A look back at: The Magic of Scheherazade

So it's been only three days since I last made a post and already I finished a game. Technically, two days were spent on The Magic of Scheherazade; this game is an NES game that has a password system (no saving) and Legend of Zelda-style movement. And yet aside from action RPG combat, they also went ahead and gave us Dragon Quest-style turn-based stuff too. Along with jobs that impact stats like Final Fantasy 3, time travel like Chrono Trigger and many others, a weird solar eclipse that comes by which reminded me of Castlevania 2's day/night system, different tools and magic to use like many other action RPGs. All of this, Culture Brain, somehow you managed to do all of these before the more famous ones did, and yet you get barely even a mention even among other RPG gurus!

So yeah, The Magic of Scheherazade is a game I recommend everyone to look at at least once. It's got that "little of everything" spice to it which means it doesn't actually hit a stride anywhere, but it provides consistent enjoyment. At least, when it's enjoyable. Money isn't a problem usually. Experience is usually not a problem. Filling up HP and MP with the items is unorthodox and took me a while to figure out. Some enemies just spawn in annoying places. Some spells are overpowering like the "change forms" spell, both me and some of the opposing bosses can utilize this and it reminded me of Duke Nukem 3D's shrink ray in that it renders the target helpless and easily killable. For the bosses that had this change form spell, I really just had to spam magic at them, and for the record, the Magician class is the most recommended class, but others are necessary for certain plot-related things.

The two things I personally didn't like are the lack of a save system (obviously) and the turn-based battles. While it seemed innovative at the time to incorporate random turn-based battles upon screen transitions and such, it lends itself to a number of problems. First, fighting alone is totally not recommended, you die much easier that way. Second the magic your main character has isn't enough compared to what they can use on the field, your allies can use some of this though which doesn't make sense. Oh yeah, the allies? What the heck are their stats supposed to increase, when I increase? I guess that makes some sense. Often times I had to rely on them, some interesting formation attacks, or the recruitable troopers to get by some of these surprisingly tough turn-based battles. And then I said screw it. I would escape these things. Because ultimately the biggest issue with turn-based battles is that they are a total pace-killer. You gain experience much faster and easier in the action RPG battles, and while I appreciate using strategy in turn-based battles, it's also how these battles are shown up, enemies already in a formation where they TOO can use a group attack to soften up or straight up instakill in the case of the Mondiburn spell, and the recipes for frustration are more than enough for me to just escape or use loads of troopers to get through them.

Still, the fact I beat the game in two days shows just how dedicated I am to the fabric of this kind of stuff. And this really is the last game for my summer break, the rest will be much slower to come by.

A look back at: Brain Lord

Hey look, Google finally fixed image uploads, yeah. I still hate them for that. Anyways, this game didn't take me a week to beat. However, it's been somewhat of a while since I last made a lookback, so let's blame ALTTP Randomizer. I was having just too much fun with that game so much that I played other stuff simultaneously with it, including some Doom stuff as well as eventually this game, which I got to once I was finished documenting some more map secrets.

So yeah, this didn't last long, which I am quite thankful for as I wasn't really feeling like playing a long game at the moment, but they really didn't call it Brain Lord for nothing. You will have puzzles, the game has special rooms that require a ton of knowledge on how to push certain objects to fit for certain switches, or do other stuff outside the box. Other than that, the game's combat is super wonky, enemies are actually not too concerning considering how dumb their AI is, and how you have multiple tools at your disposal. I mean, the sword range is great, the ranged weapons have infinite ammo, the magic spells are just a charge without any MP consumption, and the morning stars were fun to use. Plus, the jades helped out in battles a lot, though ultimately I didn't rely on them, which mind you is a GREAT THING. You don't really need them, but they make things easier for combat. You can grind them to good levels so they are of more help, but again, not really necessary. I appreciate it when helpful game mechanics aren't required, after all.

Overall though, the difficulty is all about the puzzle-solving, as well as figuring out where you need to go. Five dungeons, and yet they are all memorable. The Tower of Light sets the stage, it's huge to go through but has basic puzzles. The ancient civilization and its tech spice things up a lot, as it's even bigger and has more things to it like dark rooms and floating platforms. The ice palace, well I don't need to go into detail with those ice floors, but I will say the game trolls you with poisonous springs and even poison signs. The Droog volcano is my least favorite owing entirely to those rock mazes that shift and really don't have a good pattern to how they work at all. And the Platinum Shrine is appropriate for a final dungeon, backtracking to make things longer, crazy statues that attack, but those damn dark rooms (which the light jade can't even illuminate) end up being the biggest trial and error show with where the walls are. I won't forget these.

A look back at: Lagoon

 

Lagoon for the SNES, mind you. Not related to Bahamut Lagoon, considering it's made by Kemco, who I'm really not familiar with much of their work at all. But it is a port for the original game that was on a long-forgotten console of sorts, excuse me, computer.

And if you like Ys. If you like Soul Blazer, well, this one could be up your alley, but it just does not seem to hit the right stride. No contact damage from your end, you do swing a sword, but damn if that isn't the smallest sword range ever. It's extremely small, you'll only know if you hit if you hear a *DING* and even then you might also get the white flash indicating damage alongside the enemy. Sometimes the enemy just gets pushed back instead. If it weren't for regenerating health and magic when standing still, no matter how slow it would be, then I wouldn't be liking this game at all. The music is a true standout, the plot is cookie-cutter in a number of ways, but gameplay matters more than most.

Speaking of magic, once I got a hole of it, it ends up becoming more of a primary means of attack. It's great until you run into the enemies who are immune to magic, where you then are forced to use the super-short-ranged sword again. You at least get several staves and crystals to experiment with magic, and I found myself using the basic staff for single-target magic the most. The higher level magic uses up a lot for screen-clearing magic but it is totally useless for me. I did level grind a lot, and this factors into strength and defense and made my sword overpowered, so the game ended up being easy, at least until the boss rush at the very end of the game. Yeah, there's one of those, you have four bosses at the end, two of which have alternate forms so essentially that means six. And oddly enough bum-rushing some of the bosses at a high level actually does work, though not with all of them.

Well, at least I finished it in a week, or actually about four days to be honest. I took two days off because I was sick. Anyways, summer break is on me so the next game will hopefully get through soon enough.

A look back at: Moon: Remix RPG Adventure

Thank you Toby Fox.

Okay, he's not the guy who made this, but whatever, a lot of his inspirations for Undertale basically came from this Japan-only release. He saw the stuff about this, an unnamed boy falling into a strange new world (though this one is the video game he was playing), the coming into contact with the strange and idiosyncratic  characters, and saving the monsters, the strange and cliche damage numbers during the beginning and ending. It seems like Undertale took it all and then some. Of course, other games Toby has experienced also helped in his craftsmanship, namely one song from Live-A-Live is the inspiration behind Megalovania.

