Sudeki tells the tale of four unlikely heroes: Tal, Buki, Ailish and Elco. Their world has been ripped into parts of light and dark many moons ago by some unhappy gods. Now it’s under threat from the evil Aklorians determined to rid the world from all that’s bright and cheery, once and for all.

Without a doubt this game has had some high production costs lavished on it. The distinguished sound of Tom Baker, who voices the wonderfully animated shadow puppet introduction, gives a positive impression that the tale of Sudeki will be a rich tapestry ready to be unravelled by the player throughout the game. Indeed, the world of Sudeki is a lush and colourful place, if a bit garish at times.

The development of the story is covered by the game’s cut scenes. Sadly the initial impression of an involved and twisting plot fails to meet expectations. The story washes away, revealing a particularly linear adventure, not saved by side quests that consist of little more than collecting a few objects. Characters, whilst interesting to look at, have a very mundane even clichéd back story; it’s difficult to see why these people have been brought together to complete the task at hand.

A lot of time is spent walking around the world and walking and walking and walking. Not that there’s anything wrong with that per se; often in RPGs taking a certain path can lead to a new side quest. Zelda made moving between locations fun, Morrowind’s freeform play rewarded such wanderings. Not here. You tread the same path you’ve trodden a dozen times before, with nothing new to see and nothing new to do.

The same applies to many of the NPCs you’ll meet; whilst they are plentiful and beautifully rendered, most of the time they have but a single utterance to say, little of which has any relevance to the game plot; distinguished actors or not, much of the voice acting is sub par. Where interaction is available, branching conversation doesn’t exist; it’s simply a list of questions with stock replies.

Much of the rest of the time is spent in dungeons exploring and solving puzzles. There’s nothing brain taxing here, normally being a case of ’get to a switch’ or ’move a block over a floor panel’. You will need to use your character’s innate abilities to solve some of these, which makes things a little more interesting. Ailish is able to see mystical invisible items and make them appear, Tal is the only character able to heave blocks around, Buki is able to climb a certain type of vertical wall using her Wolverine-type weapon and Elco has a rocket pack he can use to fly across gaps; assuming there’s the fuel cell rocks around to power it.

Some of the world interaction doesn’t make much sense though. Near the beginning of the game, when you’re first encountering the enemy, the surroundings are war torn with many things on fire. This is normally quite hot, but our hero with asbestos skin can coolly stand in the middle of it unscathed. Return to the same spot later, when the fires are extinguished, the bails of hay are a sight of perfection rather than the blackened char they should be. The land of Sudeki is indeed a mystical place.

Whilst these things are true of many RPGs, Sudeki promised to change what we expect from such games. Not so far it would seem.

Random battles have often been criticised and here they are absent. In their place are battles triggered by entering a particular section of the map. It’s usually quite obvious; the area will be enclosed or a save point will be nearby. Irritatingly once you conclude the battle and step outside, returning to the same area can trigger the same battle again; this tends to be in open spaces rather than dungeons. It can be an issue as it’s not possible to run away, meaning wrong turns are penalised.

Combat is done in real time allowing you to control one character while the AI takes over the rest of your party. This wouldn’t be a problem if the AI did what it said on the tin; unfortunately it does not. Characters all too easily get themselves cornered taking more than their fair share of damage, requiring you to switch and heal whilst the individual you’ve lost control of gets themselves into the same kind of mess. It’s best to leave the AI on defence rather than offence.

There are two styles of attack available to the player; melee and ranged. The former is by far the more satisfying, allowing Tal and Buki to inflicted damage through a simple and easy combo system. Ranged combat is the domain of Ailish and Elco, but is much more restrictive. You’re forced into a first person view, limiting your field of vision and hindering your battle progress. The camera can be an issue in combat when fighting multiple foes. It’s quite possible for a monster to creep up from behind whilst you’re attacking his accomplice, without being able to defend yourself; this can be quite frustrating at times.

Along with the vanilla physical damage your characters can inflict, they have a set of special abilities called skill strikes. The strength of these is governed by an individual’s essence; the higher this stat, the more damage they can do. This is further complemented by a single powerful Spirit Strike. This can be used once your characters have earned enough spirit strike points from killing monsters. These are pooled for the party meaning if one character uses their Spirit Strike, the gauge needs to be refilled before a different party member can activate theirs.

Turn based combat works well in RPGs because it allows you to take stock of your character’s status and abilities and use them in a way that complements the team. In Sudeki’s real time system some of that is lost. This isn’t a striking criticism; the faster paced nature of combat can be intense and makes a change from what are often laborious tactical battles; it’s simply a bit too loose.

Gaining experience ameliorates the situation, allowing you to improve on your character’s abilities; levelling in Sudeki is a simple but interesting affair. Gone are much of the stats and modifiers frequently associated with RPGs, instead you’re given tokens when enough experience is gained from combat or quests. These tokens can be spent on increasing your health, skill, power and essence, or can be used to gain new skill strikes. It definitely makes things accessible to those intimidated by the more complex systems of other games.

Weapons can be permanently powered up by enlisting the help of a blacksmith to engrave runes on them; it’s a nice feature. These may increase the damage a weapon can cause or give them a chance of inflicting a status modifier on your enemy, such as weaken which halves the damage they do or freeze which stops your target from moving. Similarly armour can be upgraded to shield you from status change or empower your character with a positive effect, such as haste that increases your speed or regen which gradually heals your character’s health. These upgrades are not cheap though, and so will take time to obtain.

The sad thing with Sudeki is that it does have some nice ideas, but they’re just not fully realised. That’s the biggest disappointment; whilst it isn’t a particularly bad game, the poorer parts are those most remembered. The one thing left nagging in the back of your mind is that it could have been so much more.