Bakumatsu Kourinden ONI (幕末降臨伝ONI), released on 2/2/1996, developed by Pandora Box and Winkysoft, published by Banpresto

This is the seventh game in the ONI series and the second one for the Super Famicom. I played the first one (Kijin Kourinden ONI) earlier. The first one took place in the Kamakura period (14th century) whereas this one takes place in the Bakumatsu period, which is the transition from the Edo to Meiji periods (mid-18th century). Despite this change, it’s rather unfortunate that the Japan part of the game doesn’t really feel any different. The towns and even Kyoto/Edo that you visit don’t feel particularly Edo- or Bakumatsu, they’re kind of generic towns that you might have found in the first game. There should be Westerners in Japan, people talking about the cultural changes and such, but you don’t really see that until later in the game.

The story opens with the “Shadow Shinsengumi” — the Shinsengumi were a historical group of samurai associated with the shogunate that is well known through pop culture representations. The “Shadow Shinsengumi” is a fictional part of this organization dedicated to dealing with spirits, demons, and other creatures of that nature. (The text is written vertically; I don’t think I’ve seen an RPG before this that does that.) They’re driving out some yokai that were disguised as humans.

The main character is Yamatomaru, whose father was a yokai hunter but was killed by a strong enemy. At the beginning of the game he goes to a nearby mountain to drive out some spirits. Later more spirits attack his town (Iidamachi) but he is saved by a warrior Jurota. They go to the capital to find out why the yokai attacks are increasing all over Japan, and end up joining the Shadow Shinsengumi.

The graphics are quite nice; good late-SFC quality.

The game system is similar to the previous title, with some changes. They switched to a normal XP/level system. This game also has the NPCs, kami (gods), and 5 Heavenly Swords from the first game but the implementation is a bit different:

• There are NPCs that randomly do stuff in battle; this time you can get as many as you want although only 8 can be in your active roster at once.
• The kami still give you spells, although not all of them are associated with a particular character anymore. In addition, some characters will also learn spells naturally through levelling.
• The game kept the “monster” transformations from the 5 heavenly swords. However, in addition to that you now equip the swords and they level up. You learn sword techniques that use the power represented by the green number in the shot above, and that regenerates 1 point per step. If you have a sword equipped you only earn 1/2 XP for the person (but full for the sword). Basically when you get these swords you never really equip another weapon again with one or two exceptions.

The NPCs and kami still require a lot of backtracking and talking to random people at certain times without much in the way of clues.

The plot is rather static for the first 2/3 or so of the game. The main characters are given the task of figuring out where all the yokai are coming from. We are soon joined by Natsume and her brother, two survivors of a clan who can control spirit forces. It turns out that the yokai are coming from out-of-control Spirit Holes, and we decided to seal all the ones we can find in Japan. However, although behind the scenes we see that the Shogun wants the power for himself, and that a foreigner named Risshu is manipulating some of the military in the shadows, also wanting the Spirit Holes for themselves.

At each Spirit Hole we get a new Heavenly Sword and see a flashback involving the characters from Kijin Kourinden ONI; it turns out in the end that they put their own spirits into the Swords so that they could protect the Spirit Holes.

Eventually we deal with all the Spirit Holes in Japan, although in doing so we make an enemy of the Shogun, who is tired of us sealing all the holes, and declares us traitors. We also face off personally against Risshu, and defeat him. The heroes then decide that they need to get away from Japan, and head to the United States, taking along a native American woman who was in Japan — she tells us that there are “Guardians” (like the kami) in the US and some spirit holes there as well.

This leads to a weird section of the game where you have to make it across the ocean in a boat. You buy cannonballs and torpedoes, and can also level the ship up. You also sometimes have to fight regular enemies as well. This part is annoying and slow because you need to be pretty strong to deal with all the enemies you have to beat to reach America, but to get that strong there’s really no option aside from just a bunch of grinding. Or, you can use items that eliminate random encounters, which is what I did…this would bite me in the ass later but for now it seemed like a good idea.

There is no explanation for how you deal with the language barrier, but in any case the white people in the US pretty much scorn you (except they’re willing to sell you things), and the Native Americans are a lot more receptive.

