Eragon - More Than Skin-Deep

27/05/24

Frequently, the hardest thing for me to continue writing reviews for the Game Boy Abyss is just how samey the experiences can be. After all, how many licensed titles have I played so far that have just been ‘generic 2D paltformer’? How many have been perfectly serviceable, utterly forgettable experiences? I love The Game Boy Abyss, but it wears on one’s soul, which might genuinely be the most first-world problem I’ve ever typed. The fact that Eragon, a game based on an utterly terrible film (which in itself is an adaptation of a fairly derivative novel (that I still loved)), is a game that bucks that trend blows me utterly out of the water. That’s not to say it’s incredible by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact that Eragon is a pretty decent RPG with more interesting combat and actual in-depth RPG mechanics when they really could’ve made something throwaway and forgettable is incredibly impressive to me.

As a known RPG guy, having a title like Eragon be an RPG altogether is enough of a draw. Plus, as it so happens, the novel’s author, Christopher Paolini, recently released a new novel set in the universe, so everything kind of comes together. Having played the home console version of the game - a hack and slash that feels like a much worse edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - I went into this expecting something real nasty, especially with how goddamn ugly this game is. God I love having my expectations subverted! Oh, how I love it when I judge a book by its cover, and then that book punches me in the face in annoyance! Oh, I love writing terrible, terrible metaphors! Eragon isn’t amazing, but man, it tries. It really, really tries.

In all honesty, it’s been a long time since I’ve read any of the Eragon novels, let alone the terrible, terrible movie. In all honesty, the last book in the series, Inheritance, left an atrocious taste in my mouth, and the less said about the film, the better. So, as I went into the game, I expected, at best, a play-by-play of the film, or at worse, a totally stripped-down trainwreck. Well, stone the crows - against all odds, Eragon for the GBA goes above and beyond. Taking cues from both the film it directly adapts, and the book it inspired it. It’s nothing major - little stories, here and there, references to future books that were left from the film. Hell, there are entire sequences, like an absolutely charming section early in the game where Eragon, his cousin Roran, and Roran’s girlfriend Katarina are wandering the countryside, doing odd jobs to pay back a debt. Hell, the entire prologue of the game, depicting Arya and her warriors attempting to evade pursuers, was a section mere minutes long in the film, is a near hour-long experience that does a serious good job of taking the player through its mechanics. Side quests in towns, flavour dialogue that just fleshes out the world - Eragon isn’t paving any roads to new frontiers, but it’s fleshed out a lot more than some of ‘RPGs’ I’ve played - GBA or not).

I’ve always been aware of Eragon having a GBA edition, nothing more than a name on a list, so prior to actually looking up gameplay, I expected a bare-bones, hack and slash experience. The, and let me coin this, ‘licensed fantasy adaptation version of platformers’. Bit of a mouthful, I know, but it’ll catch on. Anyway, this ain’t no hack and flash - Eragon is a bonafide RPG, blending a simplistic, accessible battle system with surprisingly in-depth role-playing elements in a more supporting role. It makes me think of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. Whilst undoubtedly simplistic and stripped down from a more traditional dungeon-crawling system, it’s the kind of system that works incredibly for a pick-up and play system like the GBA. In my opinion, the very same can be said for Eragon in regards to RPGs.

Basic attacks are handled by keying in a combination of A and B button presses, with certain combinations providing different effects and modifiers. For example, a double B press for Eragon will cause his second strike to deal double damage. Other attacks may inflict poison, or bleeding, for damage over time, and you can find full lists in your menu to build your strategy. Whilst it is a cool system, it does suffer from certain combinations, like Brom’s B-A-B combo, being way stronger than any of the others, but that feels almost like an inevitability with systems like that. It’s not the most complicated battle system, but I appreciate the fast pace it gives most battles and enough strategy to not make it an afterthought. Magic… isn’t that. Lacking an MP system, magic, regardless of its curative or destructive nature, drains the user's health to play into the whole ‘magic drains one’s energy’ idea from the books. I kind of hate this - it makes offensive magic only useful against specific, magic-resistant foes, and healing almost pointless. Sure, it tops someone else up, but it’ll drain the user just as much, making it net negative at *best*. I’ve seen this system in other games, and I can’t think of a single example that I’ve actually liked. It just feels bad, simply put.

Between battles, you’ll be wandering across a huge, relatively open map that makes up the world of Alagaesia. Whilst only featuring a handful of major towns, as you travel to and fro from various objectives, you’ll come across small dungeons - usually in the form of caves and the like - and ruins, which will essentially present you with a pseudo-boss fight for the reward of shiny, shiny loot. With no real limits to where you can go, the game has a real old-school feel, but with that old-school feel comes the very real danger of stumbling the wrong direction, and running into a pack of Urgals that shrug off *everything* you do to them, and cut you down in a single hit. Save often, folks! But seriously, it’s a nice touch and there’s a nice bit of reward for exploring just that little bit; plus, getting to wander a bit helps in remedying one of the large, balance-related issues in the game. Grinding sucks, but at least exploration helps! I’m not gonna claim this overworld is any kind of revolutionary addition, but it makes what could’ve been a far more linear title that little bit bigger.

