You play the part of Sword, a reluctant, smart-ass hero who is drawn into a warped dimension where time portals have collided. Many individuals, all from various times and places, have also been dropped into this warped universe. It is up to you, with the assistance of up to five other adventurers, to solve the mystery and return everyone to their correct places in time. Pretty cliché stuff.

Time Stalkers more or less follows the traditional RPG formula. Turn based battles, overworld, towns, dungeons, NPC to interact with, etc. More or less everything found in every other RPG, though on a much smaller scale. The town and the overworld can be considered one and the same, the amount of characters to interact with are rather small, and the general feeling of adventure and "being there", also seems less than adequate. The dungeons, as you probably have heard, are randomly generated. Now if these dungeons were actually interesting looking, or well layed out, then the randomness would have been nice, but unfortunately, they are not. The feature is supposed to add replay value to the game, but after playing through once, I don't many expect gamers wlll bother going at it again. Which is, in the end, one of the major problems with Time Stalkers.

To be honest, Time Stalkers is boring. Sure, it's supposed to be a bit light-hearted and not all that serious, but a little more excitement would have helped out. Speak to new NPC, another dungeon/part of town appears, find new party character, beat dungeon, and repeat. In between you have the chance to mess with your inventory and save your progress, but nothing at all atypical. The battle system is ok, but even when fighting the less than vicious bosses, never is there that sense of tension you would usually find in such encounters.

Graphically, Climax did a decent job, though the game looks decidedly 1st generation. The polygon models and environments are pretty simple, the textures are of medium quality, and the framerate is consistent. Certainly nothing I would consider horrible. On the other hand, the camera in Time Stalkers, absolutely, positively sucks. It is one of the primary reason I wish RPGs would never move from that good old fashioned locked 2d perspective. The algorithm for the camera must have been deliberately designed to annoy. I can't even count the amount of times it swings in a bad direction, either when in battle or in the overworld. Walls end up obscuring the view and the camera angles frequently hide pieces of the town that should not be hidden. It's frustrating. Even though the camera can be adjusted while in the dungeons, the on screen mapping system is practically useless. The isometric 3D map in the lower right corner is way too small and limited in scope, and the overhead 2D map, which can be alternately utilized, is smack dab in the middle of the screen, conveniently covering up your character.

Time Stalkers has a decent amount of Pokemon style monster capturing/collecting, but as it's only somewhat original feature, it is still not enough to save the game from mediocrity. Everything else is fairly by the numbers, and for Sega's first published Dreamcast RPG, it is rather disappointing. It was nice to see some familiar characters from Climax's past games in Time Stalkers, such as Nigel, Friday, but unfortunately that just isn't enough for me to recommend it. Wait for Eternal Arcadia, Grandia II, Phantasy Star Online or even Evolution II, instead.