Game 8 - Fire Emblem Gaiden (Chapters 1 and 2)

Fire Emblem Gaiden (ファイアーエムブレム外伝)
Release Date: 3/14/1992
System: Famicom
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo

There was an interesting pattern in the Famicom era of sequels that were very different from the original game. Zelda II and Castlevania II are probably the best known examples (also Super Mario 2 from the American standpoint). Perhaps Final Fantasy 2 could count as well.

Fire Emblem also went this route, releasing "Fire Emblem Gaiden" about two years after the original game. The term "gaiden" usually refers to a side story of an established story, which doesn't really describe this game. It takes place in the same world and has some returning characters from the original game, but it's a completely new story that has no direct relation to the original. Perhaps the creators thought the term "gaiden" would also suggest the different gameplay and style. In 2017 this was remade as Fire Emblem Echoes.

As I said in my previous post, up to now all the games have leaned strongly towards the simulation/strategy side of the SRPG name. This is the first game to incorporate more RPG elements (although Shining Force was under development at the same time and came out soon after). Gaiden allows you to walk around towns and talk to people, and you can also move around the map. Caves have repeatable battles that you can use to grind XP if you want. However, the RPG elements are still not fully implemented, and the game has a rather strange feel to it. For instance, you still can only have one item (weapon, armor, or ring), and there is no money.

The system is based on the original Fire Emblem, with the following notable changes.

• All weapons have unlimited uses.
• Spells cost HP to cast, and magic users get spells by moving up levels.
• There are multiple promotions for many classes, and promotions are done by visiting various goddess statues.
• Archers have much greater range.
• There are monster units in addition to the usual human classes (although only on the enemy side)
• Pegasi do not take extra damage from archers.

I'm not going to cover all of the stages because many of them are just grunt battles with no story and no real difficulty.

I also am using "easy mode", which you get by holding select and start. Normally I don't do that kind of thing but literally everyone told me to, including a Japanese site.

The manual gives the back story: Valencia was created by two gods, the benevolent Mira and the evil Douma. They fought for many ages, but eventually Douma controlled Rigel in the north and Mira the Sophia kingdom of the south. They existed in harmony for a time, Rigel protecting the land, and Sophia growing the food. But eventually Sophia forgot their origins and stopped sharing their food, even when the starving people of Rigel begged them to help. Even the compassionate among the people of Rigel couldn't go against King Lima. Eventually King Rudolf of Rigel, under orders from Douma, attacked Sophia. By the time Sophia realized their mistakes, it was too late, and war had engulfed the continent. Eventually Minister Dozei defected to Rigel and assassinated the royal family, and now even Sophia Castle is about to fall to Rigel.

(This makes Sophia sound like the bad guys!)

Chapter 1 - To Sophia!

Alm, the hero

We start in a tiny village, where Maizen, a former knight of Sophia, has fled the rebellion of Dozei. He's raising Alm as his grandson, and teaching him swordsmanship. One day Luca comes to the village, seeking Maizen's assistance in forming a resistance against Dozei. Maizen refuses but Alm decides on his own to follow, taking a few townspeople with him.

The townspeople actually start with no class and you can choose which class path to take them down once they hit level 3, which is a nice touch.

The first battle

The battles are reminiscent of Fire Emblem but in general far easier. The first few battles are nothing to speak of.

The overworld map

The little cave there is a thief hideout, where we rescue Silque the cleric. She learns warp at level 7 which apparently is quite useful later. There is also an opportunity to change class at the Mira statue and drink from a stat-increasing fountain (3 times).

The first challenge comes here:

The game lulls you into a sense of complacency and then throws Leather Shield Mercenary at you. He looks like all the other guys but is at a higher level and has a leather shield, increasing his defense. He's not extremely difficult, but you have to notice that he's there. Of course you get his leather shield, and the next stage gives a steel bow. This increases archer range to 5 -- archers in general seem much better in this game than in FE1.

Next place gives us Claire the pegasus knight. She's pretty bad, but at least in this game the flyers don't have to worry about archers. Range 4-5 archers would make P Knights almost impossible to use otherwise. The Thunder Sword also appears here so Alm can attack from a distance.

