Riviera-The Promised Land: A finely chiseled gem

Before, when I heard the word ‘Riviera’, I would exclusively think of the sun-kissed beauty of the famed French southern coastline. That word would conjure up images of azure skies and seas in all shades of blue, laced with touches of palm trees, rainbow-coloured gelati, Cannes Film Festival glamour and St-Tropez old-fashioned charm. But that was before. Now, when I hear ‘Riviera’, I will also think of a game like no other: a beautiful and polished gem, sparkling with ingenuity, finesse and flair.  

Everything in Riviera: The Promised Land flutters with originality and inventiveness, starting with its very origins. The game had a most unusual birth: developed by Sting, it was originally released on the little-known WonderSwan Color as the first entry of the Dept. Heaven series, a string of games explicitly designed with originality in mind. (Three extra games came after Riviera, namely Yggdra Union, Knights in the Nightmare and Gungnir—which I all own but yet have to play, incidentally.) Riviera was then ported to the Gameboy Advance in 2004(jp) and 2005(na) and ultimately to the PSP in 2006(jp) and 2007(na/eu), with a few minor alterations including voice acting, remixed music and redrawn cutscenes. (Incidentally, this is the version I own and will dissect in this very post.) The game was mostly left unaltered though, which was basically the best thing to do: better let this gem shine in all its original, crystalline glory. 

Gorgeous abstraction

If Riviera’s introductory sequence looks like virtually any other introductory sequence pulled from a J-RPG, one only has to play the game in earnest a few seconds to realise that they stepped into a game like no other. I won’t painstakingly detail the progression system here, for such in-depth descriptions can be found somewhere else on the internet: suffice it to say that Riviera gently frames the player’s progression while giving them a free rein in virtually every other department. The framing is done by having the game take place on a series of fixed screens, with only a couple of possible moves available; and yet, inside that canalised progression lies a vast freedom of choice regarding the fighting, the investigation of certain selected spots or the romancing of your partners. In practice, Riviera looks and plays like an uncanny mix of comic strip and ‘Choose-your-own-adventure’ gamebook, in which the characters cross similar-looking fixed screens and seem to jump from one to the next just like they would jump between a comic book’s panels, all the while making decisions that will have an influence on ulterior events and ultimately alter the story’s end.  

Riviera’s rigid and somewhat abstract structure is echoed by its overall visual abstraction. This design orientation shines through the clear-cut and geometric lines and shapes of the scenery elements, which are always seen from the same immovable camera angle. It also shines through the colours: they are kept to a minimum, each screen having a dominant hue, and they mimic the texture of oil paint, acrylic paint or watercolour depending on the screen, aiming at complete stylization rather than realism. Last but not least, this visual abstraction shines brighter than ever in the map displays shown between sections, which are nothing more than a couple of interconnected white rectangles displayed on a black background along with a name and picture of the next area in line. This type of aesthetics is deeply striking and highly unusual in RPGs, which usually prefer to follow a more pastoral route in that department; yet against all odds, it works remarkably well, giving Riviera a strongly coherent and truly unique visual identity. This original visual brand is beautifully complimented by the intoxicating and slightly obsessive soundtrack, all roaring electric guitars, layered synths, delicate strings and soft chimes laid out in uncluttered, crystalline arrangements and played in vigorous, compulsive loops. 

The art direction regarding the characters follows this abstract trend, to very fine results. Despite the amount of skin exposed by the many mythological creatures present in the game, both male and female, Riviera manages to gracefully shy away from any tackiness or vulgarity. The main characters have fortunately been spared any kind of degradation for the sake of fan-service, which seems to be a constant as far as the Dept. Heaven series is concerned. (Take a look at Knights in the Nightmare’s DS cover: I’ve never seen a character that covered in a J-RPG.) All characters models, both heroes and foes, have a distinctive sharp and no-frills look, with trim lines and a low level of details. They look cute and a tad childish, in typical J-RPG fashion, yet manage to convey some maturity and calm, which is a pleasant change from your run-of-the-mill extravagant J-RPG characters. 

For all its sheer originality and mesmerizing quality, this visual abstraction could create a certain dryness and make the game world look and feel cold, impersonal and somewhat insubstantial, with potential player alienation looming on the horizon. Sting seems to have anticipated that side effect and taken the necessary measures to counteract it. As a result, the game world is fleshed out in very subtle yet effective ways. Beautiful sepia maps are shown between each chapter alongside a bit of narrative, providing an elegant counterpoint to the highly abstract ones displayed between chapters’ subsections. Full-size portraits of each character are shown before they launch a special attack, complete with the attack’s name and ‘motto’—a catchy sentence that lets you imagine the best. Foes are given the same treatment—albeit without the motto feature—letting you fear the worse and hope that your party will not be wiped out. Even that beautiful and epic picture of our heroes facing a horde of monsters that appears as a background during battle preparations plays its part in fleshing out the atmosphere and making the game world more alive and vibrant. (Incidentally, this picture used to be the Gameboy Advance version box art, recycled here in a nice nudge to Riviera’s past.) 

