Author Archives: Kurisu

SRPG Game 51 – Sangokushi Eiketsuden (SFC)

2 Replies
Sangokushi Eiketsuden (三國志英傑伝)
Released 12/28/1995, developed and published by Koei
 

 

  

Koei is a company well known for its historical simulation games, a reputation that began with Nobunaga’s Ambition in 1983. In the 80s and 90s pretty much all their games were first developed for computers, and then ported to a variety of home consoles (although they seem to have handled the ports themselves). Nowadays I think most people know them for Dynasty Warriors and spinoffs; when I was a kid the Romance of the Three Kingdoms strategy games were their best known product in the West. (They’re also known for their very expensive games; prices of 13,000-15,000 yen were common for their Super Famicom games).

Koei released five strategy RPGs in the “Eiketsuden” series, three based around the Chinese “Three Kingdoms” period, and two in the Sengoku period of Japan. All of them were made initially for computer, and four of them were ported to consoles (Sangokushi Cao Cao-den was never ported). The first one is the game I’m playing here. It was ported to Super Famicom, Playstation, and Saturn. As far as I can tell, the three versions are almost identical other than minor graphical differences, so I’ll just play the SFC one. 

 

 

The story seems to generally follow the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel, although the main ending does not follow the novel (see below). Apparently there’s also slightly different outcomes depending on your turn count and Liu Bei’s level. I’m not going to go into great detail summarizing the story since it follows Three Kingdoms so closely and there are so many Chinese people and place names that would be a chore to look up.

The main character is Liu Bei, along with the usual companions Zhang Fei and Guan Yu. The opening scene shows the Peach Garden Oath (although with no text) and then the story jumps to the fight against Dong Zhuo. I think the game does a decent job of telling the broad story without being too confusing, but a lot of the detail is lost. And (although I haven’t read Three Kingdoms) I think that without the detail the story just seems like a series of battles. Probably for fans of Three Kingdoms this aspect is a lot more satisfying.

 

One issue I had with the game is that because they have to follow the Three Kingdoms story, there are a large number of characters, and the game is constantly throwing new characters at you that are much better than your current group. So you don’t have that feeling of building up a party of characters throughout the game unless you intentionally avoid using the better characters. Most of the time I barely knew who my party was other than just stats and their unit type.

 

I can’t read some of these names

 

 

There’s another issue with the Three Kingdoms story that Koei always has to deal with. They went with Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, and Guan Yu as the main characters. But in history (and in the original Three Kingdoms novel), Liu Bei ultimately fails in his goal to restore the Han monarchy. Guan Yu is killed by a betrayal, and after losing the Battle of Xiaoting he basically retreated to his castle and died there a year later. Ultimately Sima Yi, who is a main antagonist, is able to win and unite the realm under his son, who founds the Jin Dynasty.

There are a lot of branching paths in the game, although most of them are just minor variations or choosing which of several simultaneous battles you’ll do. The game does have a “historical ending” that you can get by losing several battles in a row and making certain dialogue choices, but the designers certainly want you to go for the ahistorical ending where Liu Bei restores the Han monarchy.

So that’s the story. The gameplay is divided into 4 chapters. Each one has a series of battles, but you can also sometimes travel on the map and visit places in town to buy equipment and talk to people.

 

 

There are a variety of items and equipment you can get, but I found them fairly useless overall. The weapons and armor give only very slight increases to stats — like +2 to a stat that’s at 250. Some of the unique stuff you can find in battles is a bit better. The one exception are the horses, which are good to equip because they increase movement rate. There are also attack and heal items; I barely used these after the initial stages but maybe they can ease your progress if you make better use of them.

The people in the bars and meeting areas give you some hints on how to play the game and use the system, and a bit of information about the world.

 

Each character has a class. The main classes are swordsman, horseman, and archer. Each of these have two upgrades (one at level 20, one at 40). In addition to these classes there are tacticians, foreigners, ninja-type units, and a few others. You can get items to change people into these classes, but they have no upgrades. As I said earlier, the whole class change and upgrading thing is not as satisfying as it should be because of how many overpowered characters they throw at you starting in about the middle game. I spent a long time with my initial archer levelling him up painstakingly to the highest class (catapult), but right before I was able to do it the game gave me two catapult guys that were way above his level.

There are also tactics (basically spells) that all characters have. Liu Bei gets great healing techniques that help out a lot, whereas Zhuge Liang and some of the other powerful tacticians get huge damaging spells that are also very useful by the end of the game. The tactics of most of the other characters are not quite as useful, but they help in a pinch and the healing spells at least gain XP.

 

 

 Of course most of the time is spent in battle. This is typical player-enemy turn style. Terrain gives bonuses, but can also hinder movement (and horsemen cannot go into forest, whereas the side classes can sometimes go into the mountains). There is a weapon triangle system with swordsman->archer->horse->swordsman, but I don’t know how or if the other classes fit into this. Characters also have a zone of control so that in many cases you cannot pass by them (sometimes I was allowed to pass by but I never figured out why — it may be that Lu Bu’s horse gives a special power but I don’t think so).

Usually the goal is to defeat the leader, but there are sometimes other victory conditions instead (like reaching a base, getting Liu Bei next to a unit, running away, etc.) Typically the alternate conditions give you XP, which is a bit Feda-like.

