Hero: “A human who fused with Gig in order to slay the World Eaters. Pages five-seven have character profiles. The venerable warrior queen sacrificed her Some cowered and fled, while others pledged The violent echoes of agony and murder shattered the land. The harmonious empire stood for more than 10 years,Īnd Prodesto returned to a state of bloody war. Though only one man, his heroism swept across the world.
(Ah, the days when games had manuals that were full of valuable information…) Sadly, it’s in black and white, so you can’t see the character artwork in its full-color glory. Let’s look a little deeper into the manual. Maybe there were more branches in later playthroughs as part of a new game plus kind of unlockable?
The game’s manual claims that the story can branch in a number of ways, but on my playthrough, the only branches I saw were marked with a skull and crossbones indicating that using Gig’s power in those choices gets you a bad ending. This explains how, if you misuse Gig’s power, you will be punished in some way. “Use his power to slay the mighty World Eaters, but don’t get carried away…” “The God of Death is back, and he’s looking for trouble!” They’re talking about Gig. “Some people just aren’t fit to play god,” declares the back cover blurb. The cover is decent from a design standpoint, but doesn’t really convey the turn-based feel of the game or the real depth of its story. The background looks like a destroyed village with a hellish crimson laid over it. To his right is a black sword with a somewhat fanciful-looking hilt and a rune-etched blade. Gig is a jerk, but his one of your main allies in the game, and receives some character development over the course of the story. SNatWE was a strategy RPG, and is still unlike any other I’ve ever played.Īn evil-looking character graces the front cover.
It was actually the first NIS game that I ever owned. It’s definitely the darkest NIS game I’ve ever played, and also the least cute, with a different art style from Disgaea, Phantom Brave, and the like. However, the game does have a pretty interesting story with some very dark themes. Why is that? Is it because it was difficult and maybe overly complicated? Coming back to this journal, I realized that I never really felt like I understood the game enough to play it well. When people discuss PS2 hidden gems, they usually talk about Shadow of the Colossus, or Okami, or Odin Sphere, but never SNatWE. I don’t even remember any magazine reviewing it when it came out. It seems to have fallen into complete obscurity.
Nippon Ichi Soft has rereleased and remade some of their older games, even more than once, but they’ve never rereleased SNatWE.