Claire's older brother Clerbe

We then come to the Resistance base, where Clerbe joins the team and we get a chance to promote some units and raise stats.Clerbe asks Alm to become the leader of the resistance and maybe even future King. Sounds appropriate for the main character, so on we go to the climax of chapter 1. Dozei is trying to call for reinforcements to Sophia but hopefully we can get him before he does it. Alm is worried about incurring Mira's wrath if Sophia and Rigel fight, but Fors (another new recruit) floats the rumor that Mira has disappeared. The crops aren't growing lately.

Chapter 1 boss

Dozei is at the castle. He runs away if you beat Slader, and it takes a lot of grinding and use of Warp to beat Dozei. You get a Dragon Shield but maybe it's not worth it...I just bypassed it and beat the stage. I lost the first time because I charged ahead too strongly. Letting Slader come to you and beating him up first makes the stage a lot easier.

Maizen is in the castle; he now agrees to let Alm walk his own path, and tells him another person will be here soon, after which we can chase Dozei into Rigel.

Chapter 2 - Celica sets off

Chapter 2 focuses on the second main character, Celica. She is a holy knight who wants to go to the Mira Temple to see what's going on with the crops in the land not growing. Her initial troop is an archer and two mages, which is not the best group for dealing with warriors. I believe she also encounters the first monsters.

Appropriate for this time of year

Celica heads out for the harbor, where she picks up a rough fighter for her team and a ship. This chapter has a lot of ship battles.

Yo ho ho

Here's another Leather Shield Mercenary, by the way. There's also a map with lots of mages, and one with a necromancer that summons a lot of zombies. So they tried for some variety in the stages, which is good. This game also has magic defense (which FE1 didn't have), so it changes the strategy vs. magic using characters.

Brrraiiinnss

In the thieves' fort the first NPCs appear. They fight on their own, and if they survive the map you (generally) get them. In this map they try to fight the boss -- I think I got lucky because the weakest unit, the archer, got wounded early and retreated, so it wasn't that hard to have them all survive and join the team.


The next challenge is a Dragon Zombie, who guards a holy ring (that lets you regenerate HP on your turn). If Celica is high enough level to cast Angel, then the fight is not too bad although you do have to make sure you don't leave weak units where the Dragon's high move can get them. Beating the dragon also lets you enter the shrine where a Holy Sword awaits (good against monsters).

Reaching Sophia, the team meets Paola, one of the three P Knight sisters from FE1. But she doesn't join us now.

This stage does not have any boss. Celica just reaches Sophia and reunites with Alm, leading into the third chapter.

As I said, this game feels odd in a lot of ways, but it's not terrible so far. Apparently it gets a lot slower and more tedious starting in chapter 3, so we'll see how it holds up in the end.

1990-1991 Wrapup

I'm going to try to do a wrap-up post for each year I cover, although as the years get more stuffed with games I might have to do half-years. We'll see. Since 1990 had only one game, I decided to do 1990 and 1991 together.

My list had seven games from this period: Fire Emblem, Little Master, Super Robot Taisen, Langrisser, Lady Phantom, Ninja Burai Densetsu, and Super Robot Taisen 2.

The most notable thing about these games is that they all lean heavily towards the strategy side rather than the RPG side. All of them are single-path games with one stage after another, with only Little Master allowing for repeating stages. The RPG elements are limited -- only Ninja Burai Densetsu has any gameplay outside of battles (you can walk around in the towns and visit houses and shops). Most of the games allow for one piece or no pieces of equipment.

But three strong franchises started here -- Fire Emblem and Super Robot Taisen are still strong franchises 28 years later. Langrisser did not have quite as much success but has still had a respectable string of games.

Also there are bigger things on the horizon. By the end of 1991, two companies are developing games that have a much stronger RPG element to them, and we'll see those as the next two games on the blog (Fire Emblem Gaiden and Shining Force).

Unfortunately none of the games from this period are strong classics, in my opinion. The ones I enjoyed the most were Langrisser and Fire Emblem, although I did play a 1993 remake of Langrisser. Neither game is a masterpiece, and I think both are worth playing mostly to people who really like retro games or want to see the origin of these franchises. Langrisser is probably the better game.

Finally, this period has been pretty well favored by fan translators as well. Out of the 7 games, one has an official release and 4 have fan translations, leaving only Lady Phantom and Ninja Burai Densetsu. As I understand it, PC Engine CD games often present difficulty to fan translators because the voiced cutscenes rarely have subtitles, making it hard to do any translation of the dialogue.

