Riviera: A Land of Simple Amusement
Riviera is an RPG that originated on the Game Boy Advance before coming to the PSP that has some rather solid ups and downs. Rather than follow the JRPG standard in every aspect, it throws in some mildly unique ideas in mechanics and game progression that stand to be both the good and bad of the game. If you simply want to jump to a quick verdict, skip to the final paragraph. Otherwise read on to get the full impression.
The story follows Ein, a grim angel and servant of the gods of Asgard, as he goes on a quest to rid the world of Riviera of demons while preventing the eradication of the sprites that live within. Through initial twists in the story, he meets a bevy of female companions creating a harem side-story of sorts. Though this tends to be a significant turn-off to many since there is much conversing on raising their affection with your hero, it doesn’t get to obscene or invasive. In fact it tends to add more character to the game than the overarching plot does, as that tends to follow the tired path many JRPGs go in trying to kill all-powerful demons and gods.
The overall game is a rather linear affair, as you’re shuffled through the story and world in a narrative manner, with most of your adventuring and conversing being through the ‘Look’ mode. This process in turn uses TP that you earn in battle based on how well you fare in combat. Though it sounds like it has the chance of heavily limiting your exploring, as long as you use the battle’s system (more on that later), you keep a healthy amount of TP at all times. On top of it, any selections required to progress the game never use any of your TP, resulting in a lot more freedom to chance on optional selections.
On top of this exploring, there are a bountiful amount of quick-time events of varying styles. Though most of them are rather easy to succeed at, they start to become bothersome even for those that like the game mechanic, because you will find them coming up as it seems nearly every treasure chest in the game has a trap that summons one of these buggers.
Combat in Riviera is where there becomes an even bigger difference in how the game plays. Rather than having the standard method of equipping inventory, at the beginning of each battle you choose three of your protagonists to go into the fray and select up to four weapons and items for your characters to use. Each of your party members excel at certain weapon types and should be greatly paid attention to in order to succeed in combat and each weapon carries a certain element that it deals damage in of the usual fare (physical, ice, fire, electric, and holy). It is important to keep in mind that each item carries a vital number with it that defines how many times it can be used. Once a sword has been swung its designated number of uses, it breaks and disappears from both combat and inventory. Though this puts some scarcity into the combat mechanics, items tend to be plentiful throughout the game, so smart inventory management and swift kills should never catch you out of equipment. Beyond this, the combat is a turn-based affair, and nothing drastically different or confusing. Most enemies have weaknesses and resistances to different attacks, and boss battles heavily revolve on knowing their weakness to take them out in as little effort as possible. This can allow you to have easy advantages, but with no obvious projection of what will be effective before your selecting of weapons and party members to send in, you can be put in frustrating situations that will have you reloading your save because you are doing paltry damage. Riviera also throws a couple bars that are filled by the battle, one for your party allowing you to launch ‘Overskills’ which unleash immense (although overly elongated) powers, and a Rage meter that serves the same purpose for your foes. Other than that, since the game follows an extremely linear path with only a stop to town between chapters, there is no concern of going to inns to heal since your party starts every battle with a fresh and full bar of health.
Rather than the traditional affair of having one giant number to stand as your level, your party’s characters gain attributes through the use of weapons and items. The concept in this is that while playing through the game, characters skill up through item usage. In reality, the far more practical (and more mundane) process is to go into the Practice mode, where you can fight opponents in a controlled environment that disables item durability loss.
Both the adventuring and battling merge to score your gaming prowess with a point system that serves to give you a rank. This serves as a nice note as to how well you are doing as you play and awarding you more points for the Look mode, but other than that does not have a heavy impact on the game itself. On top of that, as long as you follow the game’s advice of finishing battles timely with a powerful overskill, Riviera will spew forth constant A and S ranks while keeping your TP almost always maxed.
For originally being on the Game Boy Advance, the artwork has ported over to the PSP rather well. The character sprites are a tad blobbly in an effort to smooth pixels, but the backgrounds, characters, and still-image cut-scenes do not show much in aging.
While the game brings some unique mechanics to the JRPG formula, they end up neutralizing themselves out by being relatively polished, but also mildly frustrating at points. Aside from having to do some trial and error to figure out the best tactic against bosses, the game is relatively easy with no huge difficulty curve. The last chapter of the game culminates with the ever-annoying boss rush weighing in at 8 bosses, but with smart usage of the combat mechanics it ends up being more like a way to stretch out the game’s length in a bothersome manner rather than to be a final challenge. Though the plot itself is tired and full of tropes, the less important sections of dialogue give some breath to the characters and create some likable personalities and charm. With the option to choose English and Japanese voice acting, the Japanese option is the clear winner as it has far more dramatic and emphasized reading to it while the English voices have more of a ‘read out in a sound booth’ feel. In the end, this all equates to a rather average game. It will not deliver an impressive and memorable experience, and it definitely will not be a game you will prioritize over a major new release, but if you’ve got the time it may be worth a play through.