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First of all, What is Moon Diver?




Moon Diver is an Xbox Live Arcade Game developed by Freeplus, and published by Square Enix. That should tell you a little bit about it, right there. But anyway, it is a 2D, 4 Player (both online and on the same box) game in which the Earth is destroyed by a Demon Child named Faust and only four people, the Moon Divers, can stop him. There is a Fifth Moon Diver, named Silence, but he rejected the group and often comes into violent conflict with the other four, though I do not think he works for Faust.

First of all, this game is LOUD. Most games I have my TV set to 17, and this game is louder than all of them just at 7, so adjust accordingly. I would call it a mix of Super Smash Bro's and Secret of Mana; Side Scroller elements and a general feel of SSB, with the Pause to Cast Spell found in Secret of Mana. Which is actually a bad thing. As much as I love SoM, you can control how often people use spells, and therefor pause the game, by smacking them around if they get obnoxious about it. Online, however, is another story. You WILL find someone who thinks it's a good idea to spam the same spell that pauses the game (and plays the same fething animation) every five seconds online, and unfortunately, it is REQUIRED in certain stages where NOT stunning the enemies will lead you to an instant Game Over screen.

Also, the bosses are nothing special; they just have three to four moves and repeat; not hard, though repetative, and they have a very LARGE health pool, which doesn't help matters. One boss even has a one hit KO move, and though the wind up on it is very long, you will often have team mates destroying the cover that is dropped for you to avoid it, causing the entire party to wipe and you to start the level over.

The game features RPG elements with each of the five Moon Divers (Seyfeat, Tolby, Hitora, and Orion and if you download him, Silence), with three basic stat; Health, Magic, and POW, Health and Magic increase your resource pools, as to be expected, and POW increases your attack power. Spell power is completely determined by the spell in question. Speaking of Spells, each character starts out with just one, except Silence, who starts out with two. You have to find every other spell, off of the beaten path, and you get one chance per level to find it. If you miss the spell, you can always replay it to try to nab it again. The problem comes when you add three more people; spells can only be picked up once, and it's not shared; as soon as a Spell is spotted, it's an immediate "drop what your doing and try to get to it first!" type deal.

For the Characters, it goes like this: Seyfeat will increase his Magic and Health fast, Tolby will increase all of them equally, Hitora increases her Magic at an exponential rate, Orion has the highest starting health of the original four with the fastest growing POW, and Silence has the best of all stats starting out, though he upgrades much slower than everyone else. This actually makes it harder to play the game online; Silence is so much better than everyone else starting out, you have to play as him to keep up with everyone else, unless you play offline coop. And when I say Silence is "so much better", I mean that his stats are twice as high (no joke, either) as the characters that are supposed to specialize in those stats, and that he starts out with two level 3 spells, while everyone else starts out with 1 level 1 spell. Couple seeing repetative characters with repetative animations, and it gets really tiresome.

As for the Combat, You basically use two buttons; X, and B. X is to slash with your sword for a multi hit combo (How long you can go for is determined by your POW attribute), or you can hold X to charge for one devestating hit. B is used to cast your Spell, and you can carry up to four spells per mission, selectable via the D-pad. It might not sound very fun, since it's basically a Fable system, but their are key differences. Do a double Jump? It's an attack, too. Flip over cover? That's an attack. Slide? That's also an attack. The best way to attack is actually to stay moving, and it helps keep it more complex than just one button spam. While it's not Devil May Cry, it's certianly more in depth than most games on the Marketplace. It is also very easy to lose your character in more hecktic fights, even if everyone is playing different characters.

Point: Why you should buy Moon Diver.

- Beautifully animated with good graphics; weither your doing flips, kicks, sword slashes, or just charging your attack, the game just looks great.
- 4 player same-Box co-op. Not many games support this now a days.
- It's a fairly decent mix of Button Mashing and knowing when to Charge Attacks, when to use certain spells, and all the movement options they give you in the game (You can climb on vertually ANY surface, walls and ceiling included)
- It already has an additional character that you can purchase for DLC for (get this) 80 M$ points. Not only that, but this character starts out with the stats of a Lvl 50, perfect for just jumping into the game. And in addition to that, you also (for that same 80 M$ points) a new game mode. That's a hell of a deal.

Counter Point: Why you SHOULDN'T buy Moon Diver.

-The story makes NO sense. At all. I get that the world was basically destroyed, but after that, I have not a damn clue.
- Spells will pause the action to the point of watching the same spell unfirl every five seconds or you all die.
- Some Cheap deaths from bosses.
- Spells take patience to find, and some of them don't have a clear usage. (And for some reason, "Heal 75% of 3 Allies' health" is one of the first spells you get AND NOBODY USES IT!)
- Very easy to lose yourself in combat, right when you need to know where you are the most.
- Silence wrecks any sense of progress, since he starts as (What could be considered) Level 50 and still levels up.

Overall, I would give Moon Diver a 3 out of 5. I like what it set out to do, but it just doesn't do it well enough, in my humble opinion.



I don't know, I just got bored and decided to write this. I'm as whimsy as a free spirited school girl.