On to 1992!

Game 7 - Super Robot Wars 2

The Super Robot Wars posts on this blog are going to be different from the main ones. As I said in my last SRW post, I spent many years playing through about the first 40 games in the series and I don't really have much desire to do that again. Instead, I'm going to repost what I was posting to the srwg.org message board (and descendants). These posts were almost all lost in various server moves and database crashes, but I have them all on my HD.

As a consequence, these posts will be rougher and less detailed than the normal posts -- some of these I wrote over 10 years ago and I don't have a clear enough memory of the game to do much editing or expansion, although I will add some bracketed [2018:] notes. These were also written for an audience who was familiar with Super Robot Wars.

Anyway, the old stuff starts after the line.

---

This game is really the beginning of the SRW franchise proper.  Despite a large number of differences from the games most people are used to, the basic gameplay and "feel" of the series is still there, albeit in a very primitive form.

The series used in the game are the core UC Gundams (FG, Z, ZZ, CCA, and F91), Mazinger, Great Mazinger, Grendizer, Getter Robo, and Getter Robo G.  This is also the first appearance of Cybuster and Granzon.  However, from most of these series only the main robots and pilots are controllable player characters.  The vast majority of the enemies, particularly the named ones, come from the Gundams.

Gameplaywise, here are at least some of the differences between SRW 2 and later games:

• The game does not differentiate between pilot stats and mech stats. The only stats are power, defense, and speed. They level up as the pilot levels up, and there is no upgrading with money.  You cannot switch pilots.
• The numbers are scaled much lower than the later games; your mechs start with as little as 250 HP and at the max level (50) even most of your super robots don't break 1000 HP. The weapon strengths are also very low.  Even the battleships have really low HP.
• Each unit has a maximum of 2 different types of attacks in the NES version (i.e. Cybuster only has Dis Cutter and Cyflash; Gundam F91 only has Beam Rifle and Beam Sword).
• There are no equippable items. You can buy items from shops on the map, but they either increase permanent stats (just by 1), or they stay around and can be used by anyone at any time (i.e. Repair Kits).
• There is no such thing as energy, bullets, or morale. Any weapon could be used as many times as you wanted per map (extremely unbalancing in the case of Cybuster!!) [2018: Actually I found Cybuster pretty weak even with the unlimited MAP attack]  Also because of the absence of morale, you can go back to the ship to refuel/repair as often as you want with no penalty.
• You are forced to counterattack if you are attacked.  It is possible to dodge the enemy's attack, but you cannot choose a block or dodge option, and you cannot choose the weapon you counter with.
• The special abilities (such as Newtype and Shield Block) do not exist.
• The seishin are different, and generally less useful. Hirameki(Flash) costs 50 SP, for instance, and there is a 10 SP seishin that only raises your hit value by 10.
• Terrain compatibilities of units do not exist (weapons do have them).
• Repairing does not grant any EXP.

Storywise, the plot is pretty simplistic.  Bian Zoldark forms the Divine Crusaders, and it's everybody vs. DC.  There's no indication that any of the anime plots happened (i.e. the One Year War or anything); it seems that the various robots were created to fight the DC.  For the most part, the plot is just a succession of "let's fight this DC base" or "The DC are attacking here", with very little character interaction.  On the other hand, things from the anime like the Kamille-Jerid rivalry are vaguely referred to.

Stage 1

Talk about back to the basics -- this is the first SRW game to have a plot. It's interesting to see many of the features (some in embryo) that survive to the later games, while there are many differences.

All the text is in hiragana which makes it somewhat hard to read, but not impossible. The opening "prologue" is interesting because unlike many of the other games, it does not mention the events of the actual series. All we're told is that Bian Zoldark has formed the Divine Crusaders to control the Earth, and gotten many of the Super Robots under his control. There is no mention of the One Year War, of Dr. Hell, or any of the events of the shows that usually are mentioned -- it seems that the game is not interested (as the later games are) in setting the events at a particular time in the chronology of the Universal Century or anything like that. I'm also curious to see what the fearsome power from space that Bian Zoldark fears is -- in the Alpha series it's the Aerogaters but obviously that won't be the same here.

The setup and story of the first stage are similar in that the story isn't drawn from any of the series, even though Char appears in the stage (it's not entirely clear who he's working for; I guess DC).

