Riviera: The Promised Land - Be unique, or die trying

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Hello everyone! How is that orc haunting going with the OpenBOR games I recommended you in the last entry? Good? In this new entry I bring you another “pocket JRPG” specially designed for those who are looking for something different to the usual stuff we often see in the genre. The game is called Riviera: The Promised Land.

Originally released exclusively for Bandai´s WonderSwan handheld system in 2002, Riviera: The Promised Land is a JRPG that breaks with many of the rules established by the genre, after all, we are talking about a game developed by Sting, parents of the excellent and challenging Knights in the Nightmare, and if there is something the guys of Sting are known for, that is their tendency to do the things their own special way as they proved with the mentioned Knights in the Nightmare, and with Riviera it was not going to be different, although it is probably a much more “earthly” game when compared to the one and only Knights in the Nightmare. We will start with the story of Riviera, which is also much more “common”, and which borrows many elements from the popular Nordic mythology. The story of Riviera says that a 1000 years ago a huge war known as the Ragnarok took place between the gods of Asgard and the demons of Utgard. Desperate, the gods broke and ancient oath and sacrificed themselves to summon the Grim Angels. Armed with powerful weapons know as the Diviners, the Grim Angels soon vanquished all the demons. When the war finished, the demons were sealed, and Utgard was turn into the beautiful dreamlike land of Riviera. The power and wisdom of the gods was spread among the magical inhabitants of Riviera. However, some recent sings seem to indicate that the return of the demons could be close, so the Grim Angels Ein and Ledah are send to Rivera to activate a secret weapon known as Retribution, which will be able to annihilate all the demons, although it will also destroy Riviera in the process. This will serve as the starting point of an adventure that will take us across this “Garden of Eden” while we try to save it from the demons. The main characters are:  

Ein 

Ein is the protagonist of the adventure. He is a Grim Angel that sacrificed his wings in order to obtain his Diviner, which is called Einherjar. He is quite naive, something that often annoys his familiar Rosy and his partner Ledah. However, he gets the chicks.  

Ledah 

Pragmatic, loyal, distant, cynical and a lone wolf, Ledah is a extremely experienced Grim Angel that follows any order he´s given by his superiors without hesitation. Just like Ein, Ledah also sacrificed he´s wings in exchange for something, although it is not know what exactly. He´s favorite weapons are the swords. He is the Vegeta type of the group.

Fia

Gentle and with great cooking skills, Fia is the “healer” of the group. Although she´s pretty mature for her young age, she can be rather shy sometimes, especially towards Ein. Her favorite weapons are the rapiers and the words.

Lina 

Lina has a kind of energetic and childish personality. She loves treasure hunting and eating, and hates housework. She seems to possess a specially ability when it comes to humiliate herself, especially when she´s around Ein, whom, by the way, she is in love with. Her favorite weapons are the bows and other long range weapons.

Serene 

Serere is an outgoing and rather tomboyish young girl. Before joining Ein, with whom she´s also in love, she used to live in the island of Rosalina till her tribe was annihilated by a Grim Angel called Malice. Her favorite weapons are scythes and spears.  

Cierra

Cierra is a witch, though she is a good witch. She is kinda like the “older sister” of the group, and she possesses great magical skills. Despite being a bit clumsy, she always remains cheerful. She loves to study the secrets of magic, and her favorite weapons are staffs and canes.




As some of you might have realized, with the exception of Ledah, Ein´s group will be composed almost exclusively of beautiful young ladies, and this is not just because of pure fan service, or at least not completely. The reason for this is that game includes a very light component of date simulation game. Yes, that´s right, those games in which you can put your level of Forever Alone to the test by dating girls on your console and that are popular in Japan. In fact, they are so popular that some dudes even “married” their virtual girls... But anyway, like I was saying, this component in Riviera is very light, and nowhere close to even games like Ar Tonelico, so don´t worry, you can still play the game with your friends/family around safely. In fact, in Riviera you will always stay in the infamous “friend zone”. During some of the scenes of the game, we will have the option to choose between several answers. Depending on the answers we choose, our relationship with our beautiful “friends” will improve, changing some events in the story, and also the final depending on the friend we developed a deepest relationship with.

