~~JUST A HEADS UP THIS REVIEW MIGHT HAVE MINOR SPOILERS SO PLEASE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED BY A BIT OF THE GAME'S CONTENT OR EVEN EXTRA CONTENT THEN REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THIS REVIEW, THOUGH IT'S NOT TOO HUGE SO DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. I'M NOT GOING TO SPOIL THE ENDING FOR YOU LIKE IT'S NOTHING THAT'D BE CRUEL HAHA OKAY ENJOY THE REVIEW~~

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story originally was made by Banpresto in 2003 as a Spin off game to a popular series in Japan known as... Summon Night, with this game however taking inspiration heavily based off the Gameplay from the "Tales of" series dating back to the 90's. While this game is more akin to those games, there's one feature that is completely original (In line with the name) that sets it apart from the underline mechanics that the Tales of Series set off to accomplish, however we'll get to that in a moment.

While rating quite positive during it's initial release, due to the end of the GBA's life cycle it only became a small footnote within the massive gallery of games that took place within the ganre and especially as a whole, yet many people fondly still remember the games that happened to of played it back in the day and even had gotten 2 sequels, sadly though the third being lost in translation but you can find English patches online, though not fully completed.

Enough Rambling, onto the review!

Graphics: For a 2003 GBA game they look pretty good, sure not the most top notch stuff you could find on the system though it still accomplishes a lot. Your character in battle is represented by multiple sprites all together to create one bigger sprite that allows it to better give a sense of movement and all the characters you fight as well as the enemies have their own sprite to boot, though a few recolors as typical with some JRPGs. The backgrounds for both the Overworld and the Battles are quite great, probably being the best part of the graphical presentation along side the Character Portraits that pop up when you or an NPC talks to you. The only downside I personally can see is that the Overworld Sprites look pretty basic. There's nothing too wrong with that, however given the presentation as a whole it's very underwhelming comparatively. It doesn't stick out like a sore thumb though they could use a touch up.

Sound: From what I see, a lot of people criticize the GBA's sound chip which I can see being a big issue, though a lot of games use the Sappy Engine pretty well and to Summon Night's credit, I think the same. However, they are pretty basic sounding being almost chiptune quality in their fidelity. With that being said though, that's not really a bad thing, if at all! I think the compositions more then make up for it, it's quite positively a really great soundtrack. I believe if the Sound Chip was better the pieces would be excellent, but as it stands I think what they've made is more then acceptable for the system.

Addictive: If you're into games that thrive on completion, then Summon Night Swordcraft Story is just the game for you! Not only does it have a Monster Dictionary, Not only does it have many weapons to create and even alternate versions with better stats, not only does it does it have a boss rush, but you also can do 50 extra dungeons once you complete the game! Is there anything else after you complete the game 100 percent? Sadly, no. Though you shouldn't really expect too much since it's already giving you so much after you beat the game to begin with. Honestly it's still a positively fun game to play through even after playing it through countless times! If you're into completionist type games you probably will get a kick out of this game.

Story: ~~HEY REMEMBER WHEN I SAID SLIGHT SPOILERS WELL UHHH THIS IS PROBABLY GOING TO HAVE A TINY BIT OF SPOILER STUFF IN IT SO AVERT YOUR EYES~~

In this game you're a part of a town that for a living brings in novices to work under a guild and within them also has a master to help you out with techniques for creation. You and a hundred or so others are tasked with creating your weaponry and given your own Guardian Beast who once was the Guardian Beast of your fathers and now with this knowledge you go down into dungeons to collect materiel and craft them into weapons. Along the way, you'll face many rivals who you start to befriend, but behind the scenes something has been happening to your town that has been making eruptions start to become more and more apparent to where it starts to become a frequent occurrence. As a Knight for the Silver Guild you'll find out how these earthquakes are happening and soon find out more about the truth to your father's backstory and bring peace to the world

~~OKAY SPOILERY STUFF OVER~~

The story is pretty typical JRPG Stuff, at least some of it is. It still has it's own identity in my opinion and makes for a fun story to play through. I should know, I've played this game about 10 or so times on my own.

Depth: Like I said, this does have quite a bit of content in the way of end game and also along with the (Obvious enter the title as a joke here) you'll be making plenty of Swords... and Spears... and... OKAY IT'S NOT JUST SWORDS.

The Crafting part of the game as the name imply is the biggest feature and selling point to the game. You'll be able to craft between the selection of 5 types of weapons, each with their own weaknesses and strengths. The way you'll make these are by smelting your material into elements which you'll be using into creating these weapons, though there is a few exceptions. The electricity element isn't readily available until a good chuck into the game's story when you need to create a specific weapon. After that, you'll be free to make sny weapons with that element after the fact, of course with the right material that is. There's also Mystic Ores with are somewhat very hard to come by and are how you make all the alternate versions of weapons. You can only obtain them by defeating Enemies that bear the resemblance to Armor or Weapons though they're possessed.

Weapons usually have a set of base stats
ATK: How hard your attacks Hit
DEF: How much damage is reduced when Hit
AGL: How fast you can run (includes from battle) and your attack speed
DUR: How long your weapons last before they break (And if they do, they break permanently)
TEC: A very nuanced stat, basically as it grows your weapon's DUR gets depleted less, some hits with weapons with multi-hits get more attacks in, and it's a perma-stat even if you break or sell your weapon.
You can also gain ATK, DEF, And AGL stats with accessories as well as LVL ups so keep that in mind.

Other then that, you have your typical elemental attack system, which isn't anything too out of the ordinary. Your Guardian Beast also has one of the four elements as their starting skill set and then once they level up enough they will start to earn other skills from the other elements. Along with this, you can hold up to 3 weapons in battles with certain circumstances that you have to remove 2 and only bear with 1 usually for things like tournament rounds, however that's rarely an issue.

One of the things you'll want to look out for is also when you're fighting any boss with a unique weapon of their own you can't get anywhere else, if you successfully are able to destroy their weapon then you'll obtain the technique for it. Keep in mind however, this is only for bosses with unique weapons and nothing else. Usually their weapons are completely unique and have different stats comparatively to weapons that you get normally, and how good they are can depend on how situational they can be or how high their stats are. You are also to sometimes find random techniques lying around usually though during the end game, just be sure to collect them!

One final note is that the Hot Iron Ladle is the best weapon in the game
No i'm not joking

Difficulty: It can very depending on what types of weapons you have during the game and what point you are in the game. It's hard to pinpoint though personally it's a very average difficulty around the board, save for some bosses being a pain in the neck to beat due to their high HP. Overall depending how you play the game it can be a completely different play-through for anybody to be frank.

With that out of the way, as I've played the game for multiple times and having a bit of a bias for it, under these Rose-tinted glasses I can see a perfectly fun game with it's only foil being the time it released, as by the time it was the DS already had been 2 years ahead and the GBA basically was on life support at that point. The game still is near and dear to my heart, having been a game I sought to go after at least a year or so after I beat it the last time. It's just that much fun to me. I wouldn't recommend you play this game however if you're looking for a super deep and enriching story or a absolutely difficult JRPG but for all it's worth, please check out this game. I give it a very high recommendation and consider to be one of the best that the GBA has to offer.