Time stalkers is developed by Climax, the people who worked on Shining Force and Shining the Darkness as well as other RPG classics for Sega systems. The character Pyra in this game is from Shining the Darkness and the character Lady is from Ladystalker. Climax was already one of my favorite developers before this game came out and they have shown their capacity to create inspired games for gamers who would rather participate in entertaining themselves than be entertained. This turn-based RPG follows six heroes who are trapped in a sort of fairyland that is made up of "pieces" from various time periods, both real and fictional. The lead character is Sword who is kinda the dude with the bad attitude that you know and hate from all those Square games you have played. The overall story is not the strong point of this game, but the various substories are all quite interesting and fun to complete.
Timestalkers is a first generation Dreamcast game and, unlike Soul Caliber, it does show. The character models are above average and most of the monsters are rather good, but you won't find yourself spending too much time gawking. The overworld is an amalgam of "pieces" that is more notable for its awesome graphical style than its technical prowess. This is not to say that it is unattractive, it just isn't awe-inspiring. Stylistically I love the architectural mode of the fountain square and the oddity that is Noiman's Piece, which is on the back of a floating turtle. The dungeon graphics are probably my favorite. Although they are randomly generated they still look quite nice and the battles take place right in the dungeon view. When you get close to an enemy it either engages you in combat, or, if it's less aggressive, you may choose whether you wish to fight it or avoid it, and then your characters and the enemy just move into battle formation. One thing that may bother some about the graphics is that the characters are quite weird looking and the character portraits are a bit ugly (to my tastes anyway). However, the people are very interesting.
All of the characters play very differently with Pyra being the best at magic, Rao the best for brute strength and everyone else falling somewhere in between. Nigel is perhaps the most well rounded character and also my favorite. You only use one hero at a time in dungeons, but you can recruit up to two monsters into your party to bring that total up to three. Monsters are captured with the "capture" command used in battle. The lower the capture percentage the higher their loyalty is to you, or their tendencies to do as you say. Captured monsters are also more powerful if your character has high charisma. Monsters are stored in the capsules you carry with you or can be grazed in an expandable monster house. Every weapon you find has its own set of techniques that open up once you have high enough stats to master it. This makes the weapons (which all have different graphics) more diverse than the basic attacks and hit percentages alone. When you enter the dungeons, you will always be at level one like in the ancient dungeon in Lufia 2. When you get to the end of the dungeon, you may obtain a new title (if you got enough levels) that allows you to master and register more spells and skills. Spells and skills must be registered before you enter the dungeon (and capsule monsters must be taken out) and then skills must be selectively locked so that you can learn some earlier. This system was confusing to me at first, but I have grown to love it, it is highly customizable and more strategic than what you would normally find in a straight RPG.
My favorite music in the game is the theme music, which is delightfully corny, and the music from the downtown dungeon. Every character has their own theme music and I found all of the dungeon music to be great, which is good since you spend a lot of time in the dungeons. The sound effects are top notch as well. Excellent overall.
With hundreds of items and over 70 monsters to capture, along with a percent found/captured system, this game is perfect for completionists and collectionists. I've played for many tens of hours and not come close to getting all of the items, especially the elusive legendary items. Legendaries are great fun in themselves. You can pay the blacksmiths to have them improved, to have spell and skill packs added, and to have the mastery requirements lowered. Your weapons are as powerful as you make them. Just great. You can also spend money to have the carpenter improve your house and monster house. There are rare items you can display in your exhibit room called collection items. This game has five VMU mini-games (some of them actually fun!), one of which is an editor for your VMU screen graphic, which is entertaining if you like to create stuff with big pixels. Another one is Yogurts Big Adventure, featuring Yogurt! I will note that according to other reviewers this game can be completed in less than 10 hours. I have not verified this as I have too much fun with the game to just rush through it. I will suggest that you entertain yourselves as the developers left it open to you to take infinite quests from Noiman and strive for a 100% complete game. You can continue your game after completion as well and will want to, as there is something very valuable in the dollhouse at this point. There is a lot more I could tell you about this game, but I hope this is enough to get you interested. It seems to sell for about $10 these days.
I call this the RPGers RPG. If you like getting items and collecting things, as well as a very strategic and challenging system, check this one out.
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