Game 3 - Super Robot Wars

Super Robot Wars (スーパーロボット大戦）
Release Date: 4/20/1991
System: Game Boy
Developer: Winkysoft
Publisher: Banpresto

Super Robot Wars is one of the titans of the SRPG genre, with around 60 titles in the series and more still being released. However, SRW will occupy a strange place on this blog, because I have already played all of the SRW games from SRW 2 up through Original Generations 2 (that's 44 games!) and I have no desire to play them all again.

What I am going to do instead is take this opportunity to post some commentary I made on the srwg-w.org forum while I was playing them through. These commentaries are not necessary fleshed out and polished, but the majority of my commentary posts disappeared in a forum crash (I have them all saved locally), so this seems like a good place to put them.

The exception is SRW 1, which I never played. It's really a black sheep of the family, and in some case almost doesn't qualify as an SRPG by the definition I'm using here because it doesn't have a developing story. It's basically just a series of maps with the end goal of defeating Gilgilgan. So I've only played the first 2 stages of it and this is the only post I will make about it. It's much closer to the Compachi Heroes franchise and seems to have been made in imitation of the Daisenryaku games (which are not SRPGs).

To me this is barely recognizable as a SRW game although you can see some of the seeds of what comes later. You start off by choosing between Gundams, Mazinger, or Getter Robo and you start with only units from there. You can convince other units to your side, but it's much harder to do so if the units are not from the franchise of the convincing character. Unlike most SRWs there are no pilots; the mechs are animate by themselves. Seishin exist, but only your leader can use them, and each stage it randomly selects three for you to be able to use. The game has permadeath, unlike every other SRW. The weapons have no bullets or energy, so even the range high-damage weapons like the Vesper and Fin Funnels can be used as many times as you want. You find hidden items in each stage which include additional weapons for the mechs.

Anyway here's my experience with the first two stages.

Stage 1

I chose the Gundams, and F-91 as my leader. So I can put points into attack, HP, speed, and Charisma (which helps with convincing units).

The units are F-91, ZZ, 100-shiki, Z, Gun Cannon, Nu Gundam, and original Gundam. The enemies are a mix of enemies from the three franchises, with a Garada K7 (from Mazinger) as the boss.

The battle scenes are simple, and just attack-counterattack (unless the unit is out of range). I don't like the seishin system because it's too random -- you can get good ones like Friendship, or you can be stuck with ones that only affect the leader. I'm also not sure how to heal. I tried to convince a unit but it failed.

Along the way there are towers that give items, and then the boss. I had Friendship so I didn't lose any units here.

Stage 2

The boss here is Elmeth, from first Gundam. Texas Mack is also there. In both stages, the enemies all rush you except the boss and a couple of units around it, so the hardest part is the middle when the enemies can all gang up on someone. I managed to convince a Kapool but it immediately got killed by the enemies.

So that's all I played and it really didn't seem like that good of a game. But you can try for yourself because there's an English patch on romhacking.net.

Game 2 - Little Master Wrap-up

FACTS

Little Master: Legend of Likebahn (リトルマスター ライクバーンの伝説)
Release Date: 4/19/1991  
System: Game Boy 
Developer: Zener Works  
Publisher: Intellimedia

1. Turn type: Player turn/enemy turn.
2. Maps: Small. Terrain gives bonuses. Gimmicks on each stage.
3. Character customization: None.
4. Character development: Standard XP level system. Max level is 8, but monsters can be combined at temples to change to better monsters.
5. Party size: 7 is the most you can send out on a map; I'm not sure what the maximum size of your party is. You can get additional monsters from buildings on certain maps.
6. Equipment: The game has no items or equipment.
7. Game flow: Most of the stages can be repeated. No exploration. No alternate paths or secret maps.
8. Saving: Any time. There is something odd (or perhaps glitched) with the saving though; sometimes it will restart you at the beginning of the level if you reload, but with your XP intact. If you get a game over, you have to reset before you're actually returned to the world map or it will auto save you there and you'll have to do the stage again. 
9. Death: When a unit reaches 0 HP it is removed from the map and loses all XP (but retains level).

IMPRESSIONS

Games for the Game Boy were always "lesser" than games for the home consoles -- not that the games were automatically less fun on the portable system, but they tended to be less ambitious, smaller, easier to play, and shorter. Some of this is due to the limitations of the hardware, but sometimes it's simply developer laziness or the audience perception. This game has only 15 small stages compared to Fire Emblem's 25 medium-to-large ones. Little Master 2, which came out a year later, has 34 stages, so it would not seem that the developers were hardware limited here.