Pristine battling

Riviera’s content and gameplay is as precise and elegant as its presentation, which is a sheer delight. The result is a masterpiece of crystalline progression in which every unnecessary obstruction and filler have been removed for the sake of gameplay’s fluidity. Take the battling matter, for instance: Riviera ditches the somewhat messy random battle approach in favour of a neat series of unavoidable fights that take place in predefined areas. Every one of these fights thus becomes an event of huge magnitude that must be approached with the right amount of preparation and handled with the right strategy. This is the polar opposite of the ‘millions-of-random-battles’ model favoured by most RPGs, and it comes across as strikingly efficient and polished. 

The total absence of random battles is not synonymous with an absence of level-grinding, though. There is a modicum of level-grinding in Riviera, and it is given the same precise and clear-cut treatment as the field battles. The grinding process is entirely separated from the main progression and takes place in a special arena that can be accessed at any given time. This is an clever design that casts the level-grinding as an activity in its own right, taking place in parallel with the main storyline and offering a pleasant diversion from it, rather than as a chore regularly interrupting the player’s progression. Riviera’s peculiar brand of grinding is also a highly productive one that reaps pleasant rewards: instead of levelling up slowly by piling up XP, the characters level up once they’ve dealt a certain number of blows with a specific weapon—typically between three and nine; the progression is thus incredibly fast and can be tightly monitored. Once a weapon is fully mastered, the character’s stats raise and a special attack is learned. Called “Overskill Attacks”, these devastating moves are the light and soul of all fights, and trying to master them all is definitely one of Riviera’s greatest thrills as far as the fighting is concerned.  

And since I’m mentioning the fighting, let’s be clear about one thing: Riviera’s fighting system is an absolute, dazzling gem of a fighting system. While it may seem deceptively simple at first sight, it grows only deeper and deeper as one progresses through the game, revealing unexpected layers of complexity and becoming all the more enjoyable. In typical Riviera fashion, it is slick and precise, allowing the player to fine-tune their strategies and providing them with all the necessary information to do so, both during preparations and during fights per se. Strategies must be streamlined, for only three party members can take part in battles, carrying a maximum of four items with them. If you add the fact that items only have a limited number of uses, after which they are gone for good, and that the general inventory itself can only hold fifteen items, the necessity to strategize all fights becomes obvious. That’s not to say that the game places a dagger under your throat, forcing you to be fully prepared or die; Riviera is actually a fairly easy game that lets you restart a fight as many times as you want in case you lose—with your foes slightly weakened for good measure—thus removing any kind of stress and making way for pure, unaltered pleasure. As a whole, Riviera’s fights are crisp and elegant affairs, highlighted by the regular bursts of Overskill Attacks, all grand presentation, thrilling animations and hits en masse. (To be honest, I felt ridiculously elated every time I pressed the X button to launch such a deliciously devastating attack.)  

Expanding the freedom

As excellent as it is, the fighting system is not the only feature that breathes freedom through Riviera’s corseted structure. A more subtle level of freedom is at work in the game, unbeknownst to the player at first, but more and more perceptible as one make their way through Riviera—the land as well as the game. 

This is where the so-called ‘Trigger Points’ come into the picture. They are points that you earn through fights, the efficiency of your fighting technique determining the number of points you will reap. These points can then be used to investigate selected spots in every fixed screen and uncover a range of secrets. While combing these spots is by no means necessary to progress through the main storyline, they can expand your adventure nonetheless and are the first door into this finer level of freedom I mentioned above. The items that you may discover through the use of these Trigger Points, as well as the small events that you may trigger, will alter the gameplay and the storyline in sometimes significant ways. This is an ingenious and well-honed system that is fully rewarding rather than punishing, as one may expect at first sight. When I read about these Trigger Points in the game’s booklet, I feared that they would be mandatory to progress and that should one run out of points, they could end up being stuck in limbo forever. Of course, this never happened—nor did I actually ever ran out of points, for that matter—since Trigger Points are here not to restrain your freedom, but rather to astutely expand it beyond the boundaries imposed by Riviera’s inflexible structure. 

