Battle 16

On the way to the dwarf village we encounter a group of Dark Elves — despite the story making them seem scary they’re just basic enemies.

The dwarf chieftain initially refuses to help us but when Aks shows him the God Orbs he agrees to help, and gives us a bunch of armor and weapons. They’re just basic upgrades like Chainmail, so I’m not sure what makes them particularly useful against the dark elves. There was also a movement ring which I gave to the iron golem — he moves so slowly that I haven’t even gotten to make an attack with him yet; I’m not sure this upgrade will help much but he might get a chance.

There’s also a little event you can do in town (I’m not sure if it’s optional or not) with a wounded child. This gets me 20 healing herbs, and then a dwarf joined the party. Now we continue on to Crystoll Temple and encounter another set of Dark Elves.

Battle 17

I now have 22 units which makes the turns take a while. This is a really long fight because of how long it takes to move everyone and how many people do 1 damage. This is a general problem with this game and it’s exacerbated by the way the XP system works. It seems to me like your XP gains are partly dependent on the amount of damage you do, which means weaker characters have a really hard time catching up.

After this, Aks makes it to the port town that will take him to Crystoll Temple. But the ship only holds 10 people, so you have to select who to bring. I took my highest damage dealers, and a magician and priest.

On the other side of the ship, there’s a black fog that separates Aks from his companions, and all four Shitteno are waiting for him.

He’s ready to fight them all, but…

Arselia is there, and they threaten to kill her. So they start beating Aks up and he doesn’t resist…but then they kill Arselia anyway. This pisses Aks off so much that some light energy comes out of him and gets rid of the black cloud, bringing in the companions.

Battle 18

You would think a fight against all the Shitenno at once would be difficult, but it really wasn’t. Partly this is due to the horrible AI, which made the Shitenno hardly move and sometimes not use spells even when they were in range. But also they seem to be the same strength they were when you first fought them. So Gazes, the first one you fight, is incredibly weak.

Once the fight is over, Aks apologizes to Arselia’s corpse….

Except she’s still alive! The dragon gave her protection against the Shitenno earlier in the story, so this protected her. She an Aks share a romantic(?) moment.

She then opens the temple for us, and Aks has her go back to her village while he goes in. No battles here, but Aks receives the Holy Sword from a goddess who watches over those from Aks’ village. He isn’t sure why someone who is the son of the devil can use the Holy Sword, but the goddess doesn’t have answers. Aks heads back and picks up all the party members, as well as two new Holy Knights from the temple — they’re helpful because they have healing spells.

From this point on we have all 24 members but the game never gives you enough equipment to make using them all viable. In the last set of battles I basically used a small party of Aks, Ganesha, and the ninja guy for damage, Mute for magic damage, all the healers, and then the dragon knights and horse knights in cases where I needed to charge ahead and take out magicians before they could do too much damage (or to do the last 2-3 necessary to kill something). I also got another MP restoring ring which meant I could use the other magician as well.

Aks heads towards the cave leading to Dark Castle, and meets Arselia along the way, who tells him that there’s another evil power in the castle besides Balgas.

Next up is a series of 4 or 5 grunt battles as Aks makes his way through the caves to Dark Castle, and then the castle itself. None of them were particularly hard; with all that healing and the powerful attacks of Aks and Ganesha, plus two magicians with MP restore, the enemies are quite easy.

Finally, Aks reaches Balgas’ room.

Balgas threatens the party, but Aks just retorts that Balgas is a plaything of his dad. And that seems to be the case since he has low HP and is no harder than any other boss in the game (he has the same HP total as the first boss in the second stage of the game). Balgas does indicate that he’s serving some other boss than Aks’ dad but doesn’t explain further.

After the battle, Aks sends Balgas’ spirit back to the demon world, and then you get a chance to talk to one party member (with a voiced sequence). Aks says he has something else to do, and then goes back with a small party to a warp zone behind Balgas’ throne.

This is Lucifer, who serves Aks’ dad Satan(!); he initially pretends to be congratulating Aks but then declares he’ll control the world, etc. The fight is not very hard because Aks is ridiculous and you get two healers. Aks then decides to use Satan’s power one time to banish Lucifer.

Aks now returns to the mainland and begins to live a quiet life with Arselia, which includes sex because this is on the PC Engine.

