Congrats SoMoGa, you ruined it.

I am on the fence on this one. Vay is a good game in its own right but this port is less than stellar. Before I get into that I want to point out that I own the Sega CD version, so thats my point of reference.

The good: The story elements are still intact, and there is a lot to like about this game. The combat system is a solid standard fair. The music, (much like the rest of the game), shows its age, but its still good.

The bad...: Where to begin... The controls are downright messy. I dont know why they thought that the point and move system was a great idea, but it just doesnt work for this game. You will end up spending a lot of time trying to click where you WANT to go and the game just takes it as a suggestion. It really needs a directional pad like so many ports already use. In fact lots of amenities that we are used to from iPhone ports are just simply nonexistent here in this title. The games graphics are quite blurry. Makes me wonder if they were trying to improve the quality or something. Regardless, they failed. Also there are quite a few graphical and sound bugs rife throughout the game. When I first started the game the sound didnt load and half the screen was black. Keep in mind I usually restart my phone when getting a new app. I had to restart the app to clear the bugs. It probably doesnt help that the new menus have contributed to some of the graphical issues I have witnessed. Which brings me to my next point...

The downright ugly: Inventory management is messy. Instead of using the actual in game menus and graphics, they tossed that all out in favour of iPhone menus. Its so bad in fact that it really breaks the immersion factor. Common sense things, like being able to buy and sell multiple items dont seem to exist in this port. Nothing like playing an old rpg and being ripped out of the immersion by a crappy boggled down UI, coupled with the horrible point and go movement, sound and graphical errors.

The bottom line is, even if you never played the original version, there is still too much going against it to recommend this to anyone. Yes there is a great game under the tonne of bad but a bad port is still a bad port, no matter how you slice it. The folks that are disregarding our opinions want to stick their heads in sand, thats fine, but our opinions are still valid and very much ring an unfortunate truth that they did a bad job. Even if the car looks pretty on the outside, it all means squat if the engine block is cracked and leakin oil. I also dont like saying this, since I know that programming is a deeply involved process, but these folks were downright L-A-Z-Y. The inventory UI is a prime example of that.

These same people will be importing Lunar as well. After what I have seen thus far from this port, I do not have high hopes. Which is sad really, since I consider Lunar one of the best RPGs out there.

UPDATE: bugs have been fixed (sort of), but the game desperately needs a control pad. Even the crappy one from Lunar would be nice. As it stands, its still incredibly difficult to move your character, which in turn, makes the game unplayable to me.

Fenavian about Vay, v1.3.1