 

In many battles, if you move certain units next to other units, they will fight and you’ll automatically kill the enemy. Sometimes the pre-battle dialogue makes it obvious, other times you just have to get lucky. In a few cases these result in the unit joining your team rather than dying.

 

The indoor maps can be difficult because of how easily units can block areas, and hit you with their archers from behind walls. Unit blocking can also be a problem with bridges on overworld maps. Overall the difficulty of the game is not that high, although the most difficult part is the middle part.

 

 

The final battle is against Cao Cao, who faked his death, but if you can reach him he’s not too bad. He has a spell that does half of everyone’s HP in damage but even standing on the good defensive terrain I was able to beat him in two turns with just half my party there.

 

 

Overall this game is decent. It gets a bit long and tedious, which is a common problem with SRPGs, and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I was a bigger Three Kingdoms fan. We’ll return to this series in 1997 with Koumei (Zhuge Liang)-den for Playstation — from what I can see on a quick view of youtube videos, it’s relatively close to this game, but we’ll see.

—

Here is a later addition I’m making to this post to cover the Playstation and Saturn versions. As far as I can tell the gameplay, story text, stages, etc. is exactly the same as the original. The graphics look different from the SFC; the maps are done in a different perspective, and instead of sprites during the story sequences there are just pictures of the characters.

The Saturn version and the Playstation version are the same.

1996 Preview

1 Reply

Sangokushi Eiketsuden is going to take me a little while more and I don’t feel like making an intermediate post about it, so I’ll post the 1996 game list since I’m on the final 1995 game.

1996 is a longer list than any year before; from here there are many games each year until non-mobile games as a whole start to decline in the 2010s. The final SFC games (other than Fire Emblem 5) are here, and Saturn and Playstation will become the dominant platforms for several years. Lots of well known games here, though.

Games list:

  • Bahamut Lagoon (SFC) – I’m going to play this with the new English patch that byuu/near just released.
  • Power Dolls FX (PC-FX) – This is close to not being an SRPG but I think it qualifies.
  • Dragon Force (SAT) – I’ve heard that no emulator runs this correctly, although Kronos claims compatibility.
  • Der Langrisser FX (PC-FX) – Going for Independent/Chaos route
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of Holy War (SFC)
  • Treasure Hunter G (SFC) – I’m not entirely sure this is an SRPG by my definition but we’ll see when we get here.
  • Energy Breaker (SFC) – The last SFC game until 1999
  • Sakura Taisen (SAT)
  • Langrisser III (SAT)
  • Vandal Hearts (PSX/SAT) – Which platform?
  • Arc the Lad II (PSX)
  • Riglord Saga II (SAT)
  • Harukaze Sentai V-Force (PSX or SAT) – There are going to be a lot of PSX/SAT games in this section and I guess I’ll have to evaluate which one to do on a case-by-case basis I guess. Generally PSX emulation is more reliable than SAT but I think many times SAT has better sound?
  • Funky Fantasy (SAT)
  • Terra Fantastica (SAT)

In addition to those, I’ll be making posts about Masou Kishin and Shin Super Robot Taisen as before, with just overviews and old message board posts.

Skipped games:

  • Super Robot Taisen 4S (PSX) — this is notable as the first Super Robot Taisen game that has voicing, but it’s just a remake of the SFC game.
  • Sangokushi Eiketsuden (SAT/PSX) — As far as I can see, these are basically the same port as the SFC version so there’s no reason to play it separately.
  • Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre (PSX) – Same as above, this is too similar to the SFC version.
  • Farland Story FX (PC-FX) — This is a remake of FS1 for the Super Famicom. It actually has a lot of upgrades from the SFC Farland Story, with voiced dialogue and various interface improvements, but the game is still basically the same bad, boring, bland game as before.
  • Dragon Knight 4 (SFC) — I’ll be playing the Playstation version of this game in 1997.

Rejected games:

  • Taiko Risshinden — This series is listed by some sites as an SRPG series but it doesn’t fit my definition.
  • Monstania — I’m still not sure if this is an SRPG or just an RPG with grid battles.
  • SD Gundam Generation games — These don’t have any unique characters that stick with you and level up. I will be skipping the SDGGG games unless they’re the SRW-style crossover games like Gather Beat.
  • First Queen IV (PSX) – I initially had this on my list; while I did enjoy FQ1, this really isn’t an SRPG. It’s a rather unique combination of strategy and action, but it doesn’t really fit my definition.

1994 wrap-up

4 Replies

This is rather late, but someone reminded me in the comments that I never did one for 1994. 

1994 had 11 games:

Fire Emblem 3 (Mystery of the Seals)
Majin Tensei
Hioden Pact with the Monsters
Galaxy Robo
Super Robot Taisen EX
Lodoss War
Shining Force CD
Langrisser 2
Feda: Emblem of Justice
Albert Odyssey 2
Power of the Hired   f

I don’t think there are any major new developments in the systems, although Hioden is a real time strategy RPG which is a rare thing. 

Game of the Year has to go to Langrisser 2 — in general I would like to avoid naming the same franchise to two different GotYs but in this case I feel the only other candidate would be FE3, and Langrisser 2 definitely beats it out. 

