Summoner (game)
Encyclopedia
Summoner, developed by Volition, Inc. and published by THQ
, is a third-person
RPG
. It was released on October 25, 2000 as a launch title for the PlayStation 2
and was subsequently ported to Microsoft Windows
and Mac OS
.
Joseph's goal, achieved through his newly regained powers of summoning, is to defend Medeva from the Orenian invasion and to defeat the evil emperor, Murod, by using rings to summon the ultimate creature. Along the way he teams up with an assortment of characters, each with their own substoryline and optional quests. There are side quests with almost every NPC
met in the game. These reveal more of the lore of Medeva, of which there is an abundance. Throughout the game you will experience voyages of many a mile through the use of a world map, similar to that of Final Fantasy VII
. Using this completely 3D world map, Joseph can travel to the massive holy city of Lenele, the mysterious monastery on the Isle of Iona and many other exotic locations.
Much of the game revolves around its extremely intricate and interwoven mythology. Early on in the game, the player is exposed to the major religions of Medeva and Orenia. Complete with their own Creation myth and apocalyptic chaos, the player soon discovers that these religions influence almost every character they encounter. Much like the Final Fantasy series mentioned hitherto, it tells the story of gods and goddesses that represent the four major elemental forces: Amasido of Water, Urath of Air, Lahara of Fire, and Vadaggar of Earth. This is explained further and in greater detail in the sequel to the game.
Flece - Flece was brought up as an orphan in the "Old City" district of Lenele where crime was prevalent. She is supposedly the illegitimate daughter of a prostitute who was knifed to death in the Alley of Dogs. She now works for Tancred, who has crowned himself "King of Fleas" and controls Lenele's underground. Later in the game, she is revealed to be result of a tryst between Princess Qifeng, and King Bellias, thus making her the heir to the thrones of both Orenia and Medeva. She appears once briefly in the sequel looking for Rosalind of Iona.
Rosalind - Estranged daughter of Yago. She studies Aosi, the language of Creation and is the party's primary spellcaster. She originally joins reluctantly by order of Abbot Laurent, but in the end is the one who compels Joseph to accept his destiny. She plays a minor but important part in the second game and seemingly appears to Maia, the sequel's main character in a dream sequence. Later Maia and her father, Yago, learn that she was consumed by the Destroyer of Eleh aided by its agent Krobelus. The Tempest takes her form and Rosalind is no more.
Jekhar - Joseph's childhood friend whose family was murdered in the massacre caused by the demon unleashed by Joseph. Jekhar is now a soldier living in Lenele working under King Belias VI. He hates Joseph, but is ordered by King Belias VI to join in Joseph's quest for the rings, instead of helping fight off the invasion. As a result, he does not help Joseph as compared to Joseph's other comrades. When Fleece asks Jekhar to help her rescue a one-handed Joseph from life imprisonment, he turns his back and instead decides to stay on Iona guarding the queen of Medeva. He appears once briefly in the sequel alongside Flece, but it is only a cameo and he is left unnamed.
Flece uses her stealth to reach Yago, who sends the two to the island of Iona, where the Abbot of the Monastery holds the ring of light. Yago gives Joseph the ring of Darkness, and sends them to the island. There, ironically, they meet Yago's daughter Rosalind. She is an acolyte who has hated Yago her whole life for abandoning her and her mother for his search of the Summoner. Reluctantly she accompanies Joseph into the Catacombs where the first kings of Medeva are entombed. Inside the half-cave, half-fossil sepulchre, they find Sir Carados, a long lost knight and builder of the Great Library. Having gone mad with delusions that he is Vadagar, the god of the Earth, he attacks them. After his defeat they find the ring of Light at the tomb of Iona, the dead consort of Vadagar.
