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I’ve been playing RPGs a long time. I’ve played easy games, difficult games, long games, short games, complex games, and simple games. Nothing prepared me for what I would come up against with Magna Carta: The Tears of Blood. An excellent storyline, decent visuals, and intriguing combat system come together to form a solid base for Magna Carta: The Tears of Blood. Unfortunately the base is nearly toppled over by unnecessarily tedious combat, extremely long load times, and mediocre audio. Altogether I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about Magna Carta until I had nearly completed the game.

The Humans came to the continent a few hundred years ago, attempting to flee a great plague, and quickly spread into the indigenous people’s land. The indigenous peoples, the Yosan, banded together under the leadership of a Queen Amelia and with the formation of the Blast Worms, an elite fighting group, quickly began to remove the Humans from their land. The Humans, not enjoying being slaughtered and forced to retreat, formed an alliance and fought back. The story follows the life of Calintz, a human swordsman, whose village was destroyed and massacred by the Yosan. Calintz leads a mercenary group named the Tears of Blood who have all suffered loss to the Yosan and fight them ferociously.

Travel from one place to another is either accomplished instantaneously through the world map or tediously by walking from area to area until you get where you need to go. Unfortunately you get little choice in the matter most of the time. Also, load times are devastatingly long. I would regularly be able to get up, pour myself something to drink, drink some, go back and sit down only to find the load screen was just going away. Once in an area, Calintz may move one of two ways; carefully with sword drawn which allows speaking up on enemies, or with haste which decreases your field of vision allowing enemies to sneak up on you. If an enemy sneaks up on Calintz and begins the battle, the characters may not move for a set amount of time, usually equaling two attacks. This can be quite devastating if you are unprepared for the elements being used by the monsters. On the other hand if you sneak up on an enemy and attack it, you get the same advantage of free attacks which can greatly increase your chance of winning the battle. I’ve found that in most cases I can get as many as four or five attacks in before the enemy gets to attack once if I gain the sneak attack.

Each character has a style they begin with. At first it is only one style and only one attack within the style is accessible. If a new attack is perceived that character can, on its next turn use the new attack. Each style usually has four attacks. In order to access a higher attack a character much first use each previous attack in that style in the battle. Each attack has a button combination which must be pressed in the right rhythm in order for the attack to succeed. Luckily only two buttons, X and O, are used in these attacks. There are further powerful attacks in each style, Combo and Counter. Each style only has either Combo or Counter, not both. Combo does a devastating combo attack usually equal to or greater than the damage for the regular attacks of that style. Counter allows the character to guess the buttons pressed by the enemy and if correct allows a devastating counterattack. Unfortunately the game doesn’t show you which buttons to press in Counter and the Combo can take in excess of 15 button presses in the correct rhythm to succeed. Any of the buttons being wrong or out of rhythm and the entire attack fails. This is quite annoying considering enemies never fail their attacks on you.

Each attack has a primary element to which it belongs; Celestial, Wind, Mountain, Earth, Ice, Water, Lightning, Fire. Each creature also has a primary element. Hitting a creature with an element that is complimentary to it (hitting a Celestial with Celestial or Wind) does little damage while hitting it with an opposing element (Mountain or Earth) does extra damage. These elements are drawn from the very environment in which the battle takes place and are limited. If all of one element if used up in battle, no more attacks of that element may be used until the element has been replenished. Unfortunately the game designers overlooked the monster’s use of the elements. Early in the game I tried to make sure that the enemy didn’t have any of the elements that it used for its attack so that I wouldn’t get hit… just to find out that the enemies can still use their attacks with the element completely drained.

Each element also has nine “talismans” which can be created using other talismans, found, or bought. These talismans act as the healing potions, mana potions, and boost items that are common in RPGs. Unfortunately with eight elements and nine talismans each that leaves over five thousand combinations since some of the combinations wield different results if you combine them in the reverse order. It got quite difficult to keep track of the combinations that I knew of and because nearly impossible to track all possible combinations without cheating (and as many of you know I don’t cheat, use faqs, or walkthroughs so I was up a creek).

The graphics were wonderful in Magna Carta: Tears of Blood. The environments were very well done and the characters were beautiful. Costumes were vibrant and unusual although the main character seemed to be dressed in a woman’s outfit instead of the outfit of a renowned swordsman. Battle sequences were beautiful if a little hectic. Too often I was uncertain of the total damage done until the end of the attack because the damage flowed by so quickly and on top of one another. Spells and attacks were both flashy and vibrant.

Sound in Magna Carta: Tears of Blood is a mixed bag. The sounds of battle were excellent and the voices in the voice acting are wonderful. The musical score is well placed, but lacks variety. My largest problem with the sound is actually the performance of the voice acting. Many times in the cut scenes there would be long pauses in the middle of sentences much like when drunk people try to tell stories. It was merely a minor irritant, but it was enough to almost want to turn off the sound completely and read the subtitles

Overall I felt Magna Carta: Tears of Blood was a game which brought too many concepts to the table for any of the game to completely shine above the rest. Inordinately long load times, the tedious button pressing during combat, and the bias with which the enemies can not only always attack, but never fail their attacks kept me from completely immersing myself in Magna Carta: Tears of Blood. I found too much to keep me uninterested in the game for the storyline and intriguing combat concept to show for what they are; wondrous. Diehard RPG fans and those people who enjoy the rhythm button pressing in some parts of Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy X would be most suited for playing Magna Carta: Tears of Blood. It’s a good game, but the lack of immersion caused by load screens keeps it from truly shining through.