Crimson Sea (Xbox) review "Brought to you by the same company that gave us the game with a million ennemies to fight, Dynasty Warrior 3, Koei proudly present the game with a billion ennemies to fight: Crimson Sea. "

Brought to you by the same company that gave us the game with a million ennemies to fight, Dynasty Warrior 3, Koei proudly present the game with a billion ennemies to fight: Crimson Sea.

Story:
Yu are Sho, a young detective, that get ''invited'' to join the IAG (i.e. the space police), along with his sidekick, a money crazed boy named Yangquin. You are at first tasked with the job of investigating dissapearances and attacks by creatures known as ''mutons'' before having to once again save the world (well actually in Crimson Sea it's a whole star system, but who's checking?)

Gameplay (7.5/10)
Crimson Sea is an Action game with a bit of adventure. It is mission based and let's you from time to time choose the order of the missions you'll have to face. Every mission is very distinct from the other and offer you a completely different challenge. In one of them, you'll be asked to hunt-down invisible ennemies in a crowded city, using only your radar as guide (which is only really a proximity detector), at other times you'll have to protect your sidekick Yangquin along with your soon-to-be girlfriend while he repair a spaceship and sometimes asked to fight thousands of ennemies using up to 5 partners along with you that you can place in different customizable formations, as you desire.

The game, overall is very good, but it's variety is also is downfall. Sometimes you just want a ''normal'' mission. Go in guns blazing and forgetting about weird objectives like having to collect a certain number of items before time runs out is a rarity in most of Crimson Sea.

The multiple type of guns and upgrades in this game gives some replay value to it. Since you'll most likely never have enough money (awarded according to performance in a mission) to buy everything, you'll have to choose your prefered kind of gun and hope you're prepared for every eventuality. Most guns also serve as a melee weapon, an energy blade coming out to slash/bash ennemies at will, meaning you never have to switch from melee to ranged weapons having both of them at the press of a thumb (which is a must considering the sheer number of ennemies you'll face at once, which may be more than a a thousand on the screen at once).

Crimson Sea does suffer from huge camera problems. Koei included a weird button configuration to help remedy to this problem, using a trigger opn the controller to strafe and another to lock-on ennemies, but i never could get really used to it (always felt uncomfortable).

Graphics (9.5/10)
Crimson Sea is one of the most beautiful game out there, with detailled characters coming close to those found in fighting games like Kakuto Chojin and beautiful backgrounds all the while supporting more than a few hundreds of ennemies on screen, Crimson Sea will not let your mouth go dry. Granted some level design such as a sewer or a cave doesn't let for big artistic creativity and are a bit dull to the eyes, but overall, it's still worth an almost perfect score.

Sound (9/10)
When you turn on the game, in the options menu, you're invited to listen to the musical score of Crimson Sea. Usually this means that the developpers knows they have a great soundtrack to allow gamers to just sit back and listen to their music. And in this case, i'm right. Crimson Sea has one of the best soundtrack i've heard since the original Mechwarrior 2, on PC. The whole soundtrack feels very movie-like, serving well the presentation of the game, which is very japanese-anime like.

The sound effects are very well made, although a bit more ordinary. Yangquin just becomes plain annoying when he yells ''here they come'' when you're already fighting hundreds of ennemies (although not THAT annoying).

Overall (8.5/10)
Crimson Sea is one of the best titles for fast and furious action on the XBOX. I think it's a game that's borderline between a rental and a purchase. It's not very long, but does have some replay value with higher difficulty levels, alternate endings, some small unlockables that will have you replaying the whole game just to see what you've unlocked and the number of guns and upgrades that you just can't use on the first go-through.

Community review by deedob (January 14, 2003) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.