Other games worth playing are FE3, Hioden, and Shining Force CD. Majin Tensei is long and slow moving but I had fun with it. Galaxy Robo is interesting with its large maps, although it doesn’t quite reach the level of the other games I listed. Power of the Hired is simplistic and short but not bad. I did not play Feda for the SNES, but the Saturn remake was OK — too long and repetitive but the system had some interesting points.

The other games (Lodoss War, Albert Odyssey 2, and SRW EX) are not recommended.

I’m almost done with 1995 so I won’t bother with a preview of that year.

Games of the year:

  • 1990: Fire Emblem
  • 1991: Langrisser 
  • 1992: Just Breed 
  • 1993: Super Robot Taisen 3 
  • 1994: Langrisser II

(The “game of the year” is not necessarily the best game or the game I liked the most — I intend it to be a combination of quality, how much I enjoyed it, historical significance, and other things like that.)

SRPG Game 49 – Sengoku Cyber (Part 2, last)

2 Replies

Stage 8

Remember how the game encourages you to distinguish between your fighting force and your home team that makes money and items? Well here’s a series of four stages where you have to use a specific set of 4 people plus 1 of your choice. You can’t change their equipment at any point because that can only be done at the dispatch screen.

Actually it turned out to not be so bad; fortunately they make the enemies fairly week so you can catch your lower level people up. But mine had none of their special skills because I had just been using them to make money.

 Stage 9

My dogs had babies.

This stage is where we’re trying to steal guns and fireworks from the enemies. The boss has an annoying move that he randomly uses from time to time to shoot someone from anywhere on the map. There are a lot of hidden and optional characters here that you need to take specific characters to get. And then they’re not very helpful, but at least it’s more people.

Stage 10

This is a rough stage. We still just have all these predetermined groups and the grunt enemies in this stage are very strong. They also have more of these undefined-range moves that they can use from al over the place. You basically have to make sure that nobody drops too low in HP or they’ll get picked off. There’s also a secret character you have to reach in 14 turns, although I managed to do it even though I wasn’t trying that hard.

Stage 11

This stage is really long. You have to beat all the enemies, plus there are reinforcements (more of those guys from stage 10). You get 5 guys from the hidden village after a while, but it still takes a really long time to beat and has even more of those annoying “hit you from across the map” enemies.

—

So this is the point where I’m going to give up on the game. It’s a shame because it has good ideas in it. There is a wide variety of characters and skills, and the “hidden village” segment between stages has a lot of potential in letting you give your non-fighting characters something to do. But the designers torpedoed everything with a series of bad design decisions. To sum up all the negatives:

  • The cursor sensitivity is way too high. (This is not an emulation issue, it’s mentioned on the kusoge wiki entry for the game)
  • The maps are too large for the content, and it’s hard to see them. If it weren’t for the inset map the game would be nearly unplayable.
  • There’s just too little information on the whole. Enemies seem to have undefined ranges for their abilities and you have to be careful because the boss might suddenly use an attack from halfway across the map targeted at your weak healer. With permadeath and no in-battle saves this is a problem.
  • The game encourages you to have your fighting force and then your “village” units. But then they have forced deploys and secrets that rely on using specific characters.
  • Too much content is hidden with no hints. The “true” ending is impossible to get without a walkthrough, and even with a walkthrough it’s tough. If you don’t move the main character in front of a little shrine on stage 4 (with no hints indicating you should do so), you permanently lose access to all the main character’s unique sword abilities. Almost all the equippable weapons can only be gotten by finding them in hidden spaces on the 31×31 maps; there are no clues so that means 961 potential squares. I’m not even sure the instruction manual tells you these hidden items exist.
  • The village part is interesting, but they need to provide more information on what you’re actually doing with your choices.
  • The battles on the whole are slow moving. 
  • Apparently there are also a lot of freezes and glitches; I didn’t encounter any of these but they’re a common complaint about the game.

I said in the last post I was going to make a little guide for the true ending but without actually doing the things myself I can’t understand some of the conditions, so I’ll just leave the walkthrough site up there. But you won’t get the ending following this stage by stage.

http://fujimaru.same64.com/index.html

SRPG Game 49 – Sengoku Cyber (PSX)

2 Replies
Sengoku Cyber: Fujimaru Jigoku-hen (戦国サイバー 藤丸地獄変)
Released 10/27/1995, developed by Pandora Box, published by Sony
 

Another Playstation game. This time I am using the Duckstation emulator, which allows for higher “internal resolution”. What this means is that the assets on the disc get displayed at a higher resolution than the original hardware allowed for — as I understand it, this is not the same as upscaling. It’s more like avoiding the downscaling that happened on original hardware. It does make a difference, especially in the sharpness of the text and character illustrations.

 Despite the name, this game seems to have no science fiction or cyberpunk elements at all, at least not on the surface. It’s based on legendary material about ninjas in the Sengoku period (pretty much anything you see about ninja in video games or anime is based on Edo and Meiji period pop culture and has no historical basis). According to the story, Takeda Shingen was raising a group of people in a hidden village to become super ninja. This includes the main character Fujimaru, who is a typical shonen manga hero — rude and brash.
 
The game is considered a kusoge by Japanese players and I see why — I don’t find it unplayably terrible, but it sabotages its own systems with poor design decisions.

