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System:
Arcade
Genre:
Beat 'Em Up
Publisher:
Namco
Developer:
DreamFactory
Players:
1-2
Release date/year:
1998
Other systems:
PlayStation
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- Ehrgeiz
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1998 DreamFactory - Namco - Arcade
- As fighting games go, you have to have plenty of action, some innovation, and hopefully a good fan base to make something worthwhile. Ehrgeiz is a good example of an idea that takes some well known characters, lumps them in with a bunch of generic characters, and then try to cash in on it! Square Soft, better known for their role playing games, tried a hand at the fighting game circuit, and ended up coming away shy with some impressive visuals, but over advanced game play and out of date ideas. Giving you control of one of several characters that include a few from Final Fantasy 7, you fight through several stages of three dimensional combat using a myriad of special attacks in hopes of obtaining the legendary Ehrgeiz. A weapon of immeasurable power, your goal is to obtain it, and use it but first you have to compete against a bunch of other saps in a quest for the same goal!
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-Game Play 6/10-
This game is just like any other fighting game that you've played, but it substitutes the fun of the actual fighting, for a visual display to look at. This isn't what you'd expect, in something that features Final Fantasy characters as selectable fighters. As you play through, you'll notice that the main stay of the game, is distance attacks...how far away you can be, and still be able to hit your opponent that's coming at you! The special moves themselves, are very very hard to remember, and even harder to pull off at times. You'll spend a good deal of time running away, instead of into the actual fight, for fear of getting your butt kicked by the super cheap A.I. that seems to love to make you suffer every chance it gets! As for the actual combination system, you'll find that once you have the special moves down, and you can chain them all together one after another, you'll be able to sit back, and watch your computer opponent get massacred with just a few powerful moves...again, this doesn't make for any sort of strategy, or any sort of actual fighting...
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-Control 6/10-
Ugh. This is something that will get to you after awhile, is the in-battle fighting controls. It gives you a couple of different punches and a kick along with a guarding button. When you go to figure out the moves, there are about 50 in all for each character...and they are all harder than hell to pull off! Once you do get the attacks down, you'll find that using them effectively in battle can take more practice than it really is worth trying to learn!
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-Audio 6/10-
Basic, fighting game battle droning. The music track for this game, is not done very well, and neither are the tracks that are supposed to accompany the various battle stages. As you listen to it, you'll hear very little difference in terms of what there is to hear, and it all sounds the same after about 20 minutes anyway! The sound effects blend into the music as well, giving a little life to the really boring battle music, but not enough to make you not notice the fact that all of the music sounds the same. As for the effects alone, you have an assortment of explosions, crashing, kicks and punches being thrown and connecting, and some grunts, groans and roars. Other than that, you're not hearing anything that will make you go ''Oooo...Ahhhh''
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-Visuals 9/10-
Nicely done, in a fighting game format using several characters from several different platform games. Giving you the characters from Final Fantasy, and a couple of other well known, and sometimes, not so well know fighting games, Ehrgeiz makes a trying stand in the age of full 3-Dimensional fighters, but only the visuals to the game justice! Each character is drawn, produced, and placed within huge, multi-leveled environments to fight it out in a battle to the finish! Every character has a set of moves that is specific to their character type, and flow nicely across the screen when performed. You can use a weapon, which are also very well detailed, and use a special move based on the power meter that you have set up. All of this aside, it plays more on the fact that there are well known characters drawn and animated into the game, and give you some flashy things to look at, from the interactive backgrounds with flowing water, to the city skyline on a rooftop fighting board.
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-Quarter Crunching 10/10-
The game gets tougher as it progresses. More often than not, about level six or so, you'll have your ass handed back to you in a rather orderly fashion and in goes your hard earned money to continue on! I'm really not sure on why the difficulty is hyped up towards the end of the game, but you'd better have your special moves down, of you're in for a word of hurt.
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-Overall 6/10-
Ehrgeiz relies more on the visuals that it does the game play. While it is a three dimensional fighter, the attack commands that you have to learn and then use effectively are way too much for anyone to really get into without spending more than a couple of hours at the machine! With that being said, Square Soft should stick to what it knows, and that would be role playing games!
//KasketDarfyre
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