But after a while Aks decides he needs to go settle the score with Satan before he can live in peace, and leaves Arselia in the night, saying he’ll be back. She cries and the game ends — nice happy ending!

One aspect of the battle system I overlooked in the manual that’s useful to know — if you have multiple allies around a monster (up to 3) they can all attack at the same time, and the enemy only gets to counterattack the initial attacker. This is very helpful to let weaker characters join a fight. The enemies will also use this technique against you.

Battle 7

Aksu’s party continues towards the cave, stopping at a fortress. Enemies attack and the entire fortress battalion flees, but two remaining archers join the party. The enemy attacking is Prince Serius. I guess I didn’t get any screenshots of this battle but it wasn’t too bad. When we beat Serius, a disembodied voice tells us that he was being controlled by evil powers, and so we just killed the prince who wasn’t acting out of his own will.

Battle 8

This is actually a series of battles in the cave; the first one is the hardest battle I’ve faced yet. 12 gargoyles who have very long movement range and do decent damage. I had to reload a lot and keep repositioning my guys until I survived. Aksu’s Return magic doesn’t work in these fights.

I believe this is one of my failures

The cave has a bunch of tricks and traps, and you have to find two keys to get through to the final room where the next of the Shittenno is waiting.

Aksu is pretty great

She was strangely easy, doing only 1 damage to everyone while I beat the tar out of her.  Unfortunately, she kills Ris Tis, who can only tell us to find the 4 Jimmu orbs (I mistook these as “god weapons” in the last post) to turn into the sacred sword which can beat Belgas. The first of the orbs is in the Dark Castle.

This ends the cave section and now we’re on to Dark Castle itself.

Battle 9

The castle is similar to the cave, with several intermediate battles and then the boss, who is the next of the Shitenno. He was the one who controlled Prince Serius, and now guards the blue orb, the first of the God orbs.

After the fight we get the typical “castle is crumbling” but we can’t escape, until a dragon rider shows up to save the party.

Not only does Akurus save us, but he also offers to lead us to his home, where the Red Orb is in the care of a dragon.

After the long cave and castle, there’s now an extended section with no battles. First, we travel to a fortress where we actually get some equipment ugprades! It’s disappointing that the previous dungeons have no chests or items, but the fortress gives some weapon and armor upgrades, and some herbs. Of course they can’t spare anyone but in the next town there’s the opportunity to trade a jewel from the fortress to hire a mercenary. You have a choice between 3 (this is why the instruction manual says you can get 24 out of 26 characters in a playthrough). I chose the female warrior.

Next up is the cave. First we reunite with Aselia, who is sad to hear about Ris Tis’ death. She has been summoned here by the dragon Bistors about the Crystoll Temple.

Bistors seems to know who Aks is, calling him the たわむれの落とし子 — I’m not sure what a good translation for that is. Joke child? The dragon thinks that Aks can defeat Balgas if he can gather the 4 orbs and unseal Crystoll Temple, where the orbs will become the Holy Sword — this is something only the Meifu Clan can do, and Aselia is the only one of them left. She isn’t sure how to do this, but they eventually find out that Aks needs to use an item Ris Tis gave him. Aselia heads for Crystoll by herself while Aks looks for the other orbs (and gets the red orb from the dragon). But the cave gets attacked by the 3rd of the Shitenno.

Battle 10

The 4th of the Shitenno has a strong attack, but other than that the battle’s not too tough. The damage in this game is so variable that you can just reset until you get 2-4 damage instead of 18 damage.

Aks’ next goal is across the sea, where he hopes to meet a magician who knows more about the orbs.

Battle 11

Crossing the sea is tough because there’s a ghost ship. Of course it attacks the ship Aks takes. The ship itself has a few battles against skeletons, and then the boss, another Shitenno. He’s not especially difficult.

On the ship we also find out the spirit of Prince Serius is there; sorry for killing you.

On arriving in the new continent, it seems that Aks is a wanted man — everyone there believes that Serius’ evil activity was part of the kingdom’s wishes and that everyone else associated with Saturnia is bad. But somehow Aks immediately convinces him otherwise, and the king of this new place gives us the green orb! Also some new weapons, armor, and companions. How trusting!

Battle 12

This is a long battle on a large map, but it’s just grunts, so no problem. Our force is getting bigger — you can always use your full group!

