SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed wrap-up

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

DATA 

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

IMPRESSIONS 

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

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Battle 25
Levels: Kurisu 19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up is the final battle!

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

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

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

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

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

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

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4 Barlizer spells in a turn is really powerful.

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

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

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

Next post will be the last one for this game. 

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 3.5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFC Game 35 – Illusion of Gaia

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 3 (temporary)

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed Part 2

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

Battle 5

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

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

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

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

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

Battle 6

Levels: Kurisu 8, Rolan 8, Orlof 9

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

Battle 7
Levels: Kurisu 8, Orlof 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

SRPG Game 14 – Just Breed (Famicom)

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

This is the last Famicom game on my list. It came out around the same time as Dragon Quest V and Final Fantasy V, so it didn’t get as much respect as it deserved at the time it came out. Apparently it was in development hell for a long time, but it ends up looking and sounding much better than most Famicom games. It’s one of the largest Famicom games (only Metal Slader Glory and Kirby’s Adventure equal it, among licensed games). It even uses some kanji in the text, which Super Famicom games were not doing at this point.

There is a fan translation so I won’t be as detailed in covering the plot as I have been on some other games that have no translations.

The backstory is basically that there were seven kingdoms associated with seven gemstones, but they were all destroyed at once for an unknown reason. There’s a prophecy that when the seven gemstones are reunited, the followers of righteousness (the “just breed”) can defeat the evil again. At the beginning of the game, the main character (a captain of a guard unit) has his girlfriend captured, who was the Priestess of Sapphire. He takes her tiara and then goes out to find her.

The character and monster designs were done by Takada Yuzo, best known for the manga 3×3 Eyes.

Like Shining Force, this game mixes RPG town exploration with outdoor battles. The graphics are similar to Dragon Quest.

Feris captured

When you leave the first town, the first battle begins. The game doesn’t really have numbered battles, but for convenience I’ll just number the fights I had.

Battle 1

 
This is an easy stage to begin with. The game works based on squads. You pick the leader (Kurisu in this case) and then can move and attack with all the units under the leader. I have two bowmen and two fighters who can use swords and spears. A nice feature is that XP is shared among the entire squad, so there’s no need to distribute kills.

The battles end when you either clear out all the enemies (getting a victory screen), in which case you can explore the map freely.

Otherwise, the battle ends when someone moves into a town or house. Even if you “complete” a battle, the monsters will respawn if you leave the town or house. There are items and spells that can warp you to locations, though.

After the first battle, Kurisu’s squad gains a magician. Kurisu himself can cast some spells — just heal at the beginning, but that’s a big help.

Battle 2

The frogs on this map can spit to hit us at a distance. This stage also introduces monster lairs (the circle at the bottom left). They generate monsters throughout the battle. If you can get a person next to the lair they can destroy the lair, but no one can go across the river here. Killing all the enemies also ends the battle and stops the generation.

Battle 3

 
This is the first battle that actually presents a challenge. In addition to the frogs, there are snails that tank, crab-like things that cast spells, and more inaccessible monster lairs. The new magician’s spells help a lot, as does buying a bunch of Herbs for healing.

Battle 4

More new enemies — Skeletons. They also have large HPs. I also got a new cleric who is her own squad, but later she is joined by Rolan and his troops to make my second real squad! This is sort of a two-part battle since first you head to the top right to get Karen (the cleric) and then leave and go down to the bottom right to the next town.

This is a pretty good game so far; we’ll see if it maintains its quality throughout the game.

SFC Game 34 – Aretha wrap-up

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Rather than category review posts, I’m going to make “wrap-up” posts like I’m doing on my other blog where I just write whatever I feel like about the game.

I’m also thinking possibly about a three tiered ranking system that’s just based on my subjective experience playing the game. I have resisted numerical rankings or objective systems, but perhaps this can express my general feelings towards each game. It would go like this:

A – These games were truly enjoyable, I had fun playing them just as games, not for the blog.

B – These games were average. I found them boring at times, and it was mostly the fulfillment of completing the game for the blog that carried me through. My overall experience with the game wasn’t terrible, it’s just not a game I would have finished all the way through for fun.

C – These games were painful to finish, to the point where I wanted to give up despite the blog, and had to force myself to play through (sometimes using cheats) just to move on to the next game.