In America we find out that Risshu was some kind of cybernetic creation of three scientists — Alva, Tesla, and Reich (I’m not sure exactly who ライッヒ is supposed to be), who have depleted the Spirit Holes in the US and want to use the ones in Japan to continue their scientific researches and eventual world takeover. Natsume’s brother eventually has to sacrifice himself to defeat one of the scientists’ creations, and after his death, Squanto joins the party as the 4th member. After this, the scientists head to Japan and we need to chase them back there.

This is where my earlier actions were fatal because there’s no way to buy the no-encounter items, and as far as I know there is no way to upgrade your ship in America. Maybe there was some other way to get out of the situation but after about 10 game overs I just turned on a no-encounter cheat code to get back to Japan. So if you want to play this legitimately you will need either 4 no-encounter items total, or you need to have a boat strong enough to reach America without using them.

In Japan, we have been branded traitors so can’t access any resources anywhere in the land (if you stay at an Inn, you get attacked by Shinsengumi). So for allies we have to call on the ancient Ihika (the name comes from one of the ancient kami of Japan). Their clan once tried to control and wield the powers of the Spirit Holes for themselves, but their civilization was destroyed. Hopefully the same will not happen to humans.

Next up is a large tower with a lot of created spirits in it; I think the scientists were able to make this with the power of the Spirit Hole but it seems pretty fast. In any case the goal here is to shut the tower down so that the power can’t be used anymore.

After this, the scientists use the power on themselves to make themselves spirits, heading to the final Spirit Hole in Hokkaido.

You have to beat all three scientists, followed by Risshu who is back and fuses himself with the Spirit Hole to make a huge monster.

The final boss was a huge step up in difficulty and I had to do some grinding just to be able to survive his attacks. It helps if Natsume can use her “sacrifice” move to kill the left hand and then you can kill the right hand quickly with strong attacks. It’s still not an easy fight because the head can only be hurt by the transformed attacks and he has a move that puts everyone back in their regular forms.

After the fight, the main characters have to sacrifice themselves the seal the Spirit Hole.

Although later, Sakamoto Ryouma (one of the few historical figures in the game) gets a message that the heroes actually did survive and set out for a new land in their ship, but were never heard from again.

Overall this is a decent game; it’s perfectly playable and has nothing egregiously bad in it. The story is serviceable, and there’s a decent amount of side content (although some of it seems basically impossible without a guide). Ultimately it doesn’t rise to the level of the top tier SFC RPGs but it’s worth a play.

Madou Monogatari Hanamaru Preschoolers (魔導物語 はなまる大幼稚園児), released 1/12/1996, developed by Compile

Madou Monogatari is a series that started in 1989 for computers, and was originally a trilogy of short dungeon crawlers starring Arle Nadja, a little girl who was learning magic. The characters are best known for their later appearance in the Puyo Puyo series, but variations of the original games were released through 1996. This game is based on the first game in the original trilogy, where Arle has to find three orbs in the magic tower to graduate kindergarten. I’ll be playing the PC Engine remake of this game near the end of 1996, but this game is an expansion of that story by including Arle’s quest to find eight items she needs to even begin the magic tower quest. Rather than a 3D dungeon, this is a standard JRPG style, although it borrows elements of the system from the earlier games.

By the time this game came out, Puyo Puyo 2 had been released along with the Nazo Puyo games, so this game was attempting to follow in the major success of those titles.

The game uses the same “fuzzy parameters” system as the original; you don’t get any numbers for HP, MP, XP, or the like. Instead, you have to judge Arle’s HP based on her expression and what she says when she gets hit. The above screenshot shows her max HP expression.

Here she’s nearly at 0 hp. After you use a spell she will tell you what her remaining MP are like. XP are the green gems at the sides; when all of them fill up you move up a level. The level is indicated in the status screen by a general description.

Near the beginning of the game she is “weak”.

Near the end she is “Strongest in the preschool”. The flower circles at the right are her speed, defense, and strength.

