Card Master: Seal of Rimsalia (カードマスター リムサリアの封印), released 3/27/1992, developed and published by HAL

This is an early Super Famicom RPG that I skipped initially because it was released in English (as “Arcana”). I played this game as a kid; I assume that I rented it from a video store but I know I never finished it. It’s a first person “blobber” dungeon crawler game.

The main feature of this game that sets it apart from others is Rooks’ card and summoning. At the beginning of the game you only have Sylph (air spirit) but as you go on you will get the other three. These elemental spirits are virtually ineffective at attacking but they gain a number of spells as Rooks levels up. They recover 1 HP and MP every step in the dungeon, and once you get more than one, you can freely switch between them (in battle you can do this on Rooks turn as a free action). In the first dungeon, Sylph is not very useful, but once you get a second spirit and start learning more effective attack spells, they become much more important. The spirits recover their HP and MP even if they are not currently summoned, meaning you can switch between them effectively and use their spells even in regular random battles.

A big problem with a lot of these early games is that spellcasters have very limited MP and there is no way (or no cost-effective way) to restore their MP, meaning that the spellcasters are basically just dead weight healing potions, or can only really be used in boss battles. So it’s nice to see games break out of this pattern.

Aside from Rooks and the spirit, you get a number of other allies. But they join and leave as the story progresses, so you never quite know who you are going to have. You also get a game over if any of the human characters reach 0 hp. Defeated spirits can be restored in towns, or later Rooks will get a spell to bring them back.

The battle system is typical AMID, with some element of battle placing — I think the enemies or allies who are in the back row are harder to hit. In addition to the sprites and basic attacks, you can buy “cards” in the town that Rooks can use to do things like flee from battle or use elemental attacks. I never really used these much although I think some of the encounters would have gone more smoothly if I had.

There is fortunately an automap, although it is limited — it can only show you a certain area around your current location, and it does not mark anything except for stairs/exits.

The dungeons themselves are relatively featureless. Basically the only things to find in them are treasure chests and an occasional boss or story sequence.

The game takes place over 5 chapters. Each one has a town you start in, and then a dungeon or series of dungeons. Once you move on to the next chapter you can’t go back (not that there is any reason you would want to). One thing that I never was able to figure out: the Gamefaqs maps seem to imply that in the English version, when you return to town you do not always have to start from the beginning of the chapter’s dungeon. In the Japanese version you do, but I don’t know whether I am misinterpreting the walkthroughs or whether this was an actual change in the English version.

Overall I thought the game was relatively easy. There are some encounters in the later chapters that some with a lot of strong magicians using area attacks, but even there I never got a game over.

The story is serviceable but nothing too out of the ordinary. The goal is to stop an evil demon from being revived by a magician. There are some surprise betrayals and such, but you can pretty much expect a 1992-level story from the game.

So overall this game is decent; it’s a lot more playable than some other SFC games but it’s nothing special. There is a patch someone made (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4505/) that apparently improves the game, although I wasn’t able to find a full description of what the changes are.