The dating-sim side of Riviera is another doorway into that muted freedom lingering beyond the game’s austere presentation. The first interesting thing about Riviera’s dating business is that the possibility of a romantic involvement between Ein and one of his teammates is absolutely never mentioned during the game, and barely alluded to in the booklet. It’s like Sting wanted the dating side to come out as a surprise, an unexpected reward at the end of the game. The player could be forgiven for missing clues here, for Riviera’s wooing process is as subtle and subdued as it can be: ditching the usual ‘shower your love interest with gifts’ trope, Riviera favours instead an approach in which seemingly unimportant events that are in no way related to courtship play an crucial part in earning your partners’ affections. The most obvious romancing tool is probably the multiple choice dialogues with the ladies, with their typical answers ranging from flattering to derogatory; however, it’s but the tip of the courtship iceberg. Battles play a part as well: the lady that deals the last blow and wraps up the fight will experience a boost of her affection for Ein. Then comes the chest business: most of the time, the process of opening a chest (with the use of Trigger Points) will stir the interest of one of the ladies, who will comment on the process. A QTE will then pop out of the blue; mastering it not only allows you to get your hands on the chest’s content, but also raises the level of affection of that specific lady that was so interested in the chest in the first place. Other seemingly unromantic choices and events play their part in raising the ladies’ affections, but I won’t detail them all here, for there are FAQ doing just that, and much better than I could ever do. Suffice it to say that this unsuspected romancing, on top of letting the player exert their freedom of choice in an utterly enjoyable and welcome way, also gives Riviera a huge replay value. There are six endings available, each one of them entailing vastly different runs with specific choices and strategies; as a result, the game must be restarted virtually from scratch if one wants to select a different course of action. Tying the courtship and thus the nature of the ending to battling, opening chests and other unrelated events, de facto making it organically linked to the rest of the game, was an absolute stroke of genius, and kudos must be handed to Sting for creating a game in which the wooing is more than a side dish than can easily be taken care of by showering the love interests with sweet talk and presents.  

In that regard, a small account of my run is well called-for. I missed a lot of secrets, which is not so surprising for a first playthrough; to make matters worse, my lack of motors skills led me to fail pitifully countless times when presented with QTE, and I lost a good amount of potentially interesting items in the process, as well as good opportunities to make the ladies smitten with my skilful self. And talking about this, I initially thought I had done a fairly good job in raising the ladies’ affection for me, but it finally turned out that they didn’t trust me that much, let alone loved me. Unbeknownst to me at that time, Cierra was the most well-inclined towards me—and the feeling was mutual: she was by far my strongest party member, dealing devastating blows with her unstoppable magic rods and more often than not putting an exhilarating end to fights with a blazing flurry of attacks. I had pampered her and moulded her into the ultimate foe-killer, training her patiently and stocking up piles of magic rods for her… Only to have her killed just before the Final Boss Fight. O, the absolute dismay! I was crestfallen, and I had to content myself with less powerful Lina and Fia for that most important fight. Lina was taken down after only a couple of turns, which made me fear that my party was not going to survive this fight, let alone win it; but against all odds, I managed to slowly but surely wear down Seth-Rah, before finally obliterating it with an intensely satisfying Lv.2 Overskill Attack—ironically delivered with a Southern Cross rod, of all weapons! I was elated, and even more so when Cierra was revived. Of course, I would have loved to fight with her during that final fight, but alas, that was not meant to be. And maybe it was all for the best after all, since this allowed me to witness the elusive and canonical “True Rose Ending”! This was a magnificent stroke of luck, for I’m sure I couldn’t have fulfilled the requirements for this ending if that’s what I had been trying to do. As for its content, I must say that I was deeply satisfied with the prospect of being Rose’s lifelong partner: I’ve had a fondness for cute yet sharp-tongued Rose ever since she was introduced in the prologue, to the point where I was actually disappointed to be separated from her when the main adventure started and really elated to be reunited with her in the Nelde Ruins. And now that this evasive and somewhat arcane ending is out of the way, I can replay Riviera with a relaxed mind and try to win the ladies’ affection a tad more actively. (Gee, I’d better start training for these QTE right away, shouldn’t I?) 

Let’s wrap this up now, shall we? When all is said and done, Riviera comes across as an amazing potpourri of game features and mechanics that gel together remarkably well. The game’s greatest tour de force is that it manages to look and feel highly polished and cohesive despite being really nothing more than a collection of fixed screens and basic animations. Sting obviously knew what they were doing, and as a result, Riviera is slick, controlled and impeccable from the first frame to the last, every pixel shining with lustre and mastery. Despite its corseted structure, it manages to offer an enormous amount of freedom in various departments and packs a huge replay value—more than some more open games, ironically. At its very core, Riviera is a fascinating crystallization of the very essence of RPG: all flourishes and ornaments like random battles, endless inventory space, dozens of NPCs, huge open world and so on have been ruthlessly and shamelessly removed to focus solely on the core of the RPG experience: battling, levelling up and exploring the relevant locations. It’s a daring approach, and one that will not suit all: but like it or not, there’s no denying that Riviera is a unique gem of a game. 

By now, it should be crystal-clear that I totally adored Riviera. In fact, I found myself loving it more and more as I progressed, and I was totally smitten by the time I witnessed the end—which, en passant, was utterly enjoyable with its many layers and dedication to give a nod to every character encountered during the adventure. It will certainly be a pleasure to come back to Riviera, especially since this is typically the kind of game that gets better with every run; in fact, I can’t wait to play it again and enjoy the fighting system to the full extent of my knowledge while trying to woo lovely Serene. That will happen sooner or later, that much is sure. For now, thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!