Torneko:
The Last Hope

Review by Chi Phan

Well, you can pretty much sum up the entire story in a little paragraph as there's really not much of a story here at all. Torneko is a dungeon crawling game very similiar to Azure Dreames and Chocobo Mysterious Dungeon 2. Like with any random dungeon crawling game, you're not going to get much of a story. To simply put, Magical Dungeons with monsters have started to appear around the village of Torneko. Don't be confuse here as Torneko has his own village name after him. On the request of the King, Torneko must explore these dungeons to find out why they are appearing around his village or kingdom. That pretty much sum up the entire storyline. If you're looking for an in-depth story then forget it as this game's story can be finish after 8 dungeons. This should tell you how short the story is. Not the game itself though.

Characters?? What characters? You have Torneko, his wife, and son. That's pretty much it if you're not including the King and an old man. There ain't no character developement here. If you want to learn more about the character then read the one or two sentences about them in the instruction book. That's it.

Graphics?? It keeps getting worse doesn't it. Well, the game uses a 2-D standard over-the-head screenshots in a 16 bit graphics. It's a little harsh to say that it's a 16 bit graphic so it's a little better than 16 bit but not really 32 bit though. The colors are okay but the dungeons look quite ordinary. The problem here is that there really shouldn't be any excuse to have 16 bit like graphics in a 32 bit system anymore. Only laziness to not making it 32 bit. While graphics don't make an rpg game, it certainly should help it and not hurt it. Which is what this game graphic does.

There are a few musical tunes but most of them are all average and sometime forgettable. It's like the gamemaker decided to put in the music so to help keep us awake while we're exploring dungeons. That's about all I can say about the music.

Surprisingly I have a love and hate relationship with this game. At times I can't stand it while other times, I can't put it down. Tornkeo is very similiar to Azure Dreams but in a much poorer version. There are times where the game can be fun and with some improvement, it's not all that bad.
There are a total of 8 dungeons to be explore. Each dungeon have a random floor to keep things fresh. Everytime you enter a dungeon to explore, Torneko starts off with level 1. Everytime Torneko leaves a dungeon, his level goes back to 1. Depending on the dungeons, sometime you can bring a certain number of items in while other times you can't and have to rely on what you find in the dungeons. Overrall you are still at the mercy of the dungeons and what they will give you in terms of items and weapons. This is very much in the way of Azure Dreams. But unlike Azure Dreams, there's no monster ally to help you out. It's just Torneko. The game rely heavily on what you find during your exploration of dungeons. But there is a couple of ways to help you out.
The game has a feature called melding. Basically you can meld together different weapons and shields to create a stronger and better weapon and shield. There's really no limit to this and this really is probably the funnest part of the game. Certain weapons and shields have special added feature that are really good. If you can combine all these special feature together into one good weapon then you're going to be kicking ass. Very cool. You can find weapons lying around in dungeons or in dungeons shops. Like with any rpg game, you have to have a shop somewhere to upgrade and buy weapons. In this case, shops can be found in dungeons. Problem is that you have to bring your money into the dungeon. Bringing money into a dungeon isn't a very good thing as there's a monster called Trick Bag that will steal your money. Nothing pisses you off more than having to bring in $100,000 so you can go shopping only to have some dumbass monster steal all your money. Pisses you off to no end!
There's a few things that make this game very frustrating too. One is that Torneko has a hunger gauge. If this hunger gauge reaches zero while he's exploring dungeons, he will faint and lose all the items he found including money. The only way to stop Torneko hunger is by eating certain things such as bread. The problem here is that you are at the total mercy of the dungeon that you are exploring. Sometimes there's no bread to be found so you faint from hunger and lose all your items.
Secondly, there's no way out of dungeons unless you reach the dungeons objective, or have a scroll that will send you outside, or find a priest within the dungeon to teleport you outside. This is frustrating cause after spending like 2 hours in a dungeon, you manage to find some really good weapons that you like and want to keep. Suddenly you are in trouble and surrounded by monsters. There's no way out. You don't have an Outside Scroll, there's no priest, and you're still a long way from reaching your objective. There's nothing left to do but die. You just wasted 2 hours for nothing and the good weapons and items you wanted to keep are all gone. Wouldn't that piss you off?? Once again you are at the mercy of the dungeon.
Another and most frustrating thing about this game is the save stipulation. The game actually punishes you for making a save during your exploration of dungeons. While exploring through numerous floors, you get a save interuption point between certain floors. If you decide to make a save, the game stops and save. The next time when you load up your game to play, the save interuption file loads up. Now once you load up your save file, that's it. The previous save file get's wipe out. But in reality, if you make a save during the dungeons that save file will overwrite the save file that you made outside of the dungeons. This game will only allow you to have one save file! Unlike other video games where you can make numerous back-up save file, Torneko doesn't allow you to do that. So if you are planning to explore a dungeon with 50+ floors, you better make sure you have the time to spend on making it all the way to the top or if you decide to make an interuption save, you'd better make sure your strong enough to not die in the dungeon. Cause once you die in the dungeon after making an interuption save, you lose all your strong weapons and items that you brought with you. It would certainly piss you off. Wouldn't you be screaming mad too if after spending 2 weeks in melding the best weapons together and to lose them cause you die in a dungeon? That's 2 weeks of wasted game time. This game can really be fun, it's too bad that some of the stipulation made in playing this game keeps it from being fun.

Extras and replay is pretty good really. After finishing the quick and short first game, you can still continue playing like with Azure Dreams. This time there's a few things and more dungeons to be had. You can change Torneko's class from Merchant to either a Warrior or Mage. You are required to do this cause some to the newer dungeons require you to be in a different class to enter them. Problem is that all these newer dungeons are alot harder and you can't bring in any weapons or items. Still if you like to simply try and explore to find newer items and stuff, it's all there for you.

If you got nothing better to do then you might want to try this game. But I would pass that if I was you. Azure Dreams is a much better dungeon game than this one. This is a game that could've been fun but it got ruined cause there's just too many silly stipulation place on the gamers when they enter a dungeon. It's almost as if the gamemakers never tested out the game themselves to see what the problem was. A poor man's version of Azure Dreams.