PCE Game 21 - Tenshi no Uta II Part 2

I left off last week on a cliffhanger, where the heroes are going to confront Ramiam in the castle. Now that we have the Sero Ark, we can fly to the castle, although we have to do some fetch quests first for a key and some other things. In the castle, we find the other Ark (Agnea) parked beneath the surface. After beating a monster inside it, the Ark starts to break down.

Farn is able to stop it and get it under control, but this hurts him and he has to stay behind while we go to confront Ramiam. He is waiting deep in the castle, with King Ragnakarn and Riana trapped in a sphere behind him. But once Ramiam uses the Lucifer Cells on Ragnakarn, this seems to restore Riana's memory, and she remembers her purpose and breaks out of the sphere, rejoining the group as we fight giant Ragnakarn. Once defeated, Shion appears and tries to kill Ramiam, but three Demons from the upper world (who may have been in TnU 1) come and take him to the surface.

Unfortunately Farn has to stay in the exploding Agnea to prevent the Orichalcum from causing a huge reaction that could destroy a continent. So we tearfully leave him behind and head out in the Sero to the initial tower from the beginning of the game, where Riana will take us to the upper world.

Raphael appears and once again refers to Riana's "judgment", but leaves as we all float up to the surface world. The party finds itself in the world of the first game, in Penzance Village. Now that they have a map, it's easy to see that it's England.

Riana and Fate are the only ones here; the other ones are hopefully on the surface too but we don't know. Immediately we are tasked with taking a girl named Tiara to Montgomery Castle. The person who gives us this task is none other than a very old Enya, one of the party members of the first game.

It seems that it's been about 100 years since. Now once we leave the village, there's a cutscene where the main character from the first game, Kearu, shows up.

After beating Lucifer in the first game, Kearu was cursed to live forever until the Lucifer Cells are all gone, which has become his goal. For reference, here's what he looked like in the first game:

Raphael also shows up, listening in and hearing that Lucifer Cells are in the upper world as well.

Fate and crew continue to Montgomery, where the King decides that Fate is the one to fix what's going wrong in the upper world as well -- at the moment, this is constant rain that won't stop (I can sympathize with this right now!). Of course as is normal for RPGs, we need a ship. This involves a fetch quest and then we can take a one-time trip to Ireland. There, at Cork Castle, we're told that if we get a Eureka Flower (the first quest in TnU1) and offer it to the gods from a high sacred place, that can stop the rain. Fate's party gets help from a young knight (really a boy) Alef, who is the descendant of another TnU1 character.

Alef tells us about Kearu, especially that if he manages to cleanse all the Lucifer Cells, he will die himself, but that's still his goal. A nearby cave has the Eureka Flower, which acts as an unlimited heal item. At the top of the tower where we hope to offer the flower, the priest Marius returns, unfortunately taken over by Lucifer Cells.

Once he's defeated, this is the last of the Lucifer Cells, so Kearu will now die.

Claire, the Angel from TnU1, comes to welcome his soul to heaven.

Now there are some side events you can do that I'll skip over. The main goal next is to get an actual permanent ship, now that the rain has stopped. Along the way we pick up Dewey and Ranzo from the lower world (Dewey was saved by Fate throwing the sword into the portal). However, what we end up getting is not a ship but an airship!

You can visit the pool from the end of the first game where Claire's father spoke to her. This time it's Claire that speaks to you. Now we're at the endgame. In order to reach the Devil Castle where the final confrontation will take place, we need two swords to cut through a barrier. One is found in a sea temple. At the top of the temple, after recovering the sword, Raphael appears.

It turns out that the rain was actually send by the Angels from the heaven world to destroy humans -- this was the judgment that Riana was supposed to announce for the humans. Raphael tries to take Riana away and move forward with destroying the world.

But Fate cries out for Riana, and she's able to reject Raphael's influence and stay with Fate. This is the "choice of the fallen angel" of the title, and Raphael seems to accept her choice.

