Gaming Retrospective - Summoner
Summoner is highly entertaining RPG that was released in 2000. on multiple platforms by Volition, Inc, game studio that created Freespace, Red Faction and Saint's Row games. Game is heavily infulenced by eastern mythology similar to Jade Empire.
Story begins with the introduction of Joseph, a man who once made a horrible mistake by summoning a demon that killed most of his village instead of protecting them from attackers, and he promised himself to never again use the set of ancient rings that gives him that power. However things changed again once he and his company learned that the evil emperor is trying to unleash a horde of horrible demons onto the world.
Joseph's speciality is summoning powerful creatures that can help him win the battles much easier. These summoned creatures are very powerful allies and you can summon five different ones once you acquire all the summoning rings, these summons also have their own spells and abilities that you can use during the combat sequences. Combat is a mix between real time and turn based with special ingame mechanic called chain attacks. Chain attacks can be triggered at a specific time and if you are not paying attention they can easily be missed and can make you battles longer and harder.
Many enemies that you encounter during the game have special strengths and weaknesses and with the game's itemization you can smoothen the punch of some enemies and increase your own attack efficiency. For example you can find fast attack weapon that can increase the chances of chain attacks that can drastically increase your power. Summoner is one of those forgotten games that was interesting to me at the time because it was creative in many ways. Interesting story, fun summons and RPG system made this game memorable for me.