Unusually for a SRW game, the first stage contains both real robot enemies (Zakus) and super robot enemies (the robot monsters).

The gameplay is recognizably SRW, although the HP are far lower than in most of the games, and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference between the various attacks the characters can make. Also there are far fewer range attacks (for both enemies and allies) than in the later games.

Char escaped; I wonder if I could have killed him if I had gone after him instead of his friends.

In any case, this stage wasn't particularly hard; I had to load a save once because I moved Texas Mack too far ahead and he got swarmed. The intermission screen has only save and continue, so I guess there are no upgrades in this game (I read in a FAQ that you can buy things from stores in certain stages; a bit reminiscent of Fire Emblem in that regard).

Stage 2

The layout of the maps reminds me of Fire Emblem for some reason. It has a very big "storm the castle" feel to it even though the goal is the usual "kill all enemies".

Michiru was really hard to save in this map. You can't control her at all, you can't heal her, and she always goes for an enemy and attacks. Also in this game you cannot choose evade or defend -- if you are attacked, you automatically counter attack. I finally saved her after many reloads, only to find that you can't actually recruit her (that was added in the Playstation remake of the game. Boo!)

Jerid, Ramba, and Kakricon made an appearance but it seems like the unique enemy appearances are really just for show in this game because the Titans and Zeon don't exist, so they're all just working for the Divine Crusaders. Jerid doesn't have any special dialogue with Kamille or anything like that.

[2018: I have no notes for stages 3-14. I have a vague memory that I initially started doing this on a blog rather than on srwg.org and maybe those stages were on the blog, but if so that blog is long lost.]

Stage 15 - Fierce fight!  Jupitoris

Your forces have to invade the Jupitoris, where Scirocco seems to be plotting against DC on his own.  This does seem to draw from the plot of Zeta Gundam, and you can see the first glimpses of the storywriting that's standard in the later SRW games.  Basically the strategy of these missions is the same -- bunch your guys up so that they can't surround you, and you just have to weather the storm of everyone coming at you at once.  Then you have to charge the three bosses (Reccoa, Scirocco, Sara).  I lost Cybuster and F-91, but overall it wasn't too bad.  The indoor missions tend to be a little challenging because you cannot go into the ship to repair.

Stage 16 - Escape!

One interesting thing about this game is that they do employ a wide variety of mission goals.  Here you have to escape the map, avoiding some Last Battalion enemies but fighting the others (the Last Batallion was later reused in OG).  The hardest enemy on the map is Radra, a rare non-Gundam unique, who is immune to distance attacks.  You can also persuade Cecily with Seabook here but she doesn't join your team, she just stops attacking your guys.




Stage 17 - Solar Ray Operational

The mission goal here is to destroy 4 solar ray panels in 11 turns.  The idea is that you have to fight your way to the solar ray panels against time, but there's a trick.  Duke Freed has a seishin called Teleport that can send a unit to any spot on the map.  Just load everyone except Grendizer into the Nel Argama, teleport it over to the solar ray panels, and go nuts.  This messes up the enemy AI because enemies will not move or attack until they get attacked or a certain number of turns pass.  I was able to get all the enemies near the solar ray panel including Gremi, and not lose anybody in the process.  (The Solar Ray is from First Gundam)

Stage 18 - Invasion!  Competo

A "defense" mission where you are in the middle and everyone rushes you.  It got kind of hairy at the end but I was able to beat them all only losing Puru.

Stage 19 - Death Fight on the Moon

You get a bunch of new weapons for your robots -- VSRB for the F-91, Shine Spark for the Getter, etc.  This is not a very hard mission because there are so few enemies; Haman is kind of tough but you can conserve all your strength for her.  The interesting part of this episode is Puru II.  SRW 2 is unique in that you must allow Puru II to kill Puru in order to later get her on your team.

Stage 20 - Deciding Battle!  The Granada Base

This is a tough stage.  Granzon sticks around until turn 7 and can kill people very easily, and even once he leaves you still have to deal with Haman and the two Geymalks.  I lost 4 people on the stage.  I doubt it is possible to defeat Shuu; he is immune to range-1 attacks which means only Z Gundam, Nu Gundam, Methuss, and Getter Liger can attack him.  Even if you did beat him, it would hardly be worth it.

