SFC Game 36 – Soul & Sword (Part 2)

Quest 9

Now that I have 10K gold I can buy the cooler device that lets me explore the fire mountain. I also made sure to track down the second level freeze spell, and buy a lot of healing items. The dungeon was fairly long, but the boss was easy.


By the time I got there, three of my guys could use the Freeze spell, and he did very little damage.

Now I’m going to take the firebird feathers back to the collector, but I may follow up on a lead or two on my way back. Only 9 months have passed so far despite me wandering a lot and using up a month to wait for the beauty contest, so I can see why people say the 10 year limit doesn’t really matter.

I traveled around and tried various things before happening on a few more events.

Quest 10

The idea here is to beat enemies in a drinking battle — this just means that you and the enemy both lose HP every round. I used Balmore and was able to outlast them all. I probably was drinking an actual beer while doing this part…

Next I tried to win a magic battle in a town up north but was not able to do it (you can’t use items, so no healing). So I headed to a mountain.

Quest 11

Here a town was being terrorized by bandits; they wanted to move off the mountain but was unable. I beat up the bandits and escorted them out (also discovering spies in the process).

I’m wondering now if I can beat that magic battle.

Quest 12

I managed to do it. You have to fight 4 guys each of whom has a magic weakness and casts spells that affect everyone. Then there’s the boss, who has a fair amount of HP and does various things, including all-attack spells. At some point I acquired a ring that absorbs lightning damage. So it was a matter of doing as much damage as possible before everyone but that ring wearer died, and hoping I had enough MP left and that he cast the spell often enough to not die. This happened, and I won.

Now he wants me to go help him make peace with his wife, a powerful witch, so that’s where I’ll go next.

Quest 13

This is not especially difficult. There are a lot of monster trapped chests but the dungeon is short — even though you have to do it twice (you have to go back and bring Rukiman the mage), it’s not bad.

Now I have Rukiman as my 6th and final character, so I’ll be able to do a quest from earlier where the guy wanted 3 men. First I tried the fighting tournament since that unlocks at least one other quest, but I failed. So I decided to buy a boat for 30,000 and go to the lake I had visited earlier.

Quest 14 

This quest is based on the Aesop’s fable about the woodcutter and the golden axe. It’s really long; this is the first time the high encounter rate was a bother. You have to go through a long underground area, then a castle, and you have to do the castle twice because you have to bring this angel back to the castle after you recover her robe. I gained a lot of stats, though, and started being able to actually equip some of the things I had found earlier.

Now after travelling a bit to buy better stuff I will try the mission requiring 3 men.

Quest 15

The women and children stay in the bar while we accompany the other three men to a valley that’s supposed to be full of gold. They need 6 strong people to twist this skull to open a secret passage.

 We do end up finding the gold, but there’s a trap that the men set for us — we escape, but with no gold, and Rukiman seals up the cave for good.

I found a feature I hadn’t noticed before, “search” in the menu. This brings up a list of leads or quests you’ve heard about, which is useful, although not comprehensive. It only records firm quests, not vague things like “Don’t come in this village on 2/10” which is obviously the start of a quest event but won’t be recorded.

Quest 16

Next up I bought a magic compass from a village up north so that I could go into the Jukkai forest, which supposedly has man eating trees. It turns out that there are 10 devil trees, and the main large tree at the center sends us out to beat them up.

Afterwards, we learn those were the large tree’s children, and a monster living at the top of the trees is messing everything up, so time to take that monster down.

Once we beat that monster, he reveals that he’s so connected to the tree now, that the main tree can’t live without him. The big tree already knew this, though, and asks us to burn him as his last wish.

I think the idea is that by burning him, his ash will revive or protect the forest, or something along those lines.

I’m almost halfway through the quests; I hope this game will not take me another two weeks to beat, though. Next up I’m heading north to a town where they warned me not to come from 2/1-2/10; obviously I’m going during that time.

There doesn’t seem to be any big storyline — I don’t know whether eventually there’s a “final” quest or any sort of story development, but it doesn’t look like it so far.

Also I’m taking Dokapon Kingdom IV off the list; I was hoping to cover it because it does look interesting despite not really being an RPG. But it requires at least 3 people and you have to use two controllers even if you have computer players. I’ll keep an eye on some of the other board game RPGs on my list and see if any of them can be played with less annoyance.

SRPG 1992 wrap-up

With Just Breed I finished 1992 on my list. This also finishes the Famicom as a system.

I’m going to start doing “game of the year” for each year. 1990 is obviously Fire Emblem since it’s the only game. 1991 is a bit harder; I’m going to say Langrisser. There’s a problem with this because I played the 1993 PC Engine port, but I believe that even if I had played the original Mega Drive version I still would have put it in first — the only other contender is Lady Phantom, and from what I’ve seen of the MD Langrisser it seems better.

