Rising Star Games finally brings Atlus' Growlanser: Heritage of War to the UK, almost a year after it was released in the US, and while I would love to say that it has been worth the wait, a derivative, largely confusing story, frustrating gameplay mechanics and some truly awful PSOne-era graphics make it hard to recommend to anyone but the most ardent of RPG fans.

There is a huge amount of content to be found here, with up to sixty hours of gameplay for those who wish to search out every nook and cranny, along with the usual epic themes of war, love, revenge and betrayal all present and accounted for, but the story's disjointed nature and the script's inability to create any kind of bond between you and the many characters found throughout the game's lengthy running time means that you are left with a title that is big on content but severely lacking in quality or coherence. You traverse the game's five lengthy chapters from numerous characters' points of view, although the main story arc revolves around Haschen, a young man who was orphaned as child and is critically wounded when the town where he was raised gets attacked by the altogether unpleasant water-based Screapers. Haschen is saved by an operation that for reasons neither logical nor explained gives him an array of abilities that are very useful for when the Screapers inevitably make their return.

Before you get to grips with this unsurprisingly moody, largely muted main character, you first get a chance to set the scene seventeen years earlier, as you take control of Seldous, another of Growlanser's many orphans, who you will learn next to nothing about, other than the fact that he isn't exactly the biggest fan of war. Seldous sets off in an attempt to put an end to the war that is raging between the island continent's three warring kingdoms of Grangale, Naylern and Cyriltia. Although not explained fully, we do learn that this island has been split off from the rest of the world by a magical barrier and that the aforementioned Screapers are roaming the surrounding seas, only too eager to feed on any humans asinine enough to enter the waters or build their villages next to the sea (surprisingly enough, there are quite a few people who do just that). Then there is the matter of the earth gradually rotting away, thus leaving little to no food for those lucky enough not to be killed by the Screapers, war or other array of nasty looking beasts wandering the land; needless to say, the outlook is bleak.

On your travels you will meet an array of characters as you stumble across a bizarrely powerful weapon, later labelled the Admonisher by its finders. This weapon is subsequently used to force peace upon the warring kingdoms for fear that they will be blown to bits if they decide to kick up a fuss; maybe not the obvious way to resolve war but a successful one nevertheless. As you can imagine, this forced peace is understandably strained, as Seldous and his newly formed PMB (Peace Maintenance Brigade) hold peace talks with the warring kingdoms at the end of a very large pointed gun, or laser if you want to be precise. While this section does serve as an interesting introduction into the state of the world, all the time spent levelling up Seldous and co. is subsequently wasted as the story shifts focus to Haschen.

With his new skills and position with the PMB secured, you set off on your journey, one that is played out from many different perspectives, something that does become annoying thanks to constant changes in character control putting you back to square one with regards to stat development. Although this shift in perspective could have been used to good effect with regards to emotional development and extended exposition, the story never strives to make all that much sense of the plot's many strands and poorly constructed character arcs. While the personal relationships between the characters prove mildly entertaining, thanks largely to the beautifully hand drawn anime animations from Satoshi Urushihara, the bigger picture often gets lost in translation. Speaking of translation, you should really watch out for the often appalling dialogue that the mostly talented voice actors have to deliver completely straightfaced.

With the story proving a huge disappointment, one would hope that the battle system might prove to be the game's saving grace. Sadly this isn't the case, as some questionable design choices, along with some very infuriating AI, make what is essentially a solid underlying battle mechanic as infuriating as possible. Battles, which inevitably make up a huge part of a game such as this are split into two types: regular and mission-based. The first of these are the random but largely avoidable battles that you encounter as you traverse the large, uninspired game world. Although avoidable, you will need to partake in quite a few of these to get your characters up to the levels required for the more difficult mission-based battles later in the game. These mission-based battles are unavoidable and often come complete with multi-conditioned achievements that need to be completed to move on.

Battles are played out in real-time, with you left to control either just your main character - with the rest of your party controlled by the often suspect AI - or the entire party, manually controlled as you lead them into battle. Sadly, each option comes with its fair share of problems. As battle commences and you choose your characters and mode of attack - either basic attack, magical spell or Knack (a basic ability), you have to wait a set amount of time, depending on the form of the attack chosen, before your character recharges and can once again be picked for their next move. While this approach works fine for the most part, with a pause in battle allowed at any time to oversee each character's condition or to plan your next wave of attack, it can lead to some truly infuriating moments, thanks to some of the game's poorly implemented mechanics.

