by MattW - January 10, 2006

If you're a portable gamer and own a Game Boy Advance, odds are you aren't suffering from a lack of Tactical RPGS. From the excellent Fire Emblem series to the Advance Wars titles, there are plenty to pick from. If you've just got an N-Gage, though, there are only a handful of RPGs to choose from in general, let alone subgenres. Rifts: Promise of Power has changed that, though and despite a slightly ignorable story and some occasionally tedious battles, it offers a long and entertaining ride which is perfectly geared for the platform.

Now, if you've played a TRPG before and enjoyed it, then you can honestly almost stop reading now and base your desire to play it on the numerical scores. Rifts doesn't do a whole lot to seperate itself from other tactical games, but it's still plenty of fun. The story begins with, "No one knows how it happened, but..." and proceeds to explain that these psionic rifts opened up and spread across the Earth, ravaging it and allowing a bunch of other creatures to come to Earth in the process. A group known only as the Coalition seeks to have tyrannical control over the planet and use a Gestapo-style special forces unit called the Dead Boys to instill terror, destroy villiages, and hunt down the rebels. The story itself seems kind of vague, which is made even more so when the player chooses from one of 3 characters, whose names are randomly assigned if you don't choose to name them yourself. Similarly, in conversations with NPCs you often have multiple response choices which can effect where you go and what kind of rewards you receive. This open-ended storytelling (despite otherwise fairly linear gameplay) is right in line with the source material, since Rifts is based on a pen-and-paper RPG from Palladium Books, where the player would have a much higher involvement in dialogue and character creation. This is neither a positive nor a negative characteristic of the game, it's all a matter of preference - players familiar with the original game will probably love those consistencies, but those more accustomed to more traditional RPGs might care for it less.

Regardless, the story doesn't seem all that important, and sometimes side-missions will last so long (especially with the pick-up-and-play portable nature of the game) that you'll completely forget what you're supposed to be doing. The problem is complicated by the small viewing area on screen, especially when towns have multiple sections which you have to pass between. It's easy to get turned around when all the buildings look the same, there are only 3 types of NPCs, and they all say something randomly which is drawn from a giant list of possible phrases depending on what type they are. These overly generic responses make the game world feel a lot less engaging, but at least the dialogue relative to the story is well-written. In this post-apocalyptic world, everyone's a hard talker and they often have some clever things to say. Your character will write down things important to the story or the current mission, but it's always in first person and fleshed out into their thoughts on the matter, adding a little bit of depth to them and making up for the lack thereof in the rest of the game.

The main mechanics of battles are what you'd expect: characters can move a certain distance and perform various actions which cost action points. Guns play a large role in combat, ranging from pistols to lasers to rifles, all with varying ranges, ammo clips, and damages. The type of weapons you equip can make or break a match, and help add a whole lot of strategy. Naturally, the type of terrain you're on effects movement and can be used to your advantage or disadvantage, as does elevation. Speaking of which, often the only way to get to a higher level is to step through a 'door' that leads up to it, meaning that if you position your player in front of it then no enemy units can get through. This can both cheapen battles and also be your only saving grace in more difficult fights, but it seems as though tactical purists would object to such a consistently available and cheap method of defense. Speaking of defense, every unit has two levels of health - their armor and their health. Armor is always effected by melee and magic attacks, but there are some spells, like poison, which target your health. Obviously, when your health is gone, you die, but it seems kind of a mute point to give units varying amounts of health since literally any melee attack will kill a unit without any armor. Likewise, if a unit starts with 60 armor, gets down to 3, and recieves a blow that would normally take off 15 damage, they'll only lose 3 armor and their health will be completely in tact. It takes a little getting used to, but as long as your strategy accommodates these kind of things, it won't be too big of a problem. All that damage to your armor will cost you, though - you have to repair it and it isn't cheap. However, upgrades are few and far between (as are experience levels) so you'll rarely have much else to spend your money on, so it kind of balances itself out.

I Think I've Been Here Before..

The visuals in Rifts cover a wide range. Character portraits are colorful and detailed, and are some of the best art in the game. The walk-about graphics are less interesting, but they get the job done. The game plays at a 3/4 isometric view, and players have full rotational control of the camera to view it from 4 different angles at any time. As previously mentioned, the amount of the environment that can be on screen at once can be a great hinderance in towns, especially when you have a few that all look the same. In battles, the camera will zoom out to cover a wider play field if there's an attack across it, so why can't we zoom out manually to get a better view? It's a far cry from making the game unplayable, but it's the only complaint I have that I couldn't adjust to - it's just plain inconvenient.

Sound-wise, it seems like I was listening to the same 4 or 5 songs over and over, but that wasn't a terrible thing, to be honest. The sporadic play times help ensure you don't get entirely sick of a tune, and the music has a good beat to it - it's got a nice industrial sound to it and it helps set the mood nicely when the graphics aren't quite up to par. Sound effects are all standard - guns blast and wolves howl, but none of it will catch your attention. But in a TRPG, I don't think anyone is expecting them to.

There are a few other little things that were bothersome, mainly menu layouts and that kind of thing. For example, if you walk into a shop and have 2 party members, you can only buy and sell items relative to the character you had chosen to walk around as - you'll have to exit the shop, switch characters, and re-enter to upgrade or sell items. It's obnoxious, but given the level of micromanagement that is usually consistent with TRPGs, seasoned players probably won't care. And they shouldn't, because the most important thing about a game like this is whether or not it's entertaining, and I'm happy to say that it is. Rifts is no Shining Force 2, but it does justice to the genre and does an excellent job as a mobile game which you'll probably play in spurts. If you get bored with the storyline and AI, Rifts also takes advantage of the Bluetooth wireless to connect to multiplayer games.

Complaints aside, Rifts: Promise of Power is a very decent game. If it were released on the Game Boy Advance, I might hold it more accountable for it's flaws (especially given it's competition). But as an N-Gage game, it works with what it has and will not disappoint N-Gage owners looking for a TRPG fix. The open-ended story will probably appeal to more traditional RPG players, so if you're familiar with the Palladium Books source material, you'll feel right at home. Of course, that doesn't mean that players who've never heard of it before won't enjoy it, and with the limited number of RPGS available on the platform, it's difficult not to recommend.