The system is a pretty standard one. You move around on a map and use attacks — each character has special abilities they can learn which are range 1, 2, or the whole visible map(!). Each character has a weapon and 4 items; the items include armor and other stat increases. Each enemy has certain resistances and weaknesses, but there’s no way to find out what they are, and the instructions don’t even tell you these exist (for instance, some enemies have high defense vs. sword attacks).

One of the major features of this game is that between maps, you spend time in the hidden village. Each character can take one action per 2 hour period you’re there. They include developing new weapons and items, earning money, raising stats, and learning new abilities or magics. This is an interesting system because you have a very large party and it gives you something to do with your non-fighting characters. However, there are some bad design decisions that make this more annoying than it should be.

First, the game gives absolutely no information about how this process actually works. You can take an action to develop new medicines. But what does that mean? Is it a percentage chance? Are you building up points? Is there a difference between 3 people doing it twice each and one person doing it 6 times? Does it depend on the character’s stat? This is true for every ability, so that you really have very little clue about what the village actions you’re taking actually do. The results screen is also confusing and makes it hard to tell what you actually got.

The second problem is that the system encourages you to distinguish between fighting units and non-fighting units, so that you can have your non-fighting people earn money and research items. But then you need specific characters to get the “true ending”, and in stage 8 you suddenly have a forced party of 4 characters + 1 of your choice. (The “true ending”, incidentally, is impossible to get without a guide.)

Stage 1

 

You may be able to see from that picture, but the main map is extremely hard to interpret. If they didn’t have that inset map down at the bottom left I think this game would be almost unplayable. There’s also an annoyance with the controller where the input is way too sensitive and you often find yourself not able to select where you want. I thought this might be an emulation issue but I saw it listed as a major complaint of original players as well.

In the first stage, they come out of the hidden village because some bandits have appeared nearby. Also, there are women who are being attacked by them. Fujimaru doesn’t really care about the women, he just wants to beat the bandits. However, if you talk to them during the battle they’ll join, and most of them have healing spells so the stage as a whole is pretty easy. I didn’t bother trying to beat all the enemies. I think you would have to take some units around to the top right to do that, but it’s only a few extra.

The women turn out to be kunoichi (female ninja) trained by Mochizuki Chiyome, another probably legendary figure. They’ve come to let us know that Takeda Shingen is dead, and that we are now free. The women are also free because Chiyome has died too, and they decide to live in the hidden village with us. The narration informs us that we’re free, but now have no idea what to do, and will be the target of other ninja who don’t like the idea of masterless ninja running around. 

Stage 2


Here we get a ninja named Kato Danzo coming out with a group to try to defeat our party. He runs when defeated. I just took my characters around to the left.

This time in the village sequence I did actually develop some new medicines and items, and people learned skills. 

Stage 3

 

The Iga Ninja are coming after us. This time the 3 leaders decide not to fight us, so it’s all grunts. I took my guys around in a spiral through the left. After we win, word starts to spread that we beat the Iga clan, which is not great for us.

Kaname can recruit one of the grunts in this mission (at the top right) by standing in front of him (down from him on the map).

Stage 4


 The next three stages are a sequence so you can’t switch characters. Annoyingly, there’s a specific character you have to send out in this stage so that she’ll be out in the next stage. Then she can get an item which will unlock a secret stage after stage 22, a necessity for getting the true ending. This is all without any hints at all. The obscurity of this was a complaint about the game when it came out, and I’m going to make a post after I finish listing all the secrets in case anyone wants to play later. (This is far from the worst game design decision, though)

This stage we’re up against a bunch of wolves. When we beat the leader, it turns out he was a ninja trained wolf that was set free and fell in with this pack. If you choose to spare his life he joins with his dog girlfriend. You apparently get different characters if you kill him.

Stage 5


 More Iga ninja battles. This stage has an oddity where you take a guy we recruited in the last battle and move him in front of every enemy until we find his sister. For some reason his sister has been turned into a ninja or something, and begs us to kill her. If you do, you get a memento.

Stage 6 

 

Yet more Iga ninja. One of the bosses has a really annoying attack that hits everyone on the board, including the weak dog girlfriend who kept dying from full HP. Finally I managed to not have him use it (I’m not entirely sure how) and I did win.

Stage 7

 

This is annoying. Fujimaru decides we need to go after the Iga clan, and you’re required to take everyone but 5 people out. The remaining 5 people then have to defend the hidden against another ninja tribe that comes to attack. I tried this a number of times and was unable to beat it, so I used a cheap trick — I left just one person behind, Gokuraku (who has the highest movement). I just moved him away from the enemies as fast as possible and waited until turn 11 when the stage ends.

I wouldn’t say this game is terrible, but it’s not great. I hope it doesn’t take me too long to finish but I still have 18 stages left, and the game is not easy.

SRPG Game 50 – Farland Story 2 (Stages 14-25)

Leave a reply

 Stage 14

By diverting a stream to flood the area, we manage to disarray the forces of the Empire and save Parakel. The legendary summoner Aldenarra joins, although his power is only half-awakened. He does suggest that Shifil ride on Rikid, and he’s now a dragon rider. Now on the suggestion of the king of Parakel we head north to a village that supposedly has a remnant of Sarena’s people — if they tried to use her Dance of Destruction for their own ends, they’ll surely try to go after the village.

