:: 2/18/01 - RBA_Armageddon ::
As per crobato's whininess after my admittedly premature review of The Kadeshi Crusade, I decided to sift through his very lengthy story to get the full picture; to try and grasp what everyone seemed to think was a very interesting and beautiful story.
It turned out to be decent, but nothing special.
Plot:
In the interests of bypassing any possible spoilers, I will be brief and general. Basically, the plot revolves around a Kadeshi invasion of the Hiigaran system. The protagonists, Seejuk Liir Hra and Zha Khor, are introduced alongside G'yela, a Kadeshi Great Mother. The plot is fresh and interesting, but there are some seriously stupid things that go on that don't do anything of improvement. For example, MAJOR SPOILER BEGINNING! a Hiigaran Admiral tries to hook up Zha with a Turanic Prince. On the surface, this could be considered an interesting side twist, but it appears at the most random of times, and is dismissed so easily that it makes absolutely no sense. MAJOR SPOILER ENDING!
Some truly powerful discrepancies also occur due to the story's shifting from one moment in time to another, dating back to the Kushan Exile. Let me summarize them:
The Khar'Toba was not the name of the ship. It was given that name by the Kharakid, which means "First City." Thus, the ships Khar'desh, Khar'osa, and Khar'kushan could not have been called that way either.
A hell of a lot of anachronisms come up in the scenes from three millennia before the actual plotline. Energy weapons, Bentusi Acolytes, and the larger warships are all way ahead of their time.
According to the Bentusi at Tenhauser Gate, the Taiidan were forced to allow the refugee ships of Hiigara to leave their world safely. They were very underequipped, unarmed ships (obviously, considering the cutscene's monologue.) There were dozens of these crappy ships; there weren't a handful of heavily armed, converted Kushan refugee warships escaping from a burning world. It sucks that cro didn't know this, for it pretty much invalidates a huge part of his story, discussing the Kadeshi animosity towards everyone.
These are but a few of the worse plot points.
Interesting plot, and he does give a lot of time to develop it, but unfortunately it runs weak in some areas. I fear to give it anything less than a seven out of ten, but it is those small, rather imbecilic detractions that bring the score down.
Characters:
I really like the characters. They seem to be the saving grace of the story. Seejuk Liir Hra, the mysterious engineer, Zha Khor, the fighter-jock Turanic princess, and G'yela, the rebellious, almost evil Kadeshi Grand Mother.
Out of all of them, I enjoyed G'yela the most. The steamy bath scene early in the story aside (there is a real upside to reading, guys!), she is the most complex of the characters. You can clearly see her evil, cunning guise, which helps her to lead her troops to battle against their estranged race the Hiigarans. However, as revealed by crobato's short scenes showing her reminiscing on past days, we can really begin to sympathize with her. It is not enough for an enemy to be bad just for the sake of it; you have to understand their position, what drives them.
Zha and Seejuk seem to be plotting against each other in the beginning, but as they unravel the Kadeshi plot they become closer together. Their interaction can be somewhat unrealistic at times, but by the halfway point of the story they're right on track.
Zha's whole Starfarer thing (I won't reveal details) is a rather interesting idea about Turanic "Chosen Ones," even though it seems remarkably like the Force.
These main characters are incredibly strong, which is a particularly good thing, since some of the secondary characters, especially Admiral Gaas Paktu, are not terribly deep. This, however, is a small worry.
Nine out of ten. The best part of the story was the characters. Unfortunately, they alone couldn't support this story, just like CGI sequences couldn't support The Phantom Menace.
Writing Skills:
Crobato has a very poor sense of writing style, despite his clear literary insight. At the risk of sounding like an English teacher, his tense shifts involuntarily from the present to the past, his subject/verb agreements are often flawed, and his sentence structure leaves much to be desired. These numerous and frequent problems forced me to detract from the actual plot.
There are some very well written pieces dispersed intermittently throughout the story (with a major concentration of it at the end), but unfortunately they are spaced out too much that the other facet of his skills-the errors-become predominant. A real shame. What was worse was that these errors were also in the fully edited version.
I don't care if this story is 130 pages long; if it isn't written properly, it can't keep my interest. I give it a six out of a possible ten. It could be worse, but it could be a hell of a lot better.
Synposis:
My score for this story is a 76% (this is NOT AN AVERAGE of the other scores.) This had a very, very good potential, and really shone in parts, but just could not hold itself up with bad writing style and a plot that became weak in parts.
I do not take this review back. I found it to be an interesting story, but, as open-minded as I tried to be, these glaring errors kept pushing me back to my current conclusion: it could be better.
Sorry. It's good, but not great. The currently running sequel, The White Beast, had better be an improvement.
