) conflicts. There are many side quests, which provide sources of experience while Joseph and his friends struggle to stop the onslaught of Murod and his hideous generals. Joseph's team will grow to include Flece, a master thief, Rosalind a mage of the Order of Iona and Jekhar who became Joseph's sworn enemy when Ciran was destroyed.

"Summoner" is a large game, with a lot of enemies to defeat. There are plenty of opportunities for hacking and slashing as well as spell casting. Joseph's special ability to summon demons and Flece's thieving add extra dimension. Bugs are few and far between. Altogether a very effective conversion of a PS2 game.

There are a few drawbacks though. Combat and control are a bit awkward, and take a lot of getting used to. There's simply too much mousing around to do. As a result battles drag out. The fighting AI's are pretty good, but the players running on auto are prone to run off and do the wrong thing just when you want them to follow the leader and sneak by some potential trouble. A few scenes get repeated a bit too often (I think I had to fight my way through Lenele's sewers four or five times). If you leave the viewpoint on auto it has a habit of picking bad angles of vision. All of these things act as irritants. Towards the end it's a real temptation to start up a trainer and let the game run on auto as much as possible.

OK, "Summoner" isn't perfect. But its overall quality is pretty impressive. 2001 has been a dry year so far and "Summoner" provides many hours of good gameplay. If nearly genocidal hack and slash RPG's are your cup of tea, this is the game for you.

This Game Rocks!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: June 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I tried this game out on a whim, and I am very glad I did. The Interface was a bit tough to get used to, but the gameplay, combat, and magic are just astounding. The graphics, while initally seeming rather basic, do show an astounding amount of detail, especially in landscaping. Also, the look of flames in the game is just amazing. There are a few bugs, though. The biggest one I noticed is that when you are moving the camera around, there can be times where you cant see your characters through some structures. Also, the graphics can drag down a bit and get *really* choppy, especially if you have been playing for a while. I have a mid-grade system (800 Mhz Pentium 3 w/ 128Mb Ram, and a 32Mb NVidia TNT2), so anyone with a high-end system should see this game fly. Overall, I highly recommend this game for anyone looking for a good RPG with an engrossing storyline. Other games you might like include Baldur's Gate 2 (especially with the expansion pack), Icewind Dale (also with the expansion pack), or Diablo 2 (with the expansion pack).

Fun but flawed

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 20, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The idea of Summoner appealed to me from the start. I've never found an RPG that has a perfect combination of hack 'n slash action with an in-depth plot, and until Neverwinter Nights finally appears, this seemed like a good way to keep myself occupied.

The plot has been outlined here by other reviewers, so I'll skip that. It is fun, though, with a few surprises here and there. Plenty to keep the action flowing, and keep you playing for a few more hours. The last time I felt this addicted was Diablo 2, so be warned.

There are some great graphics, with particularly nice 3d environments such as the forests on the random encounters. It would have been nice if more had been made of these though. When you leave a particular location, the game shoots you out to a campaign style map, where you trudge around a 2D map of the world to move from one city to another. I'm sure the engine would have been quite capable of letting you stay in 3D, and combined with the random encounters this might have made the game gel a bit better. Spell effects are great too - and the player, NPC and monster models are nicely put together.

Where the game falls apart a little is in the AI. For some reason, the designers seem to have forgotten to program the monsters to avoid area damage. Almost all the battles in the game boiled down to creeping up to monsters from behind, and finding a nice position from which to cast Blizzard or Wall of Fire spells, and watching your enemies get toasted without them even appearing to notice it. Hmm.

Something else I didnt mention is that on my Windows 2000 system, the game crashes about once every hour - so remember to save. The manual claims that the game wont run at all under Windows 2000, so I dont suppose I can complain too much.

Compared to "true" RPGs like Baldurs Gate 2, the plot is fairly linear too. Aside from a few small side-quests (most of which I didnt even manage to get started on), there is only 1 main quest, and no opportunity to play through the adventure with different characters.

Still it's a fun game, and took me around 30 hours to complete. And you can sit back and admire the scenery without hvaing to think too much.

Pro:
Beautiful forest and city environments, nice spell effects, good ol' hack n slash adventuring

Con:
Buggy AI, win2k problems, limited plot, low replay value.