Unfortunately, this is where my playthrough ended. The other sword is found in a cave. When you reach the cave, an event is supposed to happen that opens the entrance. I could not get this to happen. I looked for anything I could online. I pored over the single walkthrough that exists carefully, and went back multiple times to various places, talking to everyone and doing things the walkthrough mentioned to see if anything would happen, but I could not get the event to happen. This could be an emulation bug. More likely, there's some small thing I missed that the walkthrough (and diary) writers did without realizing it was necessary to open the cave.

Fortunately I can use the play diary to at least see what happens in the story. The Devil Castle opens with the two swords, and the party heads through, fighting the three subdemons that had taken Ramiam away. Once you reach Ramiam, all the rest of the party members (except Fahn) show up, and you get to freely pick 3 of them to fight Ramiam Satan, the final boss.

Once you beat Ramiam, he tries to capture Riana again, but Shion kills him with the Magic Sword he grabs from Fate. The ending scene has the wedding of Riana and Fate. Fate thinks he sees Shion for a moment, but he disappears -- was it an illusion? The end.

So this is not a bad game. The story is decent, especially for 1993. The gameplay is braindead but that's to be expected -- at least with the speedup key it's not annoying. I just wish I had been able to actually finish the game!

PCE Game 21 - Tenshi no Uta II

Tenshi no Uta II: Choice of the Fallen Angel (天使の詩II 堕天使の選択)
Released 3/26/1993, published by Telenet Japan

This is the sequel to the 1991 Tenshi no Uta, which I played earlier this year. At first it doesn't seem like a direct sequel -- the first one took place basically on Earth (in Ireland and England), but this takes place in a completely different fantasy world. But we'll get to the story connections to 1 later.

There's not a whole lot to say about the gameplay. It's completely standard Dragon Quest-style AMID. You can deal with most battles just by holding down the turbo button. The bosses mostly take the same strategy; cast whatever buffs and debuffs you have, then heal and attack until they're dead.

The music is pretty good just like in the first game.  Here's the OST; I don't know if the time link is going to work with the embedding, but around 10 minutes is the dungeon theme, and about 4 minutes in is the daytime town theme if you want some examples.

The game begins with the main character, Fate (subtle name) and his friend Shion.

A welcome change from the first game is that the severe inventory limit is gone -- it now seems to be effectively unlimited although I don't know if there is a cap somewhere. Shion and Fate go to clear monsters out of a nearby tower. Although the door won't open at first, an earthquake breaks it open. At the top of the tower they find a boss, and then a girl.

The girl is Riana, who has lost her memory. They head back to town, but that night, the town is attacked by demons that seem to be led by a Dark Church member. Despite the name, Shion was actually a follower of Dark Church and is surprised to see this. The three of them escape through an underground tunnel, but Shion can't believe that Dark Church was really involved and decides to go out on his own to find the truth. Meanwhile they meet up with a desert nomad Jia, who I don't have a screenshot of. She wants us to escort her back to her village, but she joins the team.

The next destination, though, is a town of Dark Church believers. There, we sneak in by making them think Jia is part of the circus. There we release a number of prisoners from cells, and learn that Dark is trying to unify the world under their own rule, and is building some kind of flying Ark. Our next party member Ranzo is also there.

In the castle we learn that King Ragnakang is working with the Dark Church to unify all the world under one culture, in order to oppose the monsters. At his side is Ramiam, a Dark Church priest, who Jia seems to know. The result is that we need to get back to Jia's village Rahasa as fast as possible, because the Dark Church is going to attack it. Ranzo can help unlock the door to a tower we need to pass through.

After a quick stop in Ranzo's town, we finally reach Rahasa. It turns out Ramiam was Jia's fiance before he left for the Dark Church. The elder thinks Riana might be an angel (big surprise) but he has a little mission for us to do. We head up to a cave where a Dark Church priest is summoning a dragon. The dragon immediately crushes him to dust, but we manage to defeat him. But for the second time in the game, we return to a destroyed city.

The Dark Church has destroyed the town, and Shion is with them. He has completely bought into Ramiam's plan to build an ideal paradise, but that will require making sacrifices -- apparently this village is one of them. Jia leaves the party.

