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GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 07/23/2002
- Updated on: 07/30/2002
- Released on: 07/22/2002
- Originally published on GameSpot: Shadow of Destiny (PC) Review
Shadow of Destiny was originally released for the PlayStation 2 in Japan last year, and it was later localized for US PlayStation 2 owners with full English speech. Still, it seems much better suited to the PC adventure game genre. It has all the necessary components: a hapless protagonist investigating a mystery, inventory-based puzzles, a moderately complex story that unfolds over the course of the game, and no standard way for your character to permanently die (though there are a few ways to lose the game outright). Shadow of Destiny tells the story of Eike (pronounced "Ike"), a student who is murdered without warning while wandering the streets of his hometown one day and is then brought back to life by an enigmatic spirit who gives him the ability to travel through time. Eike must use this ability to visit four different time periods in a quest to prevent his own murder and uncover the motives of his mysterious assailant.
Shadow of Destiny has highly detailed character models.
Unfortunately, Shadow of Destiny's roots as a Japanese PlayStation 2 game are rather obvious. On one hand, the game uses the same sort of detailed, high-polygon character models that have become so fashionable in character-driven Japanese console role-playing games. They've been optimized to work at higher resolutions, and though they'll sometimes have some pretty obvious jagged edges in the game's cinematic close-ups, all the characters look quite good and have detailed facial animations. On the other hand, the game's environments look quite bad. Eike spends most of the game in different time periods in the same town, but no matter when he visits, the town, its buildings, and its scenery always look blocky and plain--even crude at times.
Shadow of Destiny also sounds like a PlayStation 2 port of a Japanese game. If you've been playing games for a while, you know by now that when Japanese games get dubbed in English, the English versions often have terrible voice acting. This isn't entirely true for Shadow of Destiny--it does have the same sort of occasionally clumsy translation and the same kind of awkward voice acting you may have come to expect from dubbed Japanese video games or movies, but much of it is actually decent, and it's delivered enthusiastically. The same can't be said for the game's generally subdued soundtrack, which features a few decent symphonic tunes during the game's in-engine cutscenes but is generally quiet and difficult to even notice while you're actually playing the game.
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