Stage 15

Unfortunately we’re too late — the Empire has already destroyed all of Sarena’s people, leaving only the spirit Shunare behind. After clearing away the Imperial troops, a voice calls out to Sarena and the party is drawn into a tree.

Stage 16

Inside the tree is Linus. He tells Sarena that she was sent to the Empire as a child with no memory so that they would have someone to survive the Empire’s attack which they foresaw. He tells Sarena that if she can defeat the Chimera, all will be revealed.

Sarena dances the Dance of Destruction to defeat the Chimera. Linus tells her that the dance is capable of destroying the entire world and restarting from the beginning, and that their people is charged with using it when the world becomes unbalanced between dark and light. As he dies he tells Sarena to use the dance wisely. The group sets out for the Empire.

Stage 17

This stage has a bunch of elephant riders, and Barnasus again. He tries to run away when he gets attacked, but the whole party makes fun of him and he decides to stay and fight.

 

Stage 18

Riad and company arrive at Lowdos Island to try to get support for their fight, even though Lowdos is currently having a civil war. Weiss the sharkman shows up to have the final showdown with Riad. Even though Riad was too weak for me to face him, the game still acts like Riad was the one who killed him.

Stage 19

We use a tunnel to enter the Empire secretly. Unfortunately Gibegora, who is the advisor to the Emperor, knew we were coming and placed Ark (controlled by magic) to fight us. But we beat him and turn him back to normal. He frees all his companions and goes back to Farselia while we continue on.

Stage 20

The final showdown with Zoldin, who fights us because he’s an Imperial general. But when defeated, he gives the Breakstone to Riad and tells us to beware of Gibegora.

Stage 21

This stage is the worst example of the too-large battlefields that this series is plagued with; it took me over 20 minutes just to move up to where the fights could start, and that’s with speeding through the enemy turns.

A dragon guards the gate to the palace, the same one that killed Rikid’s mother. But he’s easy. This is the last stage with shops so I spent all my money on stat up items. Once we beat the dragon, a huge force shows up, but fortunately Ark and the various kingdoms we’ve passed through show up with reinforcements to deal with them, so we can move on to the palace.

Stage 22

Riad’s older brother, the Crown Prince, is lying in wait, although he’s suffering from some kind of illness. After beating the enemies, he tries to take on Riad, but Sarkrus (a winged woman on our team) intervenes and dies separating them. It turns out she was a spy for the Empire, because she loved Riad’s brother. Riad’s brother stops fighting and tells them to save the Emperor their father, and the only way is to kill him. Ever since the Queen died, he has longed for a world without war, and this allowed Gibegora to use some kind of magic to influence him. He won’t listen to anyone else any longer. Zoldin tried to find out who Gibegora really is but they never could.

Stage 23

Riad arrives at the throne room, where his father and Gibegora are. Gibegora leaves, and the Emperor turns into a demon. Riad tells him that his brother is dead, but the Emperor says he no longer needs an heir because he’s immortal. He asks Riad to join him anyway, but he refuses. Once you kill the Emperor, he comes back to his senses and asks Riad to guide the kingdom in the right way, the way his mother would have wanted.

Stage 24

We continue through the palace. At the end of the stage, the summoner Aldennara tells us that Gibegora and he are the same race; they’re the final beings created by the gods, with some of the power of the gods themselves. But Gibegora has become drunk on his own power so Aledennara was sent to destroy him. Since his power still isn’t fully back, that’s up to us instead.


Stage 25 

Gibegora absorbs the party into his body(!?). Aldennara is not there, and tells us to take out the heart in order to defeat him. We succeed, and Sarena dances the Destruction to defeat him (since it’s in a separate universe, like the dream world from earlier, it doesn’t destroy the real world). Riad becomes king with Sarena as his queen, and everyone else returns to their lives.

 

 

My review: Do not play this game unless you like having a useless main character and spending over half your time in the game just moving each unit one by one up to where the battles are. Just don’t play it. Don’t waste your time, it’s too valuable!

SRPG Game 50 – Farland Story 2 (SFC) (Stages 1-13)

2 Replies
Farland Story 2: Dance of Destruction (ファーランドストーリー　～破亡の舞～)
Released 12/22/1995, developed by TGL, released by Banpresto 
 


This is the second (and last) Farland Story game for the SFC. Since it came out within a year of the first one it’s probably not a surprise that there’s not much advance on the previous. Unlike the previous game which was a remake of several PC games, this is a completely original game following off the first one, taking place maybe 20 years later.
I skipped the first one because it was so bland and boring — this game is also bland and boring but I guess it was just slightly better enough for me to play it. They did make a few advances on the gameplay of the first one. By equipping different items you can do some different attacks — some people can heal or attack, others have a range or close attack. They also abandoned the hex map of the first game. But ultimately this game still isn’t very good.
The main problem is the balance. Throughout most of the game, enemies can kill your characters in 1-2 hits. This isn’t a big problem because any healer can bring them back to life (you can heal again to immediately use them, or wait a turn and they’ll be at full HP). But if Riad dies it’s game over. So he’s largely unusable. I also found that characters who fell behind in levels became useless as well.
The maps are also way too large, and you spend a good deal of your time just moving your units one by one at very low movement rates until you encounter the enemies. I just recommend skipping this game.