So this is ultimately a pacifist RPG. You don't kill anything as the invisible boy at all. The hero does, and you get to experience the hero at first, but then you as the bystander boy end up catching their souls, sending them to the Moon for safety, and all sorts of things. The game essentially parodies all the conventions that fantasy RPGs have. Hero on a quest by a king and minister? Yeah, that's here, and the minister deemed him a "chosen one" and looks eerie enough to have sinister intentions. A "rabid dog" that attacks the hero? Turns out it's your Gramby's dog. And thankfully doesn't die from this. Legendary armor? It's hilariously some girl's bikini that the hero steals for some reason. The Perogon monster? An actual American family's pet which you don a suit and SET YOURSELF ON FIRE to trick the hero and save. The airship? A rocket you actually craft with the weird doctor Stein Hager. There's a weird oracle, a weird fisherman, weird Kukunte tribes, everything is weird but still manages to be interesting. Oh and the Penultimizer opponent that the hero fights near the end is really just all the monsters who die to protect the queen Aphrodite, who's you're guide fused with a dragon.

Weird, but can be frustrating early on. It's really bad that I've been working my ass off so much that I have only time on weekends and late nights to pick up this game again, luckily with summer on the horizon I'm looking at a decent enough break period to play more RPGs. But the frustration comes with not being able to do much action early on due to your action limit being small. The game actually gets easier the more you play it, you get more maximum action limits to avoid dying of fatigue or so, and doing things right also increases the love level. That's right, a game about making lots of love so you don't die. That's what this game is!

A look back at: Spectrobes

 

Ah, Spectrobes. I have no idea how the heck I got you for a Christmas present, moreso the fact I got your so-called Collector's Edition. But who am I kidding, you were an interesting Pokemon clone. Or more accurately, Phantasy Star meets Pokemon. Revisiting you was a hidden gem in a number of ways.

But I gotta say, no one really talks about the original Spectrobes anymore. Any time I search anything Spectrobes-related it's always about Beyond the Portals or Origins. There were even commercials for both airing on TV. But NEVER for the first game. That's honestly a bit sad. I think that every first game in a franchise basically sets the bars for the better sequels, and are usually the ones to look at for the roots of what made those sequels good. It's why I like certain first games better in certain RPG franchises like Suikoden or Lunar.

There was a lot to get used to when I played this the first time. Battles were surprisingly complicated, using L and R buttons for Spectrobe attacks, while trying to keep Rallen safe. It's funny that the glove weapon, which almost always does 1 damage, is actually better to use than the sword or blaster, but only because it knocks Krawl away from the weak Rallen. Blaster and sword don't even do much damage in general, you pretty much must rely on your own Spectrobes to get through the battles. Having only one slot for a healing item was another thing I remember, giving more challenge to the game. You don't switch out Spectrobes like Pokemon in-battle either, since these happen in real time and you really just wanna finish up battling these Krawl before they kill you, basically.

Perhaps a big weakness in Spectrobes is its plot, as all you do plot-wise is to stop the Krawl invasion on your home star system and visit planets to help them out. A HUGE chunk of the game was spent on excavating and incubation, and I gotta admit, it does get addicting to doing that stuff. While battling is great for experience, incubating Spectrobes is the way to go more or less. It's also funny how the card input system in this game breaks it too. Thanks, collector's edition, although I at least tried to play it without too much game breaking. I didn't even bother collecting the geos for Ultimate Spectrobes, excepting that one you get in the story of course. It remains one of the more interesting games in my library to this day.

What to look forward to in 2020

Here it is folks, the very last post I'll ever make for 2019. I've been going off and on about JRPGs and quite frankly, is that all I ever wanted to do with this blog now? I've been in the Doom community since 2013 and I've played so many custom maps for the game, why not talk about them more in depth? I've created a few maps, analyzed just what each map I played has, and I've rewritten several reviews to make them concise and trustable to many who wish to play just about anything I've already played. So for crying out loud why don't I make this blog feature some Doom in it!

Now before anyone says it, no I'm not giving up my RPG musings either. That was the primary focus of the blog and I'm keeping it that way. All my Doom stuff will be kept solely in the Doom WAD Musings label, so if you want to look at how I look at them, that's the label to look at. Elsewhere will be what I've written elsewhere.

Another notable change is the removal of the RPG Cliches tag. While I love pissing on the cliches and all, it's gonna be relegated to just RPGs in general instead of its own tag. Plus I will reword all the items that were currently under that tag. The rest of the tags will remain (the Miscellaneous tag for the record covers posts like this as well as RPGs that aren't developed by any big name companies or what not). Also I will be adding pictures to almost all of my lookbacks and a few other things too.

So here's to 2020. And wow, this is my 200th blog post (although I had to delete some outdated stuff too.

A look back at: Secret of the Stars

Haha, no.

The first time I played this, I played it for an hour, then I read some reviews and decided nah, it's just not worth playing. Fast-forward five or so years later and I just decided to return to it, because despite bad reviews, some people were willing to give it the benefit of a doubt. I decided to be that way as well, but then I still was disappointed in the end. Very standard RPG with double the grinding because you have to maintain two separate parties, slow overall navigations, a random encounter rate that just cannot ultimately decide just when to give you an encounter, and a plot that is just basic, and blows a few chunks just to make it seem worse.

There are some things I credit, like Decatas which is a well done town, plus a few other gimmick places like Sleepers full of sleeping idiots, Box Town which has a boxing place, and Amaboss the female-only place where you have to sneak in with bunny girl outfits. Decatas in particular is segmented into four distinct parts, separating rich and poor, and it's cool. Old Hill, the town you create, is also nice as it grows, gets destroyed, and grows again. The theater is of no use, but the other places are better. Once I figured out combination magic, I couldn't hesitate to try it out, and it made random encounters more fun.

Too bad the game's encounters are already monotonous. I mentioned earlier that there are two separate parties, and they get used to get through some places cooperatively, although those dungeons are quite sparse. Specifically a few early-game dungeons where the Kustera simply find items while the Aqutallions pursue the main plot, and one point where only the Kustera can access a place to get "iums". There's the final stretch of dungeons, to get through four mazes, with frequent switching of parties to open specific doors and go through party-specific places until you get to each of the four bosses, sadly this is annoying thanks to the encounter rate. Then you get to the big bad through a long and annoying spiral slog, get into an unwinnable fight, leave for a plot item and come back through that same spiral, god just end the game already!