We continue our journey, coming across Shion's hometown. There's not much to there except get attacked by Dark Church followers -- but then saved by Marius and Alma, two people from the Dark Church. Apparently not all the Dark Church people are bad. Anyway, we get a new party member, Farn. He turns out to be the leader of a resistance against the Dark Church.

The party continues, trying to find a way to restore Riana's memory. As is common in these games, it's time to find a boat so we can get off the initial land. After a few intermediate dungeons, the party arrives at a harbor -- unfortunately the only available boat is being used by the Dark Church. But as an honorable and upstanding hero party we decide to sneak onboard. Of course Shion is there, but also the knight Merouz, who for some reason tries to let us go when he hears Fate's name. But Fate is determined to kill him, and Merouz has to knock him into the water. The rest of the party follows. We're washed ashore but then immediately captured and jailed by the Dark Church. Ranzo lets us out, and Jia rejoins the team.

Soon we learn more about Ramiam's plan -- he is trying to find the Orichalcum for some unknown reason. The next boss is Baruva, who has fused with Lucifer cells. Lucifer was the final boss of Tenshi no Uta 1.

After this, Raphael arrives to see Riana. He confirms that she's an angel, but seems upset with her -- she's supposed to be completing two missions. One is to eliminate the Lucifer Cells from the world below, and the other is to pass some kind of "judgment." But he leaves before we learn the full story, and Riana is still without her memory. Also we still don't have a ship, but that is soon rectified after a couple of fetch quests. Now we can travel all over the world! There are a few side quests I'll skip in the interest of space. One of them is very useful, though, because it gives you the Heal Staff. Unlike a lot of games, this can be used out of battle, so it's basically free unlimited healing when you find it. The shop also sells the strongest armor for Riana and a few others.

I'm going to summarize the next part because it's one of those grand multi-fetch quests you often find in RPGs. A magician Dewey joins up and we find out that Ramiam is trying to open the Demon Gate in order to summon a whole bunch of demons to the world. In order to stop this, we have to find a demon sword and three items that will let us open the way to where he is and stop him.

After getting all this and heading to where the Demon Gate is, the first step is to fight the knight Merouz.

After Merouz is defeated, Ramiam tells us that the Demon Gate required the blood of two relatives fighting to open it -- the suggestion is that Merouz is Fate's father. The gate opens, and sucks Dewey in.

But Fate throws the demon sword at the gate, closing it, although Dewey is lost. Now that Ramiam has failed to open the Demon Gate, his next plan is to activate the Ark (Agnea). Fate and company try to stop him from getting the Orihalchum but they're too late. Marius and Alma, the Dark Church people from earlier, are waiting for Fate, as they now want to join him against Ramiam. But Ramium shows up on the Agnea and kills Alma, and captures Marius.

Before that, they had told us we should try to activate a second Ark, the Sero. This requires another sequence of fetch quests, ending on the deck of the Sero against a Beruva, who still has the Lucifer Cells.

Afterwards, Shion and Ramiam show up. Ramiam captures Riana so that he can use her power to merge with Satan [I wonder why this was never localized?]. Shion finally sees through Ramiam's plans -- he doesn't join, though, preferring to try to stop Ramiam on his own. Now we have an airship!

Now we can go anywhere in the world, so there are a few side quests and optional events to do. After that, we need the "last key" to be able to open a locked door in Excazan Castle, where Ramiam is. Descending to the depths there, we find Riana trapped in some kind of sphere, with Ramiam and King Ragnakan nearby.

Riana is able to break out, but we do have to fight the Lucifer Cell infested King Ragnakan. Fortunately Riana is back so she can cast the very powerful attack up spell that makes these bosses fairly easy. I think I'm going to stop the post here at this climactic point because this is probably 2/3 of the way through the game. What will happen when the party confronts Ramiam in the castle? Find out next week, as well as how the game connects to Tenshi no Uta 1.

Overall this game is OK. The battles are boring but with emulator speedup they can be dispensed with quickly. The dungeons are short and rarely have anything particularly interesting in them, but the story is reasonably entertaining.