For 1992 I choose Just Breed. I know Shining Force 1 is beloved, but I feel like it’s still just a bit too primitive in its system to win — I wouldn’t be surprised if SF2 is the winner for 1993, though.

The games I played for 1992 were Fire Emblem Gaiden, Shining Force, Little Master 2, Shining Force Gaiden, Vixen 357, Macross: Eternal Love Song, and Just Breed.

The big development in SRPGs this year was the introduction of RPG-style towns. 1991’s Burai Densetsu had this in embryo, but it really shows up in FE Gaiden and Shining Force, and again in Just Breed. This represents a further emphasis on the RPG part of the SRPG. There still is not much RPG-style exploration, and one thing that still has not appeared in any games is multiple scenario paths. This will first appear in 1993’s Super Robot Taisen 3.

Although this use of RPG towns was common in 1992, it did not become a standard element — there will still be plenty of games after this that do not use any kind of transition between the battles (other than story).

Another RPG element that is becoming a stronger presence is equipment. Shining Force and Just Breed allow for 3 or 4 pieces of equipment, more than any of the 1991 games.

1993 will bring the entry of the Super Famicom, and the last of the PC Engine games. Of all the games I have on my list for 1993, I think only the last one, the PCE game “Sword Master”, is relatively unknown to English players.

The next two weeks I will make two posts on Wednesday for Albert Odyssey and Ogre Battle, two game I’ve already played on my other SFC blog, then I’ll start Shining Force Gaiden II after that.

SFC Game 36 – Soul & Sword

Soul&Sword
Released 11/30/1993, published by Banpresto

This is an attempt at a freestyle RPG in the tradition of Romancing SaGa. Like RS, you have a choice of a bunch of different quests to do and the strength of the monsters is based on the strength of your characters. The basic idea is that your character goes to the island of Volcanov, an island that’s known for attracting adventurers.

S&S has an unusual feature of having a bunch of different endings. You end the game by leaving the island on a ship, and the ending you get is based on how many of the quests you’ve completed. If you leave as soon as you gain access to the world map, the hero realizes he’s not cut out to be an adventurer and heads back to normal life. There are other “gimmick” endings; if you rest for a year in the first town without doing any quests, the hero decides he likes the town so much he’s going to get a job and live there.

Time passes as you stay in inns or travel to different places, and there are events that can only be done at certain seasons or specific days. There is a 10 year time limit but from what I’ve read that’s way more time than you need to do all the events and quests in the game. My idea is to see if I can at least get the “normal” ending without a walkthrough and then I can use a walkthrough to finish any quests I missed for the “true” ending. But if that would require starting from the beginning I’ll just move on to the next game.

The graphics are pretty underwhelming.

There are 6 stats that each have there own experience level; it doesn’t tell you how much experience you get for a fight, though. In theory, attacking should increase strength and so on, but every stat seems to get experience from any battle. Equipment is based on your stats (so you need a certain strength to use the next powerful weapon, etc.)

There are apparently 34 quests, and they can don’t have any specific order (although some apparently only open after you do other quests). I’m not following a walkthrough so my numbering of the quests is just the order I did them in.

I tried the first question and got my butt kicked badly; I looked at a Japanese guide to see if I was missing something about the system — there is another quest in town that’s much easier to do first, so that’s what I did.

Quest 1

The school is haunted! It turns out a teacher at the school is doing experiments on people to make ghosts. You beat a possessed adventurer and then the teacher himself, and the quest is over. One oddity in this game is that there are no healing spells, but the healing items are quite cheap.

Finishing a quest can get you money and items; in this case I also got a second adventurer in the party, Lenna, who makes the other quest much easier.

Quest 2

The thug son of a rich man in town has taken over the pub with his gang. Finishing this quest just requires beating him (twice). Then his father makes him join your party.

Now the pub is open for business, and I got several leads there for future quests. Two are events that only occur on specific days, so I decided to head out to one of the other towns first. First I went to the collector’s house; he sent me on a fetch errand to make sure I was trustworthy, and then requested an Elixir. From there I set off for the Mirror Castle, finding a new town along the way. I learned about a festival in this town (Sultan) from 11/11-11/20, which is still some time away.

Before doing the Mirror Castle, since it was the beginning of April I decided to go down to Madock, where there’s a beauty contest on 5/10.

A stat menu

Quest 3

Before the beauty contest I found a guy in town who is having a problem with an “endless stairway” in his basement. This quest just involves going down the stairs and fighting random encounters until you meet the boss. The first time I lost because I didn’t have any paralyze healing items — I can tell from this quest and another one that stat restoring items are essential to the game. The second time I had enough of them and won.

Quest 4

Runna, our party member, enters the beauty contest. You have to pick how to make her behave in the contest to get big points — I think it’s just random, but I won (if you can lose, I’m not sure).