I think the B rank could also be given plus and minus:

B+  These games are almost in the A rank, but have one or two bad gameplay decisions that knock them down. A good example would be Jungle Wars 2, which would have been A if not for the insane random encounter rate (even by early 1990s standards) in the second part of the game.

B-  These games are almost in the C rank, but are saved only by virtue of being easy and short. A good example of this is Villgust.

This is how I would rank the games I have played so far:

[A]  Dragon Quest V, Breath of Fire, Sword World SFC

[B+] Glory of Heracles III, Jungle Wars 2

[B] GD Leen, Benkei Gaiden, Elfaria, Xak, Metal Max 2, Danzarb, Odysselya, Silva Saga II, MADARA 2, Ranma 1/2, Super Chinese World 2, Seiken Densetsu 2

[B-] Maka Maka, Villgust, 3×3 Eyes*, SD Gundam Gaiden 2, Albert Odyssey

[C] Light Fantasy, Hokuto no Ken 5, Cyber Knight, Hero Senki, Song Master, Dual Orb, Bazoe!

*3×3 Eyes is a special case because the game has a ridiculous glitch at the end of the game that makes it nearly impossible to finish without exploiting another glitch or cheating. My rank of B- is assuming you use a cheat or glitch to get around the problem. If you’re playing this on real hardware it’s a C.

Romancing SaGa is hard to place. I was not able to finish the game and because of that I’m tempted to give it a C, but I don’t feel like the game is as bad as the other games I have in that rank.

There have been distressingly few games in the A rank so far, but as I keep saying, I have high hopes as we continue forward.

Now, on to Aretha, which I think gets a solid B rank.

The story is OK. It’s nothing amazing, but for 1993 it has more dialogue and a bit more character development than the average game, despite the short ending. Aretha 2 is a direct sequel, so it will be interesting to see whether it does any better.

The gameplay is also OK. As I said in the first post, I am always appreciative of any combat system where the magic users can actually use their magic. A big problem with games of this era is that MP is so limited, and MP recovery items so hard (or impossible) to get, that magic users tend to be reduced to one role — healing and buffing in boss battles. This game has cheap MP restoration items and high MP. The fighters are less useful but later in the game you get swords that hit multiple enemies at once, which helps.

By far the biggest problem is the baffling decision not to display damage numbers. I’m not sure what the designers were trying to do with this, but it’s incredibly frustrating to not know if your attacks are doing 5 or 500 damage. Are Ariel and Doll’s regular attacks effective? Even after beating the game I have no idea. How much better is Force B than Force A? Who knows. Is Force A doing more damage than Ariel’s damage spell? Anyone’s guess. Fortunately I think the designers realized their mistake, because in Aretha 2 the damage number is displayed.

The use of enemies on different sides is not especially meaningful. Enemies don’t do any more damage from the back or sides, so it’s just about group spells only hitting enemies in front of you.

The dungeons are not especially interesting, and there are a lot of one-path dungeons.

Finally, the item crafting system is poorly implemented. The idea of putting different elemental “souls” into the items and mixing them sounds good, but it’s impossible to predict what you’re going to get, and there’s no relation between the number of souls you put in and the item you get. 3 Fire souls may get you a better weapon than 90 fire souls. It’s also possible to get ridiculously powerful equipment early on in the game.

So overall this is yet another game that’s average for 1993, but doesn’t really rise above the pack in any meaningful way.

Now I am excited for the games that are coming up. Soul & Sword and Romancing SaGa 2 have unusual gameplay, Dokapon IV is a completely different type of game (board game RPG), and Illusion of Gaia is fun. So maybe you’ll see more positivity from me in the coming weeks?

In any case, Just Breed for the Famicom is next on my other blog, an Enix strategy RPG that’s actually quite good.

SFC Game 34 – Aretha Part 2 (Finished)

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I’m noticing a common structure for RPG stories of this era — I wonder what was the first game to use it? The game starts with the main character traveling to a bunch of places. Usually the main goal or antagonist is not clear, or the main character at least doesn’t know what it is. After this, there’s a longer middle section where you have to do a group of fetch quests — find the 6 orbs, defeat the 4 spirits, whatever. Then there’s a final section, sometimes with surprise twists or a coda.

Aretha seems to be following this pattern as well. First, Ariel was looking for information on her ring. Now we’re after the Elemental Dragon, which will lead to the next phase of the game. First up, we get captured by a giant, but freed by some sort of beast-man.

