The world map is something that simply must be seen. It’s a... well, it’s a map... like an old parchment map. You wander around between drawn mountains and rivers, walking toward cities with bold words like “Enclaan” written next to them, and it’s so different, it’s cool. The best part about the map, though, are the various drawings found scattered around. Some of them seem like random doodles of the moon and the sun, like you’d see on an old map, and others mark “dangerous areas” and such. And at all of them, you can get descriptions of just what they’re about. Way cool.
And everybody, literally, has a face in the game. Even the menial townsfolk have little “pictures” that show their faces. It’s really nice to see even the super-bit characters having a bit of personality.
Now, unfortunately, the bad stuff... the game models in Shadow Madness are sub-par. They’re very non-detailed, and at times you’re not really sure just WHAT you’re fighting and what you’re controlling. Worse, when there are more than five or six people moving around on the screen in battles, the engine slows to about half the speed, making fights even more annoying.
The full-motion video is sometimes superb -- notably the creature summons -- and sometimes painful to watch -- notably, well, pretty much everything else. The spell effects in battles are uninspired with almost no “oomph” that shows just what they’re doing. Overall, though, the poor graphics can be overlooked for the visual majesty of the landscapes you roam around. Until you get into battle.
The music in the battles is decidedly better than the graphics, with lots of different tunes for each area, giving your ear a respite from repetitiveness without the dross of the 395,281 area themes of Final Fantasy VII. Most are groovy tunes, perfect battle music, and worthy of the genre. The sound effects are good as well, if not glowing. There are some memorable effects, like the mad cackling in the Keep, but overall they’re your usual clinks, clanks, and bangs.
