Astonishia Story
	Genre: RPG Developer: Sonnori Corporation
Publisher Region Released Ubisoft NA 06/06/2006

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Staff Review

Review by Gary Hartley
January 01, 2011

I have to be careful here. This line now represents my third attempt at a review draft and, thus far, all I’ve been able to do is list the serious flaws with Astonishia Story, then rant about them openly.

Here’s a poignant one to open up proceedings: Astonishia Story first saw the light of day on Korean PCs back in 1994. I’ve nothing again Korea as a game producing country (they seem to produce a new MMO every three minutes, so they must know their way around C Basic) nor do I turn my nose up at older games -- I’m one of those retro elitist who don’t think you shouldn't be allowed to talk about video games until you’ve beaten Phantasy Star on the Master System. From the PC, the game was later ported to the GP32, a handheld system you’ve never heard of. Eventually, more than a decade later, it made its way to the PSP by way of very little update and a programming code reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster. Just because it can flail its limbs around while you yell “It lives!” into the flickering lightening doesn’t mean you’ve recreated life: you just have a shambling corpse and your consumer base is outside your door with flaming torches and pitchforks.

To try and play off the age of the game, Ubisoft have taken Sonnari’s buried KJRPG then contributed their efforts and excuses away from helping dig themselves out of an age-old hole and instead grabbed shovels and joined in. I suspect that Astonisha isn’t really a bad game at heart: it’s simplistic and dated, neither especially bad things. The colourful sprites are well detailed and brilliantly animated in everything they do, from performing signature attacks on their turn-based battle grid to trying on new clothes or taking part in a ball. The music is never particularly outstanding, but it’s fitting; sombre and fluttering. The dialogue is...

The dialogue. Right, rant two:

The dialogue was probably fine until whoever had access to babblefish that day tried to translate it into the amateurish mess that’s meant to guide you. Far too often does the game spit out straight translations of the original Korean text with no transition, leading to randomly-generated lines of grammatically incorrect gibberish sometimes complete with bracketed translation notes they forgot to take out of the finished product. Grumpy dwarven ex-general turned merchant, Randalf, gets his way after back-and-forth bickering, then comments smugly how he likes everything to be clear. It’s awkwardly phrased, but the meaning is obvious -- it still obtains a tack-on questioning what it means. It’s like handing over a finalised essay with your research notes still scribbled in the margins.

It’s quite late in the game. Perhaps the play testers had given up by then. Perhaps the translators felt nobody would play that far in. Perhaps it’s the tip of the iceberg.

While the adventure moves swiftly from town to dungeon to cave to new town, it does attempt to do so in a light-hearted manner, making fun of itself and giving the fourth wall a light pummelling. Protagonist and honourable knight, Lloyd, will interrupt drawn out discussions of game plot and mechanics to remind the cast that the player does have access to a game manual and to stop wasting everyone’s time. In-game mascots will wage holy war against warez pushers and smack around any member of the cast giving in to temptation and accepting free gifts. It’s all very non-sequitur, and often mercilessly assassinated by awful translations. The jokes rarely manage to surface from beneath the bog of bad editing: you can catch the obligatory “spy on your love interest in the bath” scene that results in the use of the oddest bath toy imaginable and an 18+ warning displayed in the far corner, but only if you manage to decode “Make sure you don’t cross the road” as “Don’t cross the hall” when ordered by her grandfather not to bother her right now. Betray his advice (like you’re meant to!) and try to leave the house, assuming that she’s in a different estate nearby, and the scene is lost forever.

Without these endless gaffs, perhaps Ubisoft’s attempts to sell Astonisha as a purposefully clean and simple game that would appeal to anyone would have merit. The expected gain levels, equip armour and slay evil foundation is religiously adhered to, and, until end game (which dumps a fantastically challenging final boss fight on your lap just before a mind-numbingly bad ending sequence where everyone shrugs and goes home) everything flows along slightly the wrong side of easy, but free of any real speed bumps. Aside for the inability to connect to any of your cast. Or never really knowing what’s going on until you hit a random bubble of [accidentally] competently translated plot then fill the gaping holes left in yourself.

In the middle of a quagmire of bad localisation, I can’t help but think of Astonisha Story bravely treading water. It was never in its nature to be spectacular, but it could have settled with quietly competent had Ubisoft thrown it a life preserver rather than hurled rocks from the shore.

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