Thousands of years ago God created a stone plate and it was named Words Worth. Legend told that whomever read Words Worth would know everything and bring about a new world. Then one day the stone plate was shattered. Both the King of Light and the King of Shadow blamed each other for breaking the plate, and a great war ensued. Since that dark day the Kingdoms of Light and Shadow have been at war. Welcome to the world of Words Worth.
In Words Worth you control the mischievous Prince of Shadow, Asutora. Asutora is Watoshi’s, the Lord of Shadow, only son. Watoshi has prevented his son from taking the warrior’s trial and letting him partake in battles for fear that he might get killed. Asutora wants to become a warrior though and impress his bride to be Syaro, who is one of the finest warriors for the Shadow. One day the Kingdom of Light begins a massive assault on the Kingdom of Shadow, this is where the games starts. Take control of Asutora and see if you can lead him to his destiny.
Words Worth is essentially a dungeon crawler. You explore numerous levels finding key items and talking to event people. When you talk to an event person it usually triggers something or someone to appear in a different part of the dungeon and you have to find that next event to move on. The key items are what you typically use to open barriers and continue to different levels. Every dungeon level is plagued with monsters, when you run into these monsters you engage in combat. Combat is fairly simplistic and pretty much just consists of clicking your mouse or hitting the appropriate key and swinging to swing your sword. When you win a combat you are rewarded with money and experience. One thing to note is that when you level up you have no control of which statistics are upgraded, so no customization of your hero . The main impact you can have on combat is choosing which path to upgrading you weapons and armor. There are a couple different weapon types to choose from, each having different attack speeds and being one-handed or two-handed. And depending on what weapon your using, you have different selections available for armor. There are quite a few upgrades to the weapons and armor throughout the game.
Graphic wise Words Worth does not disappoint. While the dungeons and gameplay areas are a little shabby, they don’t look that bad. The event CGs, on the other hand, are all top notch. The game is actually reasonably long and therefore has quite a few CGs to acquire. The extras menu is available at anytime if I remember correctly and you can view any CGs you have currently acquired.
Words Worth has fairly good Midi music playing. It can get repetitive on some levels, but for 90% of the game contains good variety and you will enjoy it while you search the dungeons. Words Worth does not however contain voice acting , maybe someday elf will do a remake with voice!
Overall (My Opinion)
Words Worth was a good game, I would rate it in the upper portion of my game collection. While it does not really have a lot of replay ability, due to its linear storyline, it is fairly long and does have an engrossing story. I would recommend being able to read Japanese for this game. While you can acquire all the CGs with no Japanese knowledge, you really missing out on what makes this a good game if you cannot follow the storyline. Also you will almost certainly get stuck finding a couple key items and figuring out what you supposed to do next, since you won’t understand where the event people are telling you to go you will be forced to wander aimlessly looking for the next event. I am not sure whether the anime series spawned from the game or vise versa but the two have the same storyline, the game goes more in-depth than the anime but they both follow the same storyline. Overall I enjoyed Words Worth and it is a good dungeon crawler.
[This message has been edited by Bigdog (edited 11-07-2002).]