Video Games : Shadow Madness

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from: Crave Entertainment

: Shadow Madness

Price: $33.59
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Binding: Video Game
EAN: 0650008198058
ESRB Age Rating: Teen
Label: Crave Entertainment
Manufacturer: Crave Entertainment
Platform: PlayStation
Publisher: Crave Entertainment
Sales Rank: 20405
Studio: Crave Entertainment



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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Worthwhile
I bought this game at a friend's behest and had enough fun to go through twice back-to-back. The world setting is great, the characters are likeable, and the dialogue puts many games' attempts to shame. The downside is the easiness associated with SM's horribly unrefined, generic battle system. Luckily, battles can be pre-empted on the field so it's not hard to completely phase them out while still maintaining a harder (comparitively) difficulty. The dialogue alone is worth the purchase to me -- it's obvious Craveyard really worked hard on it -- and it's replayable, although there's a lacking of sidequests and other things that would keep one coming back for more. A fun Doom-like minigame called "Gadget Madness" can be played also, and it's held up quite well. Given how cheap it can be found, blind-buying may not be such a bad thing...although renting is preferred to those who want slambang excitement every ten minutes.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Awesome game.... could have been better
Shadow Madness is a truly amazing game. Being one of the RPGs I ever played, I really couldnt tell you that there were many flaws. The only major flaw in the game is the graphics. They are the worst I've ever seen. But a side from that, this game is absolutely amazing. It holds one of the greatest and one of the creepiest storylines I've ever seen. People say that it's just a basic capy of FF7, but it's nothing like it. One of the coolest elements of the game is the music. All of the music is just right for the situation, making the gameplay even cooler. Above all, despite the graphics, Shadow Madness is a truly magnificent game. You should really try it out.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Has its flaws, but overall good
One of the few RGPs made by an American company, Crave, Shadow Madness was widely maligned upon its release, ignored by players, and faded into obscurity. Contemporary players with $20 or less to spare for a game will nevertheless find it enjoyable enough if they approach it with an open mind. I know I did. The story of a ragtag group of wanderers out for revenge (yes, it sounds familiar) and seeking to free the world from an evil sorcerer, Shadow Madness is not perfect, but has many strong points. Here's the breakdown.

THE GAME'S FLAWS

GRAPHICS: 2/5
Shadow Madness was released 2 years after Final Fantasy VII, and with such tough competition the graphics could not look anything but adequate then, and they are somewhat outdated now for players of modern systems. Still, they do their job well enough, and some of the backgrounds are very nice. The use of the map, which features stylized drawings, is interesting, but as noted by other reviewers the drawings could have been better, and sometimes they are tasteless or downright ugly.

ARTWORK: 1/5
The character artwork for SM had been justly maligned. Of special note is Windleaf, who combines in her design all that is tasteless and mediocre, but the other characters do not stand out, although Stinger's is adequate (and do not, in my opinion, resemble FFVII's Cloud as greatly as often accused). All the characters in the game, including the 'townspersons', have portraits.

GAMEPLAY AND GAME DESIGN: 2/5
The game's biggest flaw (apart from the artwork) is the mundane gameplay and inconvenient battle menu. It features 3 battle styles, "aggressive", "normal" and "defensive" (hint to new players: do not use normal initially, when Stinger is alone-it lowers his defense and contributes to a quick demise.) Although the game begins on a medium difficulty, it quickly progresses into "very easy" due to the unbalanced experience system, which allows your characters to level up at a high rate, and the differences between the effectiveness of these 3 modes of attacks quickly become unimportant. Each character has a special attack which becomes available at some point of the battle- for example, Stinger throws knives- but again, they do not provides much variety to the battles. The magic system is the worst. The battles are 'real time', which means that the enemies attack without waiting for the player to attack. There is a lot of magic available for the magic-users, but it is a run-of-the mill magical attacks, and the list of the attacks (which are learned in 3s) becomes so long that the player often barely has time to scroll down during the 'real time battles', and often does not bother with it. (Although the game become so easy, and the enemies give so little damage, that eventually I could use the magic anyway). Worst of all, the inventory is tiny and the player wastes time sorting out and getting rid of the more useless items to keep it organized (and the game features too many useless items). Thus, the entire game is played without much variety, and the amount of time contributed to organizing the inventory is frustrating.

