Ecsaform (エクサフォーム), released 1/28/1999, developed by Bandai Visual

Ecsaform is our first game up for 1999, and it recently got a fan translation so you can try it yourself. It’s a pretty underwhelming game, though: an interesting world and setting, and a potentially good system. However, a lot of it is undeveloped and it bears the hallmarks of a game that ran out of development time. One aspect that most reviews comment on is the second disc, which is entirely devoted to a huge database of characters, terms, plot elements, etc along with concept art and sketches. While this may seem like a neat addition, the fact that the main game can be completed in 15 hours makes it seem odd that they spent so much time on that accessory disc. Although I have no proof of this, it seems possible to me that the accessory disc resulted from the designers realizing that they were not going to have enough development time to put all the detail they wanted to in the game.

The graphics are only slightly better than Super Famicom level and there is no voicing. There are a few FMVs, which is really the only place that the game really uses the PS1’s power.

The game consists of 53 battles, with no alternate routes or free battles. Between the battles, you often can walk around the areas, but this really serves no purpose. All the dungeons are just one-path routes with nothing to find aside from the next combat and an occasional “lost” merchant who will sell you stuff. You can explore the towns and talk to some people, but they are needlessly large given that there is basically nothing to do other than shop or talk to a small number of people who don’t add much to the game.

The basic stats are typical for RPGs. There are three equip slots. The first is a weapon. You equip the weapon and then (press down on the control pad) assign the “ridou” (spells). Not everyone can use spells, and the number each character can equip varies. The TP are used both for the spells and for weapon skill moves.

The armor allows you to equip items that boost your base stats (from +1 to +5, there are also ones that raise multiple stats). Finally, you can equip 4-5 consumable items for each character.

Character’s turns are determined by “wait points”. On your turn, you can use your AP to do actions. You can use as much of your AP as you want, but excess AP at the end of the turn are coverted to EP (5 AP = full EP, 4 AP = 80% EP, etc). EP act as a kind of shield; with the exception of a few magical attacks, attacks will first deplete a character’s EP and then their HP. Overall I think this was a pretty good system; it was never as simple as “always leave at least 5 AP so you can have full EP”. Often you do have to calculate whether it’s worth doing an extra attack or move at the cost of not having as much of an EP shield for the next round.

One mystery to me is the “wait” command. If you “end turn”, your remaining AP are converted to EP as above. But if you choose “wait”, you don’t get any EP. There must be some purpose to the “wait” command but without the instruction manual I wasn’t able to tell what that might be. Possibly your turn comes sooner?

Susely is the main magic user; I generally had her use the damage dealing spells and give the stat up spells to other people. All spells work on both enemies and allies, so you often have to carefully target them to make sure you’re not damaging your own guys. At some point you get a spell that stops the enemy’s movement and actions — not only that, but it lowers their EP to 0. This is by far the best spell in the game and it even works on all the bosses (including the final boss). In the last third or so of the game this is basically all I had Susely use.

The characters are mostly distinguished by their type of attack, and the number of AP they have. One character uses ranged weapons, another is a big dude with a bigger range attack, and another can control insects (more on that when we get to the plot).

The map design is not especially good. Way too many of the battles are just “here’s another set of grunts to beat”, which is unacceptable in a game that’s already as short as it is. It makes it seem like they realized they were not going to be able to fit as much overall content in the game as they wanted to, and so they just added 2-4 grunt fight battles to each sequence to add some length.

There is height but no facing. One thing you can see from the image above is that there’s a one-square halo around each character that you can’t stop on, and one movement point is 1/2 the size of a character.

The extra disc divides the story in to four “acts” although Act 1-4 doesn’t actually appear in the game itself.

Act 1 begins with Susely, who is the product of some sort of experimentation to make someone who can handle Ridou (the magic) better; she’s survived to 14 years old which makes her exceptional, but the scientist(?) Due no longer has a use for her and she’s set to be disposed of. Meanwhile, Due is trying to activate a “Harm Constructed Being” for the completion of some kind of plan.

With the help of some sort of spy-like figure named Haburo, Susely and the Harm Being (who Susely names Beed) escape the lab and make it to a city called Vorel.

Act 2 finds them in Vorel, where they join a mercenary group along with Palam (the person in the screenshot above). The next portion of the game involves doing various jobs for the local guild — none of them seem to be advancing any kind of overall story, but a number of them have to do with “Insect Masters” who are able to command “insects”, beings who are left over from a previous age and come out of ruins.

Eventually we learn that these Insect Masters actually have an insect as a kind of parasite inside them, which is why they can control the insects — but removing it results in their death. It seems that Insect Masters are being captured for some purpose we don’t know.

Acts 3 and 4 involve the party leaving Vorel and investigating the ruins, where eventually the insect master storyline is connected to Due’s experimentation and his plans, along with the past civilization that caused a great cataclysm. I usually don’t reveal the entire plot when there’s a translated version of the game you can play. Ultimately the story is OK, as I said before, it really seems like they didn’t have the time to flesh out the story in the way they wanted to — it’s not a bad story, but it could have been a lot better.

“It could have been a lot better” I think is probably a good tagline for the game as a whole.

I’m going to try doing a numerical score of the game in a subsequent post later this week.