Game 49 - Dark Kingdom

Dark Kingdom (ダークキングダム)
Released 4/29/1994, Published by Telenet 

I've played a few Telenet games on this blog for the PC Engine, although some of them were ports. They did the Tenshi no Uta series, Deathbringer ports, Xak ports, Lady Phantom (on my SRPG blog), and the Cosmic Fantasy series. This is the first game I've encountered on the Super Famicom by them. It has an interesting premise -- you are part of the Demon Lord's army which is taking over the entire continent from the humans.

The dark army is divided into 12 different species of 4 ranks. The main character, Jenn, is a shinninzoku, which are in the second rank. They look like humans, which is why they aren't in the top rank. He enters the dark army in the hopes of finding out who wiped out his village. The opening has him taking a test by walking through a gate, which determines his position in the army. He gets the best position, an officer, and enters at the lowest rank of officers.

The majority of the game involves taking missions from the commanders in the Demon Castle, leaving to go out and do them, and then receiving a promotion. You can hire mercenaries to accompany you (up to 9). They can equip things and level up, but they cannot upgrade their skills or magic. Eventually you get enough "real" people that you can stop using the mercenaries. In theory they are still useful because if your main party gets wiped out, the next 4 characters can come in and continue the battle. But I never actually made use of this.

Before you leave on a mission, you can buy things, visit the passport office to allow you to pass between regions, and equip magic. Each person has a number of MP, and can equip up to three spells, each of which cost a certain MP to equip. The spells themselves have a limited number of uses; I'm not sure if it's based on your MP or level.

You can also fight in the arena below the castle to level up. You have a time limit to finish each mission, but the time limit is so generous I never even came close to hitting it. The time advances when you are on the overworld map, if you stay at an inn, or if you fight in the arena. You can choose in the arena among 4 monsters (any combination of them), and then fight 1 to 99 battles against those monsters. So you can level up quite a bit from this. I had to do this a few times during the game because I found it a lot harder to level in the actual dungeons.

The battle system gives you four options. The first one, SWM (Sword Meter), is a basic attack that brings up a swing image:

The sword moves back and forth and you're trying to stop it in the middle. The color also changes but I could never tell if that did anything.

Next you can use AP, which are special abilities. Without an instruction booklet I couldn't tell what most of these did, and there are combinations you can do. The most effective one seems to be Successive, which gives you multiple strikes in one turn. Every time you finish a mission you can give all your non-mercenary characters one level of an AP skill; I focused on what skills each character started with, but Successive definitely turned out to be the winning skill. There's also magic and item (no defend).

When you venture out beyond the castle, you can visit towns where the humans are all scared of you. You can take anything you want from the weapon or item stores and stay in the inns for free (the items are pretty worthless, though).

The first few missions are lowly tasks and Jenn gets the feeling he's being used and looked down on by the superiors, especially those who consider his 2nd rank species to be too humanlike. He gathers a few allies to his side as he continues to raise himself in rank. One of the commanders, Beizar, takes a particular dislike to Jenn.

One big problem I had with this game is that I got a huge amount of freezes -- this game probably froze on me more than all the previous 48 other games combined. There were also a lot of problems with the BGM. I would be tempted to chalk this up to emulation problems or a bad dump, but bsnes is usually pretty reliable and the ROM is from NoIntro. I had to use a lot of save states to deal with this problem.

From here there will be more story spoilers, but my overall feeling about the game will be at the end of the post if you want to jump to there.

By the 7th mission Jenn's fiance Judy has joined up, and we go after a new enemy, the Hero Lux. This is a personal request from the Emperor. This becomes kind of a parody because they're like the heroes in a normal RPG, and there's a rumor that they are immortal -- for just half their gold they can come back to life endlessly. How will we defeat them? Well, once they kick our butt, Jenn changes into a superman and crushes them all, although they do make you fight the battle out. He does this several times during the game but never remembers.

Next you're charged again by the Emperor to recover a sword in a cave, but the cave also has something the heroes are looking for. Thanks to a series of traps, Jenn has to team up with Lux to escape the cave. Afterwards, another Emperor mission to beat a new dude that has appeared, Tordes. Tordes knows Jenn although Jenn has apparently forgotten him, and Tordes kicks Jenn's ass. Fortunately the superhuman transformation comes up again so that Jenn can win the fight and cause Tordes to flee.