Quest 5

In Madock there were also kids that a guy wanted us to escort to a northern town. While I was going there I passed through a number of other towns and got some leads on additional quests that I can’t do right now. Several of them cost too much money, or require me to do something else first. In one town you can join a cult, which ends the game.

In the north town it turned out the house we were supposed to escort the kids to is the wrong house, and going back to Madock, it turns out the guy there just wanted to get rid of the kids and he’s gone. The kids join the party…that might seem bad but they have a lot of MP and don’t do that poorly in battle.

Quest 6

After this I wandered again; eventually I came to a western-themed town where I have to pick a side between Clint and Giuliano (named after famous Spaghetti Western actors). I chose Clint. You then have to save him from Giuliano and fight G. one-on-one. The first time I lost because I picked Balmore to fight him. He uses an attack that causes broken bones (disabling the fight command), and he does it every round so you pretty much can’t beat him without magic. So I lost that time.

Second time I used Runna and it was easy; I got kicked out of town afterwards but at least with 10K. I was also able to pick up an Elixir, which the collector guy wants.

Quest 7

The next town over was supposedly guarded by a big monster. He tricks you into a contract where you have to talk to 16 people to find out the single one telling the truth. Of course once you solve the puzzle he just attacks. I messed up at first because I didn’t know the yellow numbers coming out from physical attack damage meant he was getting healed — once I switched to magic it was over quickly.

Now I will head back to give the Elixir to the collector, and perhaps I can head back to the volcano now that I have 10,000 to buy the cooling unit. My guys still don’t have high enough stats for the next level up of weapons/armor.

Quest 8

On the way, I decided to pay the 10K for entry to the Mirror Castle. This is just a bunch of tricks and traps with treasure chests to find — when you find them all, you “win”. Some of the equipment can be sold for more than 10K so it may be worth it early in the game, especially since I still can’t equip any of this stuff.

Now on to the fire mountain.

The oddest thing about the game so far is that I’ve completed 8 of the 34 quests and my stats still aren’t good enough to upgrade my equipment. There’s also magic and techs that can be bought — these also require certain stats to use. If you buy it, anyone (with the requisite stats) can use it. I was able to buy the second Fire magic which a few people can use; that’s helped quite a bit. The techs (which cost HP) I haven’t done much with.

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed wrap-up

Just Breed (ジャストブリード)
Release Date: 12/15/1992
System: Famicom
Developer: Random House
Publisher: Enix

DATA 

  1. Turn type: Player turn/enemy turn.
  2. Maps: Small to medium.Terrain slows movement and may give bonuses, but I’m not sure. You win a map by beating all enemies or by getting the main character to the next town/cave/etc.
  3. Character customization: None.
  4. Character development: Standard XP/level system. XP is shared among members of a squad.
  5. Party: You have up to 4 parties on each map; each party has a leader and 5 underlings. There are six total leaders, and their squads join and leave as the story progresses (you never get a choice). Some maps are indoors, and you only get to use the leaders in that case.
  6. Equipment: Four equipment slots per character.
  7. Game flow:You proceed from one battle to the next in a linear fashion. Sometimes you can repeat battles, sometimes they disappear (although maybe only for a time). There are towns between the battles where you can talk to people, buy things, etc.
  8. Saving: At inns in the town.
  9. Death: Not permanent. If the leader dies the entire squad retreats from the map. Reviving guys is cheap. Even if the main character is killed, you lose some money but the XP you gained from the level remains.

IMPRESSIONS 

This is both the last game of 1992 and the last game for the Famicom (on my list). Graphically of course it’s inferior to the PC Engine and Mega Drive games I’ve been playing, although for the Famicom it’s impressive. The monsters, designed by Takada Yuzo (of 3×3 Eyes fame) have detailed pictures you can see by looking at their stats, and the character have Takada’s art in the instruction manual. The music is also impressive, both from a technological and quality standpoint — I only wish there were more music tracks.
The key point of the game, to me, are the monster lairs. These are what prevent you from using a turtle strategy or a “move slowly forward picking off guys one at a time”. If you do that, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed. So you have to press forward and split up your team to deal with the lairs. This can prove to be an annoyance, but it also puts more strategic value in your moves. My main complaint is that it’s very unclear when lairs are actually going to produce monsters. It’s a confusing combination of map variance, distance to the lairs, the number of units already on screen, and maybe other factors. I don’t like this kind of uncertainty because it makes it harder to plan strategically. And there also seemed to be times where I was able to use the technical limitations of the Famicom to “cheat” in a sense by moving so many of my own squads onto the screen that there was no memory or sprite space for new monsters to appear.
The game gets significantly easier once you unlock the higher level damage spells. The game is not totally unbalanced; the MP are limited enough that you can’t just waltz in and cast a bunch of spells. But it definitely lowers the difficulty until you reach the final area.
On the whole I enjoyed this game, and unusually I found myself enjoying it more as the game went on. There were annoying parts, and it does take a long time to move all the units (although the Auto mode helps). But for 1992 it’s a solid game and one of the best of the 14 games I’ve played so far.
Next Wednesday I’ll post the 1992 wrap-up and then the two successive weeks I’ll write posts about two games I’ve already played (Albert Odyssey and Ogre Battle). After that, whenever I finish the Super Famicom game I’m on it will be time for Shining Force Gaiden II. 