Battle 13

Next up is Damud cave. This is another long cave with a lot of warp zones and incidental fights against grunts. Once we get through all that, Aks gets taken to a  room with the magician Zabra Muba, who reveals a lot of backstory.

Aks’ name

It seems that Aks is the child of a human priestess and the evil god, who was accidentally(?) summoned by these villagers. He reminds Aks that if he used his innate power he could crush Balgas without the Sacred Sword, but Aks is determined not to use his father’s power. It turns out that Zabra Muba was a childhood friend of Aks’ mother and escaped the village with her. After Aks was born, his mother returned to their village to warn them about its impending destruction, but it was too late and she was killed (maybe) along with the village. Zabra Muba and Aks were both put into hibernation by “that person” (Aks’ father?) 1000 years ago, and now they’re both back to deal with Balgas. So it’s off to Crystoll Temple.

Along the way we stop at a town to pick up a new party member (an Iron Golem) and then the next fight.

Battle 14

This battle had 1 enemy, which seems like a bug or programming error. There are other areas of the game that I feel are this way also — a few characters gain almost no experience from killing things, for no clear reason I can see. Sometimes you get no stat increases on a level up, particularly at odd-numbered levels.

Battle 15

Next we stop in another fortress, which gets attacked once again; this time you fight the two mercenaries that you didn’t hire back earlier in the game. I also started getting class upgrades here (which seems to happen around level 18-20). I’m not sure what the class upgrades do other than give you some stat boosts.

Then in the next town Aselia is there — she stayed back to warn us that the Shitenno are back with Dark Elf weapons, and the only way we’re going to be able to deal with those is to visit the dwarves in the nearby forest and get their special armor.

So that’s where I am now. Based on a Japanese “let’s play” of this game on Youtube, I’m at about the halfway point in the game.

Sword Master (ソードマスター)
Release Date: 11/19/1993
System: PC Engine
Developer: Right Stuff
Publisher: Right Stuff

This is the final game of 1993 and the final game on the PC Engine (check out my other blog for lots more PC Engine games, through 1996, but none of them are SRPGs.) It is almost totally unknown in the West and doesn’t have much presence in Japan either. There is a playthrough on youtube and a few blog posts about it, but no walkthrough sites.

The first thing I want to point out is the package; the back of the CD case just has a collage of combat scenes, which aren’t that impressive, and no text at all. It gives no indication of what kind of game it is or what it’s about at all.

According to the instruction manual, a great power once destroyed the world. Our main character, Aksu, has been born with a cursed destiny, and wanders the world by himself. He sees dreams that indicate he is the son of this great power. He has access to some sort of power but sealed it away.

Here is a video of the game up to the end of the second battle:

The game begins with a cinematic opening and a vocal song. Aksu then reaches a small town, where he comes across a girl stumbling into the bar; her village has been destroyed and the chief kidnapped. Aksu decides to escort her back. Along the way he meets some Orcs.

Battle 1

The battle system is pretty typical, although I believe this is the first game I’ve played that lets you move and attack in any order, with all your guys. That is, you can move a few people, attack with one of them, then move another, etc.

I noticed here that there is no money in the game. I still have not gotten any drops from monsters yet which means that everything you get is decided at specific points in the game?

The battle sequences are standard:

One annoyance is that sometimes people will get multiple strikes, and the enemies sometimes go before your character. The damage also can vary widely; I’ve seen 11 damage which on a reload was 1 damage. You can save any time, but there is only one save file. Aksu has the “Return” spell which works like Shining Force, so as long as he hasn’t moved yet it’s safe to save unless you’re in a battle that doesn’t allow Return (which the instruction manual mentions).

After the battle, Aksu refuses to spare the Orcs’ lives:

Yikes!

Battle 2

Aksu goes to see King Dalk VIII, who tells him that Balgas, an evil being, seems to have been reborn. Aksu takes immediate interest in that and decides to go take him out. The King gives him two companions — Ganesha the warrior, Belzes the knight, and Sesca the priest.

But before that, the King tests Aksu’s ability by having him fight some guards, which are no harder than the Orcs.

Battle 3

Before this battle there’s a cutscene where Balgas reawakens, and his four Shitenno minions agree to carry out his will.