The giant does big damage, but spells and some buff items were enough to beat him.

The party now comes to a desert, and we find that we need an Amber Lens held by some ants to see the way to the fairy kingdom, where the Elemental Dragon is. The ants are split into red and blue factions, and we get in between their war.

Fortunately the ants aren’t very smart so after the red ant queen tries to use us to destroy the Blue ant queen, we turn the tables on her and get the amber lens, opening the way to the fairy kingdom. A few more dungeons lead to the treetop village.

Here Ariel meets the little gnome she saved as a child, who gave her the egg that hatched into Fang. He says some unknown person told him to give the egg to her, so it must mean something. This is where we also find the Elemental Dragon, although he is currently in the form of an elf. He is missing four sources of his power, which we have to collect to restore him to full form. 

  • The first is in the rainbow town, a strange place inhabited by Zoppies.

  • The second is in an ice area to the north.
  • The third is out in the sea — Doll rejoins the party, and we get eaten by a Leviathan but that’s where the spirit source turns out to be as well.
  • The last is in the Dwarf fire area, in a fire tower.

 I’m skipping over a fair amount of gameplay there, but once we get all the spirit fragments, it’s time to restore the Elemental Dragon — except that someone named Zyhalt from the Vandal Empire arrives, along with a woman named Layla who looks just like Ariel.


Once we fight off Zyhalt, the Elemental Dragon reveals that Ariel is actually the descendant of the royal family of Aretha, and thus the Aretha Princess (surprise surprise). A curse split her in two, and Layla is her other half (although why is she with Vandal?) Fang stays with the Dragon to grow into his final form while we head out to find the other Aretha rings. This requires heading to Vandal and beating some of the heads of the Empire. This also gives the first taste of these enemies:

These soldiers and their palette swaps show up again and again in the final parts of the game, and they are incredibly annoying. Only magic works against them, and since the game doesn’t show damage numbers it’s hard to know how much the magic is even doing. Doll’s Force seems to be the best way to beat them, but even then it takes forever to win one of these fights and you get almost no XP for them.

Anyway, Ariel begins to free parts of the world under the control of the Vandal empire by beating the leaders, like this one:

Next up, save Queen Anastasia from a castle with a bunch of those knight fights that I mentioned before. Arrgh. The only good thing was that Doll learned Force B which cleared the enemies out a lot more quickly, but still very annoying. Zafan then returns, mind controlling Doll again, and going to a sky castle. Fang reappears in full form though, and now we can fly! The first thing you should do is go to a small island with a forest, where you fight a blue dragon and then get the Trinea item. This fully restores MP and HP. It can’t be used in battle, but as far as I can tell it has unlimited uses outside of battle.

Layla also gives up on Vandal and joins us; she’s a very powerful attacker.

Zafan was actually somewhat challenging — I lost the first time. Doll has good buff spells at this point — defense and attack up spells that work on everyone. Basically what I had to do was use those buffs, heal with Ariel, and then fight with Layla and Fang. Zafan’s attacks hit everyone for a lot of damage, so after that it was heal heal fight fight until the end.

Now Ariel’s grandmother returns, having been captured by Zafan. And all that’s left is to go to the capital of the Empire and take down the Emperor himself. First, Duke Barbatos is waiting, but he goes down easily. Although the castle has a bunch more of those really annoying knight fights.

 Afterwards, Doll completely recovers his memory and remembers defeating the evil Gatansoa (apparently in one of the GB Aretha games). It’s then time to enter a dimensional portal to the Dimension Castle, a one-path dungeon with some good equipment and the final battle. The Emperor goes through the usual JRPG thing where he tries to summon and control Gatansoa but gets taken over and killed instead.

He’s a tricky boss. He can use an ability that causes Fear in everyone (cannot act). He has another move that I think removes buffs, although it’s hard to tell. His other attacks damage everyone. I did the same thing as in the Zafan fight — Fang and Layla fight, Doll and Ariel heal. I had enough MP restoring items to do the fight, and I never got attacked multiple times while everyone was Fear.

Once the Emperor is defeated, you get a text-less ending sequence where Ariel and Layla merge back to a single body. I guess to find out what else happened we have to play Aretha 2 in a couple of years.

I’ll post a wrap-up in a bit — this is not all that great of a game but certainly not the worst I’ve played.