Eventually, Jenn learns that it was Belzar that destroyed his village, and he decides to assassinate him. But at the same time, Belzar has taken out the Devil Emperor, with the help of Tordes. This means Jenn has to flee the capital and for a while it's just you and Judy. He teams up with the heroes to defeat Belzar. Along the way, he learns that it was not Belzar who destroyed the town, but when Tordes came to kill him, Jenn's superpower destroyed the whole village.

Tordes is the final boss, who tells us the truth about Jenn -- he was a prototype Super Being sent by the gods to test out a being that would be greater than either the old type humans or the new type monsters. Tordes was sent to kill Jenn. Once you beat Tordes, he dies, but Jenn is unable to control his power and disappears, although Lux is able to escape. He's hailed as the hero for destroying the Demon Castle.

Later, Jenn stumbles into a village, ranting about having to escape from the blinding light and warning the villagers to run. They recognize him as one of the demons and put him in a jail cell. The game ends, saying that nobody knows what happened to him. Apparently if you do a side quest in the last chapter someone releases him and it says that maybe someone will be able to save him.

-----

Famitsu gave it a 22/40 when it came out and that seems about right.Everything about the game is pretty middle of the road. The storyline is fine for 1994 if you ignore Final Fantasy VI (which would have been hard to do at the time!) The gameplay is a touch above the old cookie cutter DQ2 system, but some of the added things are somewhat annoying (like the swing meter). It is interesting to be in the reverse position of a normal game, aiding the dark side against the humans. The interface is mostly OK, although you still can't see the stats of a weapon before buying it! How hard is that?

Next up is Popful Mail, the SFC version.

Game 48 - Dream Maze: Kigurumi Adventure

Dream Maze: Kigurumi Adventure (夢迷宮きぐるみ大冒険)

Released 4/15/1994, published by HECT

This is a rather bizarre game that got a fan translation. It begins with a boy having a dream.

The frog says he was chosen randomly to be a hero, to save four princesses who will then use their power to help him defeat the Akumu ("bad dream"). Unfortunately that's the extent of the story -- there aren't any developments, twists, or anything. 

The game is a first-person maze.

The game takes place through 5 areas with a total of over 60 floors, so there's quite a bit of volume. On each floor you can buy a map that will show you the floor's layout, although there's no way to know where anything is on the map (stairs, shops, etc.) The areas are suitably kid-dream themed (Cake Tower, Pudding Tower, etc.)

The "kigurumi" (wearable animal costumes) from the title comes from the way the characters can wear the outfits of defeated monsters.

Any large monster you fight (like the chicken in the middle) will leave behind a suit as long as they are the last enemy defeated. You can then visit a "changing room" to change suits, and there are also tailors that can make custom suits by combining multiple suits -- this doesn't seem necessary, though.

Unfortunately that's the only way to change the characters' power. There are no experience levels or equippable items. You gain "candy" from fights that act as money, but what you buy with those are healing items or single-use damage dealing items. The problem with this system is that it feels pointless to actually explore the various levels of the dungeons. All you get is money that you can use to buy healing items, which let you continue to explore to get money to buy healing items. Once you've gotten good kigurumi suits from the current dungeon, all you need to do is get to the boss. So exploring the huge dungeons seems like more of a chore than a fun experience. There are a few helpful items in the levels, particularly the ones that raise your max HP (which is the only way to do that). But I still feel like having to explore 10 floors of a dungeon to find a couple of useful items feels wrong.

The levels are mostly empty; there might be a treasure chest (which you have to walk directly over to find) but often there's not even that. But what you will find are the wizardry-inspired warps, spinning floors, and trap doors. But they seem to have gone out of their way to make it annoying -- there are levels with complicated warp sequences that lead nowhere useful, you can just ignore them and go to the next floor.

The battle system has you choose "punch" or "kick", and then an area of the screen. Each suit has a different punch and kick rating, and monsters typically have one type of attack they're weak to. Some suits also give you special abilities like Fire.

Once you choose an area, the monsters might move out of that area and dodge.

There are other characters to find in the dungeon but they're quite difficult to find if you don't know where they are. Once you get them, you can do a combined attack that does more damage.

The main problem with this game is that it's just not that fun to play. Wandering around in the mazes feels like a waste of time because you're not finding anything useful or getting stronger. But if you use maps, you can probably beat the game in a few hours. The bosses in each tower are at the same level as the grunt monsters until the final boss in the last tower, who is a huge step up in difficulty. As I said before, there are no plot developments.