But perhaps I can tolerate this stuff if it weren't for such bad, bad translation. I mean just look at this crap. "The Laboratory has been explored!" Uh duh, you obviously meant exploded. There's others that are bad. "Adults Town" "I'm Full Ben" just get outta here. The enemy names are just facepalm-inducing. Badbad, Badman (should be mafia guy or something), Bohr (boar), Clarken (kraken), Galuda (garuda), Gas Slag (gas slug), two forms of Ghost that are different, Grizley (grizzly), Lace (lich), Oga (ogre), Pump King (pumpkin), Sourseris (sorceress), Specter (spectre), Talanchula (tarantula), Trool (troll), Val Eagle (possibly bald eagle), Vegelisk (basilisk), and Wyte (wight). Just, no. These guys needed a proper translator before they released this.

A look back at: Popful Mail

So I've reviewed The Guardian Legend, Crusader of Centy, Startropics, Golvellius, and even Illusion of Gaia, and not a single one of these I considered to be RPG based on the mechanics they had. Crusader of Centy was a Zelda clone, Startropics had it's own array of items and health system, but also a lives system. Golvellius was that but way worse. The Guardian Legend threw me in a hybrid of rail shooter and Zelda-like navigation but no real RPG elements. Illusion of Gaia was closest because it definitely emphasized adventure and multitudes of attacks, but abandoned the formulas that Soul Blazer and later Terranigma followed.

So when I played Popful Mail, I had to straddle the line. RPG or no? I say it ought to be based on a few things. Actual shops, cashing in enemy rewards to get gold and better equips, and the ability to change characters each with different abilities. While there's no level up system and the game plays exactly like a Metroidvania, I say this game feels like a good example of a Metroidvania/action RPG hybrid. Of course, it's painfully forgettable plot sort of ruins it, especially if you were like me and played a non-translated SNES version, but I bet even if you get the translated version it would still not be too pretty. The game also times you based on how long it takes, which I think factors in what ending you get, and it could get difficult, usually par for the course for any Metroidvania-type game. The anime-like presentations are okay but aren't too exciting. Gameplay is very much what matters most in Popful Mail.

A look back at: Robotrek

Got to admit, I'm so glad Quintet games are pretty short. If this game were any longer, I'd probably keel from exhaustion because of how boring its combat is and how lame its story is.

It's yet another one of those "good on the premise" ordeals, the game allows the player to create and customize robots for battle in an active-time battle system, as well as create, combine, and recycle items. But it barely does much plotwise. I mean, get your kidnapped father back from evil hacker dudes who brainwash people or turn them into mice or use science in some weird way. And then time travel comes into play and it gets even more convoluted. Boom! Past! Oh wait, now the whole thing was a dream? Now all of a sudden, this person you met in the past seems to have recognized you. Oh yeah, there's space travel, a space princess, and an evil fortress. The embarassing thing is this is the one part of the plot I can actually remember, and if I can remember the cliches more than any surprising twists, than really this game isn't that good plotwise.

And to potentially insult players further, the thing that got me was an excessive amount of backtracking. This may be because of the guide I used when playing, but even without it, there's a lot of "get in this dungeon, find thing, go out the long way, go back and fight boss". This added the boredom factor. Part of me wanted to get many of the dungeons over with, and really I would include those dungeons on a "worst dungeons" list because of the backtracking alone. I get this game definitely got the customization aspect going with the robots and items, but to really make a good game you need a good lot of everything.

A look back at: Skies of Arcadia

A whole lot of this game is still fresh in my mind. Gotta take advantage of it. This also will be my last game of the year.

So Skies of Arcadia apparently was different from all those cash-ins at Final Fantasy VII, but it pulls off so many cliches and tropes. Yet it does those amazingly. In other words, you'll be seeing things in this game that you'd see elsewhere, but this game does all those well. For my look back, let's look at all the cliches!

-Vyse being a determined hero. We see that in almost every RPG that has a designated hero. Vyse however, shows his determination everywhere, from escaping inescapable areas, finding things no one else has found, going through seemingly impossible things. Wow.
He also has the distinction of being an RPG protagonist with both parents, which is uncommon. Both parents even live, and his father is naturally a notorious pirate on his own.
-Fina is a good example of the "mysterious girl" who does show some lack of knowledge and tact, but she's the one with the main goal and allows the others to go for her quest.
-Aika is the simple, but effective sidekick who's somewhat in love with the hero and ends up in some sort of love triangle. Thankfully this isn't as oversaturated as other things.
-The idea of two different pirate factions is pretty cliche on its own right. One is the Blue Rogues, the Robin Hood-esque guys who steal from the rich and give to the poor, while the Black Pirates go all out. Neatly enough, we don't see much of a war between these two, and we don't need to.
-Captain Drachma is basically Captain Ahab, while his nemesis Rhaknam is basically Moby Dick. Drachma gets sidetracked from his own goal for the rest of the heroes, but eventually gets to Rhaknam. What ranks this better than just a mere cliche is that much later, Drachma's apparent sacrifice turns out to be fake, and he comforts Rhaknam in his last moments. Not to forget, his backstory about his son and the name of his ship are taken into account, neat.
-Gilder is just another dashing pirate, without TOO much story to make him lame. All he has is just being another ally, but running away from a crazy female pirate.
-The Valuan empire naturally just HAS to be evil, and the token member of the empire who is of a "kingdom" title, Enrique, is good, while everyone else is associatively evil. Empress Theodora is naturally one of conquest, and Head Admiral Galcian moreso.
-Heck, the five admirals under Galcian all manage to have unique personalities as well. Alfonso being the wealthy coward, Vigoro being the ladies' man and the buff guy who works only for the good fights, De Loco being Mr. Mad Scientist with superiority complex, Belleza being the trickster in disguise (honestly I noted that Bellena was Belleza first time I played) with a troubled past. Gregorio is the somewhat boring one but is sort of an Obi-Wan figure to Enrique's Luke, while Galcian himself and Ramirez are Palpatine and Vader, respectively.
-The main fetch quest Fina gives is cliche, find six Moon Crystals, each in respective locales. It does a better job of making you get them too, because you go around the world to get them and the time it takes between each one isn't unorthodox (in other words, makes you take a long time to get just a few and the rest are immediately gained afterwards).
-Speaking of locales, you've got plenty, and they are often allegories of real life places. What else would you expect Yafutoma to be? It's completely Asian in nature! Same with Ixa'taka, which is indigenous jungle people similar to say, the Incan civilization. Nasr of course is Ottoman Empire/Middle Eastern nations, while Valua would be similar to Napoleonic Era France or some other empiric European nation, with a dash of Spanish and British given character names. The Dark Rift seems like a no man's land, while the so-called Cape Victory area resembles Australia.
-And speaking of six crystals, there's six particular Gigas, all of which fought in ship battles with different strategies. Gargantuan abominations that somehow still are charming to fight.
-Oh what do I see, a Doomed Hometown! Surprisingly no one who is named dies, and EVERYONE on Pirate Isle is named. But Pirate Isle loses its main pirates, and Fina is also captured. Meanwhile the two main characters are off for loot when this happens. It does a better job of portraying potential bleakness but averting it by not killing everyone like Tales of Phantasia did.
-It's not the only one, once Vyse gets his home base it does get burned down, plus he loses five of the six crystals in something rather predictable. Ramirez portrays himself as dangerous pretty well in this scenario.
-Said home base also used to be a deserted island where Vyse fends for himself for a week before he gets rescued. An interesting thing is how Gonzales, the dead guy he meets, ends up being somewhat of an inspiration.
-The Maginot Line Rule, a cliche on the Grand List, is in effect for Nasrad, whose naturally an enemy of Valua but doesn't realize the potentiality of it's worst admiral. Of course, the town is to be rebuilt at the end, along with Valua itself, which gets vaporized later on.
-Okay I'm not too into the whole Enrique-Moegi thing since it came out of nowhere, but at least it wasn't entirely too obvious except to the other characters. Them marrying at the end was a pretty neat thing since it shows that they really did bond. Moegi's feelings are pretty hard to convey since she never once opens her eyes.
-The plot twist in that Fina was to call down the Rains of Destruction isn't something completely out of the ordinary, but at least Fina proves the Silvite Elders wrong enough to not look crappy. Not to mention I got some Xenogears vibes with the Silvite Shrine being upside-down like Solaris. Neat touches.
-A coup within the empire, seems interesting enough. Gotta give Galcian some credit, he was intending for his defectors to die once he showed them his goals. Him being all for power is yet another allusion to his similarities to Palpatine. It's a shame that Ramirez's whole deal with being similar to Vader is seen mostly in the Legends release, so I didn't get to see that.
-God, I just LOVE how friend and foe alike come together to help Vyse stop Galcian. Just watch as a whole armada of allies drives in to help. From an old-timer noncombatant like Centime to a rival like Baltor, it's just so enticing. Always like it when I see Avengers-like teams appear to stop a greater evil, as cliche as it is.
-Ramirez completely losing it after Galcian gets rammed by Belleza is also not out of the ordinary, him attempting to really destroy the world is also not out of the ordinary. Regardless of any potential opinion here, the circumstances are quite epic with the Silvite colony drop. Not to mention his "last stand" final boss battle still remains epic, and quite horrifying given his attacks.