After returning to Lenele, King Belias sends them to find the other rings while Murod's forces under General Pijian lay ready to siege Lenele. They go to Saanavarh, the stronghold of the Khosani people who made the rings after their original home was flooded by Amasido's vengeance. They test the Summoner's party which nets them the ring of Fire. Afterwards, they travel to the swamp of Ikaemos. Once an ancient empire, Ikaemos was destroyed by their namesake god's anger. The Priest King froze his people in stone before they could die. Joseph gets the ring of Stone after defeated the reanimated statue of the Priest King. However, they find that Lenele has been overrun by the Orenians after it was betrayed by the King's corrupt brother, Prince Sornehan. The party splits up and Flece and Joseph head to the temple of Urath alone. There they find the king dead and Sornehan crowned by the Hierophant. In the main twist of the game, Yago then instructs Joseph to put on all four rings and place his hand into the Forge of Urath. This action destroys Josephs hand, along with the rings, releasing the demons that had been bound within by the Khosani hero, Rhukha. Yago reveals himself to be possessed by the demon of darkness that destroyed Joseph's village. The demon, Machival then tells Joseph that he plotted this with the help of Flece, and Yago and Sornehan promptly turn over Joseph to Murod as prisoner.
and become lord of all creation. Using her clandestine skills, Flece finds Joseph imprisoned in the very bottom of the tower. Flece and Joseph escape and flee to the lakeside village of Wolong recently had been attacked by founder General Pijian, who is chasing the forces of the Jade Temple led by Aoqi-the woman in white who killed Tancred. The town healer tells Joseph that only then of the lake can heal his injury. They meet up with Rosalind and journey into the caverns under the city. There they find the plant they seek and the healing pool where Joseph's hand is remade. Jekhar and Aoqi meet them outside in Wolong's citadel with her Jade Temple troops. They then battle the forces of Pijian and retake the city once the general is slain. Aoqi then reveals that she is the missing daughter of Emperor Gaodi who was usurped by Murod. Aoqi was in love with King Belias and they had an illegitimate daughter, who then was to be killed, but Tancred, prince of fleas, could not bring himself to do it, so he raised her as his own.
The next ring is in the forest of Liangshan where a mighty demon was killed by the dragon and thus poisoned and damned the place. Once a village, it was taken over by [ and a powerful poison miasma. In the center, they find a shrine where the guardian keeps the ring. They defeat more of Murod's solidiers and take the ring. Finally, they return to the Jade Temple where battle against Murod, who is a member of the Nhuvasarim. After his destruction, Qifeng takes the throne as the daughter of the true Emperor of Orenia.
THQ
THQ Inc. is an American developer and publisher of video games. Founded in 1989 in the United States, the company develops products for video game consoles, handheld game systems, as well as for personal computers and wireless devices...
, is a third-person
Third-person shooter
Third-person shooter is a genre of 3D action games in which the player character is visible on-screen, and the gameplay consists primarily of shooting.-Definition:...
RPG
Role-playing game (video games)
Role-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
. It was released on October 25, 2000 as a launch title for the PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
and was subsequently ported to Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
.
Gameplay
The player can choose how short or prolonged the abundance of optional quests and side stories they will follow will be, which offer a diversion from the massive main storyline. The game also includes an abundance of spells that are cast in real time. It makes use of the RPG standard spell elemental alignments (Fire, Earth, Water, Wind/Air etc.) as well.Synopsis
The main character is Joseph of Ciran, a young man personally responsible for the destruction of his hometown. As a boy, Joseph summoned a demon to save his village and watched in horror while it murdered his family, friends and neighbours and destroyed all he held dear. Torn between the grief of his loss and the hatred of his new power, he cast away the ring which a man named Yago had given him and swore never to invoke his powers again. Joseph fled from Ciran with great haste, leaving behind all his memories of demons, death, and horror.Joseph's goal, achieved through his newly regained powers of summoning, is to defend Medeva from the Orenian invasion and to defeat the evil emperor, Murod, by using rings to summon the ultimate creature. Along the way he teams up with an assortment of characters, each with their own substoryline and optional quests. There are side quests with almost every NPC
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
met in the game. These reveal more of the lore of Medeva, of which there is an abundance. Throughout the game you will experience voyages of many a mile through the use of a world map, similar to that of Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII
is a role-playing video game developed by Square and published by Sony Computer Entertainment as the seventh installment in the Final Fantasy series. It was originally released in 1997 for the Sony PlayStation and was re-released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows-based personal computers and in 2009...