PCE Game 20 - Gensou Tairiku Auleria

Gensou Tairiku Auleria (幻蒼大陸オーレリア)
Released 2/26/1993, published by Taito

This is going to be a fairly short post because I have run into emulation errors, or perhaps a bad dump (although someone else has submitted this game as a bug in mednafen). The game is an action RPG that has a 2D platforming style, sort of like Exile. It is just as deadly as Ys, with enemies able to kill you instantly if you get too close. However, you can only save in towns, which increases the difficulty. One distinctive feature is that if your level is high enough, lower level monsters will not appear. So this prevents you from overlevelling but has the side effect of limiting the amount of money in the game -- something one of the walkthrough sites warns about.

The emulation problem is that the movies don't play, or only a few images show from them. The game starts with a rather long opening scene, of which only a few parts can be seen (but the dialogue is audible). I watched this movie on youtube to begin.

The backstory is that Auleria was a world where different races lived in harmony, but then the king was killed and five continents took their own routes, although the peace was kept by an alliance between the kingdoms. The story begins when a war is about to start between the kingdoms. One of the lords, Albert (who is a monster of some kind), is visited by a prophet Georg, who seems to be telling him that he can defeat the other kingdoms, starting with the weak "mouse" kingdom (just a metaphor).

Albert's forces head out, as we switch to the main character. He lives in a little town; we see his friends and family, then he heads out to buy medicine from an nearby town. Of course while he's gone the enemies destroy the town and when he gets back, the entire place is a burning mess and everyone is dead. So the main character heads back to the nearby town to find out what happened.

After poking around in the village, he heads off for the castle. Michael, the one survivor, went there to tell the king what happened. This is where the action starts -- it's just swinging your sword, basically. There's an MP gauge that lets you charge up and shoot some fire from your sword, but I didn't find that very useful.

At the castle, our hero learns something of what happened (just that 5 magic monsters came to destroy the town). Michael tells him that his younger brother Karl might fight with the hero. But Karl says he wants Michael to come home first -- Michael has headed off to a cave, which is the first dungeon.

I died a bunch of times in here, but after levelling and upgrading my gear I finally found Michael. Now Karl joins the team. At this point the game becomes a bit easier because you can switch between the hero and Karl, each with their own HP gauge. The next goal is to be able to pass the barrier to the next kingdom, but first you have to do a sidequest involving a crooked weapons dealer. This requires going back into the cave and exploring new areas and beating a boss. But after this a movie played that I couldn't see again, and I thought that was good enough.

It's too bad the emulation didn't work, but this isn't that good of a game anyway. Next up is Tensi no Uta II, the sequel to the 1991 game I played earlier. There's also a slight change -- I think I'm going to skip Laplace no Ma for the PCE and play it when it comes up on the Super Famicom instead (despite being in some ways a different game). But I had Tengai Makyo Fuun Kabuki Den in the wrong place so that will be after Tenshi no Uta II.

Game 27 - Silva Saga II Review

At the end of the last post I said this was a thoroughly average game -- it's perfectly playable, but hardly anything will wow you.

Story/Characters: This is a weak part of the game. The characters barely exist, particularly your frequently rotating party members. The story is cookie cutter with no real twists, even in places where you might expect twists.

  
World: Standard fantasy world -- a little disappointing from Yuto Ramon because GDLeen at least had some innovation but this is just like any other generic RPG world.

 
Game Flow: Quite smooth. There are few places where you would even think of grinding,and it's never impossible to figure out what you should do next.

System: It's mostly standard AMID, although the three parties (see intro post) keep it interesting. It's fun to try to level the mercenaries and jinzo because you have to be careful about which enemies you let them beat up on. You could easily beat the game without ever hiring a mercenary or getting a jinzo, but it wouldn't be as fun.

Side Quests/Optional Content: There are some optional jinzo you can get through some bosses and other stuff, but that's it.

Interface: I'm hoping that we're moving into an era of more modern interfaces. This has pretty much everything I would expect -- you can see the stats of equipment before you buy it, no inventory limit, easy equipment interface, etc.

Graphics/Sound:The graphics are underwhelming. While the enemy sprites are decent, the rest of the graphics still look like the Famicom-era ones of the early SFC. The music is pretty good, though I didn't find any particularly memorable songs.