The biggest of these problems comes surprisingly enough from the terrain. Due to its fixed nature, characters seem to find themselves stuck on a regular basis, meaning that you will have to cancel their current action and manually move them back into position. Although merely annoying for the most part, for certain mission objectives this wasted time and potential attack can mean the difference between success and defeat. Another problem stems from the choice to make each command enemy-specific, meaning that while you may choose a certain approach for one enemy, once they are defeated your allies may well charge blindly on towards the next enemy, regardless of whether or not a different approach is required. This of course leads to even more manual movement and more wasted commands on your part.

Although these problems do become a nuisance, when the AI isn't striving to annoy, the battle system actually works pretty well, allowing for a wide range of tactical approaches to battle. This is especially the case in the simpler random battles that allow for some interesting experimentation. You can change your approach, along with your party members' inventory and items, with ease mid-battle, thanks to the simple and easy to access command menu. The magic casting system also adds a nuanced and tactical twist to encounters; with magical attacks generally taking longer to charge, the time increasing as you increase the rank of each spell instead of the amount of magic points required to cast, time becomes of the essence. The problem is, enemy attacks lead to longer cast times, meaning that a strategic positioning of magicians away from enemy clutches becomes all but essential to success.

Sadly, the above mentioned problems are not so easily overlooked in the target-specific mission battles. Beyond the issue of wasted commands causing huge problems for timed-based objectives, there is also the matter of the conditions for victory seemingly changing at the drop of a hat. Although these changes do keep you on your toes, thanks to the bizarre design choice to keep the conditions for victory updated separately from the basic command menu, checking these updates becomes an unnecessary, time-wasting chore. Why Atlus would choose to have these updates in the system menu, meaning that you have to completely exit the battle to see what needs to be done next is anyone's guess. It takes you out of the moment and separates you from the battle, leaving what should have been an epic, story-driven encounter as a disjointed mess.

When you do win battles, be it regular or mission based, you inevitably pick up experience with which to further develop your characters. Beyond this you also get the added bonus of picking up ability plates to learn and upgrade each character's three skill sets of magic, innate skills and knacks. These plates are attached to weapons and armor and are assignable when that item is being carried. They then need to be infused with 'knack' points, which are collected via won battles, to learn specific skills. To enter these knack points into the plates, you first need to set them to a character's 'active flow'. From there you need to take into account how each plate has specific arrows, meaning that skill plates can only be attached with corresponding arrows on another plate. Although this is an interesting enough system is theory, thanks to limited space on the grid, combined with the inability to chop and change, or even sell unwanted plates until later in the game, the system soon becomes cluttered and tiresome.

Almost every aspect of the gameplay in Growlanser falls somewhere between average and disappointing, but at least in the case of the graphics you know exactly where you stand; you will quickly find that it's easily one of the most underwhelming visual experiences you are likely to come across on PS2. Sure, the hand drawn characters are nice enough, but really, that's about it. The landscapes, although varied enough in a clichéd sort of way, are drab and uninspiring, while character models are poorly rendered with limited and generally weak animations. Character attacks also fall comfortably on the side of disappointing, with little fanfare for even the most powerful of attacks later in the game. To make matters worse, these stronger attacks trigger poorly designed cut scenes that make everything else on screen grind to a rather unpleasant halt. On the back of titles such as Odin Sphere - a true graphical work of art - it's amazing how far Atlus' usually high graphical standards have slipped for this latest release. The audio fares better, with some decent voice work, but when you consider the at times truly awful dialogue and the pleasantly forgettable soundtrack, it's far from enough to save this package from complete mediocrity.

Fans of the series will probably find something to like in Growlanser: Heritage of War's forty or more hours of gameplay and selection of extras that include a battle arena and fairy contest; for the rest of us though, there is little to be found here other than an extremely average RPG that seems to do its best to exasperate its already lengthy list of shortcomings.

Reviewed by Liam Pritchard for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).