Corum Side Story

The "Side Story" in the title already implies that this isn't an ordinary entry in the series, but the extend to which it did away with everything the popular series was known for came as quite a shock for its fans. In place of the standard medieval fantasy world now stood a semi-science fiction / cyberpunk setting a la Final Fantasy 7. But not only did the scenario have nothing to do with the former games, the genre was also dropped in favor of a turn-based SRPG, to try and mimick the success of Softmax' The War of Genesis series, which HiCom was also publishing at the time.

With Corum, HiCom's internal Saver Team created what would become Korea's third most successful RPG series after The War of Genesis and Astonishia Story. A fact not that easy to understand when having a try at the series' first entry, as it feels quite unpolished. The story about a warrior that seeks revenge on the evil lord that has slaughtered his entire village is a beaten horse, but where the game falls flat the most is its action battle system. There's a severe lack of variety, as the hero only knows no offensive moves other than a standard combo and a dash attack. A block button is supposed to bring more depth to the fighting, but it puts the player in a worse situation more often than not, so a combination of evasion and button mashing is always more effective, the incredibly stupid AI takes care of the rest. Even the bosses seem ridiculously easy at first, that is until they switch into near-invincible mode, which requires hours of grinding to even be able to touch them at this state. There are also only three different weapon types, swords, halberds and (utterly useless) bows. Funny enough, there is a bar that recharges in between attacks and determines the strength of the next stroke, much like in Final Fantasy Adventure on the classic Game Boy.

A far superior sucessor that introduced many improvements, for example a battle system that actually made sense. On the other side stood incomprehensible changes, like the inability to run in towns and the restriction to saving points. Corum II was brought to Germany by budget publisher Software2000, but was widely dismissed by reviewers as a mediocre and misplaced console style RPG.