. Using this completely 3D world map, Joseph can travel to the massive holy city of Lenele, the mysterious monastery on the Isle of Iona and many other exotic locations.
Much of the game revolves around its extremely intricate and interwoven mythology. Early on in the game, the player is exposed to the major religions of Medeva and Orenia. Complete with their own Creation myth and apocalyptic chaos, the player soon discovers that these religions influence almost every character they encounter. Much like the Final Fantasy series mentioned hitherto, it tells the story of gods and goddesses that represent the four major elemental forces: Amasido of Water, Urath of Air, Lahara of Fire, and Vadaggar of Earth. This is explained further and in greater detail in the sequel to the game.
Main/Playable characters
Joseph - The main protagonist in the game. Born in Ciran with the mark of the summoner on his hand. He was given the Ring of Darkness by Yago, and once tried to use it to save his village from attack but unable to control the great power, the demon he summoned razed the village. Joseph was exiled from Ciran and travelled with Yago for a while, before throwing the dark ring down a well and running away to Masad, a sleepy town on the Darhu river. He promised himself he would forget all that happened at Ciran and never use his powers again. When Medeva is invaded Joseph is forced to find Yago, and somehow regain the power of summoning. As well as being able to summon monsters, Joseph is also a good warrior and has access to healing and fire magic. At the conclusion of the game, Joseph reunites all the demons and dragons, and becomes the reborn form of the god, Urath. Or as an alternate ending, players have the option to ignore his destiny and walk away.Flece - Flece was brought up as an orphan in the "Old City" district of Lenele where crime was prevalent. She is supposedly the illegitimate daughter of a prostitute who was knifed to death in the Alley of Dogs. She now works for Tancred, who has crowned himself "King of Fleas" and controls Lenele's underground. Later in the game, she is revealed to be result of a tryst between Princess Qifeng, and King Bellias, thus making her the heir to the thrones of both Orenia and Medeva. She appears once briefly in the sequel looking for Rosalind of Iona.
Rosalind - Estranged daughter of Yago. She studies Aosi, the language of Creation and is the party's primary spellcaster. She originally joins reluctantly by order of Abbot Laurent, but in the end is the one who compels Joseph to accept his destiny. She plays a minor but important part in the second game and seemingly appears to Maia, the sequel's main character in a dream sequence. Later Maia and her father, Yago, learn that she was consumed by the Destroyer of Eleh aided by its agent Krobelus. The Tempest takes her form and Rosalind is no more.
Jekhar - Joseph's childhood friend whose family was murdered in the massacre caused by the demon unleashed by Joseph. Jekhar is now a soldier living in Lenele working under King Belias VI. He hates Joseph, but is ordered by King Belias VI to join in Joseph's quest for the rings, instead of helping fight off the invasion. As a result, he does not help Joseph as compared to Joseph's other comrades. When Fleece asks Jekhar to help her rescue a one-handed Joseph from life imprisonment, he turns his back and instead decides to stay on Iona guarding the queen of Medeva. He appears once briefly in the sequel alongside Flece, but it is only a cameo and he is left unnamed.
Part I. Medeva
The game begins in a small village besieged by the forces of Orenia under command of Emperor Murod, who is looking for the one born with the mark of the Summoner. After fending off solidiers and escaped by river from the place, Joseph escapes to the capital of Medeva, Lenele. Joseph attempts to get to the castle to speak to his former companion, Yago (now an advisor to the King), but is taunted and rebuffed by the guards. A shady person notices his difficulties and offers her assistance, introducing herself as Flece, an agent of the local crime lord, Tancred. They end up infiltrating the palace by means of the sewer.Flece uses her stealth to reach Yago, who sends the two to the island of Iona, where the Abbot of the Monastery holds the ring of light. Yago gives Joseph the ring of Darkness, and sends them to the island. There, ironically, they meet Yago's daughter Rosalind. She is an acolyte who has hated Yago her whole life for abandoning her and her mother for his search of the Summoner. Reluctantly she accompanies Joseph into the Catacombs where the first kings of Medeva are entombed. Inside the half-cave, half-fossil sepulchre, they find Sir Carados, a long lost knight and builder of the Great Library. Having gone mad with delusions that he is Vadagar, the god of the Earth, he attacks them. After his defeat they find the ring of Light at the tomb of Iona, the dead consort of Vadagar.