---

Next up is the final set of 3 PC Engine games, then I will be caught up to where I am with SFC. The next SFC game will be Madara 2.

Game 27 - Silva Saga II Part 2 (Finished)

This is a fairly short game, so I was able to finish it up in two posts.

The three party system makes the random battles a little more interesting than the usual "mash attack" -- trying to level up the mercenaries and jinzos is fun, and they can act as meat shields in the battles as long as you don't let the mercenaries get killed. I was pretty successful until the very end. My very first hired person, Elmina, died on the last dungeon and I had to replace her. Sniff sniff.

Last time Kurisu had become the Hero of Light. The next major task is to find Milfa, who was one of Kairal's original companions -- we'll never reach the final dungeon without her. Unfortunately she was sunk along with the city of Olotria, so the first task is to head up north into the snowy fields to find Endra, one of the other warriors who traveled with Kairal. Since Arlaw has already joined us, that will be the complete party (I guess maybe these 3 were in Silva Saga 1?)

The snow sled

The enemies in this part of the game taken a sudden leap in difficulty, but I actually found it doable without grinding -- they give a lot of XP, and with judicious switching between the parties I was high enough level by the end of this dungeon to be able to beat the boss. One odd quirk of this game is that all the bosses, even the final boss, can be poisoned. They only lose 50 hp per turn max but every little bit helps.

The boss

Now Endra joins the party along with underwater gear that will enable us to reach Olotria. Only one thing left -- we need a ship! Fortunately the mayor of a nearby town is happy to grant one to the Hero of Light. Now we can reach Olotria, but before that, let's go back to Kurisu's home town and find out what's his deal.

The destruction of Dolun

Actually there's really no story there -- Kurisu left Dolun to try to defeat Zolde but his ship was destroyed. What is helpful here is an old man who tells us that we can't real Zolde's castle without going to four towers and beating the bosses there. But Milfa's power is necessary, so Olotria is next.

Sunken city Olotria

With Milfa joining the team, the final party is complete. Now that Milfa is with us, the old man in Dolun will give us the Black Key, to open the first of the four towers. Here it's just four dungeons in a row -- each one has a boss, the key to the next tower, and some of the ultimate equipment for our heroes. None of it is especially hard.

One of the towers

I used the same strategy on all these bosses -- Power Powder to increase attack, and Arlaw's defense spells, then poison. Then just attack and heal when necessary. The final dungeon is quite short, with a few sub-bosses that aren't very difficult, and then Zolde himself. He has three forms, but none of them are very hard.

Zolde

After being defeated, Zolde vows to come back some day as all stereotype villains do, and the game is over.

This is pretty much the definition of an average RPG -- it's easy to pick up and play, has a few innovative features, an uninspired plot, and cookie cutter characters. Nothing special, but if you're looking for old school RPGs it's worth a go, and it has a translation patch.

Game 27 - Silva Saga II

Silva Saga II (シルヴァ・サーガⅡ)
Released 6/25/1993, published by SETA

This is the third game in a series with Minelvaton Saga and Silva Saga I, and also has connections to GDLeen. All of them had scenarios by Yuto Ramon. The backstory in the manual is pretty standard for RPGs -- a world with the Light God Harn and the Dark God Zuhl (who was the final boss of GDLeen, at least an avatar of his). Harn won a huge war and ushered in an age of light, but Zuhl continues to affect the world and so heroes of light need to arise occasionally to defeat Zuhl's forces.

Part of the backstory

The Dark Prince Lagon was defeated by Prince Leon of the Palmekia kingdom, in a story told in one of the novels. Then in Silva Saga 1 (for Famicom), Leon's grandson Kairal used the Sword of Light to once again defeat the darkness. This time, our hero is Kurisu (or Palsu in the instruction manual), who has washed up on the shore in Beta, a small village on a small island. Unfortunately the forces of Zuhl are attacking even here. Fortunately the woman who finds him gives him some basic equipment. He has amnesia and only remembers one thing: he needs to find Kairal, the Prince of Light who defeated Lagon (I think).

