The once peaceful and prosperous land known as Riviera has become the central stage in the war between the angels and the demons. As it tends to happen in video games, the only ones that are powerful enough to stop the fighting is a fallen angel, four boy hungry girls, and a talking cat. To put it simply, that’s the premise driving Riviera, a role playing game for the Game Boy Advance. Gamers everywhere will be happy to know that the game greatly succeeds every expectation thanks in part to its excellent story and slick production value.

At the core of the game, Riviera is a turn based role playing game that is actually cut from the same cloth as games such as Final Fantasy and Golden Sun. You set out with a party of five characters, wondering the land and defeating all the demons; all the while gaining experience and progressing through the story. If you’re a fan of plot development – you’ll be in heaven with Riviera.

On every single screen there’s always something to read. Many of the conversations and events throughout the game will incorporate a “choose your own adventure” type of dynamic, where the choices you make will influence the information you receive. The choices you make will also reflect on the path you take through the game. Because of the Teen rating that Riviera holds, it can deal with the concepts of death, betrayal, and even right verses wrong.

The game play in Riviera is an interesting blend, simply because it borrows features from a variety of different role playing games, as well as borrowing things from the strategy and dating genres as well. The movement interface itself has a point and click style vibe to it as well. Instead of having to walk everywhere, you can advance to other areas and examine things simply by tapping buttons that match the choices onscreen.

The combat interface is the normal pick attacks then watch them work setup, although there is many strategy elements that bookend the process. Before each grapple you’ll need to pick three party members and four items to take on the battlefield, although your overall inventory can hold up to five characters and 15 items. You’ll also need to set a battle formation and specify which characters will form the front line and which characters will be in the back.

Each character in the game will have his or her own stats such as strength, defense, magic, and vitality. The heroes and enemies alike with also have weaknesses and resistance toward specific types of attacks. The weapons in the game will vary in terms of strength, range, and just like games such as Dark Cloud and Fire Emblem – the weapon will break after a set number of uses.

The dating aspect of the game isn’t too obnoxious, although it isn’t too subtle either. You’ll often end up in situations where you’ll have to favor one girl’s opinion over another’s. The grand total of these choices will influence each girl’s feelings about the male hero and even alter the dialogue scroll at the end of the game.

With Riviera, one thing is undeniable – the production values take the value of the game through the roof. The visuals are gorgeous, with colorful sprites filling the screen at any given time. With the graphics being excellent, the audio isn’t a slouch either. There’s a LOT of speech in the game, which starts from the very beginning of the game. Throughout your quest, you’ll never have a problem with the graphics or understanding what the characters are saying.

When it’s all over, it’ll take most people around 40 hours or so to finish Riviera. There are 7 chapters in total with practice chapters. Even after you have finished the game, there’s enough secrets and replay value there to go back and play through the game all over again!

If you like to play role playing games, you can’t go wrong with Riviera. It doesn’t bring anything new to the RPG genre, yet it presents a lot of the old concepts in many ways, which can be very refreshing. With everything Riviera has to offer you – it’ll keep you busy for hours on end.

- Top-GBA-Games.com