Huh, has it only been a week? I didn't expect to get through this game so fast, and even less likely to get through a strategy RPG that fast when the battles usually last an hour or more. Regardless, I managed a speedy finish of this game. This is of course owing to this global pandemic everyone knows by now allowing me a boatload of free time to mess around.
So Bahamut Lagoon. It amazingly does some cliche things well before the more famous ones did, despite this game never being outside of Japan. Sky islands? Yep, Skies of Arcadia got beat to it. Same with gay characters, porno magazine items, helpful dragons that are more than summons, something something Harvest Moon, hell Matelite is the original Adelbert Steiner. And his crush on Princess Yoyo is quite crazy come to think of it. Not to mention the love quadrangle between Byuu, Palpaleos, Matelite, and Yoyo, the lone woman here picking Palpaleos, her former captor.
The gameplay twists the Shining Force rhetoric quite a bit to make it worthwhile, the AI of the dragons also helps with battles often if you use it wisely, the main drawbacks I can think of is how much the field skills get used against Byuu alone, and like any other RPG with a main character it's game over if his unit falls. The linearity is compounded by "side quests" which are just places to level up in all honesty, the status spells have varying levels of workability, the regular spells and such get powered up if the dragons are. Basically the dragons are the maker and breaker here, without them this game would be cruel, but there's still some challenge. And of course, the terrain is something to watch out for.
There's just a lot to this game that makes it worth it. It's a certified Top 20 game for me. I'd say Square hit another one out of the ballpark but not out of Japan with this one. This along with Treasure of the Rudras and Live-A-Live were some of the finest to have never seen international release, no wonder they are all recommended in cult followings.
No comments:
Post a Comment