So yeah, very much recommended game no matter how cliche things are.

A look at: Freelancer

I still play this game, but usually with the expansion mod known as Discovery. People often erroneously refer to Discovery as a mod, but see, it holds much of the basic parts of the original games along with new content, that it's really an expansion.

As for the main game? Well, there are some things that can catch your attention with a game. One of those is how things are named and set up. See, when I saw that there's a space system going by the name of New York and a planet called Manhattan, well, what can I saw. I'm awed. And I want to know about the rest of the locales. Truth be told, it's exactly what I figure out. Liberty is Space America, sweet. And the other houses are done similarly. Rheinland is Space Germany, Kusari is Space Japan, and Bretonia is Space UK. The lost house of Hispania is divided into Mediterranean space pirates (Corsairs) and South American drug lords (Outcasts), while other independent factions are listed as well. Discovery of course adds Gallia, which is Space France, and even brings the Coalition (Russians) back into the universe.

Given that your character is in fact, a freelancer, you can do anything, particularly once the singleplayer campaign is over. Go lawful, go unlawful, go smuggle some illegal goods or trade regular ones. Go hunt down pirates or terrorists or fight off police forces as a pirate or terrorist yourself. Each and every faction has some goal, some motif, enemies, allies, and it especially applies to Discovery where the focus is on roleplay. The game in itself doesn't advertise roleplay otherwise, but you do gain net worth and levels as you progress, so it sort of qualifies. The singleplayer campaign has its freelancing bits in between missions, but tries to progress things accordingly, so it's impossible to be overpowered until after it's all finished. Then again, the progressively tougher combat, particularly once you reach the Nomad lands, can only make fancy flying a necessity.

The many ship classes, weapon classes, and bases make a whole lot of things vast. On the surface though, the thing to take note is that space is essentially 2D in this game. Your navmap is 2D and everything apparently is on a plane. This is a bit lame honestly, as if you fly above or below the plane, there's nothing of interest. Mods of course, don't follow this rule. The political zones correspond to what factions are met in those zones, while mineable zones show places where you can shoot at rocks to gain free trading items.

The utilities I use to play and hack into the game have helped me dissect everything I need to know about Freelancer, and I'm still playing it to this day even after starting it way back in 2006. Honestly, it's a good game to play, mild at the worst, enjoyable most of the time.

A look back at: Dual Orb II

Well, looks like I'm gonna be alright after all. Didn't have a whole lot of activity for a full week, wow. But anyways, I finally got done with Dual Orb II, and even though my review of it is pretty darn neutral on the whole thing, guess what? I HATED this game. And I'll list all the reasons why. Massive spoilers, although most of you wouldn't care or something.

1. One thing I at least loved was the intro, showcasing two people as if they were pretty good scientists, just willing to send one back to avoid a potential apocalpyse. Both Alex and Serra in this case seem to be pretty decent characters on onset, except we will barely be seeing much of this intro make sense until much later in the game. Lame. And yes, one of these characters you'll know for too much, and then the other you'll barely even make of at all. We also get to see a FF6-like opening of a priest wandering in the snow with a baby. I at least came in expecting this to NOT be a ball buster, and it obviously isn't, but that intro honestly gave way to some false hope.

2. I've already said it before, but man this game has too many cliche parts to it. Just look who we got for characters, a generic mysterious girl, a generic bard, a generic thief, a generic rebellious princess, a generic demi-human companion, and a generic pirate. And that's just the secondary characters that you get later on. The two main characters you see are two fantasy-style guys, one swordsman, one spearman. Look at their styles. One is a blondie, while the other has silvery hair. Take a good guess which one turns traitor later on in the game. Not to mention there's an evil empire, with an emperor, a mad scientist who's more evil than the empire, forgettable generals, and your average everyday eldritch big bad. Oh yes, you have one orb in this game along with three jewels to use it, along with some "spirit nucleus" thing that isn't an orb. Let's also not forget, those three jewels have "guardians". And there will be castles, dungeons, jails, mountains, towns, harbors, and floating fortresses alike.

3. Aleth is a silent protagonist in a game I firmly do not believe should have a silent protagonist. I don't think I need to say much else here.

4. Well, at least the hopeless fights where you're supposed to lose are done a little bit better in that I don't HAVE to lose. But I never was a fan of them. The opening fight between you and Lagnus can actually be won, which is a nice accomplishment, while the first fights against Gilzath and Organa you can just last a few rounds before it ends. The penultimate boss of the game plays it straight though.