A Few Features Short of Greatness

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Although Summoner has been out now for a month or two, I haven't bought it. The reason is, I played the demo, and decided that the good didn't quite outweigh the bad enough for me to commit to this game. My comments refer only to the demo.

With the release of Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, the mighty Infinity Engine, the engine behind all the BG games, Icewind Dale, and the awesome but underappreciated Planescape: Torment, has likely gone into retirement, swept away by the winds of time and 3D technology. What the world needs to replace it is either an excellent RPG adaptation of an existing 3D engine like the Unreal or Quake engine, or (better yet) a new, great 3D engine for CRPG's. The new engine driving Summoner, for all its excellent qualities, is not that engine.

For one thing, the Summoner engine only allows you to control one character at a time. This means that your other characters (a total of four player characters and one summoned character) can only follow AI scripts, which rarely do what you want them to do. You can spend a few minutes carefully setting up an ambush, then one of your non-controlled characters will attack, breaking the ambush.

It's understandable why this decision was made, as allowing the player to control five characters simultaneously in 3D requires excellent camera control. Then again, controlling many characters simultaneously was very difficult in 2D, until Bioware showed how to do it with the Infinity Engine.

Second, the camera is virtually uncontrollable. You have exactly two choices on where to position the camera, and in combat you lose one of them. Ideally, the camera control system should allow the player to look where he/she would in real life - mostly to the front, but sometimes behind or to the side.

Another problem (which is probably not fundamental to the engine) is the limited map function. The map shows a very small area, which doesn't help much when you get lost in the large areas of Summoner. It's like getting lost in a big city, stopping to buy a map of the area, and finding that you can only get a map of the city block surrounding where you are. Once again, the BG games showed how to implement the map function: show the player a map of the whole area, with markers to indicate where his/her characters are.

All that said, there is one significant improvement in this engine. The inventory system is a vast improvement over just about any other game. There is only one inventory for all the players, which eliminates the tiresome moving around of inventory items necessary in BG. Those items which are equippable on the character currently selected are highlighted, the others are grayed out to reduce confusion. At any time, additional information, including who can wear it and how much it costs, can be displayed with a mouse click. Very nice.

The limitations of the engine are a shame, because Summoner is a fine game. The graphics are excellent, most of the time. The 3D characters are amazing, the combat sequences are great, the environments excellent. The chain attack feature of combat, while new to me, is quite enjoyable. The gameplay is so good, I got to where I could ignore most of the problems mentioned above.

Most, but unfortunately not all. When decision time came, I found that I could not ignore the poor mapping function. Apparently, I hate not knowing where I am. The thought of wandering through those large areas with no real map to guide me was terrifying, so I just said no. Those who can stand the problems of this game may just say yes, and may enjoy it very much.

Nice game!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: July 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have to say that this is a great game. The graphics are amazing, especially the summons. This game puts together many aspects that create an enjoyable game for the public. First you get options, I dont mean sound and graphics setup options, but choices that make the game fun for different people. There are many many side quests that guarantee hours of extended play and fun. Between the gameplay time and the graphics this game would have been a 5, the only thing that brings the game down a notch is above view camera angle, sometime this angle makes it hard to see around corners or far off enemies that are on the charge. Besides that, great game

You'd Better Have A Fast System If You Want to Play This

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I played this game in multi-player mode with a friend, and had a ball until the lag kicked in. We were playing on a network server using P3 500Mhz PC's, and at one point, the lag got so bad we had to re-boot our machines. We downloaded the patch, and it didn't help. I've played multiplayer mode in plenty of graphic-laden games (new and old) on this PC/network server before, but I've never had this kind of problem. Summoner is a fantastic game, and once you get used to the funky camera angles, you become completely absorbed in the story and gorgeous graphics. I just hope your system is faster than mine, or you're bound to get frustrated. I'll still play this game, but will always have the worry that I'm going to have to re-boot during a battle again.

Lightning Girl!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Well I personally reakon they should make this game into a film. But thats another story. The only apsect about this game that I did find a bit worrying was the amount of space it takes up on you hard drive but to be expected when you actually start playing the game.

General outline is that joseph the main chap has been born with the mark of the summoner. A person that through the use of rings is able to summon creatures to aid him on his adventures. You can get both deamons and dragons to fight along side you! Which I do believe makes the game nice and original just by the story line. Joseph has to use his rings to defeat an evil guy, who I havent reached yet and I guess destroy him.