This game does have some interesting features. They tried to differentiate the maps by putting gimmicks in (like tornadoes that randomly move characters, or graves that spawn zombies). The monster combination system has a lot of potential. The main problem with it is that unless you repeat stages, it's hard to build your monsters up to the point where you can combine them to make a lot of different units. And it's not really necessary because Moomoo and your hero are strong enough to beat the majority of the game (maybe the whole game) themselves. This does increase the replay value and length, something I would have appreciated as a kid when I only got a few games a year. I can see having fun playing the early stages repeatedly to level my monsters and make the most powerful ones. But it's not necessary.

In 2018 there's not much reason to play this unless you're a huge Game Boy fan. Even if the gameplay seems appealing, I have a feeling that the 2nd and 3rd games in the series are better, but we'll see shortly. There is a translation patch for this game, however.

Game 2 - Little Master (Stages 11-15)

The last five stages actually have some element of storyline, though not a whole lot. My goal for my units was to get some dragons -- by the end I managed to get one, and two cyclops, which was enough to help out a bit in the missions.

Stage 11 - Dracula Castle

Dracula is hanging at the back but the boss is actually Medusa. There are hidden mines on the floor that hurt anyone stepping on them (including enemies). When I saved and reloaded my save later, all my units were back at the beginning (but with their XP intact and the enemies defeated) and all the mines had been sprung. A bug, I guess.

Afterwards, Dracula takes the princess and flees.

Stage 12 - The Flame Mountain

The trick in this stage is that all the flame squares do 5 damage a turn until you beat the Hell Crab on the right.

Once the hell crab is gone, Dracula is the boss at the top left.

Stage 13 - The Dragon Cave

This stage has a sword that the Hero can get, after beating the Sword Guardian, who then joins your team (his name is "Arabia", you can see him in the picture below). The sword then makes the hero always critical hit and do a lot of damage, so he's obviously the most effective fighter for the rest of the game.

 
The boss is a Hydra. This has to be the most pathetic looking Hydra I've ever seen.

Afterwards we reach Gezagain's Castle, and he sends a Demon out to fight us.

Stage 14 - Castle in the Earth

Finally we're at Gezagain's castle. But seeing that he's hiding behind another boss, we know he's going to run away. This castle has warp tiles that send the units around to different places. If a unit is standing on the tile the warp would take you to, it has no effect, which makes the stage somewhat annoying.

Afterwards, Gezagain runs up to his cloud castle.

Stage 15 - Final Battle in the Sky

All the monsters in this stage are dragons, but there are a lot of hexagrams so it's not too bad. The final boss has two forms.

The problem is that if you beat the first form on the enemy phase, it screws you over. He immediately gets a free attack in his second form, then for some reason it's back to the end of your phase again and he gets another attack. So I had to make sure it wasn't the Hero who beat him, so that whoever did beat him could die without game over.

Gegazain's second form is a big dragon. Once he's defeated, the game ends.

Our hero saves the princess, and returns to the castle.

So that's Little Master. I'll say more in the wrapup but basically, it's not really worth playing now but I can imagine it was a fun game to take on the road with you in a time where there weren't a whole lot of RPGs (and no SRPGs) for the platform.
 

Game 2 - Little Master (Stages 1-10)

Little Master: Legend of Likebahn (リトルマスター ライクバーンの伝説)
Release Date: 4/19/1991
System: Game Boy  
Developer: Zener Works  
Publisher: Intermedia

After Fire Emblem, it took a year for the next game to come out that falls within my definition of an SRPG. It's for the Game Boy, and predictably it's considerably shorter and less ambitious than Fire Emblem. It spawned a short franchise, with Little Master 2 coming out a year later, and then a third game for Super Famicom in 1995.

The games are clearly building on the structure that Fire Emblem started, but they do introduce new elements of gameplay. Except for a few unique characters, your party is made up of various monsters, who can be combined in temples to grow into stronger monsters. Each stage is slightly different, with gimmicks or tricks to keep things interesting. While the game is quite short at 15 small stages, that's typical for this era of the Game Boy. Having a game that you could take with you anywhere was enough of an advantage that even a not-so-exciting game could sell.

The gameplay is very basic. It's standard SRPG. Your characters can move up to level 8, and there is no equipment or items. A unit attacks, the other unit counters. It follows FE's player turn/enemy turn system. Most of the stages can be repeated as many times as you want, so there are opportunities to build up your characters and try to use the monster combination system to get different units.

