While I do prefer the combat changes in the second game, this game still laid the baseline for what that game would use. The general area of Wystern is interesting and the presence of craftknights makes a lot of sense in this game. The story has you go through a tournament arc to decide who takes your late father's place among the craftlords. It is an alright story, and the chats with a selected character is fun and gives you something extra on replays.
Gameplaywise, it feels like an early 2D Tales of game. You don't have many attack options, but it plays well and still offers something fun. You'll have to fight against other people throughout the story, and you can break their weapons in order to craft your own version.
The main thing that makes me go back to this less is the lack of variety in combat. The guardian beasts decide the order you learn spells and how many charges you get, but that's about it. The weapons lack any technique and forging options to mess with the attributes of a given weapon. This makes combat feel a bit braindead at times, especially if you aren't fighting a human. Speaking of, breaking someone's weapon will feel pointless if you don't plan on using that weapon type. If you only want to use knuckles and drills, you'll have very little reason to fight characters that specific way. The game can also get visually dull at times, since it mostly takes place in the labyrinth.
This is a solid game for the first playthrough, but is less appealing on repeat playthroughs since its combat is less developed compared to other games.

Este juego es en realidad un Fighter RPG 2D. Iremos consiguiendo materiales en el mundo para fabricar armas y darnos un sentido de progresión.

En los combates el juego cambia a 2D para convertirse en un juego de peleas donde usaremos las armas que hemos creado. El resto del tiempo el juego es "vista por arriba" e iremos hablando con muchos NPCs y entendiendo la trama (que está muy buena y tiene varios giros inesperados).

Tendrás que elegir una mascota elemental que te acompaña en el juego y eso le da bastante replay value porque querrás ver los diálogos o poderes que no tienen las demás.

A true hidden gem in the gba rpg library. The gameplay becomes so addicting and there are very few rpgs I can honestly say have such a great flow to the narrativ. It constantly surprises you, makes you laugh and throws you into new fun adventures. Doesnt even overstay its welcome and is super fair when it comes to actuall gameplay. One might consider it a minor downside that the game is so damm easy, but I never feel like it gets to the point where it feels unearned. Im going to check out the sequel for sure now.

Disclosure: I was QA on this title

Summon Night is a cute little action game with some light crafting elements, a pokemon-esque attitude, and a tournament arc-based story. It works well for what it is, but most everything is fairly shallow, if satisfying.

Combat is as dead simple as it gets. Weapons have a single combo string and one or two extra moves (usually an upwards attack and a charged attack) and spells are simple line attacks, heals, and buffs. Movement feels sluggish at the start, but forces you to pay attention to your attacks, positioning, and blocks, which injects a little bit more depth into the combat. It is satisfying, but never really feels like more than block to get an opening and then spam your attacks.
Each weapon has a bit of a different playstyle that makes it rewarding to find one you like (and you can equip up to 3 at once for most combat). The game sort of pushes you toward swords, even though drill is obviously the coolest.

I like the sprite work in Summon Night quite a bit. Characters are cartoony and expressive and the pixels are very well done. Small touches like each weapon you craft showing up on your character add a bit more charm as well.

Crafting weapons is very simple, but it is sort of fun to progress through the largely linear weapon progression. I like that the crafting itself is core to the gameplay and also tightly tied to the narrative. The ideal here would be a few more steps towards the Monster Hunter model, where my choice of weapon has a lot of meaning, but like the rest of this game, this does well enough for what is needed.

Everyone loves a tournament arc! There aren't a ton of games that are just "go through this tournament" and it is cool to see it here. There are diversions, of course, but largely you are competing to become the next Craftlord, which basically just means 1v1'ing all the other crafts-kids in town. This is classic anime storytelling that the game leverages well to give the player motivation and to introduce a bunch of rivals/friends for you to interact with. The simple approach here works very well.

I like Summon Night for what it is, though it isn't quite interesting enough to hold my attention on this revisit. I do have a soft spot for it since it was the first game I worked professionally!

Yeah. I dont think this game is my thing at all. Ive played this for roughly about five hours and I dont want to continue.

The gameplay feels so overly clunky, laborious and slow, dungeons are just bland and have nothing going for them and the encounter rate feels way too high so it just feels like one hell of a chore getting from point a to point b.

I also really dislike most of the characters. Either they're overly jerky and/or inappropriately horny and react to everything the MC does with 'DONT BE SHIT' or 'LETS GET MARRIED' with very little in between. Its jarring and not at all fun to play.