Title Crimson Tears Manufacturer Spike System/Year PS2/2004 Genre Beat 'em up Players 1 Player Ports N/A Androids May Not Shed Tears, But Gamers Do. Overview Tokyo is in complete chaos, a labyrinth of bioengineered weapons and dungeons. An accident has caused distortions in the earth’s spatial dimensions. A.R.M.A (super weapons manufactured) has sent in the Mutanoids, or Humanoid weapons, to bring control to Tokyo. Its up to Amber, Kaede, and Tokio, three strong mutanoids, to clear out the dungeons of all bioengineered weapons and save the city. Not the greatest story but it works for the type of game Crimson Tears is. A mindless, simple beat ‘em up where you care about the game play more than the story. For this game, I found myself caring more about when this game will end. Graphics 4/10 A nice intro begins when you pop in the Crimson Tears disc, probably the best part of the game. The game uses similar style cut scenes through the entire game, which continue the story. This is some of the best cel-shaded work I’ve seen, not better than Viewtiful Joe but up there. Everything is easily accessible, nothing too confusing. The three main characters and villains are the best designs in the game. Everything else is bland and boring. The game uses cel-shaded graphics and the main cast looks great. Decent animation, even though the characters run kind of funny. Enemies are nice, but their designs are very simple and nothing too creative. I can say the same thing for the game’s bosses. Nothing inspiring or cool looking, just ho hum bosses that look like they were tossed together at the last second. The dungeons are pretty much the same. They are randomly generated, but not the design. Every room is flat and looks almost the same as the previous one. Good thing each dungeon has multiple floors, oh wait, that isn’t a good thing. It looks like all the effort was put into the characters and nothing else. The effects are pretty decent, but nothing will keep you playing for the rest of the game. Nice graphics, but it wasn’t used to its full extent. Gameplay/Controls 4/10 Crimson Tears is a beat ‘em up with RPG elements, meaning you beat the crap out of anything that moves and gain experience. Sounds like fun right? You pick one of the three characters and you send him/her into battle. The game spans seven, randomly generated dungeons, total of eight stages, with multiple floors and dozens of enemies. Each dungeon, containing as little as four floors, is filled with tons of baddies, items, and traps. Your objective is to get to the exit of each floor and make your way to the top to defeat the dungeon’s boss. You do this for all seven dungeons, the eighth stage being nothing but boss fights. This game spells repetitiveness doesn’t it? Ah, but you forgot about the RPG elements. You begin in a hub stage, Tokyo, and you can explore the ruined streets, well about four screens worth. There’s NPCs to talk to, one screen having characters that sell items/weapons. The item shop sells health and potions for ailments; the two weapon shops provide weapons and ammo for all three characters. They occasionally ask you to find an item for them, which are hidden in one of the dungeons. Finding the item and giving it to whomever will earn you a weapon or another item. The last few parts of the city, most of the NPCs give you hints and tips about the game. The older man is taking up a collection to rebuild the city. Donating money, which you get by killing enemies, will expand the shops (more weapons and items), the only reason I see in doing this. One NPC will challenge you to time missions; you win money and items by completing a dungeon in a certain time. Other than that, there really isn’t much to see. You character gains experience by killing enemies in the dungeons and slowly level up. The characters that you are not using level up slowly during play. Unlike real RPGs, leveling up is more of a chore than fun. You are outclassed if you don’t level up, so you must stay in an earlier dungeon to gain experience. The game is easy when you spend a lot of time leveling up; the truly hard part is trying not to fall asleep while doing it. Since the game is really repetitive, this adds more to the boredom. Trust me, there’s more to induce sleep. Defeating enemies will give you money and items that you can use for buying, or creating/upgrading, weapons. Some may even strengthen certain attributes or expand your combo repertoire, more on this in a bit. Your weapons can also gain experience however using them too much will cause them to break, very annoying. Each character has a preferred line up of weapons; Amber uses swords and daggers, Kaede loves is similar but she likes to use huge swords, and Tokio is all about guns. So you must repair them before you jump into a level, the more damage the more expensive it will be to fix. Most weapons have elemental damage, enemies