5. Gameplay-wise, there's a lot of issues. Most notably, all that grinding I do is boring. And I do it mostly for money, even though the level gains are nice, well, I'll leave that for another list item. But damn, many of these items and weapon upgrades get expensive. Sure, the prices of weapon upgrades mellow down, and one optional town is cheapest (though you gotta remember, the town is optional and you might miss it), but when enemies don't give out the big moolah until the very VERY end of the game, something's gonna be rather annoying with the grinding. It's thankfully not on the same level of Dragon Warrior though.

6. But then you realize, leveling up your characters doesn't seem to change a whole lot. You're only doing a tad bit more damage, your stats are growing just a tad. It all boils down to what equipment you can have that can allow you to disk and take more. Sure, the character's HP counts will hit the thousands, with Aleth's HP being the frontrunner, but the rest of the stats need some work. I mean, I can overlevel my characters to high, high levels (not on purpose, because I mostly grinded for money) but there will somehow still be enemies faster than me speed-wise.

7. And then we get to the matter of damage itself. You see, if the damage isn't 1 or a miss, you and your enemies will be doing triple-digit or quadruple-digits numbers usually. A character can bite it at around 4 hits, even with the best armor and level available. Your enemies also have high health but your damage output is just like theirs, so you can just storm through encounters when you need to grind.

8. But then again, when you want to get through the game, that's when the random battle system decides to just swarm you with encounters. Wonderful. Like I didn't have enough on my plate already. A full treasure room could take me minutes because I run into ten battles or so because the random encounter rate is excruciatingly high.

9. Ah, these spells are totally mixed. Just look at these healing spells. The standard Revive revives someone at ONE HP. That's not gonna help at all. The status spells are worse, as they usually are, but unless it's Earth Shake you have almost no way of telling what you just did when you use them. The buffing spells barely make any noticable difference in stat gains. The attack spells? Aleth and Serra only get ONE EACH, although they are both good ones, while Saladin and Lagnus get plenty of them. Notably though, it seems the spells gained by leveling up aren't really in accordance to the levels gained. Why is it that Darkness Arrow, a spell gained by Lagnus at level 9, so much better than every other spell he gets in the levels afterward? The same with Saladin's Stone Lance and Nova, although those two are gained at much higher levels usually, then again it seems that Saladin is always gaining new spells with each level up. But what's with all the marginally WORSE spells gained after these ones? And if you are wondering if elemental spells will take a part with weaknesses, not always the case. Sometimes, trying to exploit one isn't gonna be much of a difference.

10. Oh, and there's status effects, yes, but they are forgettable, and they will always be cured at the end of battle. What harm will Poison do if it is cured immediately after battle? And the confusion/charm spell is supposed to keep control of the person, but here it can be broken out of with a physical attack as if it was a sleep spell. Lame.

11. So the vast majority of enemies you face aren't really amazing at all. A good chunk of them are actually completely human in fact. Most of the enemies include the ghost-masked thieves that actually look well graphics-wise, the soldiers, the annoying karate girls that always go first. All of these human enemies do the same thing, physical attack. There are very few magical enemies, who can actually be a lot tougher, like the Jeldollies and their Wind Cutter attack along with a few late-game ones, but by then I am overleveled enough to beat them usually. But wait, what's with these technology based enemies in a predominantly fantasy world? What's with these weird monster trucks? Floating laptops? Large desert tanks? Weird hypodermic needles that heal enemies? There's not a whole lot of sense in enemy creation, but Dual Orb II didn't seem to have a proper sense of direction.

12. When I find a weapon, it's always gonna be unknown until you actually equip it, and then you sometimes realize it's a cursed weapon. Pretty basic, but it's mostly a hassle having to train up certain weapons with boatloads of cash to ensure you are killing the bigguns. There's a few times where you'd want to choose a best weapon for a character. Rapier or bow for Karina? The Ice Fang for Saladin is surprisingly his best choice, as the Kill Wing later on is crap at the higher levels. Meanwhile, the Dragoon spear is something that will basically never leave Lagnus once you equip it.

12. Oh Lagnus, you mischievous boy you, always getting into trouble, it's a shame that the most interesting character in the game has to save your sorry ass from stupid thieves that think you're perfect kidnapping money.

13. Really? Making Cassius leave before our first real dungeon? Way to make a crutch character there. Cassius was decent early on due to him being speedy and having a good weapon level, but making him leave is gonna make it much harder, since characters that rejoin don't seem to be trained up for later battles. I mean Final Fantasy Mystic Quest did that. Mystic Quest trained up characters that would later rejoin the party.

14. Serra's whole role is seriously easy to figure out. Amnesiac, mysterious waif, apparently being considered a goddess even though she isn't. Making things even stupider is the game lets out a fact she isn't a human. Well, she may have Sailor Moon-esque hair, but her entire personality is that of a human. And yes, expect her to get kidnapped once. She at least has a unique weapon, but the drawback is it cannot be modified better.

15. Hardwick upon first seeing Serra will immediately say "just my imagination", and then when you lose Serra later on, he's all like "don't you remember me?" Just no.

16. The boss fight against Torath is an example of why I hate this game's boss fights. Either it's just a battle of attrition like most, a hopeless boss fight that ends in a few rounds, or like this, it's a gimmick fight in which it shows Lagnus his newfound abilities. Yet, it's not made entirely obvious.

17. It amazes me that Saladin is amassing these two women like he's Glenn Quagmire as a thief, but joining the party and staying for the rest of the game puts something into perspective. What about those women, huh?

18. I'll give the Colodus arc a lot of credit, it's definitely a good plot twist. But it is pretty much ruined by the cloaked figure next to Seldam which pretty much means that the whole thing is obviously a farce. I mean, you can see it a mile away.

19. Najiri is easily the least popular character for the party due to his NPC-controlled tactics. And it's not in a potentially fun way like FF6's Umaro either. It's just straight up boring. You can knock him out and it wouldn't make much of a difference. But you know what I really hate? The fact that I wasted a LOT of money to buy one Guriguard, an item only he can equip, only to find out it's not only NOT his ultimate armor, but the Shell Armor, which is his best armor, is the armor I get in the dungeon JUST BEFORE reaching Najiri. Yeah, what a complete fluke that was. I know it's a black market and all, but still, come on.

20. Gilzath's main entry comes with a semi-hopeless boss fight, then Saladin shows off his cool spells at this point, which he never did up until that point. Good job there, preventing me from using such awesome spells until now. Now he's gonna grow those spells like crazy. I'm actually not mad at this per se, but I AM mad that Gilzath still gets away with Serra despite being stopped.