Here is a video of the third battle:

After that battle Aksu and the party head on to the next town, Premia. Although you can explore the towns, the game is (so far) linear in that once you leave a town and clear the next battle, you can’t go back. Your progress follows a map:

This battle is pretty tough because the first of the Shittenno is there. His 32 HP are difficult to deal with, since he can attack 3 times in a round — I retreated the first time but the second time I won with reloading. Hope for misses!

You get medical herbs before the battle. These get equipped on a character, and when they reach 0 HP, the herb will automatically be used to restore to full HP. Since there are a limited number of these and no money or stores to buy new ones, I’m trying to avoid using them — I will let them get used on a boss battle or something like that, but if a random orc happens to do more damage than a character’s max HP (which has happened a few times) I’ll just reload.

Battle 4

The townspeople complain about monsters, and the chief tells us that without the God Weapon we won’t be able to seal Balgas — maybe the Meifu Tribe in Systore Village knows where it is. The chief doesn’t think they’ll talk to Aksu, but Aksu seems to know more about this Meifu tribe than the chief does…

Heading out to Systore there’s a battle, but it’s an easy one vs. grunt Orcs and Lizardmen.

Battle 5

Unfortunately Systore is deserted. Aksu eventually finds Aselia and some children hiding, who tell him that the chieftan, Tis Ris, knows where the God Weapons are — but he has been captured. So off to Dark Castle to try to recover him. On the way, there’s another grunt battle. It has some slight challenge because you start off surrounded, but the enemies themselves are the same as before.


Battle 6

Aksu and his party reach Quarg, an elf village. The townspeople complain about Balgas, and the chieftan tells us that they sent a party to a nearby cave that connects to Dark Castle, trying to recover Tis Ris, but there was one of the Shittenno there waiting for them. Two elves join our party and we’re off to the cave. But on the way another fight with random monsters — there are new monsters (Gargoyles) here that can move far.

Several people levelled up to 5 and gained no stats no matter how many times I reloaded…that’s odd.

Macross: Eternal Love Song (マクロス　永遠のラブソング)
Release Date: 12/4/1992
System: PC Engine
Developer: Masaya Games
Publisher: Nihon Computer

1. Turn type: Player turn/enemy turn.
2. Maps: Small to medium. Terrain gives bonuses.
3. Character customization: For some characters, you can choose between two mechs at certain upgrade points, but the choice is permanent.
4. Character development: Standard XP/level system. At certain levels, the character’s mech upgrades, sometimes with a choice between units.
5. Party: You always get to use all your units in each map. In addition to a number of named characters, you get a decent number of nameless enemies that can level up and stay with you for the rest of the game.
6. Equipment: The game has no items or equipment.
7. Game flow: 29 stages, one after the other. A code can be used to repeat maps if necessary.
8. Saving: Any time.
9. Death: Not permanent

I believe this is the only Macross franchise game that will appear on this blog. Macross appears in a number of Super Robot Wars games, but this is the only SRPG for Macross alone. I’m afraid that Macross fans will not find a great deal to like in the story. The story elements are mostly borrowed from the original Macross series and Macross II, and the format of the game makes the characters underdeveloped. 

On the other hand, the story is pretty good for a 1992 RPG. Masaya used the same technique as in Lady Phantom (and that they’ll later repeat in the PCE remake of Langrisser) of using one short voiced cutscene before each stage. This is followed by a description of the situation and stage, and then some pre-battle dialogue. The crucial thing missing is dialogue between the missions, which would have fleshed out the characters more — but once again, few games have that in 1992. The use of the vocal song (Ai Oboeteimasu ka) near the end of the game is a nice touch. 

I wonder why the only characters from the original series to appear in the game are Britai and Exsedol. 

From a gameplay standpoint, they did a good job of integrating the 3 forms of the Valkyries into the game. The idea that the plane fighter form has the lowest evade rate doesn’t really make sense, but I found that all three forms were useful at different times. The level-based upgrades also add some interest and give you some new things to play with as the stages progress. The stages also have a huge number of NPCs, and they become part of the strategic calculations in each stage even if they die quickly. The decision to give you permanent grunt units is interesting as well; even though they are way behind your main characters in ability, they can actually accomplish a fair amount.