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 5

Battle 23
Levels: Kurisu 17, Rolan 17, Duval 17, Lydia 15

This is another dungeon map, so only the commanders can fight. It turned out to be quite annoying.

After some fights to get items, there’s a third fight that has monster lairs and monsters. I fought through using a lot of magic, figuring I would go back and heal before moving on. Unfortunately this fight doesn’t disappear when you beat it. So you have to beat this and the ensuing boss without going back to town. Since I had no idea how hard the boss would be I tried to beat the stage using as little magic as possible. I failed 3 times trying to split my party so in the end I just sent everyone over to the right to beat those lairs, then up to seal the rest.

The boss turned out not to be as bad as I thought. After using 4xBuraizer and Kururein to take out the grunt enemies, for the boss I just set up as follows:

Every round I attacked with the three people up front and healed with Lydia.

The upside of having to do these battles so many times is that I gained a bunch of levels.

Battle 24
Levels: Kurisu 19, Rolan 18, Duval 18, Lydia 16

This is the last overworld fight with the troops, and it’s a tough one. By the end of the first turn, Duval’s entire squad was gone and Rolan had lost most of his troops as well, so I decided just to try to get Kurisu up to the town at the top (Rumble Bill).

This turned out not to be all that difficult; I did lose the majority of my forces but Kurisu made it. I just made sure to move him forward every turn and use powerful spells and focus on healing Kurisu. The monster dens are off to the side and don’t produce many monsters.

Battle 25
Levels: Kurisu 19

Kurisu is alone for this battle against 5 clones. It’s a repetitive battle but just keep healing; the enemies usually don’t heal enough to keep up.

Battle 26
Levels: Kurisu 20, Rolan 18, Orlof 18, Hans 19, Duval 18, Lydia 17

The rest of the game is a series of battles in the Rumble Bill tower. As usual, there are a lot of chests with good weapons and armor. You can’t leave the tower once you enter, but there are shops and an inn.

First up is the Red Dragon (after a series of normal enemies and lairs). The dragon’s fire breath can be circumvented by the setup at the top, since it only hits people outside of the starting range. You get the Light Sword (which damages all enemies on screen but not for much) and the MP Ring, which restores MP, very useful for Lydia. Next up is the same fight but with a Green Dragon.

This is harder because the tornado attack doesn’t have the range problems that the fire one does, but I only lost Hans (twice).

Next up are similar battles against a Blue Dragon, who casts thunder, and a Snow Dragon, which breathes cold. The Blue Dragon fight is not tough because he can only hit one person at a time. The Snow Dragon battle itself is hard because there are tons of enemies that use whirlwind and frost breath. Lydia with the MP Ring is a big help because she can heal frequently; there’s another MP Ring that I gave to Rolan, who used the Bunsheed spell to do 4 attacks frequently. The dragon itself is basically the same as the Red Dragon.

Now it’s time for the penultimate fight, against Gel Du Ray. This is a much tougher fight than any of the previous ones in the tower. You basically have 6 bosses that are at the strength of the dragons you’ve fought up to now, with a monster lair spitting out Wolfens (that cast the Tornado spell).

I was not impressed with the Light Sword because of its low damage, but with the Bunsheed spell it goes off 4 times, which is much better. I basically used up all my MP clearing these first two bosses. The Wolfens that come up can sometimes be thwarted with the MP stealing spell, but in some sense I just had to take the hits. Lydia had one MP Ring for healing, and Kurisu had the other MP ring for repeated Bunsheeds with either the Light Sword or the Just Spear.

Next up is the area with the monster lair and three additional bosses.

They cast a lot of spells and have too much MP to deplete, but I found that once I sealed the lair and it was only them left, they couldn’t really do enough to stop me from killing them. I then swapped the MP Rings around to restore everyone’s MP, and went for Gul Du Rey.

With full MP, he’s a complete pushover; he has a few nasty spells to cast but with multiple 4x attacks coming at him every round he goes down quick.

Next up is the final battle!

Battle 27
Levels: Kurisu 21, Rolan 21, Orlof 19, Hans 19, Duval 19, Lydia 18

This battle is just two bosses. The first is just a normal guy that casts the same familiar spells; he goes down quickly.

It should be possible to retreat and restore MP by swapping around the rings like in the last battle before taking on the real final boss, but I didn’t do that.

