Lucienne's Quest

It looks like Mystaria, it plays like Shining Force, but it bores you like a Saturday night with your parents. It's Lucienne's Quest, and it needs help.

Be Our Quest

Featuring the first female-led plot since Lufia, this game has all the trappings of a role-playing game, and the usual accouterments like weapons, magic, and extensive (read here: useless) conversations.

But the jagged graphics and carousel music, along with the weak story line and unimpressive enemies, really grate on you. You'll be more scared when you realize that you actually paid money for this game.

Control is menu-based, and it's effective for the most part. Problems arise during combat, however. It's a grid-mover with a turn-based style of combat. This means you have to line up your characters carefully, and so to use heal spells you have to take a hit first.

Quest for Hire

Playing from overhead view, the close-up graphics are grainy and move slowly. The enemies look like they were drawn by children, and the spells, though colorful, never get off the ground graphically. Some enemies, like the Dead Creepies, are too hard to spot on the bland backgrounds.

The sounds try for heroic but end up sophomoric. The battle music is awful, and the sound effects are below 3DO standards.

In the quest to make better next-gen games, this one couldn't cut it with a double-edged sword. Lucienne better take her quest back to the drawing board.

If I could make one wish, it would be for someone to release this game on PlayStation and Saturn. In a nutshell, Lucienne's Quest is one of the finest, most enjoyable RPGs I've ever played. Coupled with great sound and graphics, the story is engrossing and the action non-stop.

The story follows a young wizard's apprentice, Lucienne, as she helps Ago find a cure for the hideous affliction of lycanthropy that has infested his town. Much like Breath of Fire or Final Fantasy, there are two modes of action:World and Battle.The world view is nothing spectacular; just another overhead view of terrain and little "bubbly" characters.The battle scenes, however, take place on a 3-D-modeled landscape where the terrain (like trees and rocks) can be used as weapons or defensive pieces.

Another great facet of the game is "Spirits". Spirits can be found throughout Lucienne's world Each spirit can perform a certain action, most of which are offensive attacks, but also included is a spirit which heals injury and even a spirit that will lend you money so you can buy more weapons' Add these to the already numerous spells and terns that you can use during gameplay, and you've got some major depth.

Only two things mar this near-perfect RPG One is that there isn't enough variety in monsters you eally have to do is change the name and color of an already existing feature and bam you've got another monster. Also, once you ve con quered an area, if you leave and come back you have to re-fight the monsters. This make? dungeon-delving a major pain in the butt.

All in all, this is an exemplary RPG that all 3DO owners should jump on. Lucienne's Quests a startling glimpse at what we can expect from RPGs in the 32-bit future