Stage 1

The main character Riad is the son of the Emperor, but he stays away from the castle hunting, with no interest in war. But his father wants to use his childhood friend Sarena to do the secret “Dance of Destruction”, which can destroy kingdoms. Riad instead takes her and runs away, with the Emperor sending troops after.

This is actually a tough starting stage; the enemies hit hard and you only have two dudes. I got one game over and thought I was going to die against the boss but managed to squeak it out. There are shops but they didn’t seem to sell anything useful.

Why can’t you turn off the battle animations? This is 1995! 

 

Stage 2

Riad reaches a port city that is supposed to be free of war; nobody fights there because it would disrupt trade. But the Emperor is so desperate to stop Riad that he attacks. Riad is now joined by a wolfman friend Klaus, as well as a demon Varacana (also a friend). The enemies are basically the same strength as stage 1 so this is much easier. 

Afterwards, they head to Felsaria, where King Ark (from the first game) rules. They hope to find shelter there and a place to hide.

 Stage 3

The Emperor’s men have reached Felsaria before Riad, and they spread rumors that Riad had attacked and burned villages there. Kai, a knight, refuses to believe this and is also branded a traitor. The captain of the ship we took also joins us (Altaba). The bad stuff seems to be done by Barnasas, a demon.

I realized on this level that if you equip Sarena with the Heal Ring you can have her heal party members on her turn instead of attack. This game also has the same shop system as last time, where you can buy things if you start your turn on a shop. It does not seem to have the treasure chests/spots, though.

 

Stage 4

Kai agrees to escort us to King Ark, but on the way we come across Eria, who Kai knows, being pursued by enemies, so time to save her. Kai’s dad Docati is actually leading the enemy troops, but once we beat him, Sarena’s dance makes him realize what’s going on. 

Barnasas is here, but I don’t think he can be beaten; he’s way above our levels and runs away after one attack.

 

Stage 5

King Ark believes our story of course, and goes on his own to meet with Riad’s father, which doesn’t seem like a good idea. Meanwhile a fake Riad attacks (he’s the one who had been besmirching Riad’s name). Ark’s son Shifil joins, as well as Docati from the last stage and a wizard Neiful.

There are enemies in various places here so I split up my party. Fake Riad was moving too quickly towards my forces so I just had Varacard buy all the equipment that the whole party will need, and I will distribute it next stage. I also have a bunch of items I’ve gotten from killing things that I need to do this too — of course this is all the way back to Fire Emblem 1 level of interface where you can’t manage items except individually in battle.

Stage 6

Ark has gone off but not returned, and now Imperial soldiers have arrived at Felsaria. Riad decides to try to get back to Felsaria; unfortunately Ark took their magic ship so they’ll have to find their own way. After beating the Imperial troops, they learn from one of them that Ark is probably shut up in a fortress, and the Imperial army is trying to convince a white dragon to work with them to attack Felsaria. So that’s our next goal.

This map has a secret shop that sells “lucky” weapons. I’m not sure what they do, but I bought a lucky sword to find out. 


 

Stage 7

Barnasas, the demon, has convinced the white dragon that we’re the enemies. His father pledged to King Ark 15 years ago to protect Felsaria. But when Rikido (the white dragon) smells Shifil, he recognizes him as Ark’s son and realizes that Barnasas tricked him. So now we have a dragon on the team, and continue to try to find a ship. 

Stage 8

The ship turns out to be Silent Moon, the magic ship that got us here in the first place. So we’re really not stealing anything. Along the way we pick up Doris, a summoner. This game has one advance on FS1 in that characters do have multiple moves — Doris, the dragon, Sarena, and a few others. But it’s done through a cumbersome manner. You have to “equip” either the tail or the breath attack. You can freely change weapons but it seems like they tried to graft a multiple attack system onto the FS1 system and this was the only way they could implement it. 

 

Stage 9

On their sea voyage, the heroes are attacked by a fleet led by Weiss, a sharkman who studied under the same sword teacher as Riad. But now the teacher is a general in the Imperial army who has ordered Weiss to defeat Riad. When you attack Weiss the first time, he does something to blow everyone off the ship. 


 

Stage 10

Everyone wakes up in the land where Zoldin rules; he’s the sword teacher of Riad and Weiss. Some of the party members are gone, and Riad has lost his memory. But he regains it for no reason at the end of the stage, and Zoldin leaves after a single battle. 


 

Stage 11

Shifil reappears here, but other than that we just learn that the Empire is attacking Troy to the east, so that’s our next destination. The General here was the strongest boss yet, but as long as Riad doesn’t get killed it’s not very hard. 

Stage 12

King Paris fears the Empire and so isn’t interested in cooperating with Riad. But when Riad uses a Trojan Haniwa trick to get into the castle, Paris agrees to help on one condition — we go north to Ginebia and eliminate the Imperial force there. 

