Previewed: October 8, 2004
Previewed by: Roger Cox
Publisher
Atlus
Developer
Atlus
Release Date: October, 2004
Genre: RPG
Players: 2
ESRB: Everyone
View Screenshots (15 Images)
Atlus has always made and published many types of RPG’s. My personal favorite is Thousand Arms (PS One). This time around Atlus is bringing us a kiddy-style, car racing RPG (I like to call it “Kiddy CAR-PG”) that has more depth than meets the eye. It’s called ChoroQ and with its simple visuals and 9 year old appeal most anyone would brush this game aside. When I was handed this game to preview I wasn’t to optimistic, but after playing it for 5 hours I feel like it has grown on me.
The premise of this game is simple. You are a car (instead of a person, but who acts like one, lives like on, and other wise should be one) who lives in Brachy Town and is trying to become the top racer. Brachy Town has a police station, fire station, school, hospital, flower shop, post office, civic theater and everything else you’d expect in a small town. Day and night times occur during the game, but not in real time. Months change too opening up special events specific to that month.
It’s not going to be easy becoming a top racer here. You start out with a car that has no chance of winning even the easiest of races, but you can come in 2nd if you try hard enough. Placing in the top 3 gives you money to upgrade your vehicle. The amount of vehicle upgrades shocked me. There are 18 categories to upgrade including; the engine, tire, hood, horn, transmission, and so on. With all these options it takes a while to upgrade your vehicle to its maximum potential.
The racing side of this game seems dead slow when compared to Burnout 3, but ChoroQ somehow still captures the feel of competitive racing. This is where the game becoming addicting. You will race, come in 2nd place, but feel like you could have won if only you had a little more speed or acceleration. That’s when you go buy upgrades and try again. The races are so short and painless that it’s easy to play them over and over (feels like you are leveling up in a standard RPG). It does get a little repetitive, but by the time you get bored with a track you’re fast enough to take on the next race (which you chose based on its difficulty level).
What kind of turned me off about this game was the deep and complicated story, which simply doesn’t fit this game’s style. The story should be more simplistic and easy to follow. This is a more serious design flaw than you’d expect. This is because ChoroQ has a lot of potential to be young gamers first RPG and it has the potential to be a great one. I really hope the story is simplified in the final version of this game.
The music in ChoroQ seems oddly familiar. Haven’t I heard this background music before in another one of Atlus’s RPGs? The music here fits the game perfectly, but so far there isn’t enough variety.
The graphics in the preview version of ChoroQ leave a lot to be desired. At this point the game has PlayStation One written all over it and I don’t think they can look much better without starting from scratch. Hopefully they will get some final polish before release.
With its simple graphics and RPG-like gameplay ChoroQ seems like it would be a perfect fit on the Nintendo DS rather than the PlayStation 2. Not only would this game sell well on the DS, but Atlus could make more money by selling it for $30 which is what they should be getting for it.
ChoroQ is another Japanese import game that looks to be a steal when it’s released for $15, much like Katamari Damacy. Make sure to give this game a second look if your store is smart enough to stock it!
While we wait for more details on this fun litte title, check out our collection of great screenshots in our Preview Gallery.