Summoner

Summoner is a third-person action-RPG from Volition that launched alongside the original PlayStation 2 and later made its way to PC. You play Joseph, a young man haunted by a childhood experiment with summoning magic that went badly wrong and destroyed his village. The Khosani rings that grant summoners their power are central to the lore, and the game leans hard into the idea that calling forth demons and elementals is dangerous, double-edged business rather than a clean superpower. For an early-2000s RPG, that tension between power and consequence is genuinely interesting worldbuilding, even if the execution sometimes wobbles. Combat is real-time with pause, and the chain-attack system lets you build combos across your party of up to four characters. The summoning itself is the headline mechanic: different rings call different creatures, each with their own stats and abilities, and keeping a summoned entity under control burns resources. Let your concentration slip and your demon stops following orders. There is genuine satisfaction in fielding a dragon against a boss and having it actually listen to you, and genuine frustration when it does not. The party roster includes characters beyond Joseph, each with distinct roles, and swapping between them mid-fight adds some tactical texture, though the AI handling the ones you are not controlling can be charitably described as "enthusiastic and directionless." The writing is earnest rather than polished. The main story hits its beats competently, the villain motivations are clear, and there are moments where the lore around the Khosani and the ancient empires that summoners supposedly toppled feels genuinely evocative. Side quests are hit-or-miss. Some expand the world usefully; others are fetch tasks that pad runtime without adding much. The dialogue has not aged gracefully in terms of delivery, but the underlying narrative scaffolding holds up better than you might expect for its era. If you come in expecting BG3-level reactivity, you will be disappointed. If you come in expecting a late PS2-era RPG with more ambition than polish, you will find something worth your time. The PC version in its current re-release state is functional but barebones. No major visual overhaul, no quality-of-life additions. Camera control remains the game's worst enemy, particularly in enclosed dungeon spaces. Load times are reasonable on modern hardware, and the game runs without much fuss, but do not expect a remaster. The 85% positive Steam rating from a smaller review pool suggests the audience engaging with it now is largely nostalgic or genre-curious, and both groups tend to grade on a fair curve for a game of this vintage. Who is this for? RPG fans who want to trace the lineage of the genre, players who enjoyed early Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights and want something with a different flavor, and anyone who finds the summoner fantasy compelling enough to tolerate some dated design. It is not for players who need smooth modern controls or reactive storytelling. The build variety is limited by contemporary standards, but the summoning roster gives you enough toys to experiment with across the roughly 20-hour campaign. Completionists hunting every side quest will hit some filler before the credits, but the core arc is paced reasonably.

Monika · Scout Team

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