This is Shuu's first appearance in SRW.  I don't know what sort of backstory the creators had in mind for Shuu and Masaki at this stage in the series (nothing about their background appears in SRW 2).  But Shuu's personality is intact at this point; his polite speech, his vague taunting, etc.  The Granzon only has Black Hole Cannon and Gran Worm Sword at this point.

Here are some screens of Cybuster vs. Granzon, SRW 2 style:

Stage 21 - Stop, time!

This is sort of a dumb stage.  The goal is to escape in 15 turns.  There's not really much in the way of challenge -- there are only 3 enemies who can't keep up with your units, so it's just a matter of moving everyone to the end.  Bian does appear in this level at the beginning, here's what he looks like in SRW 2:

One thing I forgot about Shuu is that he doesn't have Dark Prison yet as BGM; he just gets the Valsion theme, same as Bian.

Stage 22 - Entering the Atmosphere

This is an odd stage. You have to protect the Ra Kaliam for 20 turns, but all the enemies rush you, so I defeated them all in 6. Also, the AI for the enemies is buggy -- if they can't attack the Ra Kaliam, they won't do anything except move. So all you have to do is surround the Ra Kaliam, destroy the 4 boss units that can make ranged attacks, and you win.

Time for some suicide runs! The last few battles are "kill the leader" ones so they can (hopefully) all be cheesed.

Stage 23 - Scirocco's Counterattack

This is Scirocco's last stage. Teleport the Ra Kaliam with every unit inside, and attack Scirocco -- I lost a few units but I won. Although they sort of used the plot point of Scirocco defecting against the evil organization, they didn't really carry it to the point where you can actually say they were using Zeta Gundam's storyline. Kamille has no particular relation to Scirocco, and there's no "insane" sequence.

Stage 24 - Gilgilgan

The Gilgilgan and Mech Gilgilgan showed up in SRW 1; Kouji and Duke indicate that they fought Gilgilgan before, but this cannot be a reference to SRW 1. It may just be that this was part of the DC fight before SRW 1 started. Anyway, Gilgilgan is pretty close to where you start, so I just threw all my guys at Gilgilgan and lost everybody but 2 people. Thankfully money is worthless in this game aside from repairs.

Stage 25 - Last Battalion Again

This stage has tons of difficult enemies and waves of reinforcements, but it falls victim to the Teleport and Suicide strategy again.  Ra Kaliam goes to the NW of the map, then I mostly used distancea attacks (because he's surrounded by other enemies).

Stage 26 - Final Battle at Dawn

The final stage isn't too bad.  I don't understand why Kyara and Lakan were chosen to be enemies in the final battle; it seems like Haman would have been a better choice. 

Next up are Shu and Bian, who start coming at you before you can completely heal up (I just used Love). Here are some Valsion screenshots (the last one is Cross Smasher):

I totally ignored Shu and focused all my attacks on Bian, using several Love seishin to restore HP, and Bian went down fairly easily.

Bian gives his usual speech, and I was a little surprised that he does actually mention Ryune in the original NES version. Maybe they had already come up with some SRW 3 ideas at this time.

Then the concluding scene has a sort of robot encyclopedia with info on each robot. The descriptions of Cybuster and Granzon don't add anything to the backstory of the characters, unfortunately, but here are some shots:

So that's it for SRW 2. Overall this is not a very good game. Everything about it is primitive; in particular, the strategic options are so limited that it doesn't really feel like you have much choice in what you do. Basically it's just watch all the enemies come towards you en masse, and kill them as fast as you can. Really this is only worth playing for historical value.

[2018: Next up will be Fire Emblem Gaiden.]

Game 6 - Ninja Burai Densetsu

Ninja Burai Densetsu (忍者武雷伝説)
Release Date: 12/5/1991  
System: Mega Drive
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega

I don't have a great deal to say about this game so I'm going to combine the post and review into one. This is the first game for Mega Drive (Genesis) I'm playing -- I never had a Genesis as a kid so I've played almost no games for the system. Looking at my list I will be playing 7 or 8 games for the system (including the CD games).

 FACTS

1. Turn type: Player turn/enemy turn.
2. Maps: Small to medium. There is terrain that gives minor bonuses, and hampers movement.
3. Character Customization: None.
4. Character Development: Standard XP level system.
5. Party Size: You always get to use all the characters you have; which by the end of the game will be over 10 (although most of them don't matter)
6. Equipment: Each character can equip one weapon and one armor.
7. Game Flow: 10 stages, one after another, no repeating stages or multiple paths.
8. Saving: Only between levels.
9. Death: Permanent death. If Burai (the Ninja) dies, game over.