Stage 13

This stage is way too large, like too many of the maps in these games. There’s a flashback here to when Riad first befriended Varcana (the demon). He was a thief but after Sarena danced for him he turned good. In this stage several new people appear — Seiren, a magician who was being used by the Empire, and Snow, a snow spirit. The king of Parakel tells us that revolts have been happening all over thanks to Riad’s actions, and he now wants us to go help Parakel. This happens to be Sarena’s home country, so of course they will go. 


 

SRPG Game 48 – Tenchi Muyo! Game-hen (SFC)

2 Replies

 

 

Tenchi Muyo is an old school anime (at least in the English world); I remember it being one of the small number of things available in English when I first started watching anime, although I never actually saw it. It’s a basic “harem” anime where this normal high school student gets surrounded by a bunch of women. In this case most of them are aliens, Galaxy Police, or other such characters. The first OVA series came out in 1992 and by the time this game was released, there were a total of 2 OVA series and a 26 episode anime. The series is actually still going on, with a new OVA series this year.

The game doesn’t make any attempt to set the background up for the series or introduce the characters (although probably there was some explanation in the instruction manual). That being said I didn’t find it difficult to follow at all. The character types are pretty broadly conceived and easy to understand, and the plot itself doesn’t seem to rely much on previous knowledge of the series.

Definitely the best part of the game is the graphics and presentation. All of the figures are large and detailed, with unique animations for each attack, animations for getting hit, and various animations and picture graphics during the story sequence. Each character also has voicing during their moves; it’s very limited but adds to the appeal.

The game, however, is lacking in a lot of areas. It is quite short and easy, and can be finished in just a couple of days.  This is fine for 2020 when most people playing it probably aren’t paying for it (or if you are, it’s $7 on ebay or $25 with box and manual). But I can imagine that being frustrating for the original audience who paid 10,000 yen. I would rather play a short, easy game that has design flaws than a long frustrating one.

Each character has 8 levels. The level ups are based entirely on number of monsters defeated, but there’s no way to check what the current number is. But this is kind of strange that beating the  earliest monsters in the game provides the same “experience” as the final monsters. 

Each level grants a new move for the character. This is nice, and I appreciate when characters grow throughout the game and learn new powers. The powers use the “kiai” stat, which you see as the green diamonds to the right of the picture above. You recover some kiai each turn and the stronger moves use it. If you have full kiai, most characters can Morph into another form, which grants different powers, and the Morph lasts until the kiai reaches 0. This aspect of the gameplay is good.

However, there is no equipment at all, and only 4 characters per battle. The characters movement is very slow, and seems to be a Tactics Ogre system where turns are based on speed and if you don’t move or act, your turn comes up more quickly.

 

There are 12 total characters. Some are optional or (slightly) hidden. The differences between the characters are pretty stark, with some characters being nearly useless. The party I have above (Sasami, Katsuhito, Washu, and Shitsuki) are pretty clearly the best party, although Tenchi could be subbed in for Katsuhito without too much trouble.

There is a world map (three of them) and you can choose where you go next, and you can go back and forth between places to level up. Typical battles are against 4-6 enemies with some reinforcements slowly coming in as you play.

The basic story involves this woman Shizuki coming in and capturing Sasami, and then we have to go rescue her. But then it leads into another fight against the purple haired person above, and you go to the moon to defeat her. The plot is decent enough but nothing all that special.

At the end you get a “maniac grade”; I only got 60/100 because I only moved 4 characters up to max level. If I had done that with the other 8 I would have gotten 100%.

This game is nothing exceptional, but it’s fine for a casual play. It can be finished in less than 8 hours. If you’re a fan of Tenchi Muyo! it’s definitely worth a try, but even if you aren’t, it’s a perfectly playable game.
 

SRPG Game 47 – Tactics Ogre (wrapup)

Leave a reply

 

  1. Turn type: Turns based on WT (see first post)
  2. Maps: Medium
  3. Character Customization: Characters can change class freely (if they meet the stat requirements)
  4. Character Development: Standard XP/level system.
  5. Party Size: 10 in one battle.
  6. Equipment: Four equipment slots (including items)
  7. Game Flow: Sequential battles, with random battles and training available. Chapters 2 and 3 have multiple routes.
  8. Saving: On the world map
  9. Death: Permanent

 

As I said in the first post, this game is innovative in many ways. The storyline is strong — in its complexity and depth it’s far beyond any other SRPG that has come before it. I don’t know if this game in particular inspired other designers, but going forward there are a number of other games that incorporate the kind of complicated political situations and warring empires that we see in TO.

This also is the first game to really incorporate 3D maps, with height playing a significant role in the game. The game also offers a lot of replayability, with two Chapter 2s and three Chapter 3s. You can also recruit a wide variety of monsters and special characters, meaning you can play the game through with totally different parties.

That being said, I think there are some significant flaws in the game. The first one is how unbalanced the different classes are, and the flawed implementation of the armor system. The second is that being just a few levels below the enemy makes it very hard to fight them — they can often do enormous damage to you and do very little in return. This means you have to spend a lot of time in training equalizing levels, and if you fall too far behind the story bosses you may even have to grind up.

As I’ve mentioned in the Fire Emblem posts, I also do not like permanent death. I think maybe it’s not as bad in this game as others because you can persuade enemies to your team, but it’s annoying when enemies gang up on someone and kill them in just a few hits.

