Kartia:
The World of Fate

Story

The story in Kartia is a little too complex for me to describe right here, especially with two different scenarios. What I will say is that even though you have two different scenarios, it's all really one big storyline. The scenarios are broken up in two separate parts. One focuses on Toxa, a freelance knight, and the other on Lacryma, leader of Vigilance. Vigilance is a volunteer group of knights who help people in distress. What is amazing is that both scenarios intertwine with one another frequently without disturbing the flow of the story but always giving up something new to look at.
For example: When Toxa group meets up with Lacryma group, certain members of Lacryma group may go off somewhere. You won't know where or what they talked about until you play Lacryma scenario. This is vice versa too when you play Lacryma scenario.
Now each scenario has it's own chapters. Within each chapter are story episodes. Each episodes is numbered according to the the overrall place it is in, in the big main storyline with the two scenarios combine. You can get a good look at the overrall storyline by playing both scenarios at once and follow the story according to the episodes and not the chapters. This is excellently done.

Score: 10/10

Characters

Kartia gives us an excellently abundance of characters to get to know. Some characters may have stronger background developement than others but overrall each character is given just enough background for us to know about them and what they are like. Everyone who played this game will have a favorite character, I'm sure of it.

Score: 9/10

Graphics

Now this is where the game takes a down turn. The game uses spite in a 2-D world. The sprites and the background are uninteresting and dull. The game could definetly use some better colors. The character pictures next to the text isn't that great either. At the beginning of each episodes there's a FMV sequence. The FMV aren't that good too. Very dull and dark. It would look more like a 16 bit game than a 32 bit game if it wasn't for the FMV.

Score: 5/10

Music

Kartia music or lack of music is boring and uninteresting. To simply put, "Does Karita even have any music?" I believe the game may carry 3 or 4 tunes at best. Very weak and forgettable.

Score: 2/10

Gameplay

Kartia gameplay is your basic turn base strategy one. You have an objective to accomplish on each battle map, and once you've cleared the objective, the fight is over. Before each start of battle, you can create phantoms to help you. Phantoms are support monsters. The kind of phantoms you can create is base on the text you use. More on text down below. Not everyone can create text though. Only certain members of the party can. Each phantom is classify in a fighting class, common, doll, and shadow. Each class is weak against one kind of class but strong against another kind of class. Sort of like rock, paper, and scissors.
Now you can also create weapons and armours before a battle to maximize your attack and defense power. The kind of armours and weapons you get depends on what text you have. You can also use magic as well but once again the kind of magic that is available depends on the text available.

Now for the text. Texts comes in different forms. Plain, letter, and grammer. You need these texts to create phantoms, armours & weapons, and of course magic. You can use text by itself or by mixing them up to create even stronger text. Text is acquire during battles and after battles. It's a good idea to learn how to use text properly.

The gameplay in itself is pretty simple. The ability to create your own weapons and armours is unique and fun at times. Creating phantoms is also nice. The problem here is that since all human characters maximum level is only 20, you'd be better off just using only your human fighters and magic attacks thus raising their level to 20 very quickly. Level 20 is equivalent of level 99. So it's fairly easy for your fighters to become unstoppable by mid way into the game. I'll give the gameplay a 7. It can be fun at times creating phantoms and stuff but they can get boring pretty quick too.

Score: 7/10

Extras/Replay

The game doesn't have much of extra stuff. It does have a special 2 player VS mode where you can pit your phantoms against a friend. You can also trade rare items and weapons between friends as well. Other than that, not much.
I guess the replay comes from playing the other scenario once you're done with the first one unless you are playing both scenarios at once.

Score: 5/10

My final opinion is that Kartia has an excellent story but everything else is just a little above average if not average. It's a great rental or buy at used price but not at full price. Leave it for a day where you've already played all the other rpgs in your possession and looking for something you haven't tried yet.

Final Score: 6/10

~Chi