The graphics in Shadow Madness are a mixed bag. The pre-rendered backgrounds are lush and vibrant, or dreary and decaying, and always gorgeous. Although the fact that they’re static occasionally breaks the whole “suspension of disbelief” thing -- most notably fountains that aren’t animated -- they’re pur-dee gorgeous overall.

The world map is something that simply must be seen. It’s a... well, it’s a map... like an old parchment map. You wander around between drawn mountains and rivers, walking toward cities with bold words like “Enclaan” written next to them, and it’s so different, it’s cool. The best part about the map, though, are the various drawings found scattered around. Some of them seem like random doodles of the moon and the sun, like you’d see on an old map, and others mark “dangerous areas” and such. And at all of them, you can get descriptions of just what they’re about. Way cool.

And everybody, literally, has a face in the game. Even the menial townsfolk have little “pictures” that show their faces. It’s really nice to see even the super-bit characters having a bit of personality.

Now, unfortunately, the bad stuff... the game models in Shadow Madness are sub-par. They’re very non-detailed, and at times you’re not really sure just WHAT you’re fighting and what you’re controlling. Worse, when there are more than five or six people moving around on the screen in battles, the engine slows to about half the speed, making fights even more annoying.

The full-motion video is sometimes superb -- notably the creature summons -- and sometimes painful to watch -- notably, well, pretty much everything else. The spell effects in battles are uninspired with almost no “oomph” that shows just what they’re doing. Overall, though, the poor graphics can be overlooked for the visual majesty of the landscapes you roam around. Until you get into battle.

The music in the battles is decidedly better than the graphics, with lots of different tunes for each area, giving your ear a respite from repetitiveness without the dross of the 395,281 area themes of Final Fantasy VII. Most are groovy tunes, perfect battle music, and worthy of the genre. The sound effects are good as well, if not glowing. There are some memorable effects, like the mad cackling in the Keep, but overall they’re your usual clinks, clanks, and bangs.

Aside from the battle engine, Shadow Madness plays very well. It details the archetypal Heroic Young Man, whose current incarnation is named Stinger, and his bevy of friends as they adventure to find out just what the hell’s blowing up all of their hometowns and making people stark raving mad. The world is intricately detailed both graphically and in books that you can read along the way. One almost wonders if Craveyard spent more time coming up with a detailed history of the world than actually developing the game, but it makes for absolutely engrossing reading. Libraries will suck up hours of your game-time as you read to discover the past of Arkose, the upper planet, and Wyldern, the inner “bubble world,” and why what is going on is, well, going on.

Expect the usual number of plot revelations and twists, many of which are unfortunately becoming so cliché that to not use them might be a plot twist. One exceedingly good thing about Shadow Madness is its dialogue. Since the game was Made in America(tm), there’re no clumsily translated lines. There are absolute scads of inside jokes and witticisms that only those thoroughly immersed in American Pop Culture would get (when I saw a maddened girl scream “YOU HAD ME AT HELLO! YOU HAD ME AT HELLO!!” at my hero, I almost died laughing -- any game that parodies “Jerry Maguire” is a friend of mine), making the player feel like he’s the member of an elite “In” group. It’s a decidedly groovy feeling, and one that I could definitely get used to. And the fact that what the characters say actually makes sense... you never know how refreshing that is until you play a game like Shadow Madness that has that little feature.

Now... the battles. There’s no real way to pad this, but the battle system sucks. The controls are sloppy and unwieldy, the game could be beaten by my six-year-old nephew on the Normal difficulty level without ever using any heal items or real spells, and the models look very uninspired. The battle arenas are nice, with a few rather poor exceptions. But the actual fighting... blah. The supposed tweaks that delayed the game’s release weren’t tweaky enough. But, and I emphasize this, battles are generally over quite fast and you can get through them with the old “pump the X button routine,” although you won’t do the double-damage tricks a la Super Mario RPG. Were this a Square game, the battle engine would be unforgivable. But this is Craveyard’s first-EVER game, made by a team of 20 instead of a team of 100, so slack must be cut. Just... be forewarned.

I believe that you can go through Shadow Madness on Easy without doing a single battle to gain experience, but I haven’t tested the hypothesis. All I know is that Normal is a piece of cake. If you want decent difficulty, please put the game on Hard. It’ll be a completely different ballgame -- believe me. An exceedingly difficult one, at times, but it’s a lot more enjoyable than the “pump the X button” syndrome you’ll have otherwise.

The menu system in Shadow Madness is a little unwieldy at first, and don’t ask how many times I’ve not saved because I pressed X too fast in the inns, but those are all things that can be gotten use to in time. The movement is very responsive, and the game supports Dual Shock quite well, with vibrations as you near a battle and shakes throughout the battles themselves. I found the Save Menu to be a bit flaky on button-presses, but that could be my controller. In any case, it’s a minor quip. Stores could have been done a tad better as well because they don’t show the benefit/detriment of items. But when you make your first bad purchase, you won’t do it again. Believe me.

Overall, the game handles very well, and if it weren’t for the bad battle system, this would be an excellent little RPG from a first-time RPG developer. As it is, Shadow Madness is merely good if you can get over the problems with it, and mediocre if you can’t.