The game begins with the opening story. Dark King Gezagain suddenly appeared 6 months ago on a stormy night and took over a bunch of kingdoms. The kingdom of Lainark is also under attack and facing destruction. The main character Lim, and his close associate Moomoo (the cow in the picture above) are sent out by the king to fight against Gezagain's forces.

The first 10 stages have no developing story; the king just sends you out to a particular place to deal with some troops of Gezagain.

The king and his hard to read Game Boy text

Scenario 1 - The Hero Sets Out

You begin with the hero, Moomoo, and three additional monsters -- a Sheepman, a Chickenman, and a Treant. Treants can walk over rivers. The other two don't have any specialties. Other monsters can attack 2 spaces away or fly. This is a very small and simple stage, with nothing tricky about it. The house gives you a Mouseman.


Scenario 2 - The Strange Temple

This is the stage with the first temple. By moving two monsters onto it, they can be combined into a bigger monster. The hexagram at the bottom is a heal point. Any unit (enemy or player) moving there regains all their HP. However, if a unit is attacked while on the hexagram, it breaks (units can be counterattacked there with nothing happening). This does add a bit of strategy because you need to be careful about how you use the hexagrams, or which monsters you attack.


Scenario 3 - Tornado Panic

The gimmick of this stage is that whirlwinds come randomly at the end of each turn and move a unit to another random space.

Scenario 4 - The Illusion Lake

A combination

The boss of this stage appears after you chase a lake around for a while. At this point my hero and Moomoo were gaining a lot of levels (8 is the maximum) although I tried to level some of my other guys. If anyone is defeated, they leave the stage and their XP resets to 0 (although their level remains intact). The combination is based on the units' "rank" and level, so combining two low level units like I did above won't give you much good.

Scenario 5 - Protect the Forest

The boss cuts down a tree every turn. If you let him cut down all the trees, extra enemies appear.

Scenario 6 - Deal with the Dam

Here you have to reach the Dam square, which will dry up the water and reveal the house with the boss.

Scenario 7 - Zombie Legend

Zombies come out the graves, although they can't move very fast. By attacking one of the tombstones you destroy it, and destroying all the tombstones stops the zombies and reveals the boss.

Scenario 8 - Mountain of the Falling Stars

The magician highlighted above, when defeated, accidentally releases a huge magic burst that kills or weakens most of the enemies. The Cyclops are tough so this should be done first. By this point I was mostly using just the hero and Moomoo to beat everything.

Scenario 9 - Fly to the Magic Mountain

Fortunately you don't have to use flying units, since a house at the top will release a bridge. I had some success here with a Wyvern unit that I had made at a temple.

Scenario 10 - Fortress of the Monsters

Supposedly this is the final stage as the king sends you to deal with Gezagain's castle. Of course this isn't the end of the game, though, the boss of the stage isn't even Gezagain.

After winning this stage, it turns out it was just a feint to draw your attention away. The king is wounded and the princess captured.

So the story actually begins here, and I'll cover the last 5 stages in the next post.

Game 1 - Fire Emblem Wrap-up

Facts

Fire Emblem: Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light (ファイアーエムブレム 暗黒竜と光の剣)  
Release Date: 4/20/1990  
System: Famicom, later remade on the Super Famicom and Nintendo DS  
Designer: Kaga Shozo, Intelligent Systems  
Publisher: Nintendo

1. Turn type: Player turn/enemy turn.
2. Maps: Fairly large. Terrain gives evade bonuses, but nothing else. No height.
3. Character customization: None.
4. Character development: Standard XP level system. Stat gains based on innate "growth rates" that differ by character. At level 10, some characters can promote to an upgraded class with the right item. 
5. Party size: There are a total of 52 characters in the game (51 total can be acquired). At most 15 can be deployed in any stage.
6. Equipment: Each character has 4 items, including weapons and usable items. There is no armor.
7. Game flow: Each stage follows the previous one; maps cannot be repeated. There is no exploration or intermission screen between maps. No alternate paths or secret maps.
8. Saving: Only after completing a stage. A temporary "suspend" save can be made during a stage. 
9. Death: Permadeath.

