Summon Night 6 Lost Borders Review (PS4)

It's raining men...and women...and chocolate chip cookies.  Summon Night 6: Lost Borders is an ambitious game to be sure.  But is it good?  Let's find out.

Summon Night 6: Lost Borders is a strategy roleplaying game in what seems to be a long-running series of games.  Being an SRPG, it plays similar to games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, and others.  So, it already has the good fortune of being in my favorite videogame genre.

As for the game's own gameplay, it's not bad.  You trot your characters off into battle and beat on cute little monsters.  The game throws in a badass on occasion to keep you on your toes.  The game has a lot of characters, so in terms of numbers, you'll be satisfied.

The battles can be big, but they're quick.

On the characters, the subtitle "Lost Borders" says it all.  This is a crossover game, featuring characters from previous entries in the series.  You have badasses, bratty kids, a few cute girls, and an idiot or two sprinkled in there.  They all can be upgraded into specialized beast to beat on all the cute little monsters you see.

Badasses and idiots, present and accounted for.

Three problems with the characters, though.  First, most of them come off as childish, immature, or just plain idiotic.  Even the adults seem like kids.  Second, if you (like me) have not played a previous entry in the series, you won't know who the heck these characters are or the worlds and events they are referring to.  Not to worry though, because they explain everything, which this leads to the third problem.  These characters are talkative.  Really talkative.  Too talkative.  There were times I wanted to say, "Shut up so I can kill something!"  They should have called the game Summon Night 6: Too Much Talking.

Even the game admits it talks too much.  Amu's face says it all.

I guess I can still forgive the excessive dialogue because the game's story is a mind-twister.  There's time travel here, alternate dimensions there, a dash of mind control, and confused characters everywhere.  As a crossover game, everyone has to figure out how they got to Fillujah (not Fallujah) and how they can get back to where they belong.  Some characters are different versions of people that other characters know.  The natives of Fillujah, on the other hand, have to figure out how they came to be and what Fillujah is, adding a pinch of mystery.  If (unlike me) you don't care about story, though, you can just skip the cutscenes.

Even a native like Amu doesn't know about much about Fillujah.

On to the other stuff.  The graphic are kind of cute and cartoony.  The monsters don't look intimidating.  Oddly, it's the human characters that will give you pause, as most of them were apparently badasses in previous games in the series.  There music is hit or miss and there is a lot of it.  The voiced cutscenes (as opposed to the text-only cutscenes) make the some of the dialogue tolerable.  There's an in-game encyclopedia call Eucross HQ that can tell you more about the characters (as if they won't) among There's a decent amount of stuff here.

Just a sample of the cute little monsters to be killed.

Summon Night 6: Lost Borders like having a friend who talks too much.  The dialogue can be funny, especially when characters like Amu and Bulrell come into the picture and start acting like assholes.  There's just simply too much of it.  However, when the fighting starts, you'll have fun.  If you have the patience to get through all the talking, you'll find a competent SRPG in this game.  Check it out.