Ultimately I think this game is worth playing, although I would recommend either the Playstation version or just use save states on the Super Famicom version to simulate how things would be in the PSX version (where you can save in the middle of a map).

The designers would go on to implement many of the same kind of ideas in Final Fantasy Tactics, which has some of the flaws and good points of this game.

SRPG Game 47 – Tactics Ogre (Part 2)

1 Reply

I have now finished TO so I will try to cover the rest of the game in this post.

I took the Law route, which means I will be doing chapter 2L and 3L. The Neutral chapter 3 is only available from the Chaos route, and then the routes converge in chapter 4. The Law route involves sticking with the Walstan side despite their slaughter of the innocent people in Baramus.

The old LUCT site has a translation of the entire story if you want to see it in detail.

The first few battles of this chapter aren’t bad as we head towards Ashton, but the Ashton battle is rough. This is the only time in the game I had to grind levels beyond just equalizing everyone’s level. The enemy leader, Aloser, is an archer and is quite strong. She could kill a number of my guys from full HP with 100% chance from the front, and even if she couldn’t, the other enemies could pick them off. I found that in general, being more than 2 levels below the enemy leader made it quite difficult.

Kurisu is a berserker there, which was a mistake — I forgot that his alignment would not qualify him for Terror Knight. By chapter 4 I had changed him to a Ninja and then a Swordmaster. He was never one of the stars of the team, but with a spear he managed to do OK. He also was my main caster of Petrobreath. It took me a long time to realize how good this spell is, but if you can cast it over an area you can take multiple enemies out of the battle completely with one spell. This helps also with collecting the stat cards and healing in multi-part battles.

The next tricky battle is against Wynoa; she has a fire orb and uses it first round to do big damage to a lot of people. So it’s time for the Cure Leafs.

After Duke Ronway’s feint attempt fails, Leonard decides to have Kurisu assassinate Ronway and assume command of the Walstans. He agrees, and we head off to Amorika, but face Vice and Aloser again on the way. This is another tough fight because they both have bows and can team up on guys.

Then it’s on to Amorika, where we fight a big battle inside.

The main challenge of pretty much the rest of the game is just preventing guys from getting ganged up on and killed. I had to try a bunch of different approaches to this until I was finally able to take out the knight.

Then we have a one-on-one with Leonard; his actual plan was to have Kurisu kill Ronway, then he would kill Kurisu to unify the Walstans after killing Ronway’s assassin. It’s Vice and Kurisu vs. Leonard.

Vice does most of the damage here, but I think I gave Kurisu a bow also so that he could keep out of Leonard’s way. With Leonard dead, Kurisu gains control of the Walstan army. The next battle is annoying.

The terrain and weather really benefit the enemies a lot, particularly the dragons. It’s a slog to beat them all. I then picked up Jenounes at the next castle, who turned out to be an excellent person all the way to the end. He got a Firedrake sword which made him very effective against dragons.

The rest of the chapter was fairly smooth, especially once I got Vice and the other new units who were quite good. This was essentially my party for the rest of the game, except that I replaced the cleric with Kachua once I got her:

I had some trouble with this fight near the end of chapter 3:

The enemies don’t move until you cross the river at the base, and as usual they can team up on someone and kill them pretty easily. So you have to play it cautiously (and if you realize how broken Petrobreath is it’s probably easier than it was for me).

The most bullshit fight in this chapter, and possibly the game, is the 1-on-1 vs Oz near the end of 3L. I don’t like it when games spring this kind of battle on you, particularly as the second battle in a sequence where you can’t save. Oz can kill Kurisu in two hits which makes it very hard to survive here — in the end I had to do a lot of class changes and different combinations until I beat him (I don’t remember the exact setup).

Chapter 4! Kachua is now a queen and we just have the Lodis people and Branta left. From here to the end, the majority of battles were overall the same — the basic tactics involved just waiting for the enemies to come, going mostly for the leader, and equalizing levels between battles. By the end of the game I had developed by team enough that I could do more than just beat the leader.

The Barbas fight was tough until I could get him to move into the right spot where I could gang up on him. The next fight against Lancelot was quite difficult. I honestly can’t see playing this on a real console where you can’t save at all during or between battles. Lancelot did an enormous amount of damage to my guys and it was just a chess game to make sure that he and the Warp Knights could not kill anyone.

Branta at the end is not too bad because he’s a Bishop, so his defense is quite low. As long as you can avoid the Terror Knights killing anyone, just getting a few units into his range should finish him off (although those Angel Knights he summons are annoying).

The last section is Sky Garden, which is a sequence of as many as 18(!!!) battles without any saving, followed by a sequence of 4 battles without saving. Before this I went to Hell Gate just to get Fudo on level 6.

I ran into trouble when the Dragon with a Wind Orb showed up. I had to do a lot of maneuvering before I could survive that battle; in the end I had to take a death of my Wizard, but he had the Death Ring so he became a Lich. I gave Fudo to Jenounes since he had high DEX and good defense.

The final battle is rough. Dolgare has ridiculous defense and comes with a lot of scary dudes. Fudo is really the key here since it ignores defense — two hits from Jenounes was enough to kill him along with one bowshot. Canopus died in the final battle, which was sad since he had been one of my most important characters for the whole game.

Overall I have mixed feelings about this game but I will sum them up in another post.