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Hikaru, a student at the Izumo school of Bushido, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl. One day while investigating a school building that was featured in his dream, Hikaru discovers a secret room and checks it out. Before long however, an earthquake shakes his world upside down. Hikaru cautiously emerges from the tumult, to find the world changed... Izumo plays similarly to interactive romance games but with RPG elements thrown into the mix for a different wrinkle on the interaction genre. Talking to classmates gleans information from them as well as primes them for recruitment into your party. When exploring the world, players may gather materia crystals which are the source of magic in the world if Izumo. Collect enough crystals and magical spells and powers become available to your little army of adventurers. Interaction with classmates will allow one to recruit them to fight on 3-D battlefields. In addition to physical attacks, magical blasts may also be rendered to attack enemies. Izumo features fairly linear adventuring but the storylines of the various girls are somewhat interesting and multiple endings give good replay value. Fan favorite Kazue Yamamoto of Studio E-Go contributes quality artistic renderings to Izumo after stints in Castle Fantasia, My Fair Angel and others. Detailed images and animations provide a high aesthetic quality to the game while the music and sound effects are also very well done. Originally released on the Japanese PC, the Dreamcast version features new artwork, full voice action for the characters and a gallery mode. The first production of every copy includes 1 telephone card out of 20 possible types which feature the ten girls from the game. View the back cover.
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