You’d think a system like the SEGA Game Gear (what with it’s color and stuff) would actually be a magnet for RPGs when it was active back in the 90’s or so, but as it turned out all the really good RPGs gravitated over to Nintendo’s Game Boy during the time leaving the Game Gear high and dry (and defenseless against it’s supposedly “inferior” rival in the early days of the handheld wars). Of course maybe that’s why Nintendo’s handheld thrived and survived (to live on with the GBA and later Nintendo DS/DSi) while SEGA’s handheld fell to the wayside (only to be revived by Sony with the superior PSP/upcoming PSP Go).

Doesn’t help

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when SEGA cranks out poop like this and expects people to fall in love with shoddy inferior games like Defenders of Oasis, which (when I first saw images of this game) I thought was the Game Gear’s last best hope for RPGing… then I actually got ahold of it and realized what a shoddy, inferior, underpowered, lacking title this game is!

Set in the Middle East and so male-centric it could make me puke, you control this prince who must do something heroic… starting off by gathering the Village People of Arabia and going out to fight funny monsters to some funky Middle Eastern music twanging (if this game has one advantage at

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least it doesn’t sound like the same generic music threads I’ve heard in a dozen Game Gear reviews to date).

Sure, because the game is set in the Middle East I guess having a male only cast makes sense, but the lack of female leads really hurts the game… of course having bare minimum RPG content and gameplay options also hurts the game. I mean this is so watered down and minimal it makes games like Final Fantasy Legend (Game Boy) seem rich and robust in comparison to this! But then again this game makes EVERYTHING seem rich and robust in gameplay options in comparison including some really horrible RPGs so that’s not

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saying much about this game.

Movement is shoddy at best, gameplay is straight forward and mind numbing, and while the Genie you pick up has some power (and a few characters do have some special abilities) there just isn’t enough to make this game really shine. In fact this game so does the opposite of shine for the most part making you wonder why I ever thought this game even had a chance review wise.

If this is one of the best RPGs the system has to offer? Then SEGA was doomed from the start. Because of all that, Defenders of Oasis falls woefully short and only garners a 2 out of 5.