You have to beat the green face in the front and the two red things at the top first, and then the orb. The boss initially has 4 attacks per round, although each part destroyed takes off one attack. Once only the orb is left, the boss’ main area gets stronger spells. The spells are the usual fire breath, and thunder (multi or single hit). I split the party up and alternated between healing, attacking, and using Hardy or the Warrior Wine (which increases damage for two turns). Every so often someone would die, and then Life Herb brings them back.

Once only the orb is left, I was only able to attack him with three people a turn, so the other three used healing or Hardy to support the main guys. Ultimately it wasn’t a tough battle.

Finally Just Breed comes to an end. I’ll post the wrap-up on Wednesday.

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 4

Battle 16
Levels: Kurisu 14, Rolan 14, Hans 14, Duval 13

This is a short, easy stage. All you have to do is get Kurisu to the town. Two more monsters come out of the town each turn, but if you combine Duval and Rolan’s magic with Hans’ bow attack it’s not hard to open up a passage.

Battle 17
Levels:  Kurisu 14, Rolan 14, Hans 14, Duval 13

This is basically a boss fight, with the Sandworm mouth. Mini sand worms come out, and you have to destroy all 3 parts to kill it. The boss can use an earthquake attack. Even so his HP are pretty low and I think once you beat it the mini worms stop coming out — if not, I think you can finish the battle by killing the boss and having Kurisu get to the mouth and go in.

Battle 18
Levels:  Kurisu 14, Rolan 14, Hans 14, Duval 13

The gimmick to this stage is the stone barriers, which you can remove by attacking 4 times (I think). It has to be a melee weapon attack directly adjacent to the barrier, and the area weapons like the Whirlwind Sword won’t work.

The main threat in the stage are the Hell Hounds, which can use Barlizer (the wide area flame spell) for free. However, the rest of the enemies on the stage are not much of a threat, and I now have enough high damage spells that I was able to target them first and take them down. Also, they can be put to sleep, a basic spell that a lot of characters have. Attacking a sleeping enemy does not wake them up. So with all that in my bag of tricks I only lost 2 characters. Once again I’m not sure how the enemy lairs work. Every time I think I understand them, something happens that goes against that understanding. I know the distance between your characters and the lair is a factor, but I think there may be a limit to how many characters can be on a screen at once — that would explain why sometimes lairs don’t spit out monsters even though you’re right next to them. But even that doesn’t seem like a complete explanation.

Battle 19
Levels:  Kurisu 15, Rolan 15, Hans 14, Duval 14

This battle initially seems like it might be a headache with 16 monster lairs, but it’s not that bad. There are two sets of monster lairs, both like this:

One set is guarded by those 4 things in the above picture, which have high defense. The other is not. The enemies they spit out aren’t anything especially dangerous, so advancing and using multi-target spells helps a lot. I am now certain that one of the conditions for a monster lair to produce monsters is that there can’t be too many characters on the screen. In the following picture, despite the 6 active lairs, only one enemy appeared. Before I got down there they were spitting out as many as 5 monsters in one turn.

Battle 20
Levels:  Kurisu 15, Rolan 15, Hans 15, Duval 14

This is another cave, meaning you only use the 4 leaders. The cave has five rooms; the first four have some good equipment, the last has the boss. They also have traps that shoot out missiles and such.

The boss is pretty strong; I lost two guys. The Bunshin spell helped a lot — it creates 4 copies of the character and they go out and attack. Duval got the Flame Sword which casts Barlizer, so having 4 of those going off in one turn helped a lot. Rolan has the same spell.

One of the items you find in the cave is the Luna Bow, Hans’ ultimate weapon. Which of course means he immediately leaves the party.

Battle 21
Levels: Kurisu 15, Rolan 16, Duval 15, Lydia 14

This stage has a lot of nasty enemies, but I now have casters with spells that hit every enemy on the screen. With that, plus Duval’s quadruple Barlizer spells, and the rest of the forces, it’s not that hard to take down even this many enemies. Only 4 monster lairs.

After visiting the town you have to do the same thing again, this time to put a log in the dam to open up the next area. It’s no harder than the first time.

4 Barlizer spells in a turn is really powerful.

Battle 22
Levels: Kurisu 16, Rolan 16, Duval 17, Lydia 14

This stage has tough monsters, like the new Manticore enemy that can use Barlizer for free, and other nasty enemies. On the other hand, the “hit all enemy” spells and quadruple Barlizer and other such spells are so powerful that ultimately the stage isn’t that hard. I lost a few guys, but at this point in the game revival is so cheap that it really doesn’t matter that much.

I split my army into two to deal with all the monster lairs.

Next post will be the last one for this game. 

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 3.5

See the previous post’s update for how I made it past where I was stuck. Lesson there: pay more attention to the dialogue.