 IMPRESSIONS

The story of the game is basic. The main character is half-Japanese half-English, although this doesn't seem to have any relevance to the plot. He gets trained as a ninja, and then has to rescue a lord's daughter Yayoi from the warlord Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga has been possessed by the demonic energy of a sword that he was trying to gain the power from. Beyond this, the story is mostly "go here and do this" leading up to defeating Nobunaga.

The cutscenes have pretty good graphics

This game is the most difficult one I've played so far, but I don't like the way the difficulty is done. A number of design choices (or accidents?) make it so that you have to manage extremely limited resources to level up and buy equipment for specific characters in order to survive the final stage (and some intermediate stages as well). This requires either a walkthrough, or playing through the game multiple times. The game is quite short, so replaying it wouldn't necessarily be a huge issue, but it's not what I like to do in an SRPG. It's frustrating to me to be unable to continue because I didn't know that a later stage would require a specific character at a high level. Some people may like this kind of tactical planning and replaying, but to me it's just poor game design.

There are three main things that create this kind of difficulty. The first is that money and XP are both very limited, and there's no replaying stages. The second is the time limits to beat stages, especially the 22 turn limit on the final stage which is quite severe (and entering the palace to actually complete the stage takes 3 turns so you really only have 19). The third is that attack and counterattack happen at the same time, so even if you attack a 1 HP enemy, he's going to get a counterattack as he dies. On top of all this is the permanent death and lack of any in-battle save. I used save states quite a bit to play this.

There's a walkthrough on GameFAQs but it only tells you what you need for the final stage, and gives you the compatibility for units, which is very important. I agree with the walkthrough (and a Japanese site) that for the final stage you really want the Ninja, both mounted samurai, and both spearmen at level 9 with the best equipment, and the two healers at a decent level (6 is fine). You don't absolutely need all five characters at max level, but they need to be close (and the Ninja has to be at level 9).

To do this you need to save most of your money for the second to last stage, for training and equipment.

Walking in a town

This is basically what I did on each stage:

Stage 1 - I did not use the archer at all in the game. I bought new weapons for the ninja and spearman.

Stage 2 - I bought armor for the spearman. This is in preparation for stage 4.

Stage 3 - At the beginning of the stage you have to pay all your money for an item, so I trained the spearman up to level 3 or 4 beforehand. He was definitely 4 by the end of the stage. Make sure to use all of the priests' MP on every stage to level them up.

Stage 4 - This is the second hardest stage in the game, and if you don't have a strong spearman you're not going to survive the samurai onslaught. Even with a good spearman it's not easy because you have to get the unit placement just right.

A  mounted samurai joins the team

Stage 5 - I bought the Ninja the shuriken, which is nice because it lets him attack without getting a counterattack.

Stage 6 - Nothing special, just don't spend money and try to focus all the XP on the mounted samurai, spearmen, and ninja.

Stage 7 - I bought a spear for the spearman.

Stage 8 - Nothing special.

Stage 9 - This is where I bought the best equipment for the 5 main units (except the Ninja, who gets the best sword after this stage), and trained everyone to level 9. This took most of my money.

Nobunaga

Stage 10 - I think you can be somewhat less than optimum on this stage because I did a pretty poor strategy but still managed to beat it on the last turn. Yayoi doesn't have to be saved by the Ninja so it's better to take him to the right and some other units to the left. The annoying part is that you need 3 turns after beating Nobunaga to win.

The end -- this looks like a real picture?

So I wasn't a big fan of this game. It has some good ideas, but I don't like it when the difficulty comes from restricting your strategic choices to the point where there's basically one path through the game.