21. While it's nice that Cassius comes back around this time and gives his actually interesting backstory on being a spy and why he hates Kardosa, remember what I said earlier. And hell, he's not gonna be in the party that long anyways either. His king is also a huge idiot when siding with Kardosa and it obviously becomes apparent later on.

22. The whole prayer scene in Claydon made no sense. How come neither Cassius nor Lagnus were transported with Serra, Saladin, and Aleth? All I can think of is to make room for more party members but that's a lame excuse. Let's also not forget to mention Hardwick's hatred of Aleth by looking at his eyes. God, I hate it when that trope is used.

23. The middle arc is thankfully not so bad. Sure, more royals in danger of being kidnapped, more characters join, the drunken guy in the harbor tavern seems like he could actually be of nominal importance, and we get to see an actually interesting evil general. Not to mention Bargan is gonna be our token good pirate. Of course, he's yet another crutch character due to how short of a time he's in the party, but he was okay at the very least. Still though, that horn thing seemed like a weird way to avert a hopeless outcome from Organa, and to make things more blatant, the story of Bargan's daughter is just clear as day exactly who Lina really is.

24. The bickering comic relief between Saladin and Karina ends up being pretty textbook. And of course, they will hook up at the end as you can EASILY expect. Guh. I would like Saladin more if he was actually a thief for crying out loud. Despite showing shades of it with a few lockpicking scenes, he's used for comic relief way too much. At least Karina gets a family, wait, when exactly did her brother end up being a scientific prodigy again? That came out of the blue. So did the Cadmus island being a mobile sea turtle. I guess the kicker here is that it actually cannot be controlled.

25. It was worth it in the end, but again the grinding for the money was just so boring. I had found out that the fight against Gilzath was gonna be 100% magic-based, so I had to buy three Guard Talismans (one is in the Time Ruins, making four for each). Unfortunately, those aren't really useful anywhere else due to having zero physical power. And even then, Gilzath uses Nova which still does thousands of damage, it's a good thing he falls quick due to my high levels of grinding. Hey, I also grinded so I could get five Magic Chains (one for each of my party members and for Bargan later on), and a Body Suit (for Cassius later on). All in all, over 300000 gold which took me days. I don't feel like grinding for THAT long again.

26. Of course the mage society is gonna be reluctant to join. They at least can be credible because they KNOW their power is so great it can be used for evil. Too bad that the evil empire IS gonna force them to do that later on.

27. The whole family moment involving Marilyn, Saladin, Elena, and Gilzath honestly made me cringe more than I honestly would. So exactly how did Saladin wind up away from Gassa, from his sister Marilyn and mother Elena? Well, he got teleported by Gilzath, Marilyn's teacher, who's obviously stupid dream of immortality was never gonna come. Naturally, we also get Elena coming in at this point to help, along with those three jewels, the last just picked up. Not to mention more and more exposition dumps. Poor Elena at least had an interesting backstory centered around her forbidden spell usage as well as Gilzath's stupid ambitions.

28. That mountain village arc is just stupid. I hate everything about it. The initial greeting was creepy enough, the rest of the NPCs just tell Aleth he isn't somehow the high priests son and that they created him. The tower is almost as bad, all of a sudden, our silent main swordsman is the clone of Alex, a guy who's clearly from the future. The only good thing about him is that he was a good guy anyways. So if civilization was actually destroyed and saved by Alex's use of the Orb, how the heck are we in more primitive times? I always like to ask this particular question.

29. Oh yeah, and it looks like the people of the village have fulfilled what they needed to do, which is merely to "guide Aleth to find the truth", they pretty much cease to function, and then they turn into dirt. Not stone, but dirt. It's a worse implication, honestly. Why doesn't the dirt blow away in the wind I wonder? Why do I get the dirty thought that these people have literally turned into what could actually be considered poop? Guh, this is just unbelievable.

30. Oh yeah, and we finally get an airship, only that it just so happened to be where it all began. It's not entirely clear where to advance the plot next, but apparently it's back in Hilandia, where a deus ex machina occurs just to get the Hilandia king and princess out of commission, the latter only temporarily. Not to mention the romance blossoming, the eventual takeover of Lagnus's body by Chandler, wait, Chandler? That's the main villain's name? And I thought Carltron from Secret of Evermore was a lame villain name.

31. Kaliban should have had more character to him, but alas, he's just another political figure that runs away after you defeat his mooks. But he's never even seen again afterwards.

32. Okay, it's a heartwarming reunion that eventually leads to the final act for both Bargan and Lina/Organa, but what happens afterwards. What is Claydon doing here all of a sudden if its reactor malfunctioned by Kardosa's hands? It sure wasn't there before!

33. And speaking of which, I actually found a way to completely break the game. If you park the Lindblum airship behind Nisa, meaning above it, you cannot reach it and are stuck forever between Hardos and Nisa. See, when you leave a place, you're always under it, and there's only one spot above Nisa, so by entering Nisa (also you cannot immediately reenter the Lindblum while standing in it, to my knowledge), you effectively doom yourself from completing the game.

34. Dammit, Dual Orb II, level Cassius up. I have been toting three level 70 characters due to grinding for the best weaponry and he's still around level 15 in comparison. He's completely useless to the party by this point. Even if I were to train his weapon up, what's the use?

35. This game sure has its annoying bosses, especially Organa's second fight considering how people have developed strategies for it. But there should have been strategies for Sindra too. This guy hits physically for about 3000 HP which is certainly a lot, while he also can hit everyone with spells too. The real reason he's annoying is he has a healing spell that heals him for 9999 HP, and subsequently made him the most annoying boss in the game.

36. Okay so I do beat him, and his desperate backup plan? Nuke the reactor he's next to, which is on a slow control platform above some crazy void. First of all, you're not just killing your enemies, Sindra, but also the mages that are powering the floating fortress you are trying to get into the sky. Not to mention Hardwick, Odorath, and Chandler, who are also encountered after Sindra, are in the castle as well. Nuking everyone is gonna screw up their evil plan. Cassius sacrifices himself to kill Sindra, which I don't like either, but you know what? Cassius practically saved Sindra from his own stupidity by killing him that way.

37. Yeah, would've loved a nice buildup to fighting emperor Odorath considering how he's pretty much a cool-looking bearded emperor. But not only is the endgame focused on Hardwick and Chandler more, but Odorath just HAS to act like he's not human anymore. All that buildup to fighting a big bad emperor and he turns out to be practically automated. Come on.

38. Their showmanship of the power of the floating fortress is obviously not gonna sit well politically. Yeah, let's cleanse the earth by killing every human down there and endangering the species for more evolved humans, which are obviously gonna be way worse.

39. The ending battles are at least okay in the sense, one becoming hopeless, brought to light with the utilization of the orb, and a cliche but not too terribly done wish to bring Serra back. Also Lagnus dying as himself, mumbling as if he was still in the openings of the game.