Battle 12
Levels: Kurisu 11, Rolan 11, Orlof 11, Hans 11

This is a side mission, in a cave nearby the town to get Orlof’s ultimate weapon (a bit early?) It has double the attack power of the iron swords everyone has now, and it’s a spear.

The boss there isn’t very hard because you can put it to sleep. I found this out accidentally when I was trying to exit from Hans’ magic menu and pressed the wrong button. I’ll have to try sleep on other strong enemies — once he was asleep I just cast a bunch of magic until he died. (Apparently elemental magic doesn’t work, but I used the Gusachi spell which isn’t elemental.)

Battle 13
Levels: Kurisu 11, Rolan 12, Orlof 11, Hans 11

This is another map where we need to split in teams and go off in different directions.

I sent Rolan to the middle, Orlof to the left, and Kurisu and Hans to the right. In retrospect I should have done it differently. Orlof’s weapon is a lot better than I thought — it hits all enemies adjacent to Orlof. Hans would have been better in the middle island because of all his archers. In any case it wasn’t that hard.

Battle 13
Levels: Kurisu 12, Rolan 12, Orlof 11, Hans 11

The challenge of this map is that Kurisu, Rolan, and Orlof are sick. Randomly when you select their squad they might be paralyzed, which automatically ends their turn and then does auto for the rest of the troops. This means either that they get left behind, or that the troops run into disadvantageous positions to attack enemies (even the magic users will try to go hand to hand) and then get killed. This makes the mission incredibly annoying because so much randomness is involved. I had to retreat from the battle twice. Then it town it’s annoying too because as you’re trying to walk around, your character will randomly walk another direction or jump instead of moving. I understand the desire to vary the battles but this is not the way to do it.

It seemed to me like the key to winning is not to activate any of the monster lairs, although I wasn’t sure that was possible. I know you can successfully complete a battle without sealing all the lairs, but maybe there are certain ones you can’t. On my second try I figured out at least that if there are no enemies, but there is a lair in range that will produce enemies, you don’t win.

In the end I was not able to avoid the lairs, if it’s even possible. The key was just to go fairly slow, and get somewhat lucky with the paralyze hits. You have to make sure not to let Hans get too far ahead or he’ll get mobbed and die. Fortunately I can heal the paralyze in the next town.

Battle 14
Levels: Kurisu 13, Rolan 13, Hans 13

Orlof ate double the poisoned meat so he’s out. In fact, he won’t return until almost the end of the game, so it makes more sense that they gave out his ultimate weapon so early.

I don’t understand how the monster lairs work in this game. Sometimes they’re active, sometimes they’re not, and sometimes they will spit out one monster and then quit. There must be some sort of programming limitations involved that may introduce some luck or potential manipulation into the process. The second time I tried this map, I was able to seal 6 monster lairs without them ever sending out a monster, whereas the first time I tried it some of them were spitting out ghosts and hornets. I think it’s because I activated the west monster lairs before I approached the other ones, but it’s hard to tell. 3 shouldn’t be the limit.

The most dangerous enemies here are the ghosts, which cast an instant death spell. If it hits your commander then the entire troop runs away. I ended up taking two squads down and one squad left, but this backfired when none of the lairs downwards brought out any monsters. Rolan was completely outclassed on the left side and was wiped out, but Kurisu was able to make it to the town and end the battle that way.

Battle 15
Levels: Kurisu 14, Rolan 14, Hans 14

This is not a hard stage. The main annoyance is this NPC who yells at you as you move along, but the enemies don’t attack him and there aren’t that many enemies or lairs on the map.

After this, you have to navigate through a maze cave which is annoying.

But then it’s on to the next part. The name of the legendary god or kingdom or something that is related to the 7 Holy Stones is called ランブルビル. When I first saw that it looked to me like Rumble Bill and now I can’t read it as anything else. So I will continue to look for the secret of Rumble Bill.

SFC Game 35 – Illusion of Gaia

Illusion of Gaia (ガイア幻想紀)
Released 11/27/1993, developed by Quintet, published by Enix


This is a spiritual successor to Soul Blader (Blazer in English), and the second in the loose trilogy that ends with Tenchi Sozo (Terranigma). I played this game when it was first out in the US and really liked it, and I played it again some time ago and liked it then too. I still liked it after this replay, and the storyline that I always liked is especially impressive now that I’ve seen what else was coming out around it.

I did some spot checking vs. the English game script, and the translation seemed reasonably accurate. There is the usual Nintendo censorship, with references to alcohol and religion removed. Some names are changed (for instance, Tem->Will, Peggy->Hamlet, Rob->Lance). The ending sequence seems very slow in the English version. This happens a lot in localizations because Japanese requires fewer symbols than English does to express the same thing, so a reasonable text speed for Japan becomes a crawl in English if they don’t do any changes.