and bosses are weak to certain ones, and so leveling up each type is crucial, especially for level eight. Add another check to the boredom list. Of course is you break the weapon, you must buy a new one and start again. A cool concept, but not for this game. Well to keep enemies from causing this each character has a variety of combos for hand-to-hand combat and all types of weapons. In the garage, where you can pick your character, store items, and save your game, you can look up your combos and upgrade them, adding more hits. You find combo upgrades in the dungeons and by completing the time challenges. You take you upgrades to the combo menu and you can upgrade them in any of the categories. Some can’t be upgraded until your reach a certain level. You can also obtain SPM upgrades, or special attacks. This unleashes a very powerful attack, which will add more hits by upgrading. Each character has a lot of different combos, but they don’t extend the fun or replay value any. There’s a bar underneath your health meter called overheat. As you attack, your meter fills up. When it’s filled, your character starts overheating causing them to speed up and to lose health slowly. Special attacks fills up the bar more quickly, so you can’t really abuse them. Unless you have coolant, you must wait for this to subside but it sends you to near death, another annoying element to this game. If you die, you must pick another character to save him/her. If you happen to die in a dungeon, you have a certain amount of time to save your character and all the weapons, items, and cash you’ve earned. Now if you died during a boss fight, you get a second chance at defeating it, however if you haven’t been leveling up all three characters, plus equipping them with weapons and items, you’re screwed. Fail at your second chance, you lose all your items, weapons, and half of your cash. Plus you must wait for the two characters to heal before using them. For a game that relies on combos and beat ’em up tactics, it likes to keep you from doing it too much with spending money on repairing weapons and making you go berserk with overheating. Since you must level up to actually beat the dungeons and the bosses, all these annoyances make it really repetitive and a chore to level up, ruining the game. I was tired of playing five hours in. The game’s controls are really simple, I expect this for every beat ‘em up. You have a punch, kick, and special move button. Mixing up punches and kicks will give you different combos. Your character also has a block and dodge button. Perfect for nullifying damage. The game is easy to control, thank god. This is the only category I don’t have any complaints about. Sound/Music 2/10 The intro is definitely the best song in the entire game. Everything else is just weak, nothing annoying but it doesn’t help you stay awake. Sound effects and voice acting is ok, could be a lot better. It’s just the same punch and kick sounds throughout the game, plus whatever sounds the baddies make. Since you’re hearing this throughout the game, it doesn’t add to the fun. To be honest, nothing does. Replay Value 0/10 The game takes around twenty hours to complete. Yeah you read right. A twenty-hour beat ‘em up filled with repetitiveness and boredom, how fun. Maybe if the game was like five hours, that’s when I really didn’t want to play anymore, would be fine. But twenty hours? There’s no need for that. If you do manage to beat the game, you get access to the EX dungeon where all the enemies and bosses are there to greet you. Also you can collect items for new costumes. Each character has three costumes, most coming from Street Fighter and Darkstalkers. Playing the game on hard will give you access to more goodies. I imagine by the time you beat the game, you really don’t care anymore. I certainly didn’t. Overall 2/10 Crimson Tears is a sleep fest from beginning to end. You fight legions of enemies with combos that don’t vary much to gain enough experience for yourself and your weapons just to beat the dungeon’s boss, just to do it all over again the next level. Of course you can’t do this too much or you will break your weapon and overheat, which cost you more money so you must go back to dungeons to restock. It’s an endless circle of boredom and annoyances. Also the fact you have to do this for twenty hours. Controls, character designs, and cut scenes look good while everything else is mediocre at best. For those of you who are looking for mindless fun, you won’t find it here. Stay away from Crimson Tears and save your money for one of the better Capcom games coming down the road. Pros: - Nice intro and cut scenes. - Cool character design, for the main cast at least. - Controls are simple and easy to get into. Cons: - Extreme boredom. - Repetitive and annoying game play. - Boring designs and stages. - All of this for twenty hours. - by Cold Man X