Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows

Moby ID: 20420
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Description official descriptions

Gauntlet is back for yet another iteration. The Emperor has crucified his four loyal heroes to a magic tree, driven by a maniac thirst for their immortality. Hundreds of years later, as only a ghost, he came to regret all the wrong deeds he has done and frees them, asking them to defeat his six former advisors in an attempt to undo what he has done.

This version of Gauntlet goes back to the roots: The warrior, valkyrie, elf, and wizard fight their way through hordes of enemies to make their way to the six bosses. The game is mostly a hack'n'slash affair, puzzles are limited to finding keys and pressing buttons that open doors and portals. Every character has a unique set of moves and attacks: The warrior has rather powerful attacks, the valkyrie has quick moves, the elf can shoot powerful arrows, and the wizard has several magical range attacks.

Defeating enemies gives you experience points that may be used to increase your three stats; some chests in the levels contain better armor or weapons. Also, new moves can be purchased with gold.

The game can be played both in single-player as well as cooperative multi-player, where up to four players fight together.

The newest feature of this game (other than the much better graphics) is the online gaming feature. Played online, the game is identical to a regular multiplayer game, with each player on a different box.

Spellings

  • 圣铠传说:七悲 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Promos

Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

331 People (290 developers, 41 thanks) · View all

Executive Producer
Creative Director
Producer
Art & Outsource Producer
Associate Producer
Lead Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer
Software Engineer
Associate QA Engineer
Intern Software Engineer
ATG Manager
ATG Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Game Designer
Game Designer
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 58% (based on 28 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 14 ratings with 1 reviews)

There's a reason why veteran RPG gamers hate Hack-and-Slash RPGs

The Good
Yikes, I honestly haven't played the game that long to discover any good parts about the game. Though I must admit, the story was somewhat interesting...

The Bad
There's a reason why I didn't play this game very long. It got boring. Seriously. I only got as far as the first level before losing TOTAL interest in the game.

In my defense, the game is really that bad. I'm an RPG veteran and devout fan to unreasonable fanatical levels. If a game even has the "smell" of an RPG on it, I would play it regardless.

In the traditional sense, RPGs are not no-brainer games. RPGs has a long tradition of complex game play, may it be due to choices of that one has to make because of the storyline or the sheer enjoyment of the complexity character development provides. RPGs are traditionally difficult and complex games. Thats what an RPG is all about. There's no such thing as an "easy RPG". Moderately difficult maybe, but no RPG is a walk in the park if it really truly IS an RPG.

This lousy excuse for an RPG is a really bad imitation of Diablo-like hack-and-slash RPGs. Diablo for veteran RPG gamers is child's play...and the only reason why anyone bothers with the game is probably because they want to see the cut scenes. One of the worst type of RPG's out there is when the essence of the game play is : "Click...click...click"

Yes, those 3 words explain what this game is all about. Just press the dang attack button from beginning to end. If that was the kind of game play I was expecting, I would of got me a shooter game, not a RPG you idiot!

The few hours of the game, that's all I did...attack-attack-attack. Monsters continuously spawn, I wouldn't even call this an adventure game. It would probably better fall under a "beat-em up" type of genre. This game is an insult to RPGs everywhere. No game play whatsoever, leveling up only occurs at the end of a level, where you buy attributes from the gold you got from defeated monsters. Basically, you know what the game is all about and I couldn't just bear to click the same button each second for the next several hours. Game play? What game play?

This game probably works better in multi-player where players need a no-brainer game to tune in their boredom. Its fun for 30 minutes, bashing all those monsters around, but you don't get a game just to play it for 30 minutes do you? That's what Solitaire is for.

The Bottom Line
No sane veteran RPG gamer would go near this piece of junk.

PlayStation 2 · by Indra was here (20756) · 2006

Trivia

Cancelled Windows version

A PC version was also announced but it was cancelled.

Development

Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows underwent a major re-design in summer 2005. Watching Gamespot E3 videos (which present game before the re-design) offers a glimpse of the big changes that were done: For one thing, the game was originally planned to be very M-rated: The warrior could hack people in two, the valkyrie could decapitate people, enemies could be picked up and thrown into spikes, all with very bloody results. Also, the traps in the dungeon passage were all very lethal indeed (the saw blades for example would chop a careless creature into chunky little pieces of meat).

Another change is evident when looking at the credits and promotional footage for the game: Lead designer J. E. Sawyer (as well as early print ads) mentioned the epic storyline. In the credits, many names of the ACT3 studio can be seen - which usually provides Midway with pre-rendered FMV scenes. Also, in the E3 build, the game started with a two-minute cut-scene that used the ingame render engine.

The final game has none of this. This is because the actual number of levels is less than half of what was initially announced in previews, and since the missing levels created huge gaps in the storyline, the story was discarded altogether and replaced with a more generic plot. As evident from the credits, Josh Sawyer ended up asking to have his name removed. John Romero also was associated with the project, but left around the same time as Sawyer.

Engine

The game was originally developed with the RenderWare graphics engine. However, unhappy with its capabilities, the developers replaced it with their own engine they wrote from scratch. Even though the RenderWare logo is shown, there are almost no traces of the RenderWare engine left in the game (except for a few framework functions).

Information also contributed by Karthik KANE

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by EboMike.

Xbox 360 added by Parf.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Patrick Bregger.

Game added December 16, 2005. Last modified March 27, 2024.