Granstream Saga is on the demo disk included with the July issue of Official Playstation Mag (OPM), which gave it 3 out of 5 stars (same score as the competing Konami game Azure). Although I'm no RPG expert, I found the game to be intuitive and refreshingly fun. I'm looking forward to purchasing it. Concerning marketing, I'm witnessing full page ads for Granstream and Quest in almost every gaming mag out there. Quest ads have favorable quotes sprinkled on them...even from EGM which gave it the post-lukewarm review.
Again, I agree with Todd, that these reviews do not necessarily predict purchasing power. Other factors are more important, such as Quest being the first RPG for N64, and Granstream's unique fighting engine and easily learned gameplay. To support this notion, OPM gave Ghost in the Shell 4 stars - which didn't appear to help Ghost's sales one bit. Also, these guys that review games have the tedious task of playing dozens of games a month. I liken it to a movie critic such as Desson Howe or Mike Sullivan (Washington Post), who seldom rate a movie favorably...maybe one decent review every three months - these guys hate everything - blockbusters and undeniable turkeys. They're just subjected to too much (like the game reviewers), so they're bound to dislike almost everything except for what they don't have biased pretenses against. |
