Ever since Square resurrected the RPG withFinal Fantasy VII,  the RPG genre has become the Holy Grail of system sellers overnight.Climax Landers(which will be calledTime Stalkerin the U.S.)  is Sega's first real attempt to get an RPG on the system, but the game fails  in just about every way imaginable--even after numerous delays.Sent to explore an old clock tower, our hero Sword stumbles on a mysterious  book. Upon opening the book, Sword and the surrounding terrain are yanked  from the world and attached to a magical, floating continent inhabited by  several other such outcasts. The master of this strange world immediately  labels Sword a "hero" and sends him on a quest to unite the other heroes,  defeat a great evil, and return everyone to their respective worlds. The  story is traditional RPG fare--the kind of average ideas we've grown to accept  and even like. Every other aspect of the game, however, falls far short of average.Free advice to all you budding game developers out there: If you're ever going  to make a game that has high hopes of success, please be sure you understand  why people like that type of game in the first place. While the story ofClimax Landersis passable enough, its contradictory dungeon, battle, and experience systems undermine  any chance the game has at being enjoyable.Climax Landers, like Sting'sEvolution, takes a development shortcut  and substitutes randomly generated dungeons for actual map design. As a result,  all story development must take place in the town, turning the dungeons into  endless battle sequences. IfClimax Landersoffered battles that were actually  fun, this wouldn't be a problem. The battle system is as stale as humanly imaginable  and even sinks to include ancient interface issues that RPGs had supposedly long forgotten.  You can only have one of the main characters at a time in your party, which essentially  translates to having only one useful character in your party. To fill the other two  slots, you can catch monsters à la Pokémon. When you encounter the  roaming beasties in the dungeons, the characters line up to fight. In each area  there are four spots for characters to inhabit, leaving one spot open for movement.  Each attack has a different range, meaning that the monsters may not always be able  to reach their opponents. However, not all monsters can move to another square, so  they become blocked by your other characters in a position from which they cannot  attack. This, in turn, also prevents the main character from attacking in many  situations. Additionally, when you give the command to attack, you are giving the  command to attack the location the monster is in, not the monster itself. Thus,  if the monster moves before your attack connects, your character will strike nothing  but air. This is particularly amusing when you are attacking the back row and the  monster moves forward, causing you to run right through the monster, swipe at  nothing, and then run back through it. Every weapon has multiple attack techniques  users can employ, each requiring varying amounts of vitality points per attack.  For the most part, these aren't balanced, and changing weapons can sometimes be  fatal to your character as a result.There is almost no point in gaining experience or developing your character inClimax Landers, because every time you start or finish a dungeon, your  level drops to one. So the only reason to go into dungeons is to advance the  story and get items. However, chances are you won't be able to use the good weapons  and armor at level one. Additionally, characters are limited to carrying four  items when entering a dungeon. Thus, the primary purpose of getting items is  to sell them. The only permanent improvements you get from completing dungeons  are spells and skills. However, many spells and skills can't be used until the  characters' stats have reached a certain level. Thus, your characters essentially  start over every time they enter a dungeon. Every battle earns experience for the  characters, which in turn earns levels that raise the characters' stats. Additionally,  upon completing a floor of the dungeon, you can allocate bonus points to your lower  stats to let the characters use spells and skills. Like inFinal Fantasy VIII, the  difficulty of the monsters increases as the hero's level increases, ensuring the game  is a constant challenge and never too easy. Given the monster difficulty system that's  in place, it's not clear why the developers decided not to let you keep your experience  from dungeon to dungeon. With the current experience system, you don't feel like you're  ever getting anywhere.There are plenty of interesting little side quests to do inClimax Landers, but  none of them make the game particularly worth playing. Having a lot of excess development  time on its hands,Climaxprogrammed 10 VMU games that can be bought and collected.  A majority of the games are pretty worthless. The most interesting game is a miniature  paint program that lets you draw a picture and display it in the gallery attached to  Sword's house. Sword can also upgrade his monster pen and his house, both of which cost  a lot of money. You can also sign up for bounties with a leather-clad rabbit on the  Wonderland-esque island.--Peter Bartholow--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction  in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of  GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.--GameSpot Review