MINOR STUFF
The game is full of small bugs and inconveniences which attest to the inexperience of its designers. They never become frustrating, but they do hinder the smoothness of its execution.

THE GAME'S STRENGTHS

MUSIC: 5/5
Brad Spear's score is great- varied and melodious. Best of all, there is a great deal of variety in even ordinary battle music, so you do not have to hear the same music over and over again- something of an irritation in Japanese games.

WRITING: 5/5
Attesting to its American origins, the writing of the game is good to excellent, even today. There is a lot of humor in the exchange between the characters, and rarely awkward grammar or spelling.

STORY: 3/5
As a reviewer noted, SM falls into its own genre of fantasy-horror, which is somewhat gloomy initially, but becomes better as the story fleshes out and the world becomes more well-defined. (At first you do nothing but wander amid ruined towns and mad people, which is a little unnerving and somehow fails to define the world of the game, as if you stumbled into a formless madhouse). The story is smoothly executed and always keeps you interested, although never particularly shocking or exciting. Plot twists are few and often predictable. Still, it is a solid, well-developed story.

CHARACTERS: 3/5
Some complained that the characters of SM are two dimensional, but in my opinion the strong writing more than covers up for the lack of quirks and unique personality traits in the characters. The characters are meant to be ordinary, but most of them are likable, and their 'ordinary' personalities shine through the strong, humorous writing. Stinger, Harv-5 and Clemett are particularly fun, in my opinion, but I found myself liking all the characters. People who find them not sufficiently well-developed should remember that "characterization" is not always necessarily a collection of unique traits or a complex background or reactions to dramatically unfolding events. Sometimes a good writing can define characters simply because they are well-written, act 'natural', and amuse the players with the exchange of their conversation- as SM's characters do.

OVERALL: buy it. It's only $15 nowadays. You'll like it if you keep an open mind.


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Yes, it is not Final Fantasy 7. So what!?!
You know what I am really sick of, is hearing everyone compare this game to FF7. At the end of their reviews citing; not as good as ff7, and less story than ff7, you are not sure if you read a review for Shadow Madness or FF7.
Stand alone this a great game, perhaps one of the few rpgs from the U.S. to take that credit. Japanese games have little humour, and tend to be either very serious or very intense. Its nice to see a character like Stinger in Shadow Madness yell insults to the villian or speak with an old woman who has gone crazy from the plague that gives the game its title, reveal her cooking secrets to be loudly swearing at the food.
The humour brings real life and likability to the characters, mixed with a moody soundtrack that couldn't be better. Rather than a single soundtrack for all random non-boss battles common in rpgs, Shadow Madness plays a series of several dozen battle themes dependant on the area. One dungeon area will have several types of battle music to enjoy.
Admittedly, the battles do become overly easy later in the game, and the useless items are annoying to pick up, but hardly slow from gameplay. This is more about story, with battles mixed in. The visuals are fitting for the areas, and are not a downside. Sure the graphics are low by todays standards, but are more than enough to create the effect.
Finally, a game is made without so many depressing, and morbid characters. The stars in Shadow Madness are rough-edged and genuine. This game was an excellent fresh edition to a rpg market that often produces to much of the same.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Possibly the most underrated RPG of all time.
I was hesitant to get this game at first and still have some reservations because of it's flaws, but I honestly believe that this is a good, solid game that could have been one of the best if it weren't for those glaring flaws.

Stregths:

Storyline, Characterization(especially when they interact), the depth of the world(LOVED reading through the libraries), some of the spells/FMVs, music and dialogue that rivals Lunar. In fact, IMO, the dialogue is considerably better than most Final Fantasies and even the Suikodens!

Weaknesses:

Graphics(but not a big deal to people not too concerned with that, like me), certain elements of the story could have been expanded, could have had better characterization and the battles were awkward and took a lot of getting used to as you didn't have time to do much of anything.

So, the game is good, just good. It could have been much better, but it does NOT deserve the bad reputation it has.

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