There is character evolution throughout the game all characters as well as having the hand to hand abilities also have a levl of magic apart from 1. He's a warrior sent with you from the king. So you can puddly puddly into situations. Fire fireballs, create ice storms, reserect the dead. It endless, weapons are well thought out and I think the game is tops.

Definate testing needs to be done before you are to buy not everybodies cup of tea.

Great game, one to keep

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The term 'RPG' is so loaded these days that it's hard to adequately judge whether or not you'll like a game from that 'genre' or whether it'll make you dump it in the trash out of disgust. Summoner is an RPG, in the sense that you play a number of characters that improve over time, gaining skills, equipment, and various powers on their way towards dishing out some plot-ending comeuppance. Here are a few things that particularly stand out to me about Summoner:

1) Graphics. Summoner is a beautiful game to look at. It's aging now, but still has excellent detail and is very immersive..little in the graphics will grate to such a degree you'll find yourself wondering what the heck happened.
2) Game play. Combat is real-time rather than turn based, with your characters operating dependant on the AI settings you give them..they can emphasize melee combat, ranged, healing, offensive spells, as well as perform specific acts you command them to do. Use the space bar to pause the action and dish out orders, then jump seamlessly back into the fray.
3) Questing. The game has a main quest and hundreds of small side quests you can perform or ignore. Some become fairly tedious and are multi-stage, so that if you're not careful you can miss a vital item or person and never be able to finish it. While you generally can explore however and for however long you wish, certain game events that occur will make you unable to go back and finish quests, as key NPCs or even areas have been destroyed or otherwise affected.
4) Exploring. I'm one of those players that loves to poke around in the wilderness and do my own thing for a while. In any RPG I look forward to the first chance I have to be independent and explore rather than trudge from point A, do task A, walk to point B, do task B, and so on. Summoner is great for this. You can roam around and encounter all sorts of strange things. The random encounters can often be challenging, but are always very detailed. You can escape them if necessary by running to a border in the encounter map a la Fallout/Fallout 2, which is a good way to survive if you get in over your head. I did that a lot. Another great aspect is that tasks are not cued to your levels. That is, exploring and leveling up will actually aid you later in the game, rather than just making everything harder. I always despised RPGs that had random encounters and other events react to your power level, so that you ran into red dragons outside pristine little villages in the middle of the kingdom. In Summoner, exploring is ALWAYS in your interest. Monsters drop random treasure, and extra levels will always help later on. I stumbled over a way to find rings of fire protection early in the game, and used them to finance a number of my item purchases.
5) Character Development. You don't really get many options in choosing your party/cast members, but they're varied enough not to be a real problem. Make sure to train them all up so they can survive on their own, since you'll likely have to play them individually (as well as your main Summoner guy) in the course of the game.
6) Replayability: Very high. The game world is very large, the towns and cities are vast, and the NPCs are very interesting. There always seems to be another area or monster or item or quest to check out, and not in the sort of desperately addictive way it can be in Diablo II. I never felt a sense that I was wasting time or losing out on "necessary" items if I went off the beaten path; both the game and the combat system reward creativity. One game you might favor archers, another you might favor swordsmen and melee tactics. It's really up to you.

All in all, Summoner is a great game with high visual standards that has really held up over the last couple years. You can play it for 30 minutes, or burn a weekend without thinking about it. In either event, you won't be disappointed.

Has its flaws, but still a pretty good RPG overall.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The controls could use some work, the graphics are obviously outdated, and the voice work is terrible. But aside from these flaws I enjoyed Summoner. It's a good game - not bad, not great. I would give it 4 stars but...

In a town near the end of the game I came to a bug that has preventd me from finishing the game. In a place that you normally walk through to go to the next area, nothing happens when I walk there. It doesn't trigger the transition to the next area... so I'm stuck. I tried several things but nothing worked so I eventually just quit playing.

However, I realize that this bug is most likely a rare thing and so I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. But I still felt it was worth mentioing... and so I give it 3 stars.

summmoner

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: September 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is very good but i think should come with a book to help you solve stuff am currently stuck in monastary if anyone can help me with this i would appreciate it

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