Right now what the Xbox 360 needs in Japan is a good RPG. Not just a solid ‘B’ level one like [EM]~Enchant Arm~, but an ‘A’ quality RPG that tells Japanese consumers “hey, you need to buy an Xbox 360!” While future games such as Blue Dragon might be enticing to the Japanese game public, by the time those games come out the PS3 will be on the market and pretty much no one is going to care. The important time is now in the spring, the summer, the fall; that’s when MS needs a hit RPG that appeals to Japanese gamers. Tengai Makyou Ziria, a remake of the 1989 game of the same name, isn’t going to be that hit.

Tengai Makyou (also known as Far East of Eden in the west), is an old-school game in new-school clothes. Those who’ve played Dragon Quest VIII should be familiar with what that means. It means while the graphics are reasonably modern, the actual gameplay mechanics are simple and feel like you’re playing a game made 15 years ago. DQVIII was an example of how to do this correctly. It created an amazing world with epic scope, a nice story, an epic adventure, and combined that with an updated version of the original DQ battle system. Tengai Makyou Ziria does none of that.

For one thing, the graphics in Ziria aren’t just a huge leap behind what payers expect from a next-gen game, but rather they are worse than most PS2 RPGs. While the resolution is nice and sharp at 720p with the text looking more readable than ever and jaggies nowhere in sight, the actually polygon models, animation, and special effects are downright horrible. The lead character Ziria is decent looking enough, but the enemies in the game are atrocious and look quite bland. The art design definitely extends beyond even generic and just into “bad”. Another thing that doesn’t help the visuals is that in the world of Tengai Makyou, each town is intentionally supposed to look the same. While it’s nice that they kept the continuity, the overall appearance is that everywhere you go, everything looks the exact same and the towns are fairly small and incredibly lifeless compared to the scope scene in DQVIII or even FFXII. Spell and skill animations are stiff and unimpressive with special effects out of a Dreamcast title. Overall, Ziria is not a game anyone will be playing for the graphics.

Another problem is that the game hasn’t really been balanced or made more interesting/exciting with this remake. The original game was nice for its time, but its sequel TMII Manjimaru was a much better and more diverse game. You’d think that when making the X360 version of Ziria the team would change around the story and just keep the general plot and world of the original, but no instead they opted for an exact remake. While on one hand you can say “That’s how it should be. Original content should be left alone!” The problem is that the original content is just not that great in 2006. The balance presents the old-school issue where characters will become overpowered and able to kill anything in one hit, but then the second they step into the next dungeon (the dungeon designs are incredibly bland and just tiny areas of repeating PS2 level textures) or story arc the enemies will kill their whole party in one round if they’re unlucky. Because of this, the game requires a large amount of level grinding before advancing into each new arc. While this may have been tolerable 17 years ago and maybe even today if the story and world made you want to grind to see the next section, since the game looks so boring and the story is so non-existent there really is no driving incentive to continually grind.