Saiyuki (西遊記), released 11/11/1999, developed and published by Koei

This game is something of a spiritual successor to Houshin Engi which I played last year. They both are based on classic Chinese novels but essentially tell a new story. Saiyuki (Journey to the West) is one of the most famous novels in the Chinese tradition and is well known in Japan; its influence extends to tons of media, including Dragon Ball. As you can see from the image above, this was actually released in English.

The basic story of the novel (which I actually read in English translation last year), is that the monk Xuanzang takes a long trip from China to India to bring back Buddhist scriptures. He is accompanied by several supernatural companions, most notably Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. The novel is basically a series of episodes: usually it starts with Xuanzang being captured by demons, and then the other companions have to rescue him and defeat the demons.

Rather than follow this episodic structure, the Koei game essentially rewrites the entire storyline. You start by picking a male or female Xuanzang. She then receives the mission to go to India by Guanyin (same as the novel), but the purpose of her going is unclear. She gathers many of the same companions as in the novel, but there are some additional ones (I think they may come from the novel as well, they just aren’t primary companions).

Xuanzong’s mission is to pick up these divine spirits along the way and put them in her staff, and then bring them to the Thunder Temple (which is where Xuanzang gets the scriptures in the original book). Along the way, they are opposed by Demon Spirits which want to get the staff for their own purposes. Their motives are also unclear at first but eventually the antagonist is revealed, and the usual world-destroying plans.

The storyline is serviceable but nothing exceptional. The characters get some development, but mostly the main characters rather than some of the optional characters you can get.

The game is divided into 4 chapters. Once you move on to a new chapter you can’t go back to the previous areas.

While you are in a chapter, you can move around to the various towns and places. You won’t find any random battles unless you take a job in the pub which has you delivering objects to various places for money. If you do that, there is a chance you might get attacked by monsters or bandits. You can also fight in dojo in each town.

So there are opportunities to raise levels and money, except in the final chapter. Once you move to chapter 4 you can no longer access any shops or grinding opportunities, which is frustrating.

The battles are speed based (although each person gets one turn before another one gets two). Height and facing count, and there is elemental compatibility as well. One really nice feature is that when you choose an attack, it will show the expected damage that every unit on the board will take from that move. However, that expected damage does not include any modifiers from elemental/height/etc so there is some uncertainty.

If Sanzou (Xuanzeng) goes to 0 hp you get a game over. For the most part this isn’t a huge deal since there’s a lot she can do without engaging the enemies. Her main power is to summon the spirits you gain during the game, which stay for 3 turns. They affect the stats of everyone (or restore HP, etc) and they also give Sanzou herself a 0 mp attack move she can use. The other characters are simply removed from the battle if they reach 0, and will return afterwards.

With the exception of Sanzou, every character can also turn into a huge beast form. They get a lot more HP and can use some very powerful attacks, but once they use up a certain number of points of attack they go back to regular form. You get more total points by levelling up a general “beast level” after each battle.

Each character has the usual armor slots. Their weapons are fixed and can only be upgraded by paying money at blacksmith shops in the town. Additionally there are 8 slots for magic spells and accessories. The spells depend on the elemental levels of each character, which increase with level ups as well as from using the same spell over and over. I’m not sure whether the elemental levels affect the damage or general use of the spells themselves.

Visually the game is fine. The character portraits are large and detailed, and the map sprites are fine. The 3D maps can be rotated and the angle changed. Every so often it becomes a bit difficult to see where characters are but most of the time it’s OK.

The difficulty of the game for the most part is relatively low. I did have to grind some at the end of chapter 2 — there’s a 3 part battle at the end and my levels were a bit too low to deal with it.

Chapter 4 (the last one) is annoying because there is no shop, so if you enter there and it turns out you are low on equipment/items or your levels or too low, you just have to restart a save from chapter 3. Because of this I did a fair amount of grinding before I went in. I thought I was fine because it turned out the battles in chapter 4 were relatively easy — particularly once I learned how good the Stone magic is (it’s basically instant death).

The final battle is a different story though.

Various reviews of the game call it “ridiculous” and “unfair” and I can’t disagree with that. You have the central head and 6 surrounding arms. All of them can use AoE spells. The first problem is that it becomes very difficult to keep Sanzou alive because there’s nowhere safe to go. In general it’s hard to keep pace with the damage the boss does. I tried a bunch of times, both ignoring the arms and going solely for the head, and also trying to take out the arms first. I could not beat it, and so this is yet another SRPG that I stopped playing at the final boss.

From looking at some walkthroughs and videos, I missed an optional spirit that is powerful and also some good hidden equipment. My levels didn’t seem that much lower than some of the others but I’m not entirely sure what the issue was. It’s possible that if I just kept trying I could beat it — you can make saves at any point in a battle so I guess you can just constantly save until everything goes right. But I decided to just move on instead.

Other than that final battle this is a decent game but make sure you have the best equipment possible for your 6 primary guys and enough items before you go into chapter 4.

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Next up is Growlanser, but I won’t be playing that until after new year’s. I am going to queue up some Famicom game posts for December and I will most likely play Dragon Quest IX over the christmas holiday.