Black Sigil: Blade Of the Exiled – NDS – Review

For many genre fans, the Super
Nintendo represents the golden age of traditional Japanese RPGs. Classics like
Final Fantasy II & III (or IV & VI if you’re a purist), Chrono Trigger, and
Secret of Mana helped define the genre, and set a standard that developers are
still trying to match today. Black Sigil, from new developers Studio Archcraft,
is an attempt to emulate the style and quality of these games, and it’s an
admirable goal. The end result is a fun nostalgic throw-back to the early 90s
and a decent enough RPG in its own right, but some frustrating technical and
design flaws keep it from the greatness it aspires to.

Black Sigil puts players in the role
of Kairu, a 16-year old swordsman. In the game’s world everyone possesses
magical abilities – except for Kairu. Unfortunately for him, the last guy born
with no magic became an evil tyrant intent on conquering the world, and was
stopped only at the end of a long bloody war – killed by Kairu’s adopted father,
no less. Because of this, Kairu has grown up being feared and hated by nearly
everyone, and as the game begins he is sent into exile. This kick-starts an
adventure that will span the globe and determine the fate of everyone on the
planet.

Sure, there’s quite a bit of the
same stock-standard RPG plot elements we’re all familiar with, but there are
some interesting twists throughout, and more than one cliché is turned on its
ear by the time the game ends. More impressive than the overall storyline,
though, is the moment-to-moment writing. The writers have imbued every random
townsperson with interesting thoughts and opinions, and many even have unique
responses depending on which character’s leading your party when you speak to
them. It’s enough to have me searching each town, making sure I’ve talked to
everyone, and I can’t say I’ve done that in more than a decade.

Most NPCs have something interesting to
say to you, though guards tend to be all-business.

So, Black Sigil will see players
traversing the globe, going from town to town with stops at numerous dungeons
along the way. Black Sigil very clearly tries to match those SNES classics, and
everything from level design to the Mode-7 world map to the game’s font recalls
the RPGs of the 16-bit era. All the traditional RPG elements are here: shops,
inns, and taverns are everywhere, dungeons are sprawling mazes that always
culminate in a boss fight, and enemies are encountered randomly while exploring
each area. Sadly, combat is where many of the game’s flaws become evident.

The actual battle system itself
isn’t bad. The game pretty much borrows Chrono Trigger’s battle system whole
cloth, complete with ATB meters that dictate when you get a turn, attacks that
can hit multiple enemies depending on their battlefield location, and combo
attacks that let characters join forces to deliver massive damage. It also
brings a few new ideas to the table. Characters can run around the battle screen
freely whenever their turn meter is full (to position themselves for attacks or
retreat to heal). The game also has a different take on item use: while your
party can store as many items as you want, each character can only use eight
types of items that have been equipped to them.

Battles play out in semi-real time, with
Active Time Battle meters much like in Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger.

The problems with combat in this
game begin on the map screen. Simply put, the encounter rate is absurdly high –
sometimes you’ll get into a fight within seconds of ending the previous battle.
The problem’s made worse by the slow speed of combat: with standard encounters
taking between 20 to 45 seconds, it’s easy for your dungeon exploration to get
de-railed by a chance series of fights that could take up to a few minutes to
finish. Being able to move around the battlefield is a nice option, I guess,
though real tactical uses for this ability are few and far between. The game’s
item-equipping system makes sense in theory, but the game only allows you to
equip each type of item to one character at a time. So, for example, your
basic healing item (Blue Herbs) can only be carried and used by one character at
any given time. Aside from not making much sense from a storyline perspective
(wouldn’t you want everyone in your adventuring group to have some healing items
with them?), this can ruin your gaming session if, say, the guy holding the
revival items goes down during a boss fight. Other little omissions (like the
complete lack of any kind of battle transition – the screen just fades to black)
seem like oversights, but add to the unsatisfying feeling of combat in this
game.

Attack ranges are based on the spell and
your location on the battlefield.

It’s a shame that the combat is as
frustrating as it is, because otherwise the game presents a lot to like. As I
said, the story is pretty interesting and the writing is always enjoyable.
There’s a huge overworld to explore, full of diverse locations. The dungeon
design also deserves a mention. Instead of simply twisty passages full of
battles and treasure chests, dungeons are designed like puzzles, and making your
way to the end requires you to figure out the solution. It’s reminiscent of the
Golden Sun series or Zelda, where each dungeon requires you to be smart as well
as win fights.

Aesthetically, Black Sigil comes
very close to living up to its inspirations. The intricate pixel characters and
locations are extremely well-done. Again, Chrono Trigger is obviously the
inspiration – while the art design isn’t quite as inspired, the characters and
environments look almost as good as those in Square’s time-travelling epic.
Special environmental effects deserve special mention: the snow in the game’s
opening scenes is some of the prettiest in 2D RPG history. The music, too, is
almost-but-not-quite on par with the 16-bit greats. It’s an epic score to be
sure, with intense themes for battle and plenty of emotional stuff to accompany
story scenes.

Black Sigil is a love letter to the
great RPG epics of the past, and while it doesn’t really live up to that legacy,
it does remind us what made those games so great in the first place. If, like
me, you grew up on the role-playing masterpieces of the Super Nintendo, you’ll
likely find Black Sigil to be a fun nostalgic adventure. Still, I have a hard
time believing that anyone raised in the post-FF7 RPG landscape will find much
of interest here.

Gameplay: 7.0
Travel from towns to dungeons (and back), fighting randomly-encountered monsters
and talking to everyone in your path. Yup, this is a classic RPG in just about
every sense. The story bits are great (each random character is worth talking
to), but some seriously questionable design choices make the battles more
frustrating than fun.

Graphics: 8.2
The pixel art is detailed and beautiful, on par with the best of the 16-bit era.
The game doesn’t quite live up to its heroes in terms of character or art
design, but it’s still really nice to look at if you can appreciate the
traditional-style 2D visuals.

Sound: 7.8
The music’s not bad at all, though songs are repeated a little too often
(especially the battle theme, which you’ll hear over and over again). Still, the
music is appropriately adventurous and epic.

Difficulty: Hard
Like the games it emulates, Black Sigil has a steadily-ramping difficulty that
might require some level-grinding before boss encounters. For genre veterans,
though, this is all part of the fun. Not as fun is the frustratingly high
encounter rate, which will sometimes see you in battle immediately after combat
ends.

Concept: 8.9
Square’s RPG catalog for the Super Nintendo is legendary in the genre, and near
and dear to the hearts of gamers everywhere. Attempting to re-create what made
these games great is a praiseworthy goal, and while Black Sigil doesn’t entirely
succeed, it definitely gets points for effort.

Overall: 7.3
It does a lot of things right and tells a pretty good story, and if you’ve been
a genre fan since the early 90s then it’ll definitely bring back great memories.
Still, Black Sigil is frustrating in many ways, and if you aren’t familiar with
the games it takes inspiration from then you probably won’t find much to enjoy
here.