Game 5 - Lady Phantom wrap-up

Lady Phantom (レディファントム)
Release Date: 11/29/1991  
System: PC Engine (Super CD ROM)
Developer: Shin Nihon Laser Soft
Publisher: Nihon Telenet

FACTS

1. Turn type: Some sort of speed based system, although it's not obvious how it works. Characters will sometimes get 2 or even 3 turns in a row, while other times it seems like their turn doesn't come up for ages.
2. Maps: Medium to large. Standing on terrain gives no bonuses, but if there is certain terrain between you and an enemy, it reduces hit rate or stops the attack altogether.
3. Character Customization: You can pick 2 of 3 (later 4) weapons for each character before the stage.
4. Character Development: Standard XP level system, with all awards given out after the stage is over.
5. Party Size: 5.
6. Equipment: None.
7. Game Flow: 10 stages, one after another, no repeating stages or multiple paths.
8. Saving: Only between levels.
9. Death: A defeated character will come back the next stage, and will not get the small XP bonus for stage completion.

IMPRESSIONS

This is very close to just being a strategy game rather than a strategy RPG, but overall it's decent. The case boasts an "expansive" story but as you may have seen from reading the posts it's pretty flimsy, even for 1991. None of the characters get more than a slight amount of development and the game is so short there's not much content there. The decision to make the story scenes only in the cutscenes, with no other dialogue, limited the amount of story they were able to include. The cutscene graphics are also underwhelming, although they're average from what I've seen in other PC Engine games.

The gameplay fares better. Overall I thought it was fun, although a big problem is (like Langrisser) that the battle system is hard to figure out. It seems like any hit can potentially do anything from missing to automatic kill, and it's not easy to see how the various stats are used to calculate what happens. Weapons have hit rates like "45", but what does that 45 mean? Percent?

The automatic kill (yuubaku) is a big problem because it adds a huge amount of luck into the game. This is particularly true of the last stage, which is much longer and more difficult than any of the previous stages. Getting your characters to survive through that level is frustrating because of the randomness and the sheer number of enemies you have to fight.

Overall this is not a great game, but it's short and playable, and I did have fun with it, so it might be worth trying if you want to play a retro strategy game.

Next up is Ninja Burai Densetsu, which is another short, difficult, barely-an-SRPG game.

Game 5 - Lady Phantom (Stages 7-10)

One note about this game is that there are no bosses or unique enemies; the villains like Makyuras appear only in the cinematic scenes so at times it's hard to know what they're actually doing. Even the final stage doesn't really have a boss.


Stage 7

Erioche is not happy with Makyuras for his repeated failures, and once again says that neither Solon nor Vat really matter to him -- he's just trying to relieve his boredom as one of the immortal survivors of an ancient race. Meanwhile, Lady Phantom gets its next mission -- defeat the enemies at the fortress of Sanmartanmyu.


There's nothing particularly hard about this map; you get the special units again that give you an "extra life".

Stage 8

Lady Phantom's action puts the enemies in disarray. Commander Denai has failed in his attack, but his failure increases when Captain Spahn shows up. Spahn lets Denai know that Spahn and his wife were on the civilian ship Denai destroyed, and then kills Denai.

Meanwhile there's a fanservice scene on the Lady Phantom ship.

But it's time for the next mission -- defeat an enemy force that's heading near the fortress at Curlint.

This stage is very small, and once again not too difficult. The "hit all enemies" weapons come in handy here given the small area.


Stage 9

One of Captain Spahn's men comes and asks Lady Phantom for help -- they're suspicious, but when something destroys the man, Jennifer decides to help them out.

This is another short stage. There are new enemies that are quite strong, but there are also NPC units (Spahn's guys) that soak up hits for you, so it's not all that hard.


Stage 10

Captain Spahn tells Lady Phantom that these new enemies are pawns of Erioche, who is really just claiming the leadership of Vat -- he's not native to Vat and is just using Vat and Solon for fun. Of course the Lady Phantom people are pissed off at this, but fortunately Spahn knows where Erioche is. Lady Phantom has no orders to go there but they decide to break off from Solon and try to defeat Erioche.

On the planet's surface, Jennifer reveals to Spahn that they actually aren't in their mechs. Instead, part of their spirit enters the mech while they stay on their ship and control things. They warn Spahn not to die protecting them (because they won't die even if their mech explodes). You do get to control Spahn in this final stage.

This is the last stage, and it is much more difficult than any of the preceding ones. You have to make it through three levels of a base, with large numbers of the new powerful enemies. Yuubaku (automatic deaths) are frequent, and at least at the levels I was at there was a fair amount of luck involved. I actually ended up using a save state after each level after my first failure, although I don't remember whether I actually had to load one or not. Because of this stage, you definitely want to level your guys as much as possible in the previous stages and not take any shortcuts to completing the stages.