After returning to Lenele, King Belias sends them to find the other rings while Murod's forces under General Pijian lay ready to siege Lenele. They go to Saanavarh, the stronghold of the Khosani people who made the rings after their original home was flooded by Amasido's vengeance. They test the Summoner's party which nets them the ring of Fire. Afterwards, they travel to the swamp of Ikaemos. Once an ancient empire, Ikaemos was destroyed by their namesake god's anger. The Priest King froze his people in stone before they could die. Joseph gets the ring of Stone after defeated the reanimated statue of the Priest King. However, they find that Lenele has been overrun by the Orenians after it was betrayed by the King's corrupt brother, Prince Sornehan. The party splits up and Flece and Joseph head to the temple of Urath alone. There they find the king dead and Sornehan crowned by the Hierophant. In the main twist of the game, Yago then instructs Joseph to put on all four rings and place his hand into the Forge of Urath. This action destroys Josephs hand, along with the rings, releasing the demons that had been bound within by the Khosani hero, Rhukha. Yago reveals himself to be possessed by the demon of darkness that destroyed Joseph's village. The demon, Machival then tells Joseph that he plotted this with the help of Flece, and Yago and Sornehan promptly turn over Joseph to Murod as prisoner.
Part II. Orenia
Flece, realizing that she had been tricked as well by the demon of Darkness, travels to Orenia to find Joseph. She finds that Murod is using Orenian slaves to construct a replica of the legendary Tower of Eleh. Originally made by the Children of Ghuval to siege Khossos, Murod likewise wishes to storm heavenHeaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
and become lord of all creation. Using her clandestine skills, Flece finds Joseph imprisoned in the very bottom of the tower. Flece and Joseph escape and flee to the lakeside village of Wolong recently had been attacked by founder General Pijian, who is chasing the forces of the Jade Temple led by Aoqi-the woman in white who killed Tancred. The town healer tells Joseph that only then of the lake can heal his injury. They meet up with Rosalind and journey into the caverns under the city. There they find the plant they seek and the healing pool where Joseph's hand is remade. Jekhar and Aoqi meet them outside in Wolong's citadel with her Jade Temple troops. They then battle the forces of Pijian and retake the city once the general is slain. Aoqi then reveals that she is the missing daughter of Emperor Gaodi who was usurped by Murod. Aoqi was in love with King Belias and they had an illegitimate daughter, who then was to be killed, but Tancred, prince of fleas, could not bring himself to do it, so he raised her as his own.
The next ring is in the forest of Liangshan where a mighty demon was killed by the dragon and thus poisoned and damned the place. Once a village, it was taken over by [ and a powerful poison miasma. In the center, they find a shrine where the guardian keeps the ring. They defeat more of Murod's solidiers and take the ring. Finally, they return to the Jade Temple where battle against Murod, who is a member of the Nhuvasarim. After his destruction, Qifeng takes the throne as the daughter of the true Emperor of Orenia.
Extras
- After completing the game and viewing the credits, a computer animated version of the Dungeons and Dragons sketch titled "Summoner Geeks" plays. It was circulated on the internet as a promotional video before the release of the game. It featured characters from both Summoner and Red FactionRed FactionRed Faction is a first-person shooter video game developed by Volition, Inc. and published by THQ. It was released for the PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows and Mac in 2001. A version for the Nokia N-Gage was developed by Monkeystone Games. The game was also re-developed as a top-down shooter for...
.
Reception
- Summoner for the PS2 received a 74 out of 100 from 16 different reviews at MetacriticMetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. - Summoner for Windows received a 78 out of a 100 from 14 different reviews at Metacritic.