My main criticism about the gameplay is the lack of variety. This is to some extent dictated by the franchise, but it gets a little boring to fight the same Zentradi and Meltrandi units for 29 stages. Your player characters are also mostly the same. At least the win conditions and nature of the maps are distinct, so it’s not just “kill all enemies” in every stage.

Of course the visuals and audio are great; this is the period where the PC Engine could run circles around all the other consoles when it came to graphics and sound.

Overall I had fun with this game.

Next up is the last original Famicom game on my list — Just Breed, which has a recent fan translation.

Stage 21

The enemies are somewhat strong, but they’re weak enough that area-effect grenades tear them apart.

Stage 22

Nothing too tough here. There’s a wall of NPCs in front of you but just advancing slowly and taking out the units squad by squad is easy.

Stage 23

You can either beat all enemies or have Quamzin’s ship escape to the right. I just let him escape; it takes a while but then it’s not necessary to beat all the enemies.

Stage 24

I finally got Misty’s final unit in this stage, where she can send out two funnels. The funnels don’t do a lot of damage, but they are basically impossible to hit and their low HP attract enemy fire, so they’re incredibly useful. Getting Misty and Kiryuu to level 18 as quickly as possible makes this game much easier.

Stage 25

Kiryuu’s funnels came here. This is the first of a few inside maps; the Prometheus can’t move from the initial spot but it’s still not too tough. The funnels have such high move that even if the reinforcements surprise you, they can distract them enough that the ship won’t get taken out.

Stage 26

Quamzin’s new mech is the target; with most of the upgraded mechs this wasn’t that hard.

Stage 27

This stage is fairly challenging. You have 20 turns to survive, or beat the enemies. I started off by moving down and sending the funnels up. This distracted the enemies enough that I could clean up the bottom of the map and then move up and take out the rest. Brittai shows up but is no help.

Stage 28

I believe reinforcements are endless on this stage so all you can do is head to the right and get the Prometheus to the right side of the screen. 

Stage 29

For the last stage you only get Kiryuu and Misty, which would be bad if they’re not in their final forms. The funnels can distract the enemies long enough for you to beat Quamzin, which is the real goal. I got confused because after you beat Quamzin, he appears again in a weak grunt unit, and you have to kill that to finish the stage. I didn’t notice this and just headed up to where the supposed boss is, but there’s nothing you can do there. 

As I said in the last entry, this is probably the only time I will do a full stream playthrough — in the future I will stream one or two sessions and the blog the rest.

Stage 11

They keep increasing the number of grunt player units you have. They’re not great, but they can take some hits, draw enemy fire, and often have one or two shots of a decent weapon they can fire off. Using them well can make the stages a bit easier.

The Meltrandi in this stage are tough, but Misty comes in to help out after a while.

Stage 12

One interesting thing about this game is how few of the stages are just your guys vs. an enemy force. Most of the time there are NPC federation units, or a double enemy (Meltrandi and Zentradi, fighting each other and you).

Stage 13

This is another stage where we have to prevent the enemies from getting to the town. The enemies are somewhat strong, but overall the mission was OK.

Stage 14

This is more fighting against Lyle. It’s a short mission because all you have to do is get Kiryuu to the edge of the map. I killed some of the units but then just bailed out when things looked bad.

Stage 15

Now Misty has officially joined the team. She and Kiryuu have the best final upgrade mechs at level 18, but that won’t happen for a while. Incidentally, this game gets much easier when people get to their final upgrades (particularly Misty, Kiryuu, Guy, and Grey). A lot of people have Armored Valkyrie as a final upgrade choice but they’re not very good.

Stage 16

Another relatively easy stage, with both Zentradi and Meltrandi.

Stage 17

This is it for the Meltrandi, another three way fight with tons of NPC units. Not a hard stage because of everything going on.

Stage 18

The traitor Lyle is back to fight us again. Maria has joined, a daughter of Max and Milia. I think she may have been in the previous Macross 2036 game; there’s really no development of her character at all.

The video also contains a failure of stage 19.

Stage 19

This is the hardest stage so far (I’m up to 26 now). The problem is that there are a lot of tough units in the initial set, and then there are reinforcements with tough units as well. Getting Kiryuu or Misty to level 18 before this stage would help a lot. As it is, I stayed near the center of the map and fought the units as they got close. This let things go slowly enough that I was able to use all my PC grunts to absorb hits and do a little damage, and even though I lost some units, I did win in the end.

