Avalon Code (DS)

Avalon Code
Matrix/Xseed Games

Review by Anthony

Unique. After decades of the gaming industry, to hear a game described as “unique” that isn’t followed immediately with “ly horrible” is a bit of a feat. Some companies take risks in trying to introduce new gaming elements or redefining what we know of a certain genre. Most fail. So, many stick to the tried and true and attempt to capitalize on what sells. But every now and then, an effort comes together that really does something different and manages to be a solid game on top of it. Avalon Code is such a game.

Avalon Code isn’t going to win “story of the year” or appear on Spike’s Video Game Awards anytime soon, but it’s managed to take an interesting concept and build a game around it. The concept, the “Book of Prophecy”, has your hero/heroine in possession of a magical tome that can record all aspects of the world, and allows him/her to produce items, and alter the various forces that make up all people, items, and monsters in the world. It’s an action-RPG that allows you to really take things at your own pace.

What’s good:
- As I already mentioned, the game is highly unique, and the aspect that makes it unique is pulled off very well. Using the Book of Prophecy, you can scan people, items and monsters in the world to see information on them. There is a graphically represented page of information for every single one of these in the game, and each rapidly updates as circumstances change. The amount of information they crammed into a DS cart is staggering, and much of it won’t even be seen by the average player. You can use this to really tailor your playthrough how you see fit.
- The gameplay dynamic of the Book of Prophecy is both interesting and addictive. By swapping elemental “codes” that are mapped to people and objects’ psyche, the very properties of them can be changed. If a monster has an absurdly high amount of HP, you may scan it to find out it has Iron codes on it. Swap those Iron codes for the Illness codes and the monster will forever have reduced HP... unless you feel like putting other codes on it! Similarly, you may start with a completely blank looking katana, but with the right combination of shadow, iron and other codes, it will become a Muramasa. Bread boring? Add fire and light to make it a more restorative Pancake. In-game recipes guide you along and unlock new items, but really you’re never forced to make things if you don’t want to.
- The graphics in this game were a huge surprise: they’re fantastic. While there’s the typical pixellation necessary on the DS, characters are not short and pudgy, but are colorful and full of personality. That’s saying a lot, given the impressive number of unique character sprites that are present. Further, despite being on the DS, there’s no point-and-click to travel option; the whole world and its connecting points are represented here, with many pretty locations to boot. Add in the customized sprites for all weapons, equipment, plus animations for summon spirits and monsters... and this is an incredibly impressive package.
- Avalon Code is the kind of game that gives you back exactly what you put into it. When I was describing the systems to Lauren early on, she remarked that it sounded kind of like Dark Cloud 2. I couldn’t agree more. Dark Cloud 2 was an action-RPG where you could craft weapons, customize a robot, build your own worlds, play golf games, make tons of inventions... or you could just try to fight your way to the end. Here, you can collect and unlock item recipes in the world, fill the Book of Prophecy with details on the land, befriend various characters to earn items and back-stories, swap codes to make a dizzying array of weapon/armor capabilities, play some mini-games for rewards, challenge NPCs to special duels, and go for gold on all dungeon challenges. Or, you can just try to breeze your way through the game. It’s a great design.
- It’s not too hard to be killed in a dungeon or on a boss, or just by accident. Thus they let you immediately continue the game with no penalty (aside from starting with less health/MP) at any time. They also let you retry dungeon challenges and boss challenges to get better scores at any time by tapping the map. This is extremely appreciated.

What’s neutral:
- The “map warp” function allows you to instantly warp to any place in the world recorded in your Book at the cost of some MP. This is a great function considering there are no jump-points for travel in the game. However, the feature’s provided more than half of the way into the game, and quests that have you going to all ends of the world start much earlier. Further, warping to certain dungeons is a pain, because the bookmarked regions of the world may contain two or more dungeons with dozens of rooms… meaning you’ll be flipping through 30+ pages to finally get where you want. More region divisions would’ve been very helpful.
- The story is kind of back and forth. It has a fairly morbid backdrop of a world ending, and your silent protagonist can make some choices that’d make him/her a real jerk. At times, I felt pretty bad for the misfortunes that befall you along the way. That said, aside from a few moments of mayhem, I rarely felt pulled into the idea the story was trying to get across. Hard to explain... it was good, but it didn’t really make me care too much about what would happen next.
- Discovering more difficult recipes often meant you had to play a slide-puzzle game ranging from the typically easy 3x3 ones to the huge 5x5 ones. Sometimes it was a satisfying way to “unlock” a new item; other times it was very frustrating trying to figure out what goes where, considering many puzzles had pieces with corners that looked way too similar.

What’s bad:
- Oh god. If you understandably want to make the better items/weapons in the game for use, get ready to spend a lot of time flipping back and forth between pages and indices. The game gives you a very nice section of indices for finding the items you want, and allows a bookmark feature to jump back and forth between places. However, there is absolutely no way to search for a specific type of code you need. Later recipes require you to use tons of different codes to make an item, and there’s simply no way to find that Lightx3 code you need without remembering where it is out of the hundreds of pages, or just flipping through characters, monsters, and items until you find it. Next time, a search feature for codes, or the ability to hold more at a time would be hugely helpful.
- I’ve seen reviews complain about the very minor MP cost for moving codes around the book... but I never found this to hamper my play. However, to befriend characters throughout the game, you have to give them “gifts” from the book that they like. Each time you do so it costs a very significant chunk of MP, and frankly this was just stupid and unnecessary. It means that if you want to unlock a quest, you have to give some gifts, then go out and kill monsters or travel to a MP recovery pot just to come back and do so, because even sleeping at your house doesn’t recover much! It just felt like a waste of time and kept me from befriending characters that seemed less interesting or had rewards I wasn’t interested in.
- Two mini-games, the Judgment Link tournament and Zeno-9 scratching cards, both had results that were pretty independent of what you put in. Judgment Link tournaments had you versus three computer opponents battling to earn 3 points for the win. But computer opponents could score on each other, meaning you could lose even if you played perfectly. Further, the Zeno-9 cards, which unfortunately unlock great items, were nothing more than scratching the DS screen repeatedly hoping for the rare chance you match all three faces of the character you want. It was just a wee bit maddening.
- Some strange control choices can mess things up a bit. When charging up special attacks, you can press B to cancel them, but only once activated, which can take some time depending on the ability. Why not allow you to cancel the charge-up? You also are unable to change the control settings, but fairly early in the game, they map the button for exploring areas for Book-levelling detail to an attack that launches enemies. That means you’d be mashing A all over a map while your character hops and yells “haa!” slowly along the way. Oops! Use a guide to find the spots instead, lest you feel like being very frustrated with that.

So phew. That’s more than I usually say, but there really is a whole lot to this game. In many ways, it resembles the aforementioned Dark Cloud 2 in that it’s also a unique action-RPG that has tons of optional elements for you to partake in, or simply to focus more of your time on. It clearly had the kind of ambition that can lead one’s game into the bargain bin, but they made it work and managed to make it all take place in one impressively massive and beautiful game package. Hopefully a sequel will come out to address some of the more nagging issues, but these weren’t enough to ruin the experience for me. I just can’t help but wonder if they can make something next time that will really force gamers and designers to take note.