Record of Lodoss War (ロードス島戦記), released 12/22/1995, developed by Hummingbird Soft
This is yet another game based on Lodoss War; the Wikipedia article has background information on the series. But in short it started out as records of a D&D campaign and developed into a multimedia franchise. This is the fourth Lodoss War game I’ve played on this blog.
The game is divided into four chapters. The fourth chapter has the familiar Lodoss characters (Deedlit, Parn, etc) and seems to cover a story similar to the anime series and the first novels. The first three chapters are essentially prologues that cover some backstory of characters that appear in the final chapter — despite their prologue status they make up about 40% of the game.
The opening scene shows the Six Heroes battling the Demon King 30 years prior to the main storyline. They defeat him, but one hero dies and a mysterious helmeted woman helps them out.
Chapter 1 follows the mysterious woman, who turns out to be Karla, a 500 year old sorceress dedicated to preserving a neutral balance between factions of the world. She has a circlet with her consciousness in it, and if she is ever killed, her consciousness inhabits a nearby person.
She starts out with no memory but quickly gets back some memories and also levels up and gains spells as she possesses other people. The basic plot of her story is to hunt down one of the remaining minions of the Demon Lord who escaped the final battle.
The battles take place on a small grid. Each battle has a leader, and if you finish off the leader the rest of the enemies will flee (and you’ll get XP as if you beat them). You uncover the leader usually by hitting them, and then a crown will appear on their head. Also, if you can knock the leader into the pit at the back, you’ll see CHECK MATE and get double the XP for winning the fight. You can also flee by going off the bottom of the map. The system is OK but as usual the random encounter rate is pretty high. You also get a lot of XP for battles and level very quickly.
This is what the dungeons are like. At first I couldn’t figure out how the movement worked and I kept turning backwards and going ways I didn’t want to go — eventually I figured out that you are supposed to press diagonally to move, something I haven’t seen in any of these isometric view games before.
Chapter 2 is about Beld, who has a cursed sword and armor. His LP deplete every few steps and he can’t recover at Inns, but he regains all LP when the leader of a battle is beaten.
At first he’s trying to find someone to break the curse on his sword, but after that fails he decides to unify Marmo Island, by gaining the trust of the various factions on the island.
Chapter 3 concerns Fahn, another one of the Six Heroes. He uncovers a plot in Valis to take over the kingdom, but uncovers it and becomes the King of Valis himself. One of his underlings is Parn’s father.
After those prologues we reach Chapter 4. Beld has unified Mormo Island and is now attacking the mainland, with the help of Karla (who I guess feels this is necessary for neutrality). Fahn, now the King of Valis, is trying to oppose him. Parn is our main character here, the son of one of Fahn’s knights who was branded a traitor.
Goblins attack a girl in the woods. Parn fights them off with the help of Etoh (priest), but then the townspeople are mad that they’ve provoked the goblins who will now attack the town. This does happen at night, but they fight off the goblins with the help of Slayn the magician.
The trio go to a nearby cave to eliminate the goblins before they can attack anymore, but there are only a handful of goblins there. Heading back to the town they find that the goblins have attacked while they’re gone and hurt a lot of people, but the trio fights them off. Since Etoh’s healing power is not enough to heal everyone, the party decides to go find Neese, one of the Six Heroes, who should be able to help. They also learn about Karla and Beld’s attack on the mainland — Parn decides that after they help the villagers he’ll head to the capital to meet King Fahn.
That’s where I’ll stop here, hopefully I’ll have the game finished next weekend.