One thing I wanted to do in this playthrough is get all the 50 red jewels — this opens an optional dungeon that features a boss from Soul Blazer. I had never done this in any of my previous plays; it’s very difficult to do without a walkthrough. I believe this is only the second game I’ve played on this blog (after Dragon Quest V) that had an optional “superboss” dungeon.

I’m going to write this post more as a review than a step-by-step playthrough; this is a game that I think everyone should try, and it’s not especially long.

The game begins with Tem (Will) and his friends. Tem’s father went out adventuring, seeking the Tower of Babel, and never returned. Tem has some sort of psychic power. Soon he is called to Edward Castle to surrender a ring his father had left him, and once there, he gets thrown into prison. The voice of his father calls to him, telling him to seek out the six Mystery Dolls (Mystic Statues in the localization) and then come to Babel. After the princess Karen rescues him from the dungeon, you face the first dungeon.

For the most part the game is very linear. Tem attacks with his flute, and gains several power ups during the adventure. Beating all the enemies on a screen gets you a stat upgrade (HP, Strength, or Defense). This means that dungeon areas are often quite tough when you first get to them, but once you clear a few areas and get some of the stat ups, they get much more manageable. Soon Tem is able to transform into the dark warrior Freedan.

Freedan gets his own powers throughout the game. Although he is more powerful than Tem, sometimes you need Tem’s abilities to progress through the game, and you can only transform between characters at certain specific save points.

One great thing about the game is the variety of locations. The world seems oddly Earthlike without actually being Earth, and you visit the ruins of ancient civilizations like Angkor Wat and the Nazca line drawings.

There are also extended story sequences, like when Tem and Karen spend many days on a raft floating at sea.

All of this gives the game a much bigger scope and richer experience than other RPGs were offering at the time, even if it isn’t great by later standards. The ending stayed with me for many years after I played it, especially with the great BGM:

The gameplay is a bit light on the RPG elements; there are no experience levels or money, and no equippable items. You just progress in stats by clearing rooms. This, plus the relatively linear gameplay and almost total lack of backtracking, sometimes make it seem more like an action game than an RPG, but it’s still a lot of fun.

This is a game I suspect some people reading this have played, so let me know about your memories or thoughts on the game. 

Quintet would follow this game up with Tenchi Sozo (Terranigma), which is a masterpiece by any standards; one of my favorite RPGs of all time. I’ll get to that eventually, but up next (after I finish Just Breed on the other blog) is Soul & Sword, an RPG that seems somewhat Romancing Saga-like.

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 3 (temporary)

Battle 11
Levels: Kurisu 10, Rolan 11, Orlof 11, Hans 11

This is a long stage; tedious but not as hard as it looks like it might be at first.


In order to open three gates, you have to leave a person on the buttons (the circle at the bottom left). This means that each gate you pass through, one of your bands has to stay behind. However, they can move such that they can help out a bit through walls (either with spells or bows). The majority of the enemies in the stage are weak skeletons, but there are a lot of monster lairs. One Japanese site was recommending level 15 for this but I didn’t have all that much trouble with it at the levels I had above. Once you know which band you’re leaving behind, you can use up all their MP resources (or save a bit for healing through walls). I left Hans, Orlof, and Rolan. If you leave Orlof second he can use his Fribanen spell on the bosses which helps a lot, especially if you leave MP for two castings.

Once you get through all the gates, you save the women you’re after!

But no, they turn into monsters. Orlof was able to cast his Fribanen spell which does quite a bit of damage. They use the Marlo spell so they can do a fair amount of damage, and heal themselves. Even so, Orlof and his archers helped out quite a bit and Kurisu and his band were able to do the rest.

Battle 12
Levels: Kurisu 11, Rolan 11, Orlof 11, Hans 11

Actually not Battle 12 yet. I’m posting this early because I can’t get the next event to trigger. The gamefaqs walkthrough says:

“Go to the building left of the inn. Talk to everyone inside on every floor and leave. A pidgeon will come. Search it to find that Rolan and Orlof sent a letter, saying they’re OK. Go back in the building, talk to the guy at the counter and give him 100 gold to send a carrier pidgeon to them. Go down from the place and talk to Hans. Leave the town and go back in, and to the water fountain. Another pidgeon will come.”

I’ve talked to everyone in the town multiple times, left and entered over and over again, walked to all the fountains, talked to Hans, gone back to other towns. I even tried talking to everyone in Winga again, and I can’t get the second pigeon to come. The Japanese walkthrough only covers the battles, so I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. I’ll try again later but if anyone knows what to do, let me know.

[EDIT: Thank you to skyrunner14 in the comments below for pointing me to a Let’s Play. It turns out that you are not paying 100 gold to send the pigeon, but just to make the message for you. You then have to go back to the pigeon and use the message as an item to send it. I wasn’t paying careful enough attention to the dialogue.

