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http://www.atlus.com/magna_carta for the latest news on Magna Carta and several other top Atlus RPGs (but no final fantasy!)

Visit the YouTube group magnacartaclub for news, videos & chat. Do u like this video? Rate it and comment.

http://www.rpgdreamersforum.com for more video game discussion on different series.

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=281320

Magna Carta opening movie. Magna Carta for the PlayStation 2 is a great RPG that deserves more respect. I'm ripping videos of this great game, so others can experience it without the difficult battle system & long load times.

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=281320

Review:
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/rpg/magnacarta/index.html

The Good: Well-developed cast of characters keeps the story interesting; lengthy campaign will keep you busy for 40 hours or more; good music (other than the horrendous title song); bright, colorful environments and detailed, if rather garish, character design.
The Bad: Extremely linear campaign feels restrictive at times; terrible voice acting; fixed camera angles often give you an awkward view of the action.

The Final Fantasy series has been on somewhat of a break for the past four years, giving other companies plenty of opportunity to try to grab a piece of the console role-playing market while the juggernaut franchise from Square Enix lies dormant. Series like Shadow Hearts and Digital Devil Saga have all put their own unique spins on the genre while simultaneously delivering the basic story-driven, stat-building gameplay that role-playing veterans crave. Magna Carta: Tears of Blood attempts to do the same, and for the most part it succeeds, thanks to a compelling story, interesting characters, and a unique battle system.

Magna Carta: Tears of Blood takes place in the world of Efferia, where two races, the humans and the Yason, are locked in a bitter struggle for control of the land. The humans and the Yason are pretty much the same. The Yason are a bit more in tune with nature, and they have strange-looking ears, but functionally there isn't much of a difference between the two races. You control a hotheaded transvestite named Calintz, who is the captain of a group of mercenaries known as the Tears of Blood. The game picks up the story just as the humans launch a massive attack on the Yason in an attempt to end the war once and for all. The Tears of Blood join the effort, but the attack is foiled by the mysterious Queen Amilia of the Yason. As the Tears of Blood retreat, Calintz meets a strange amnesic girl named Reith, who has mystical healing powers beyond anything anyone has seen.

The two strike up an awkward and unrequited romance that carries the story through the adventure of trying to figure out who Reith is, where her powers came from, and how she can help bring peace to the world of Efferia. The story is full of mysticism and unexplained coincidences, but there are also plenty of political undertones as well. The cast of characters is bizarre, but interesting and well developed. It starts out a bit slow, but there's plenty of story here to hold your interest throughout the game. The story doesn't pull any punches, either, taking on heavier subjects like death and betrayal, while throwing in plenty of interesting plot twists to keep you guessing.

The biggest problem with the story is that the progression is so linear that it feels restrictive. There's no opportunity to stray off the path, because if you do a character will stop you and tell you to go another way. There are a few side quests you can pick up on, but for the most part you'll just be walking a narrow path from point A to point B. It feels like you're just going through the motions as the game dictates, rather than embarking on an epic quest of your own volition.

Most of the quests are pretty basic. There are quite a few missions where you have to travel to one town to gather information, only to get there and find out that the information you really need is in yet another town. As you travel from place to place you'll run into a variety of monsters that you can fight to earn experience and level up your characters. You can see the monsters on the map, and if you touch one you'll be pulled into a battle. The monsters are all laid out in specific areas, though, so the battles aren't actually random. This makes it a bit more difficult to power level your characters, although you really don't need to do that anyway. As long as you clear each area you visit, you'll level up at a pace that basically guarantees that you won't have any trouble with any of the enemies in the game.

See GameSpot for the rest... Final score: 7.1/10
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