Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Amazing"

This is my first review of all time, so bear with me through this process.

Obviously, I think this is one of the most amazing games I've played in a long time, and here's why.

The story. Beyond Good & Evil creates a story that just sucks you in from the first few seconds of play time. Combine that with a great cast of characters, good dialogue, good voice acting, some great action sequences, a fabulous new world, and great music. You now have a recipe for an incredible game that should be played by anyone who's even remotely interested in video games. Now I'll break it down a bit.

The Story: I'll not spoil anything here, but let's just say that BG&E definitely did some things story-wise that I had not seen previously in any game of it's kind. It's also a very emotional storyline with parts that are bound to have an impact on the player. My only real complaint is that it's far too short (which is understandable given the original envisioning of the "series").

Gameplay: Everything really feels natural, and I have very little to complain about. The only thing I MIGHT complain about is that the combat is very simple, but honestly, the moves flow so well that I really don't care. The vehicles handle nicely as well, even if they are really loose. The photography element really adds a cool touch to everything happening.

Music/Sound: The score by Christophe Heral is extremely well done, and all the pieces through the game compliment every part extremely well. Nothing to complain about with the sound either. The voice acting is also actually pretty good. I can't remember anything particularly awkward or forced in the whole game.

Graphics: Definitely last gen graphics, but the art style is really nice, so that makes up for the lack of "super-ultra-mega-HD-4542789P" display modes.

Other random category: I could really go on and on about this game, but I'll stop for the sake of your sanity. There's other small things I could point out that make this game just that much more immersive (M-Disk readers for saving, the "S-A-C" for storing items, characters that actually change as time moves on in the game, minigames that are actually fun to play). Another I really appreciated is that there were no pointless gathering quests that took 42 years to complete because you were looking just one millimeter to the right of where you needed to be. Nope, they just went ahead and simplified those parts into a couple little quests that just flowed together and made it easy to keep moving on with the story. That's the sign of a well made game, to me.

All in all, if the franchise ever gets picked up again, I seriously hope this same team gets put back to work on the sequel, because I think it'd be a hit if it does. And even if it's not, I'm sure we'd still wind up with another incredible game, because that's what Beyond Good & Evil is. An absolutely incredible game that ends far too soon.