40. Well, I'm not a fan of the epilogue. How did Bargan and Lina/Organa survive their cave-in? When exactly did Aleth and Serra decide not only to fall in love, but be the new king and queen? Where's the love between Saladin and Karina, and the subsequent rebuilding of Hardos and Hilandia? Sure, at least some characters are happy, but unanswered questions are unanswered questions.

And that pretty much summarizes why Dual Orb II is not a good game. I think #36 is my favorite marker here, considering how much I thought it would just really make the whole plot feel so much worse.

A look back at: The Legend of Dragoon

Hoo boy this is a biggun. You know it when it has four discs. And apparently it's not gonna be the last game I try out that has four discs either.

The Legend of Dragoon was Sony's attempt to cash in on the JRPG genre, and it worked...moderately well I guess. It certainly tries to create some unique things out of the genre and the story, given there being four discs and all. The whole battle system is nothing but a mixed bag entirely. The addition system ends up being more trouble than it's worth, but it's one of two best methods of defeating the enemies this game has. Having to time attacks properly, and time potentially nastier counterattacks that can just pop up at any time, makes this almost entirely a concentration mini-game on it's own. Ugh. The other best method of defeating enemies is throwing items, and then button-mashing like mad because that's how to increase just how much damage you can do.

But wait, what about those AWESOME dragoon powers! You might ask that. Well, they're honestly not all that useful, and especially so for the random encounters. The actual magic in this game only really works for the dragoon transformations, and somehow, they are better than the dragoon additions themselves. As superpowered as they are, they really don't last long, and against some fights like Emperor Doel, it's honestly much less fun than it really ought to be. Defending actually restores HP, which is good, but you can't do this in a dragoon form. As for everything aside from battles? Well the Final Fantasy 7 navigation is into effect, and the random encounters are actually indicated by the arrow on Dart's head which changes color. Pretty neat.

I'll go ahead and say it, Dragoon's plot is alright. Having to replace Lavitz with Albert, then later Shana with Miranda is pretty well done. Each of the playable characters all get quite a lot of development overall, as do the NPCs for each respective chapter. The end-of-disc areas are well done too. You see villains like Freugal and Emperor Doel in Disc 1 and Lenus in Disc 2 and after they end up dead you still are looking for the much worse enemies like Lloyd. The whole mystery of the Winglies is okay at best. The even bigger mysteries of what happened to Dart's father, Haschel's overall connection, and the Black Monster are astounding. Things did excite me as the story continued, and I'm glad that it didn't get too boring even if the combat really didn't woo me all that much.

A look back at: Jade Cocoon

This game honestly didn't make a whole lot of sense. At least it was short, I'll give it that.

So really, Jade Cocoon was a game with Pokemon-like mechanics that basically got eclipsed by Pokemon itself, yet somehow applying more to the "minions" than Pokemon ever did. What can you do here? Well, the whole deal with capturing and purifying them for use in multiple applications is one. Go ahead, make 'em fight. Or spin them into silk and make some cash out of it, because the main character Levant also technically fights in the field too and could use the equipment. Or combine two minions to make a nice-looking conversion that is supposedly better. Yet somehow, all these minions look very nightmarish. As for the amount I caught, I managed to get all the main ones. Didn't bother with the Eternal Corridor all that much though, but even that doesn't have every single one and a few of them seem to have been dummied out of the game entirely.

Oh man, if you are gonna do voice acting, do NOT include a silent protagonist or a nameable protagonist. This game unfortunately does this and you're main character's name is never said by any of the characters. Oh and speaking of? Many of these characters are honestly very ugly-looking, at least in their artwork. I'll give the game credit, whenever you are done with a forest, the "talk to everyone" aspect is pretty nicely done for including new information on what you want to do next. Levant gets to be a cocoon master and marries the one girl he's close to (other than his mother). The whole deal with the Onibubu attacking the village at the beginning doesn't seem to happen again afterwards. Garai at least is a good character. Mahbu's Nagi Brandings changing her appearance as the game goes on is quite interesting too. The game sure goes south really quick for its plot once they reveal who Garai was, and then Levant is basically all alone except for these new characters who show up eventually. And the game's version of trainer battles is pretty bleak, as they don't provide nearly enough; although fighting the character's father seemed cliche, it's honestly the most interesting battle in the game overall. So again, I looked at this game expecting at least some good things and found them, but was disinterested in everything else.

A look back at: Hydlide

Hydlide is exactly the kind of game that it is, a very simplistic action RPG.

That's all there is really to it. It's simple to a complete fault. There's virtually no plot at all, it's just save the girl and defeat the wizard and his dragon. The gameplay is so simplistic as to just running into enemies and watching the bars go down. Yes, monsters do reappear after awhile. Yes, some of the terrain is actually damaging. Thankfully it qualifies as an action RPG due to the stat increases provided. This also qualifies as the shortest RPG I have ever actually played, at least in theory, given how utterly simplistic it is.

Yet simplicity does not equal good. This game is often considered one of the worst games ever, at least for the NES version. I'm not sure about the rest of its sequels or remakes, but as simple as it is, this game really provides nothing super-substantial. Graphically, it's awful to look at too. I often wonder if gamers who played Hydlide back in the day just played it for a few minutes then left it to gather dust because of how lame it really was.

A look back at: Great Greed

This was a game I just sort of played on a whim when looking for a JRPG to go by for the GB/GBC. It's probably the finest example of a simplistic RPG too.

Now this doesn't mean I like it for the record, but it's not entirely the worst thing I've seen or played. The simplistic battle system is this: Hit a button to attack/magic, enemy does action on the same turn. And the battles in this game are all one-on-ones. There isn't a whole lot of strategy in most cases. Grinding is still a thing, though.

Now the story is honestly one of the dumbest, but that may be because of the locale names and the character names. Everything just has to be named after food items, from characters such as the girl companions you get with you as well as the locations to go to. Bio-Haz, the main villain, is probably named to instantiate poisoning the food places, but don't really quote me on that because Bio-Haz doesn't actually do anything important besides send men to attack people and wait for the main character to defeat him. And, well, at least you can name your main character.

Again, sub-plots, which is how the princess companions come and go in fact. One involves an election, and your princess companion not only sponsors one guy, but helps you expose the other one as a crook. Another town has incredibly strict rules, but the townspeople and even the visitors such as the main character have the ability to change them. There's a poisonous fog plot, a polluted town plot, and another one where one of your companions (the most warrior one for some reason) gets entered into a beauty pageant which is really just a trap. Also some sort of Castaway-type plot occurs, and while relaxing, the hero somehow gets everything, including his own clothes, stolen. So many weird things for such a weird game. I don't know what else to say about it, other than simplicity in gameplay combined with weirdness everywhere else.