Regarding the gameplay of the game, as we could see in Knights in the Nightmare and many other titles of Sting, Riviera ignores many of the classic features of the genre to offer us a unique JRPG experience. The gameplay of Riviera will be divided in 2 main sections: exploration and combats. Opposite to what we can see in many other JRPG, where we are able to explore the areas freely, similar to what we could see in the classic point & click adventures, in Riviera exploration will be limited to a series of options that we will be able to choose in order to explore and interact with our surroundings. To manage all these actions, the exploration part will have 2 modes: the Look Mode and the Move Mode. The world of Riviera will be divided in several zones, each with their own areas. When we reach an area, instead of moving around it freely, we will have to choose whether we want to keep advancing and proceed to the next area (or previous one), or if we want to check the current one. If we decided to check our surroundings in the current area, we will need to switch to the Look Mode, which we will be able to do with the press of a single button. Once in the Look Mode, the interactive items around us will be highlighted, and we will be able to select them to investigate them, allowing us to find items, learn more things about the world of Riviera and the characters, or discover new paths among other stuff, although in order to be able to do so, we will need TP or Trigger Points. Yup, checking stuff in Riviera won´t be “free”. We will need Trigger Points, and these won´t be abundant, so if we check stuff in a careless manner, more often than not we might find ourselves in the situation of not being able to open a gorgeous looking treasure chest since we wasted our precious Trigger Points investigating useless stuff, although of course, you cannot know if it was useless unless you investigate it. On top of this, Riviera is a pretty linear game, so many times we might not be able to go back and revisit some places, which means, if we don´t investigate the items when we have the chance, we might not have another chance to do so. This unique system will force us to evaluate constantly if it´s really worthy to investigate something, or we better wait to find a better looking thing to investigate, however, looks can be deceiving, and we could end up skipping so nice items. As you can see, Sting guys just love to make their players suffer.

And if the exploration system is unique, the battle system is not far behind, although it is probably a bit more traditional. Just a bit though. Since exploration in Riviera is reduced to simply advancing constantly to the next area by navigating the menus, the combats will not be random. Instead, every time we visit a new area for the first time, most probably there will be a combat waiting for us. The peculiarities of the combat system start with the item system. Opposite to what we see in most JRPG games, where each character is equipped with their own equipment and are be able to access a list if shared common items (potions, antidotes, etc.), in Riviera we will have to choose 4 items to bring with us to each combat, and these items will be shared by all the members of the group, including the weapons. Each character will have a certain level of affinity with each item, and depending on that level, the character will or will not be able to accumulate experience with that item. The more we use an item with a character, the more experience the character will obtain with the item, and when we accumulate enough experience with a character, the effects of the item will improve, unlocking new skills with the item, on top of the character´s attributes (strength, defense, etc.). Yup, Riviera doesn´t have a common leveling up system neither, and how much our characters will level up will depend on the items they use and their affinity with them, therefore, choosing the right items for each combat will be essential if we are to be victorious AND want our characters to level up. As I said, Sting guys just love complex stuff. On top of this, obtaining a good rank during the battles will also be essential, since the better rank we obtain, the more Trigger Points we will obtain, and so the more items we will be able to investigate in the Look Mode, which means more treasures, so bottom line: better try our very best during the combats, especially since these won´t be many of these as they are not random. I guess Sting guys said “You hate random combats? Ok, so now you´re gonna miss them!” The game also makes use of a power gauge similar to the one we can see in many VS fighting games. This gauge will be divided in 3 different levels and it will fill up automatically during the combats. Every time we level up one item with a character, we will unlock a new skill, being able to unlock up to 3 different skills with each item depending on our affinity with it. In order to be able to use each those skills, we will need to use part of our power gauge, so, if for example, we want to use a level 1 skill, we will need to fill up the first level of our power gauge, while if want to use a level 3 skill, we will need to fill up our power gauge completely (3 levels). This skill system helps to add more deepness to a combat system that, although it might seem rather simple at the beginning, soon we will discover that is much deeper and demanding that we would have imagined.

Finally we have the graphics of the game, which frankly speaking, they do the job, and that´s about it, don´t expect anything flashy here, after all we are talking about a game that was originally release on the WonderSwam. The sprites of the characters are good enough, displaying a reasonable amount of detail, but the animations are rather stiff. And the same goes for the design of the stages, which despite having generally a good design, can sometimes look a little bit too simple or empty. The game got a remake in 2004 for Nintendo´s Game Boy Advance that improved the graphics, of top of offering brand new redrawn art for the scenes of the story. This remake got ported later to the PSP on 2006, adding a complete voice over on top of adapting the graphics to the superior screen of Sony´s portable console, making this the most complete version of the game. Since the WonderSwam version never made it outside Japan, which makes sense if we think the Bandai´s portable console always reminded a Japan exclusive, and the Game Boy Advanced version is even more scarce and pricy that the PSP one, which is already scarce enough, if we think about quality/price, the PSP version is perhaps the wisest choice to go with. So, if after Knights in the Nightmare you still have an appetite for something different, you should really give a chance to Riviera. It certainly doesn´t reach the level of greatness other productions of Sting have reached, but it surely still is a good game that will please the fans of the genre, and that helped to prove from the very beginning that Sting was not happy doing just the same everyone else was doing. Enjoy!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAy9s0-Zn9Y