The biggest RPG component present in Eragon is the game’s ‘focus’ system. All characters have a set of additional skills that they can select to specialize into, with each providing a particular stat boost upon leveling up. For example, leveling up whilst Eragon’s Magic Focus is active will give him a specific boost to his magic-based stats, or Hunting will raise a character’s ranged attack stats. Beyond being a boon to just your statistics and a way to specialize in a certain playstyle, Focus stats also come into play in the overworld, though with the way the system is set up, I’m not quite sure if it’s a boon or a negative. Surprisingly, I found you could invest these points into characters who I’d (rightfully) assumed would only be around for the opening, like Roran, despite how short your time with him his.Thankfully, you aren’t punished for investing focus points into characters who leave the party for varying reasons, as those stats will be carried over into specific later characters, like Roran’s into Brom’s.

I just wish I knew how important Focus Points would turn out to be.

In theory, I really like the Focus system - it allows you to better dictate how you want to build the cast, and having more to do whilst exploring Eragon’s various towns and environments. Being able to hunt down new spells, top-tier equipment, and much needed items is a great feeling, but the big issue lies in what I think is this game’s biggest issue - it’s balancing. I never felt like I was quite the right level for whatever I was doing; I’d wander into the wrong part of the map - bang, one hit killed. I complete an area, kicking the ass of everything in reach, but the next area? Brutally difficult. Was I meant to grind? No idea. You never feel accurately challenged, either destroying everything in your path or, if you’re even able to theoretically win, having to throw the entire kitchen sink to win out without a grind. Maybe this was on me, but it always just felt off.

Similarly, in the area of the Focus skills, upon reaching the second major town, pretty much every point of interest with a Focus skill requirement was waaay above whatever I’d ended up with. Hunting tracks to find items, picking herbs to brew potions - an incredibly critical element of the game, considering how bad healing feels to use - hell, I couldn’t even break crates because I’d completely neglected *anyones* Endurance stat. If you don’t make the ‘correct’ choices in regards to Focus Points, you’ll find yourself at a wide disadvantage without the resources you need, forcing you to grind to either get the Focus Points to access the various nodes, or to just outlevel the enemies you’re fighting. Honestly, this makes me think grinding was kind of baked into the balancing of the game. Fights are fast, sure, but it’s never a great feeling to have to stop your forward progression to kill the same ugly-ass enemies again and again and again.

The big elephant in the room for Eragon, however, is just how bloody ugly the game looks. Seriously, from its battle models, open world sprites, visual level design and the awful, CGI-looking dialogue portraits, Eragon is one of the ugliest games I’ve played - period. Atrocious. It activates the neurons in my head, and not any of the good ones. Okay, maybe I’m taking it a little far, but seriously, I’m impressed by how the game’s visuals seem like such an afterthought. When so much of the game - mixed at times, as it can be - had genuine passion and varying levels of depth behind them, for them to stumble so hard in the visual department is a genuine shock. The game’s soundtrack doesn’t fare much better, but it falls into the more ‘generic and repetitive’ category than anything else. It provides genuinely zero vibes, sounding as generically fantasy as you can get, and after less than an hour of the same damn battle theme blaring at me, I decided to turn it off and listen to Castle Super BEast instead. Yeah, that’s more damning than I meant, but it is what it is.

Eragon has problems. The balancing is all out of whack, the Focus System is flawed, and the less I say about the graphics, the better. But I can’t help but give this game its flowers for actually stepping up and providing an experience that feels head and shoulders above most other licensed titles. Seriously, I’d take a flawed, mixed bag of an experience like Eragon over a thousand ‘perfectly fine’ platformers that are oh-so-endemic to not only the GBA, but gaming as a whole. I don’t see myself wrapping up, or really ever going back to Eragon, but I think it’s worth a try if you want to see the full span of what the Game Boy Advance provided.

Thank you so much for reading my review of Eragon for the Game Boy Advance! Genuine surprise this week, never expected it to be actually this engaging! Either way, it got me to read the newest book set in the universe, so I’ll give it credit for that. As an aside, reviews might be on hold for a bit, not sure - personal life stuff, nothing awful, just might be a week or two of radio silence. As always, you can email me over at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com or cckaiju@gmail.com if you have any questions or requests, or see me over at twitter @Lemmy7003. Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you next time!