A look back at: Golvellius

I hate this game.

I think it's pretty obvious, The Legend of Zelda is the best example of its kind of action adventure gameplay. While Crusader of Centy was a pretty lackluster example of a Zelda clone for the Genesis, it at least tried some interesting things with animals and throwing swords. The same can be said for Startropics, which was a more modern Zelda clone with some interesting if annoying mechanics involving jumping and lives. The Guardian Legend was a nice hybrid of game styles that worked out well despite how hard it was. I can say good things about those games, but not anything about Golvellius: Valley of Doom.

This is a straight of Zelda clone that controls like trash overall. The overworld navigation is annoying enough, and the enemies respawn, many of which are quite damaging and don't even move back when hit. You'll also likely be grinding for cash in this game, well I'll give certain enemies credit for providing some decent cash. The NPCs are actually NOT helpful this time around, and then there's the dungeons. Two types, side-scrolling and top-down don't-stop-moving, both of which suck because you leave the dungeon prematurely for screwing up. Bosses take lots of hits to kill, and giving their attack patterns combined with the sucky grid-based movement that the original Legend of Zelda did NOT have, and this game is just awful to play through. So yeah, despite being the second Master System game I checked out, I really don't have the will to replay this one any time soon.

A look back at: Faria: A World of Mystery and Danger!

Gee, with a title like that, you'd expect some game that is really all about adventure! Then again, it is an action RPG so yes you will find that. Then again, it's an action RPG for the NES, and since every NES game has been rather hard, yes, this will have that. It's almost a hybrid of other famous games in gameplay, in that your overall navigation is Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy whenever you're not in combat, and then it goes into Zelda mode when in combat, where you can't really do much else except swing you sword or use other items to defeat some monsters.

So I said it was tough, well, the level curve kinda sucks, enemies can do tons of damage, poison is surprisingly difficult to cure, and for a time you won't be able to see invisible monsters. Also the hospital charges significantly more the more you are hurt. That Phantom Tower dungeon is the worst, a Lost Woods style maze that seemed quite endless to players. One thing that is interesting are the jewels, which are really just faux money in case the player dies and loses half the money, but it's really got no other important applications to think of. One town in the game seems to have all the best items, but it's just past the midway point in the game and by then there's still the annoyances of several enemies, particularly the invisible ones. Also you know how I said I you can't really do much else except fight enemies when you get into a battle? There's a reason for that. Actually running from battles is detrimental in that the player can lose money, experience, health, or even items. What could Game Arts possibly be thinking doing this?

And this plot is a pretty weird gender-bender plot of sorts, which actually isn't that horrendous. So your character is a nameable female knight from some unknown origin, and then you have this unnamed wizard who is the standard bad guy. You also have a standard king and a standard princess to help and rescue, respectively. Not to mention dealing with a town that seems to be poisoned and then petrifying the king, and then the Wizard actually impersonates the kidnapped butterfly princess. The fact that the wizard does all of this and manipulates the hero into saving "him" is quite the feat. Well, yeah, you figure things out and actually kill the wizard not long after saving the real princess, and then your character turns into a man who apparently was one the entire time because the wizard did THAT too. Not really gonna go there, but I will say that the wizard's idea to completely merge into a dragon for immortality is not really original, and neither is getting a legendary sword to slay him. Ah, cliche plots, this time with genderbends. It's such a strange plot that I actually cannot hate it, even though the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired with some of its annoying mechanics.

A look back at: The Guardian Legend

This is one of the strangest games I ever had a look at, and seems actually not that bad given how unique it was, especially for an NES game.

Basically, you take the sidescrolling labyrinthian gameplay the Zelda and Startropics dungeons had provided, then you put up the top-down rail-shooter aspects such as Xevious, and the combination is The Guardian Legend, a hybrid game of sorts. Not an action RPG as I had erroneously called it back then. It's another one of those fun but extremely hard games, with most of the frustration in the shooter part really and truly.

The game itself has tons of enemies in both gameplay forms, and the character is a hybrid character of course, a guardian that transforms into a jet on the way to the alien ship Naju. It's a totally weird character but then again it was quite excusable for what it offered. The main currency is almost akin to Zelda's rupees, in that they are multipurpose, not just for buying "upgrades" but for using special weapons, kind of like Link's bow and arrows. The plot is the standard "find these devices to blow up ship" variant, involving ten devices, where the actual task is bigger than the plot itself considering just how much opposition is against the player. It's simple and to the point. Still though, it's a nice futuristic setting as opposed to the more common fantasy setting you'd see in most other action RPGs or action-adventures you might find back in the day. I realized I talked pretty much about everything this game had to offer, and, well, what else can you see, it's old school NES stuff, worth a look at even if you can't beat it.

A look back at: Startropics

I have no idea why I considered this one an RPG. It is another game that just falls under the action-adventure category and I called it that so long ago. I found Startropics from the same source as Threads of Fate, that one GameFAQs list that talked about RPGs no one has played.

It's a relatively short NES game with a reasonable plot. There's not much I can really make of it. Mike is looking for his uncle and it's basically a fetch quest odyssey with robots, submarines, and talking animals. Also some aliens are involved and a the villain is a guy named Zoda who apparently is the titular character in the sequel game which I'm not gonna play.  A whole lot of these side stories and navigation actually DOES spark some interesting moments, like the piano, the graveyard thing, the ship sinking, and actually finding your uncle. Not to mention the alien infiltration. Mike as a character is alright, a fish out of water considering he's an all-American dude visiting native places that look like they come out of the Flintstones. Zoda isn't necessary fought, but he has to have that "enter your mind" trick on Mike near the final part of the game. That's all there is to the plot and characters, but I'm fine with that. The music is fine too, and one of the high points of the game.

What I'm not fine with is the gameplay. I find it novel that the weapons Mike uses are yoyos and other modern items, meaning this predates the Mother series in its abilities. There's also a lives system which really makes this NOT an RPG in the sense. Dungeons are laid out Zelda-style, top-down perspective. It's very tough, this is why I hate it. And even after playing other Nintendo Hard RPGs I still think this is one of the toughest ones. I barely beat it, some of the enemies and all bosses can one-shot you on contact and there are a few mechanics involving jumping that get to my head way too much. Indeed, it's how the game plays that bothered me into not liking it. Why lose ALL your weapons aside from your default when you simply leave a dungeon? Why does your health level default back down to three hearts when you have more anyways? And oh yes, the default weapon actually gains in power when you have more health, assuming you have the upgrades. So if you struggle at some point, you are really struggling overall.

It's far from my least favorite game though, as there are far worse, but this is something that really doesn't need too much explanation. On the surface, it's a Zelda-like game that is appropriately hard, but I was not comfortable with this game when I played it, and I'd rather not play the sequel if it plays similarly to this.