Sudeki

Overview

Sudeki was developed by Climax Studios in 2003 for the original Xbox and released in early 2004, the PC version was later released in 2005. While the developer is based in England, the game's art style imitates the anime-inspired designs of Japanese RPGs.

Story

Sudeki's world is split in to two but ultimately very different parallel worlds, one being the world of light; Illumina, the other being the world of darkness; Akloria.

It begins with a young male character by the name of Tal who is both irresponsible and generally disinterested in anything but himself being tasked with locating princess Alish by his father, leader of the Illumina army.

It isn't long until he is thrust in to a journey he never expected. On his way to locating Alish he encounters for the first time a group of strange creatures and soldiers who seemingly emerge from nowhere. Turns out these creatures are from the other world and seek the destruction of Tal's for reasons that are discovered later in the game.

On your way through Sudeki you slowly unravel the truth of the two worlds, that your queen may have a secret agenda and that the dark world and its inhabitants aren't what they seem.

Characters

Tal

The game's main protagonist, a red haired sword wielding member of the Illumina army. His attacks and abilities are all sword based, some for individual targets and some for multiple targets.

Alish

An arrogant princess. Alish wields her staff like a rifle and can cast powerful spells of both the firey death and healing variety.

Elco

A scientist and an inventor, solely responsible for creating the devices that protect Illumina from attack by the forces of the dark world. He lost his left arm in an unfortunate accident but replaced it with a mechanical one he built for himself. Also controls like a first person shooter and actually uses guns. His attacks are mostly alternate fire modes for his pistols but one of his more powerful abilities results in him deploying a machine around his body that fires a giant laser of death.

Buki

A shidani warrior who wields the power of wolverine like claws, terrible voice acting and outfits that get progressively smaller and less practical as you progress. She plays somewhat similarly to Tal and features an attack where she literally spins around, slicing up everything she hits.

Gameplay

The word schizophrenic comes to mind when describing Sudeki's gameplay. Like previously mentioned the game never really controls the same even between your 4 playable characters. Two are controlled in third person and feature alot of melee attacks while the other two control like first person shooter characters. When using melee each ability has a certain radious type, Tal for example has a slash attack that only hits things in a cone arc in front of him while Buki's whirlwind only hits things in direct melee that she manages to get close enough to when spinning around.

Combat is always real time but when powering up attacks the game goes in to a bullet-time mode, the problem with this is that sometimes enemies could move out of the radius of an attack or even interupt the attack entirely by hitting the player. This made for a frustrating experience that had very random outcomes and thus a constantly flucuating difficulty curve.

As with any rpg worth its salt their is loot, levels and stats. While you would come across many different weapons their were only three outfits for each character that got progressively more powerful with each upgrade. They could also only be obtained by completing side quests for each individual charater that would then result in a giant being known as Testu appearing and 'blessing' you with a new appearance.

Abilities are progressively unlocked as you gain levels and became more effective depending on which stats you put most of your points into.

Reception

Sudeki's reception was fair, with a score of 72 on Metacritic.