Avalon Code (Nintendo DS)

[aruljothi]

Release Date: 03/10/2009
ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Marvelous Entertainment USA/XSEED Games
Developer: Marvelous Entertainment

Avalon Code is the most heartbreaking kind of game: The kind of game you really want to like, but ultimately can't. The kind of game that's bursting with creativity and ambition, but constantly trips over its own good intentions. The kind of game in which the qualities that make it sound so compelling on paper end up being the very stumbling blocks that make it such a chore to play.

You certainly can't fault Avalon's pedigree. It's the work of Alundra creators Matrix, best known for programming Square Enix's recent Final Fantasy remakes, and in many ways it feels like something of a spiritual successor to their PlayStation cult classic. There are lots of puzzle dungeons, for one thing, including the obligatory sliding ice block puzzles that drove so many Alundra players batty. And you certainly can't fault Matrix's technical expertise: Avalon looks and sounds great, with a mellow soundtrack and in-engine cutscenes that look even better than Final Fantasy IV's. Whatever dark pact the studio forged to earn its ability to wring every last drop of power from the DS's humble processors is in full effect here.

Even more enticingly, Avalon is that rarest of creations: a wholly new series that doesn't feel compelled to dumb itself down for the half-wit idiot children most developers apparently assume is the core DS audience. While the storytelling is fairly perfunctory -- your mute protagonist wakes up one day as a harbinger of the apocalypse and seems pretty OK with that fact, no questions asked -- it has the benefit of building on a fascinating premise around which the entire game revolves.

The world is about to end, and you, the hero/heroine, are tasked with recording everything of worth in order to help populate the world that follows. You accomplish this by smacking things with a magical book, which then preserves a record of the target's essence. Enemies, friends, gear, plant life: it's all in the good book. Once something has been stored in the book, you then have the power to reorder its code, a grid of attributes that define that object's nature. This comes in pretty handy when you face off against a boss, since it allows you to (among other things) remove the creature's strength attributes and replace them with weaknesses; swap out "steel" for "ill" and suddenly a monster's health is halved.

Naturally, you get more experience for facing tougher monsters, so ambitious players can crank up the difficulty by adding powerful codes to their enemies. Even then, the battles aren't terribly overwhelming thanks to the Judgment Link system, which allows you to juggle an enemy (or two, if you're good) for increasing damage. Each successive hit sends a foe higher and higher, with each successive impact hurting more and more, until you eventually launch the monster into space to explode in a shower of light, experience points, and health drops. Play it right and you can wipe out a souped-up boss in a single link attack.