Nightcaster II: Equinox (Xbox)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 0.5 stars Abysmal
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 1.9 (0.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Matthew Gallant
• Reviewed on: 01/13/2003
• Released on: 12/11/2002
• Originally published on GameSpot: Nightcaster II: Equinox (Xbox) Review

"Beer" and "rock and roll" are two of the things listed in the "special thanks" portion of Nightcaster II's credits, and any inference you might make about the game using that bit of information is likely to be very close to the truth. Nightcaster II is about as incoherent and obnoxious as the ramblings of a bored frat boy who's holding an empty six-pack and a boom box, except with Nightcaster II, you have to pay $40 to be subjected to it. The game's graphical adequacy does nothing to lessen the pain of its amateurish play balancing, poor sound programming, and generally bad design.

Like its predecessor, Nightcaster II is a fantasy action game with some RPG elements. After the end of the first Nightcaster, the hero of the game, Arran, married Madelyn, and they lived together happily until the Nightcaster returned to the land, as bad guys are wont to do. You can play this time as either Arran or Madelyn--or both, if you're mean and trick someone into playing the cooperative mode with you. Arran is strong with magic and Madelyn's strength is melee combat. At least, that's what the game tells you. If you ever actually engage in melee combat, you're going to lose a significant portion of your health bar, especially at the start of the game, when engaging in close combat is pretty much suicide. Heroes facing hordes of monsters need to be a little stronger than tissue paper.

Magic is the preferred means of attack, and you can choose four spells from the schools of light, dark, fire, and water to be on your active spell list. All the monsters in the game are affiliated with one of these types--they'll resist spells of their own type and sustain extra damage from the opposite. While the spell effects are generally good looking, the spellcasting system is overly complex for the pace of the game: You move your orb around the screen to target with the right analog stick, fire with the right shoulder trigger, and switching spells with the left. Some spells have an area of effect around your target, some shoot out from your character toward wherever the orb is. It's all unnecessarily fancy, though, as groups of monsters simply rush toward your character at high speeds, rendering any tactic other than firing at them while running in the opposite direction rather pointless. It doesn't help the monsters you're running away from essentially look like gnomes riding chickens or lumps of Play-Doh with spikes sticking out.

While many of the monsters are unimpressive, the level design is even less noteworthy. Nightcaster II does use some advanced effects like bump mapping, but the levels are flat landscapes or interiors with just a few stock objects repeatedly placed about the level. Those objects look fine, though, perhaps because of the minimal lighting in the game. The déjà vu is compounded by the lack of an onscreen map. To see where you are, you have to look at the map screen, which doesn't even tell you which way your character is currently facing. With no onscreen map and a dearth of landmarks, Nightcaster II seemingly takes delight in forcing you to wander around in the dark and switch to the map screen every few seconds.

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