In battle you don’t attack, you choose a spell instead. They’re all represented by pictures but you can get help to see what they are — they’re all the familiar ones to Puyo Puyo players, along with the voice clips probably taken from that game. While this interface is OK, I think that when it comes to the item usage it becomes annoying. You have to scroll through a lot of screens to get to the item you want and there’s no item stacking so if you want 10-15 healing items of several types it becomes cumbersome to use.

One nice feature of the game is that if you are high enough level compared to the enemies, you can hold down L+R when the encounter is beginning and you will automatically win the fight. I wish more games with random encounters had some feature like this, or at least a way to avoid fights that you can easily win.

Arle learns new spells by reading silver signs that are around the world.

There are also gold signs that can only be read with the help of a dictionary, which you get partway through the game. The top level of all the spells can only be reached through an optional sidequest. Higher level spells can be cast by powering up one level each turn.

The items there on the right are things you can use on the map to help you access new places by jumping, entering small holes, pushing far away switches, and such. I evidently didn’t get any screenshots, but you can also equip a staff and a ring that provide various benefits. The best ring is the one that lets you immediately power up to the maximum in order to use your best levels of the spells.

There’s no real storyline to speak of — Arle’s main opponents are the gang depicted in the picture above, and some devils that periodically control people. But basically you’re just traveling around the small world map and finding the 8 crystals you need to enter the tower for the final quest. It’s a pretty short game and can be completed in roughly 10 hours.

The game is also not especially difficult since you can always run successfully from fights. If you are having trouble with a boss you can level up until the monsters in the area don’t give you much XP, and try different spells to find the weak points of the boss. Healing items are also relatively affordable.

So this is an OK game — nothing too special but perfectly playable and with some enjoyable elements that aren’t in other RPGs. But how are all the other kids supposed to graduate from preschool if it’s this difficult!?

1995 is done! That had the most games of any year — all that’s left is 1996 and a few 1997 games (plus 1999’s Fire Emblem 5 when I get to it on the SRPG side).

Here’s the first three months of 1996 games.

• Mado Monogatari: Hanamaru Preschool – This is in the series with Puyo Puyo but I don’t know anything about it.
• Madara Kindergarten Saga – A rather odd hybrid time game but is doesn’t look like an RPG to me.
• BS Dynami Tracer! and BS Treasure Conflix – These games are listed as RPGs on some sites; they involved the satellite internet addon for the Super Famicom; not sure if they even count as RPGs but they can’t be fully played in any case.
• Bakumatsu Korinden – Followup to Kijin Korinden Oni from 1994.
• Bahamut Lagoon – SRPG, already played
• Front Mission Gun Hazard – This seems to be an RPG although a bit of an unorthodox one.
• Super Mario RPG – A classic.
• Brandish 2 Expert – In English, also I don’t know if it’s fully an RPG
• Chaos Seed – This is another game that seems questionable as to whether it’s actually an RPG or not, but we’ll see.
• Masou Kishin Lord of Elemental – SRPG, played
• Ys V Expert – The 5th Ys game. Not much harder than the original despite the title.

Now, a moderate change in how things are going to go — I want to make a push to finish the Super Famicom games. I have three more SRPGs to finish up 1997. Once I do that, I will have roughly 24 Super Famicom games left. What I think I will do is change the “2 SFC games, 1 SRPG game” sequence and just play as many SFC games as I can until I feel like I need a break, then play SRPG. So it may be 3-5 or even more SFC games per SRPG game.

One I finish the SFC games, I will go back to playing more SRPG games. In addition to that, I would like to take some reader requests, perhaps play some very old games, and also pick games either at random from a large list I’m making, or even do the very shocking thing of just choosing a game I want to play.

Here’s the list I’m making. It’s compiled from two different comprehensive Japanese sites and has gotten rather out of hand. I started it quite a while back when I needed some filler posts for the Super Famicom blog, and I thought it might be fun to play some of the oldest games, so I made a list of the first 100 RPGs. Then I decided I might also want to play some games that were released around the same time as the games I was playing, so I extended it up to 1996. From that point I just kept going — I’ve added to it little by little over the past 4 years or so and as this point it’s complete through 2009 with over two thousand games. I’m going to include everything through the 7th generation of consoles, finishing with the last PS3 game release in 2016. There are probably a lot of mistakes in it but there’s no way I’m checking the entire thing.