Our reader Knight37 has written a preview of Shadowflare for you. Shadowflare is an action/RPG game that was originally released in October 2001 in Japan and has become quite a popular game there. The first episode of four of the English version of the game will be available for download worldwide at an attractive price of $15 starting in October 2002. Another episode will be released each month after that up to four episodes. The marketing plan is unique and the price is certainly competitive.

The fantasy world setting of ShadowFlare shows a lot of promise. It seems that humans achieved a technological level that was fairly advanced; the use of laser defense systems and steam pipes are evident from the graphics in the game. A rift was opened to another dimension and monsters poured from it. Human society collapsed as a result, and the humans were thrown back to a medieval age. Some of the details of this setting can be gleamed from the gameplay, but most of it comes from reading the manual.

The game gives you the choice to play as a male or female mercenary. You can talk to the residents of the remote town where you begin your adventures to receive quests. As you explore the area surrounding the remote town, you will encounter enemies. You will kill enemies to gain experience and go up in levels to gain more power. The quests are fairly simple "kill the boss to get the item" type things. The gameplay is essentially clearing out areas of monsters. Areas that must be cleared of monsters include outdoor areas with forests
and large steam pipes everywhere, and dark dungeons filled with traps and hidden switches that open locked doors. Overall the gameplay is extremely similar to Diablo if a bit faster paced.

Upon leveling up you basically do not get a choice as to where to put your new stats, you just grow in power according to a predefined plan. You eventually will get access to new spells and abilities. Of course, as in Diablo, finding new and better armor and weapons is critical to success. Sometimes you may have to wait to level up some before you can equip the items you find. You are given a rather large "warehouse" stash at the town where you can put your gear you aren't wearing at the time. You are supposed to be able to advance as one of three types: Warrior, Hunter (Diablo's Rogue), or Wizard (Diablo's Sorceror). What choice you get must depend on which skills you use, because I was automatically chosen as a warrior.

The game does have a few features that are new to the Diablo-style action-RPG. The first is having a pet companion that you can control. You get a dog in the starting episode. Actually there are several dogs that you can choose from in the first town. You can press the space bar to toggle between the dog being "active" or "inactive." When active, the dog will attack your enemies and can be a great assistant. When inactive, the dog stays beside you and regenerates his health. You can also have your dog pick up stuff and activate switches. The second new feature that is unique to ShadowFlare is the mines. You can buy or find mines and can carry a certain number (which can increase as you gain equipment and levels). You can drop a mine and then lure enemies in groups over to it and watch it explode and damage all of the enemies in a radius. The mines do not hurt you or your pet, so you can actually wade into a huge group of enemies and drop a mine and hit them all. One other feature you get is a Power mode which will be available from time to time after you've killed enough enemies. This puts a powerful aura around you that protects you and allows you to wade into battle facing incredible odds.

Like Diablo, you can not create multiple save-game points. When you save you exit the game. If you are killed, you respawn in town, dropping some stuff like gold and an item you were wearing. If you save and exit when you come back to the game, the areas you have been to before and cleared out are now respawned with more monsters. This is good if you need to level up some more before you tackle your next quest, but it can be frustrating to have to wade through stuff again just because you needed to save and quit for a while. There are waypoint type things very similar to the way Diablo 2's waypoint system works, so you will not have to begin from the same starting point every time.

The graphics are 2D anime-style graphics that are similar to 16-bit console games. In the two different towns for the beta, many of the NPCs had the same graphics used for them as other similar NPCs in the previous town, just different names. Two different dungeons were both identical in the graphics and many of the overland graphics are similar. After about 10 hours of gameplay I only ever encountered 3 basic enemy graphic types, which were reused for increasingly powerful enemies of the same basic type. I killed a LOT of goblins. On the plus side, the animations are pretty good at times.

The sound effects and the music are very reminescent of console-style RPGs from the SNES days. At times the sound effects became repetitive. When you cast your "town portal" teleport back to base spell, it makes a continuous noise over and over. Also your dog will constantly bark at you. You'll get very accustomed to the sound of your sword smacking into things as well.

Shadowflare has support to play up to four players multiplayer via LAN or Internet, but I didn't get a chance to find other players to test it with yet. There is no built in matching service for the English beta version of the game, but this would be a highly welcome addition.

System Requirements: