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Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled
Nintendo DS / DSi
Looks Like ‘Chrono Trigger,’ Plays Like a Disaster
3/5 stars
“Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled” (“Black Sigil”) is the one and only game ever developed by Studio Archcraft, a team in which most of the work was done by three people. What initially caught my eye about “Black Sigil” way back in 2008/2009 was an initial screenshot that showed a game that looked exactly like that classic RPG of the 16-bit era, “Chrono Trigger.” With such a tiny development team and old-school aesthetic, “Black Sigil” seems like it would be the archetypal Indie game: Developed for PC or some other digital distribution platform and sold for $10 or so. Yet that is not the case. “Black Sigil” was published for the Nintendo DS by Graffiti Entertainment and sold at the standard DS retail price. I bought my copy of “Black Sigil” back in 2009, yet just finally was able to force myself to start playing through my DS backlog, since it is obvious Nintendo has no intention of releasing a DS player for the WiiU. Thanks to the hard work of friendly hackers, the excellent DeSmuME emulator filled in for me where Nintendo fell short. What worried me more than anything, though, was the fact that I never heard any accolades for “Black Sigil” around the time of its release – indeed the game seems to have flown completely under the radar of most RPG fans, and Studio Archcraft has done nothing in the mean time. Surely this could not be a good sign.
Presentation
As I mentioned in the intro, the initial thing that drew me to “Black Sigil” was the fact that it looked so similar to “Chrono Trigger.” Any game that tries to emulate one of the greatest examples of its genre at least deserves some attention. And “Black Sigil” does indeed do a good job of copying the “Chrono Trigger” aesthetic. The sprites for both characters/enemies and environments are detailed and well animated.
The problems crop up in the ways that “Black Sigil” doesn’t imitate “Chrono Trigger.” First, and most noticeable, is that “Black Sigil” doesn’t hold battles in-place in the dungeon environments like “Chrono Trigger” did, instead transitioning to a distinct battle screen. This in-and-of itself is fine, but “Black Sigil” fumbles the situation by not including any kind of battle transition animation or sound effect, instead just silently fading to black and switching to battle mode. This lack of battle transition makes it difficult to tell if the player has found an exit from the current screen, has triggered a cutscene, or has just gotten into a random battle. In addition, the battle scene backgrounds are of noticeably lower graphical quality than the normal dungeon environment maps, with muddy-looking floors and a cluttered appearance that makes it difficult to tell what is passable terrain and what is an obstacle (more on this in the gameplay section).
The fact that the entire view of the game world is confined to the DS’ tiny bottom screen also makes the entire game feel claustrophobic and cramped. The DS’ top screen is dedicated to the world map, but also shows some rarely-useful status notifications and (rarely) enemy stats during battles. The world map, while present at all times outside of battle, is almost completely useless, as it is incredibly compact and pixilated, making the single colored pixels that designate towns and dungeons difficult to pick-out. The fact that the dot representing the player’s position on the map is ENORMOUS doesn’t help in exploring the overworld, which also suffers from an extremely close and cramped perspective just like the rest of the game.
The soundtrack in “Black Sigil” is actually pretty good. There are several extremely well-done tracks, including the title theme and the town theme. Unfortunately, the one tune that players will hear the most is the battle theme, and it is not good at all.
“Black Sigil” is also a game that suffers from quite a few glitches. While many players have aired their grievances online about the game freezing, crashing, or otherwise allowing a game-ending bug to slip into place, I never experienced anything more major than a single crash upon transitioning into a random battle. There are, however, two major glitches that result in side-quests not completing properly that are easy to reproduce and ultimately result in the player getting screwed out of a piece of armor and a summonable monster. Neither of these extra goodies is necessary to complete the game, but the fact that these glitches exist at all makes it look like Studio Archcraft and Graffiti Entertainment didn’t bother do pay for very much QA testing in this game.
Story
“Black Sigil” tells the story of one Kairu, a young man born in the kingdom of Bel Lenora, a land that exists on a small, frozen island in the middle of a vast sea. Kairu is cursed, in that he is the only person living in Bel Lenora who doesn’t have the innate ability to use magic. This countrymen fear him, believing his magicless condition to tie him to the Curse Bringers and an evil general named Vai who waged war in Bel Lenora a generation ago. Kairu’s adoptive father just so happens to be a nobleman and the hero who banished Vai from Bel Lenora and sealed him into a cursed cave.
When it becomes obvious that there is no cure for Kairu’s curse, his father makes the ultimate sacrifice and banished Kairu into the same cave where Vai was sealed. Either Kairu will come out of the cave by using magic, or he will meet the same fate as the other cursed one.
Unbeknownst to Kairu, his adopted sister, Aurora, tags along, intent on helping him unlock his inner magic. As the two struggle through the cursed cave, the suddenly find themselves transported to another world, Artania, in which Kairu is considered normal and Aurora, as a magic user, is considered an abomination. Yet as soon as he sets foot in Artania, Kairu begins to hear the whispering voice of a spirit telling him that the only way to break his curse is to gather the spirit’s components. At this point, Kairu’s curse suddenly gets much, much worse, randomly afflicting him with status ailments while still preventing him from using magic.
As Kairu and Aurora attempt to adapt to the new world they have found themselves in, the inadvertently run afoul of the Sammarkan Empire, which just so happens to be in the middle of an aggressive war of expansion.
While evading the Sammarkans and searching for the cure for Kairu’s curse, the duo meets a variety of new friends, ranging from a mysterious shadow master to a magic-wielding leader of the resistance movement to a beast boy with the abilities of an ‘Ashen Eye’ to a one-eyed treasure hunter. There are even two secret characters whose presence in the party directly affects which of the three possible endings the player gets to see. Each of these characters gets a decent amount of character development and they are all likeable in their own way. This is the first RPG I’ve played in a long time that doesn’t have any annoying characters. While it’s obvious that many of these characters are carbon copies of characters from the 16-bit ‘Final Fantasy’ games (I recognize Kain from “FF4,” Gau from “FF6,” and Locke from “FF6” without expending any mental effort), they each have enough unique story material and inter-personal interaction that they don’t feel like blatant rip-offs.
The problem with “Black Sigil’s” narrative is that it takes forever to really get going. Early on, the game is linear to a fault, constantly pushing the player past points of no return and limiting exploration and side quests to zero. After the 10 hour mark, things start to open up a bit more, though most players probably won’t stick with the game that long considering the uninteresting opening. After about the 20 hour mark, however, the game world opens up completely, presenting an enormous world filled with places to explore and side quests to find. What I love about the side quests in “Black Sigil” is that they are all completely organic and involve exploration and conversation instead of killing X copies of monster Y or killing copies of monster Y until they have randomly dropped X copies of monster-debris Z. The side quests in “Black Sigil” are old school, provide character development for the cast, unlock new abilities, or reward the player with pre-determined pieces of loot. There are a lot of these side quests to boot, turning the second half of the game into an incredible experience.
Gameplay
When it comes to old-school RPGs, the primary gameplay element is the battle system. “Black Sigil’s” battle system is propped up by a couple of supporting gameplay systems. The equipment system is nicely old-school, with slots for a weapon (most characters use a unique type, but some swords can be used by multiple characters), helmet, armor, glove, and accessory. The skill system allows characters to expend skill points to either use a skill/spell by themselves or to team up with another character for a combo attack (obviously inspired by “Chrono Trigger’s” Dual Techs). Each character can learn a total of 8 skills/spells throughout the course of the game, as well as 4 combo attacks with each other character. The number of skills/spells available to each character seems really small, but this seems to have been done entirely to accommodate placing skills/spells into a radial menu based around the d-pad, with the shoulder buttons allowing the player to cycle between 2 sets of 4 skills. Because of the small number of skills/spells, abilities learned at the beginning of the game remain useful all the way to the end… yet when they are first learned, their SP cost is too high to make them a stable of random battles. The only modern additions to “Black Sigil’s” supporting gameplay systems are the fact that status ailments don’t persist after battle (which is good, as enemies in this game inflict bad status upon the characters constantly) and the fact that characters slowly regenerate SP while walking around environments where random encounters occur.