Stage 20 

Lyle has now joined the team. He’s the best unit after Kiryuu and Misty, and also gets a nice upgrade at level 18. Those three can usually be sent into the middle of the units and they’ll be OK.

9 more stages.

Macross: Eternal Love Song (マクロス　永遠のラブソング)
Release Date: 12/4/1992
System: PC Engine
Developer: Masaya Games
Publisher: Nihon Computer

Another game from Masaya. This one is developed by both Masaya and Big West. After Studio Nue did the original Macross, Big West followed it up with Macross II and a few games (including this one), before Nue returned to Macross production with Macross Plus. So this is a non-canonical game.

I have been streaming the stages for this game, so I’m going to link the videos and then just briefly summarize them — in the future I will probably only stream once for each game, to introduce it, and then just blog post the rest. But let me know what you think I should do.

 (The microphone audio starts off too low, but I fix it within the first 8 minutes or so).

Stage 1

After an opening scene that just summarizes the original Macross, we start with two main characters — Kiryuu and Letradi, who are test pilots for new Valkyries. Of course Zentradi attack and we have to take them on.

The Valkyries can change into three forms, just like in the show.

• The plane fighters, which have the best movement but crappy stats in everything else (even dodge, which is odd)
• The Gerwalks, which have medium stats and do not take movement penalty for terrain, and get terrain bonuses
• The Batroids, which have the best stats, and are affected by terrain for both movement and the stat bonus.

The game does a pretty good job of making the various forms useful. The fighter is definitely the least useful form, but it’s sometimes necessary when you have to move far. It can’t be relied on at all for combat, though.

The first stage is easy as long as you go to Batroid form and sit on the base.

Stage 2

Kiryuu and Letradi are now part of an actual squad, and they have to go after some Zentradi. They try the Minmay Attack (song) but it doesn’t work.

This is a tough stage! Our squad is very small, there aren’t many NPCs, and there are a fair number of enemies. I actually thought this was one of the hardest stages of the first 14. Beating the ship will finish the stage. I used the mothership a lot.

Stage 3

Qwamzin from the original Macross is back, on the enemy side, although he’s not the commander. They’re trying to use the Minmay Attack to take over the galaxy, and have developed a defense.

This stage is much easier than the last one. Meltrandi appear and help you out with some of the Zentradi.

This game takes from Langrisser the idea of changing classes on level up, although in this case it’s changing to different types of units. This makes a huge difference. 

Stage 4

One interesting aspect of this game is that you often have a lot of NPCs on the stage, and they aren’t completely useless. They often soften up or even kill some of the units before you get there. Not a hard stage.

Stage 5

In this stage there’s a time limit, but it’s extremely generous. I had no trouble beating it in the time given. We also meet the Meltrandi pilot Misty, who is occupying the role of Milia from the original Macross (she’s the one on the cover image).

Stage 6

Misty enters the battlefield for the first time here. She’s tough, and I had to restart once because I moved my guys forward too aggressively. I was not able to beat her — I had to rely on NPCs, unfortunately.

Stage 7

Vs. Meltrandi. Once again there are a lot of fairly useful NPCs, and we also start getting some grunt units that actually stay with the team and can level up. Misty goes into the human towns to spy, so we know what that means.

Stage 8

I actually got a game over in this stage because I took the Prometheus too far forward and got it killed by a bunch of enemies who all attacked it together.

This stage has a lot of useful NPCs but they can’t all die or it’s game over, so this is somewhat tricky — what makes it doable is that the goal is just to beat the enemy commander’s ship, which can be done before everyone dies even if you hang back at the beginning and let the enemies come to you.

After this stage I started getting the chooseable upgrades. Usually there’s one unit with a short range weapon and then missiles or grenades (so you have to go back to the ship a lot to resupply) and the other one with a beam weapon that lasts longer.

Stage 9

Misty and Kiryu have a date.

I was afraid this would be a hard mission because you lose if enemies enter the city, but it takes them a long time to get there and I don’t think it’s a big concern.

Stage 10 

This is not a hard stage because the NPCs are so effective. I actually restarted once to try to get XP from Misty for my own guys, but I couldn’t do it on the second try either.

So far the game’s not bad for 1992; it compares favorably with the Super Robot Wars games that were out around this time (at least SRW 2).