The other day, I found myself roaming about aimlessly at my local game store when out of the corner of my eye; I caught a glimpse of a title that until that day, I did not know existed on the Gamecube. That game, Summoner: A Goddess Reborn, is a direct port from the Playstation 2 version of the same name, but seemed to slip under my previously impervious gamer’s radar. After doing a little research, I was surprised to find that it was released in February of 2003, but yet I had never once happened upon it. Considering I’m an RPG nut and considering we Gamecube owners are salivating over any RPG we can get our hands on, I picked it up and gave it a whirl. What I found was a delightful story, a ton of characters with tons of capabilities, lots of gameplay, and many moments when I wanted to smash my controller over my skull and summon a Cubivore to devour the evil bad-controls demon that lurks within the game.

Features:

• Gamecube version offers bonus content and beefed up frame rate
  
• Many playable characters with different skills
  
• 30+ hours of solid gameplay, 50+ if you add all the side quests
  
• Unlockable bonus features for completing the game
  

Gameplay:
The story of Summoner: A Goddess Reborn starts you off as Maia, the noble queen of Halassar with a taste for blood, guts, and lore. According to the Book of the Prophets, Maia has the markings that prove that she is the goddess reborn, the reincarnation of Lahara. With her friends, Sangaril and Taurgis, an assassin and a knight respectively, she begins her quest to uncover her destiny as the goddess reborn. This is no easy task, however, for in between her quests she must keep tally on her kingdom and lead her people.

From the moment the game opens, you are immediately thrown into battle upon a ship and given a brief tutorial on how battle works. Battles are all done in real time, so don’t expect to find yourself navigating menus all too often. Instead, most of the functions you’ll need can all be assigned to a button of series of buttons. The B button is your main attack, although by combining it with other buttons (such as Z or X) you can pull off a variety of moves. Your Y button is the button to which you assign a magic spell, item, or other such object for your immediate disposal. The R trigger allows you to lock on and keep tabs on your target while the L trigger pulls incoming attacks.

For the most part, battle is fluid and fun, and it rarely gets too boring because not only are you keeping tabs on your character and how she’s doing, but also you always have to keep your allies in mind when you go into battle. Before entering battle, you go to the status screen and select an AI type for your character to follow. If you want them to attack relentlessly, choose the Melee type. If you want them to hang back with ranged weapons and shoot at the guys that are trying to hurt you, then choose the Support type. There are 6 different types of AI and what kind you assign to your characters can often determine the outcome of the battle. Unfortunately, the AI is not perfect so sometimes you can expect your allies to forget what they’re doing and attack even though they should be healing. Your remedy to this is to simply hit Left on the D-pad to switch between characters. Here is where we find that the D-pad is just too small for these kinds of operations. In the heat of battle, your thumb will seem like it’s grown 3 times its size as you desperately try to hit Left, not Right (which opens the battle menu). It’s more an annoyance than anything, but soon you come to appreciate just how nice a large D-pad is.