Impressions

Reviewing retro games can be difficult because it's hard to know what standpoint you should look at them from. The reason I called this "impressions" rather than a review is that I don't want to give any suggestion that this is an objective review. This is simply my own experience playing these games -- someone who has been playing video games since the early 1980s. I can't put myself in the mindset of how I might have thought of this game if I had played it in 1990. So at times my comments are unfair from the standpoint of what we could reasonably expect of Kaga and the other developers at the time. Given what they had to go on at the time I think they did a really good job with the game. And of course they get a lot of credit for starting a franchise that is still going strong 28 years later, and doing a lot to start the SRPG genre.

I'll get the bad stuff out of the way first. There are two problems that hurt my enjoyment of the game. The first is the item handling interface. Each person can only hold 4 items. There's no intermission screen where you can transfer items, so everything has to be done on the map. You can store extra items in a storage unit. But buying, transferring, storing, and retrieving items is painful. I would often put it off because I didn't want to deal with it. There are other issues with the interface as well -- not being able to easily see movement ranges, not being sure how much damage anyone is going to do without manually calculating formulas.

The second problem is the permadeath of units. I can't deny that this adds a lot of tension and strategy to the game -- you can't simply throw all your units forward in a mad rush and win as long as you beat the boss, or abuse the arena to power level. But it's too easy to lose a character because of an unlucky critical hit, or because you made a placement mistake or forgot to check an enemy inventory. When this happens 40 minutes into a stage it's very demoralizing. In fact this is why I have never finished a Fire Emblem game before this one. I found that my compromise of one save state per stage worked pretty well. It still meant that I couldn't just move units without thinking, but a simple mistake didn't send me all the way back to the beginning. I always wondered if the designers intended for you to lose characters and keep playing (they give you 51!) but judging from the developer comments that doesn't seem to be the case.

The game balance is spotty. The classes and characters vary widely in ability -- the axe users, for instance, get poor weapons and generally bad stats, and can't promote. The Social Knights start out much better (with greater movement, weapon choice, stats) and can promote. You can probably win the game with all kinds of parties but it's nice when the characters are closer in ability.

There is the opportunity for a fair amount of strategy in the game. Unit placement is extremely important because of how easy it is to get ganged up on and killed in the enemy turns. Going slow helps a lot with this, but often the designers have encouraged faster play by including thieves that steal chests and destroy towns, or reinforcements that start coming out if you take too long.

The storyline is really nothing to speak of -- most of the characters barely exist beyond an initial dialogue, and the plot is all given in the instruction manual. You know at the beginning of the game you're going to recover the Falchion and beat Medius, and that's what you do.

Overall I think this is an impressive effort for 1990, and it still held together pretty well for me. The rough edges are to be expected from a game of this era, particularly one that was still inventing a genre. I wouldn't particularly recommend the game except for FE or SRPG fans who really want to see how the franchise/genre started. If you're interested in the characters or (fairly light) story, you might as well play the remake in Mystery of the Emblem, or the total remake for the DS.

Game 1 - Fire Emblem (Stages 23-25)

I have to admit at this point I was getting a little tired of the game so I tried to see if I could use the Warp Staff to power through the last stages. It sort of worked, but there were a number of unforeseen hiccups.

Stage 23 - The Evil Priest Garnef
"The final fight against Garnef in the legendary city of Thebes."

I gave Marik the starlight magic and had him warp up next to the throne boss, although I noticed later that Marth was able to hurt him with the Mercurius as well. Since Marik would die and Marth wouldn't, I just sent Marth up to the top to finish the stage. This would later bite me in the butt because there are several fake Garnefs, and the one on the throne is not the real one. So I beat the stage without getting the Falchion, which is all but necessary to defeat the final boss.

Garnef is defeated, and can't realize his goal of defeating Medius himself. But he mocks Marth as he dies. Now Marth's sister Ellis finally appears.

She has a resurrect staff, which can be used in the next stage.

Stage 24 - The Kingdom of the Mamkute
"Drua Kingdom. This was the kingdom of the Mamkute people..."

This stage is easy to warp clear; I sent Abel down there with a Dragon Killer to deal with the boss and then moved Marth in to the castle. There's a place to resurrect dead people below but the only one dead was Kashim (from way before) so that didn't seem necessary.

Stage 25 - The Chosen Ones
"The fight against the Dark Dragon Medius. Marth's last deciding battle."

This is the last stage, and it's a tough one. Not only does it have strong grunts with reinforcements, but your team starts off split into four and dispersed around the map. You have no direct way to control the placement. Also this is where I noticed that I did not have the Falchion. Fortunately I had a save state back on stage 23 that I could go back to and beat the real Garnef. In doing so I lost Marik, but that seemed a reasonable price to pay.

