PlayStation

World of Dragon Warrior: Torneko: The Last Hope

Graphically, Torneko might as well be a SNES game. There's really nothing in the game that looks 32-bit, and the game looks just like old SNES RPGs used to look, complete with characters that constantly walk in place. The game's old-style look isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. In fact, the 16-bit look actually gives the game a great deal of charm. The sound effects are pretty unremarkable, but the music is quite good, and it provides a terrific theme to each of the game's many dungeons. The random design of the dungeons and the lack of a real story may turn off a lot of RPG players. But if you're an RPG fan looking for some lighter fare, Torneko is a charming little adventure that manages to push the nostalgia button without feeling overly dated.

My colleague David Smith probably puts it best when he describes Torneko as Claymation Nethack -- something that's only good for people with no lives, no friends, no jobs and a lot of spare time on their hands. However, even if I was in that situation, I would still be able to find much better games that I'd rather be playing to kill my time, such as Enix's own Valkirie Profile, or titles like Final Fantasy IX, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, Lunar 2, Shen Mue, Skies of Arcadia, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears and so on. Torneko: The Last Hope can be somewhat fun and addictive at times, but is typically just boring and repetitive.

Not only is this game about five years behind the times, it would still have been considered sucky even if it had been released on a 16-bit machine. Pointless to the extreme.

hy the !@#$ did they bring this title to the US? Is it because they thought "World of Dragon Warrior" would sell it? While I enjoy the fact that the main character is a big fat ass, the dialogue is juvenile, the control is stupid, and the game is loaded with arbitrary bizarreness. There isn’t much of a story and the dungeon crawling itself is horrendously lame. This game is an outdated, ugly piece of crap whose silly antics will charm no one. There are so many better RPGs out there.