I already started playing Illusion of Gaia for my other blog; it’s a short game so I’ll go ahead and finish that and then come back to Just Breed.]

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 2

I made two mistakes in discussing the gameplay last time. First, going back to a previous area does not let you fight the battle again. You can freely retreat from battles (as in Shining Force) but once you complete one, the map will be clear of enemies unless the story puts another battle there. Second, to enter a town and end a battle without beating the enemies, it has to be the main character that does it.

Battle 5

For the first part of this map, we have to head up to a mansion that supposedly has a person who is stealing women.

There aren’t many enemies, but there are a ton of monster lairs. It can be tricky to charge up to them quickly enough to fill them all without getting killed. As you can see, I split into two squads.

It turns out the guy was not stealing women, he was taking in poor and abandoned women, and he now joins our party as the third guy (one of his women was stolen by the same enemies that stole Feris and the others.)

The second part involves getting to the west town. I warped back to the first town to cut out some movement. It’s a pretty tough section, with lots of monster lairs.

My basic strategy was to seal off the first Skeleton lairs near the town, then move left. Rolan’s squad went up to seal off the first flying lair while Orlof headed into the eastern area, with Kurisu back to deal with the skeletons coming up from the rear. Kurisu then went up to join Rolan while Orlof dealt with the monster lairs on the east side. Equipping all the archers with Boomerangs helped a lot; they have a 1-6 range in any direction (even diagonal). With this, I was then able to approach the strong monsters at the top from both sides, use boomerangs to take out the casters, and then whittle away the strong crab things.

Battle 6

Levels: Kurisu 8, Rolan 8, Orlof 9

Yay, no monster lairs! The monsters all rush us at the beginning. I got a lot of use out of the “marlo” spell that shoots arrows out in all 8 directions, hitting every enemy in their path. I lost the first time because I was dumb and sent out Kurisu near the front — there are enemies with boomerangs that can quickly gang up on someone. As long as you don’t do that it’s not hard. (I swear I took a screenshot but it’s not in the folder…)

Battle 7
Levels: Kurisu 8, Orlof 9

The monster lairs are back, and no Rolan. This stage is not especially hard, but it takes a while. One of the lairs is out of the way, and spits out the boomerang monsters so I made sure to take care of that with Orlof’s party, while Kurisu supported with the boomerangs. Then I had Kurisu hold off the skeletons coming one at a time from the top while Orlof made his way back. With both parties active it wasn’t that difficult to finish off the stage even with the monsters blocking the bridge.

Battle 8
Levels: Kurisu 9, Rolan 9, Orlof 10

Rolan rejoins the team, and we have an interesting battle — a three level tower where you can only use the commanders. However, after each floor you can leave, and your non-commanders can cast heal spells and the like. I made sure I had the best equipment and plenty of Herb 2’s for healing. The first two floors are not too bad, although the second is annoying with its MP-stealing enemy. I used Orlof’s marlo attack spell a lot.

This boss can only be hurt by Rolan’s new freeze spell (apparently). At level 9 he had exactly enough MP to use the spell enough times to beat the boss; everyone else was on healing duty.

Battle 9
Levels: Kurisu 9, Rolan 9, Orlof 10

This introduces a bunch of new annoying enemies. They can roll towards you and hit any guys in the way. They stay where they end up, though, so they can be dealt with at least in this stage by slowly approaching them.

I took Rolan’s unit up to the left hill to deal with the monster lairs, and then kept them up there with boomerangs and Rolan’s freeze spell while the other groups went north and lured the rolypolys down one or two at a time.

Next we have to go to the same map to protect some people digging a well. After 5 turns they figure out it’s oil rather than water and return, but until then it looks like if they take one hit they die.

The monster lairs spit out these new monsters that shoot some sort of rock or cannonball; they can quickly take down one person by ganging up on them. I used a lot of magic (especially the spell that sends out three attack missiles). The lairs aren’t as bad as they seem at first because once you get near them, the monsters that come out of the lairs will stop moving off the lair. I ended up only losing one guy. Afterwards monsters start coming out of the other lairs so I just retreated back to town.

Battle 10
Levels: Kurisu 10, Rolan 10, Orlof 10

This battle is simple. One person (it may have to be the main character or his party) has to attack the rock areas near the town to make the water reach the town.


Everyone else can deal with the monsters that come down, but it’s only 12 total with no monster lairs, so they can be dealt with easily. There are annoying rolypolys up at the top but they don’t move so there’s no reason to fight them.

Back in the town we get the Winga medal, which lets us summon a thing that can fly us past the north walls. Using the medal makes it appear but start moving away. It’s to the NW of where we start. Moving up there is fairly easy and it can be reached in a few turns. Orlof got a powerful new spell that does a lot of damage to multiple units, which is nice.