Second problem was that none of my mages started near Marth. Someone on the Discord reminded me that if Marth has a Warp Staff, he can pass it to Gato, who joins on this map and appears near Marth. So I went back to stage 24 to do that.

Even then it didn't work. Marth got killed before he could even face Medius, who is behind another powerful Mamkute.

My next effort was to first send Abel there with the Gladius. Although he was not able to kill the Mamkute, he killed both of the Snipers, which was very helpful.

While this was all being set up, everyone else on the map died except for Gato and Sheeda. This left Marth alone to face off against Medius, with a lot of casualties in the final battle.

The Falchion is a fairly weak sword, but it does have a bonus to damage against Medius. It took me two turns.

But Marth was victorious! Of course Medius gives the usual bad guy speech about how he'll back some day as long as there is evil in the hearts of men, blah blah.

Sheeda managed to survive so Marth proposes to her (there's a different scene here if she died, where Marth says he'll never forget her. Now we get the English ending scene:

I'm not sure what that last sentence means; if they were referring to Fire Emblem Gaiden or not. A lot of games from this period say something like this at the end so it might not mean anything. Next up is a cast list that shows some odd romanizations for characters.

Next up is a list of all the stages and how many turns each one took, followed by your final turn count. This is a nice touch.

Finally, there's a short description of what each character does after the war. If they died, it says which battle they died in. Another nice touch.

And that's the end!

I'll post in a few days with some sort of wrap-up or review post but I'm not sure exactly what it will look like yet.

Game 1 - Fire Emblem (Stages 20-22)

Stage 20 - Black Knight Camus
"In Grunia, Marth fights the Black Knights of Macedonia headed by Camus."

In the longest pre-battle dialogue of the game, Nina tries to convince Camus to join the heroes, but he can't leave his dying kingdom even though he disagrees with Drua.

This stage has a fairly tough opening because of the four paladins to the left.

It's not that hard to kill them, but because of their high movement range it's tricky to keep everyone alive. It's easy for them to go around your troops and kill weak people. In my final play I didn't open the bridge until I had beaten those initial enemies. Marth then has to run down to the left for the Harman (Repair) staff in the house, which I never actually used.

Another enemy character falls victim to Sheeda's charms and joins the party.

Camus himself can be pretty hard. He has the Gladius, the strongest spear in the game. This is the kind of fight where I feel the permadeath is particularly unfair because if Camus gets a critical hit, he's going to kill whoever he's fighting except maybe someone at max level who has a ton of stat upgrades. I got lucky and beat him. The Gladius is good to give to a Paladin, particularly along with the Star Orb, which makes the holder's weapons not lose uses when they attack. Although the Star Orb is also really useful for Marth because the Mercurius Rapier is the strongest weapon in the game for him, and he can do a lot of damage with unlimited uses.


After the fight, Marth apologizes to Nina for not being able to save Camus.

Stage 21 - Deciding Battle at Macedonia
"A difficult fight at the border of Macedonia."

This is another map that was removed from the SFC remake.

The trickiest part is at the beginning, because all the monsters except the Paladins come for you at the beginning. Like the previous stage it's not hard to defeat all the enemies, but the Dragon Knights have such high movement that it can be tough to prevent them from killing anyone. Also your characters start separated on the map. I had three archer characters to deal with the knights and the reinforcements, but I had to try several times until I got it right. But once that initial force is beaten it's no problem because the Paladins can be lured down individually.

There's a secret shop on this stage in the mountains, that sells stat up items. Unfortunately you can't buy things at shops and send them to the storage, so it's tough to use. I just bought two things and moved on.

Stage 22 - The Knights of the Sky 
"The deciding fight against a large band of Dragon Knights in Macedonia."

I brought archers to this stage. One of the paladins is Michel, the older brother of Minerva and others, but he can't be recruited unfortunately. I played quickly here, first because you have to get to the village with Marth before the thief can destroy it. Marth has to bring the Star and Light Orbs to get Gato to make the Starlight, which is the best way to defeat Garnef. Apparently if you go there without the orbs, Gato will suggest using the Mercurius Rapier, the Gladius, and Devil weapons to try to beat Garnef instead, but he suggests basically starting the game over instead. Ouch, that's harsh!

The other reason to play quickly is to stop the reinforcements by blocking the six forts. Once I did that, I sent some units to the top left to buy stuff, and then ended the stage.

After the stage, Morodof announces that they found Thebes, where Garnef is. So now we can make our way there to recover the Falchion! In the next post I'll cover the last three stages.