Kurisu awakes

The game looks a lot like Dragon Quest. The interface is clean and easy to use for the most part. You can see what the strengths of weapons and armor are when you buy them! You can search most things in towns and houses, and a lot of them give funny or interesting messages if there's nothing there. Sometimes you feel bad (I stole 120 gold from a house where the sick grandmother was being tended to by a daughter who had to work to support her).

The status screen

The opening town has no weapon shop, but it does have a mercenary hiring location, where I picked up my first companion, Elmina.

Hiring a mercenary

You have three different parties that you can switch between in battle. Any switch automatically gives the monsters a turn. You have:

1. Your main party, which is the usual RPG party.
2. Mercenaries, who you hire at a mercenary place. As far as I can tell you never have to pay them again. They can only attack a random enemy, but recover all HP after a battle. If one of them dies, they're gone permanently.
3. Jinzo (god statues). You find these in chests, and when they're high enough level you can combine them with other statues to make a new one. Like the mercenaries, you can't control them and they casts spells, and recover all HP/MP at the end of a battle. If they die they can be revived just like a normal party.

Only the currently selected party gains XP at the end of the battle. You can't heal the mercenaries or the jinzo during the battle. But this does give some interesting dimension to a system that's mostly just the basic AMID, although I have found that due to all your different party members, the mages have enough MP to actually use their spells. The main irritation is a system that I really hate -- when the main character's HP go to 0, it's automatic game over even if everyone else is alive. Fortunately death in this game is not a big problem; you get returned to the last place you saved your game but with no penalty (other than being removed from wherever you were). This is a good offset for the annoying luck that the main character death system can introduce.


The first task is to do a little job for the mayor of Beta to prove yourself, and then he'll give Kurisu his canoe.

A battle

Now with the canoe, Kurisu is able to set out on his quest to find Kairal. One odd feature of this game is how quickly people join and leave your party. Eventually (over halfway through) you get your final party, but before that it almost makes you dizzy how often people rotate. They share their skills and levels with the next person but you lose whatever you have equipped on them.

Lisa, your first party member

Unfortunately this also means the characters are very underdeveloped (including the silent protagonist). The basic flow of the first part of the game is that Kurisu travels to a place hoping that Kairal will be there, only to hear that he's moved on. Generally there's some quest or dungeon to solve and then he'll be able to pass the next roadblock, or be given a warp item to go to another place.

A fight with 4 party members

Along the way, Kurisu learns that the Zuhl activity is now being handled by Zolde, the older brother of Lagon, who is also stronger than Lagon. Finally, he discovers that Kairal was killed by Zolde, but that Kairal knew another "hero of light" candidate was following him. He leaves behind a message for Kurisu, to find the Equipment of Light in order to be qualified to become a new Hero of Light. This just involves going to three different dungeons and getting the shield, sword, and armor of light (none of which can be equipped). Then we head to a shrine where the god Harn appears and grants Kurisu the power of the Hero of Light.

Becoming the Hero of Light raises Kurisu 10 levels, and also grants a new sprite (although the face picture on the status screen is the same).

A new man

Now all that remains is to kill Zolde, but of course it's not that easy. We still have the problem of Kurisu's loss of memory, and how can we break into the castle where Zolde is? Stay tuned!

Announcement: New companion blog

I currently have posts scheduled for this blog through the beginning of August, so I thought this would be a good time to start a side project alongside this blog.

I've been getting slightly burned out on these PCE and SFC games because so many of them are the same basic Dragon Quest-style games with only minor innovations. I absolutely do not want to stop doing this blog, but I want to have another project to alternate with to alleviate some of the tedium.

My main game love has been for strategy RPGs ever since I played Shining Force in high school. One of my disappointments with this blog is that I've played so few of them -- in fact, the only SRPG so far was Albert Odyssey, which sucked.

So I have started This Map is Completed!, a chronogaming blog for strategy RPGs. Right now I'm playing Fire Emblem 1 for the Famicom, and I have the introduction and first post up.

On this blog, Silva Saga II will begin on Saturday and run for two weeks before returning to PCE games. Unfortunately emulation problems made it so I could only play a short amount of Gensou Tairiku Auleria, but Tenshi no Uta II seems like a promising game (having played the first section).