“Black Sigil’s” battle system itself is an active-time battle (ATB) system that feels heavily inspired by both “Final Fantasy 4” and “Lunar: The Silver Star Story.” Yes that seems like an odd combination, and it doesn’t really work. Each character has a visible meter that fills in real time (monsters do too, but their meters are invisible), and once filled allows the character to take an action. If a character is too far away from an enemy to hit it, the character will take a few shortened turns to move across the battlefield to get within range. A player can manually move a character as well by holding the left shoulder button, but when manually moved, a character forfeits their ability to make a normal attack (but can still use a skill/spell unimpeded, which makes no sense). The problem with this system is that many of the battlefields are so cramped and cluttered with obstacles that it becomes impossible for characters to move around each other (they cannot move through each other) and all of the clutter to reach the enemies (this becomes even more infuriating against flying enemies who love to hover directly above clutter). Later in the game when characters have enough SP to use skills/spells in every battle, the clutter becomes less of an issue… but it also largely disappears in the later dungeons! To make battles drag-on even more, even when the battle and message speeds are maxed-out in the option menu, the ATB meters fill excruciatingly slowly.
The final straw that turns the battle system from something with potential to the worst aspect of the game is the fact that random battles happen every 3 steps or so. The encounter rate in “Black Sigil” is… the only word to adequately describe it is ‘incessant.’ I haven’t seen an encounter rate this poorly balanced since “Beyond the Beyond” stank-up the original PlayStation. The ridiculous thing is that these random encounters aren’t even necessary in the slightest to build-up characters in preparation for boss battles, as the random battles are almost always more challenging and resource-draining than the bosses! This massive drain is especially noticeable in the early game when story-based points of no return prevent the player from having easy access (or any access) to an inn or an item shop that sells consumable healing items. Early game characters really depend on consumables to stay alive with their small SP pools, and having to use 2 curative items after every battle, every 3 steps can burn through a lot of resources in a hurry. Even worse, relying on consumables in battle is impractical as each character can only hold 4 items at a time and can only hold a limited quantity of each. Of course, as with everything else, later in the game, consumables are completely worthless and I neglected to ever equip my team with new items after the midway point. The result of these balance issues is that the early game is not only boring and linear, but also tedious and frustratingly difficult; whereas the late game becomes a walk in the park filled with lots of running from battles that give negligible rewards and bosses – including the final boss – that pose no real threat.
Outside of battle, “Black Sigil” does almost everything right. There are plenty of secret passages to explore, plenty of equipment min/maxing options to experiment with, and even some cleverly designed segments that divide the cast of characters into multiple groups, requiring the player to switch between them. The final dungeon especially does a great job of splitting the party in order to solve puzzles… I just with this mechanic had been used more. Really, the only non-battle aspect of the game that is done poorly is the placement of save points. They are unnecessarily far apart, frequently taking more time that a DS battery charge to get from one to the next. While the game does offer a Quick Save option, I never like using those, as that kind of save always deletes itself after loading, which can result in a lot of tedious replaying should something go awry. It also doesn’t make sense that some – but not all – save points are positioned right next to healing discs that look exactly like white save points. Why couldn’t all save points heal the party? Why isn’t there a save point before each boss? It just seems like the save points were scattered around by the Easter Bunny with no rhyme, reason, or purpose… which is especially bad for a game that is supposed to be played on a handheld.
Overall
“Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled” is a 50 hour game of which the first 20 hours are not good in any way. I would rate the early part of the game with the lowest possible score of 0.5/5 stars. However, after reaching the midpoint of the game’s narrative and getting past all of the cumbersome points of no return and building up characters who can cast healing spells with impunity (and learning to run from any battle that isn’t guaranteed to provide a respectable amount of experience and money for the amount of time it takes to complete), the game blossoms into something amazing that could be considered a worthy successor to the 16-bit RPG Golden Age. As a game that includes both excellent greatness and deplorable badness, I can only rank it as a mediocre experience overall, despite really, really enjoying the latter part.
Of course, the main problem with “Black Sigil” isn’t that it has balance issues or glitches. The problem is that “Black Sigil” is a game that never should have been created for the DS. This is a game created by an Indie developer. Had it been published on Steam or Xbox Live, Studio Archcraft could have addressed the issues with the glitches and rebalanced the beginning of the game in a patch, thus rendering it a smooth and enjoyable experience from beginning to end. Instead, the game is trapped on a handheld with no patching infrastructure and tiny screens that make the presentation feel incredibly cramped and too-small for the epic scale of the tale the developer obviously wished to tell.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 2/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
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