However, since XP is only awarded at the end of a stage, the enemies here don't give any XP (I think this was a bad game design choice). So it's OK to bypass some units here.

The last map is the hardest one; I don't have a screenshot of it but one good tip is that you can snipe at the enemies near the stairs to the next level from your starting point. The green mech is particularly good for this. Since all your units will be revived before the final map, as long as you get one unit down the stairs you're fine.

The group confronts Erioche at the end. He's happy to see the heroes useless fighting, and has two more units for them to fight. They are Royal Guards with high HP, but for me they died in a few hits to Yuubaku (automatic destruction).

The ending is slightly different depending on if Jennifer, Spahn, neither, or both survived the last stage -- there's barely any change. If Spahn survived them Erioche kills him to set up the next scene.

 Erioche kills Spahn (or he was already dead)

Spahn reveals the truth to Jennifer, that he's her father. He thought Jennifer and his wife had both died and so joined Vat to get revenge on whoever destroyed their ship. Jennifer tells him to hang on, but he dies.

 Now Jennifer gets angry, and in an unexplained turn says some sort of magic incantation to call down spirits to vanquish the evil before them. This destroys not only Erioche but the entire planet. As far as I could see there's nothing in the story so far or the instruction manual to explain or even hint at why this could happen.

And thus Lady Phantom leaves Galdoba, and the game ends.

Game 5 - Lady Phantom (Stages 2-6)

Stage 2

In the opening movie, a being called Elioche is talking to her servant Makuras, who is one of the Vat. He wants to control Galdoba, and tells Makuras about the Solon troop movements. He then grants Makuras his power and wants him to fight against Solon.

Lady Phantom is resting and playing games, but a new mission comes in: to protect a fleet of supply ships being attacked by a pirate gang under Vat command.

Not a hard mission. Only one troop ship has to survive so you can let them soak up some hits (you do get a bit more XP for each one that survives, but not that much). One thing I didn't mention about the battle system last time is 誘爆 -- that's an automatic chance for any hit to kill anything. The higher a unit's BL score is, the less likely that is to happen. Great when it happens for you, not great when the enemies get one.

Stage 3

Captain Spahn, leader of the Galdoba Pirates, is talking to his prisoner Princess Sophia. She wonders why he's being kind to her, and he tells her he wasn't always a pirate. Meanwhile the Lady Phantoms have a new mission -- to infiltrate the fortress Neo Kyuraso and stop the development of new weapons, and also save the princess.

The new units are attachments to the regular units; they have their own weapons and when your HP go to 0 the unit goes away and you're back to the regular mech. An easy stage with the extra "life" -- one annoyance is that when you run out of weapons with the new units, you can't choose to jettison them.


Stage 4

This is essentially part 2 of the above mission. The cinema sequence has a flashback with Captain Spahn.

A green haired child, who could that be? Yes, it's our main character Jennifer. This is Captain Spahn when he was "Christopher". He's remembering when his ship was attacked by Vat troops and destroyed.

This stage has three floors. Each floor you either have to visit all the X spots to plant bombs, or kill all the enemies. I found the latter easier, even though you don't recover HP between floors. This could be hard if you get unlucky and your guys get destroyed, but that didn't happen to me. You can hide behind the computers and desks to block the enemy shots.


Stage 5

Captain Spahn is ready to confront Lady Phantom but when he notices Jennifer's necklace he gives back the Princess and leaves. Several days later, they have a new mission  -- protect trucks holding new weapons.

The mission is basically the same idea as Stage 2; just move ahead of the trucks and kill all the enemies.


Stage 6 

Captain Spahn is at a party with other Vat luminaries. They're criticizing him for losing the fortress to 5 girls, but during the talk he's able to figure out that Commander Denai was the one that attacked the civilian ship he was on so they couldn't notify Solon about what was going on in the battle. Meanwhile Lady Phantom gets their next mission -- destroy supply ships so that they can't reinforce the enemy.

You get new weapon options in this stage. Several people get weapons that hit everyone in range, or everyone in the hexes around the target. With this I just went straight for the supply ships -- after playing the rest of the game I think this was a mistake because you want your characters to be at as high a level as possible in stage 10, which is far more difficult than the first 9 stages. But we'll get to that in the next post.


The story is pretty light since all the development comes in the short cinematic scenes before battles.