I think the idea of the kigurumi is interesting, and I feel like this could have been a much better game. They just needed to add some other reason to explore the maps and fight the monsters, and make at least a tiny effort to develop a storyline. I wish they had combined the kigurumi system with some kind of more traditional RPG system. As it is, I do not recommend this game at all.

Final Fantasy VI

I've now reached the point where FF6 came out. It's amazing to me how far ahead of everything else it was. I knew it would be better than other games but it's almost like Square was on another plane altogether -- what other companies were doing wasn't even coming close.

I've also always considered FF6 a late SNES game but in fact it's rather early; I'm only a bit past the 1/3 mark. I think it's because FF6 is the last SNES game I played new when it came out. After that I was more interested in computer RPGs and didn't play Chrono Trigger until much later on emulator.

Now on to Dark Kingdom.

PCE Game 32 - Monster Maker: Dragon Knight of Darkness

Monster Maker: The Dark Dragon Knight (モンスターメーカー 闇の竜騎士)
Released 3/30/1994, published by NEC Avenue

Monster Maker is a franchise that started out as a card game but grew to include a CCG, a tabletop RPG, manga, and such. There were a number of video games based on the franchise as well. The first couple of games used card mechanics and apparently were somewhat innovative, but after that they switched to a regular RPG format. I previous covered the third game in the series, for SNES. I thought it had a lot of potential but was hampered by some poor design decisions, and I was hoping for an improvement.

Unfortunately this game is much worse, and is an infamous kusoge for the PCE. It was hampered by a long development delay of 2 years. Even then, when it finally came out it was riddled with bugs, including ones that delete your save games or stick you in impossible to win situations. They even had to include a flyer in the package warning you about one of them. There are also freezes, combats ending for no reason, not being able to move on the world map, and others. Furthermore, the game ends suddenly in the middle of the story with "To Be Continued," but the sequel was never made. One contemporary reviewer for a PC Engine magazine refused to give it a score because of how unfinished it was.

The early games had a card-based battle system. Monster Maker 3 changed this to regular RPG but did have some positioning elements that made it a bit different. This game goes back to just Dragon Quest II style.

The main character, Laia, is a half-elf who was abandoned and raised in the village of Ferund. She likes talking to the fairies outside of town, but is chased out of town when the town is attacked by other dark-haired elves like her. She is given her mother's circlet and has to go on a quest to find the truth of what happened and her background.

She quickly gets two kobolds and a fighter named Mary in her party -- the Monster Maker title means that there is some monster recruiting element, but like MM3 it's poorly implemented and not necessary to use.

There's a fair amount of voiced dialogue with some big name actors, so that's probably the high point of the game.

In order to reach the elven village, she first has to pass a barrier station. But the leader of the station won't let her pass until she investigates what's going on in Derius Castle. At the same time, a dragon egg she got in the mountains hatches, giving a baby dragon.

This is basically where I stopped. The Derius Castle part requires you to go through 3 dungeons with no opportunity to heal or save. Healing items and spells do very little and I could see this was going to take a fair amount of grinding just to get through this introductory part, and with the game's reputation I see no reason to do that.

After this game, it was 8 more years before Monster Maker 4 came out for GBA. I don't know how that game was, but this is the last we'll be seeing of MM on this blog.

PCE Game 31 - Princess Minerva (Part 2, Finished)

Chapter 2 takes the women to the next outlying area of the kingdom, which is a desert land. This is annoying because touching the desert does damage, and you have to cross the desert to reach the dungeons you need to. You get shoes later in the chapter that protect against the damage, but not at first.

Bonus fanservice

I noticed that in this section the SNES version has an extra floor for the dungeon; there are several places in this game where the SNES version's dungeons are larger or an optional dungeon becomes required. Once again the heroes defeat a corrupt barracks commander as the Cutie Kamen group.

The boss of this section, the fire spirit, is in a volcano, so first we have to go get an item to freeze the lava to enter the volcano. This involves a Sphinx, who fights and then does a quiz.

Each question you get right gets you a treasure chest, and if you don't get them all you get warped back to the beginning and then can try again up to a limit of 3. I believe that after that you get the item you need regardless of how many questions you got right. They are pretty difficult questions about history and literature; I got lucky guessing some of them and knew some other ones.

Then it's on to Fire Pressea, who use a lot of hit-all magic. The Fire Sailor Outfit is good, as are freeze/water techniques.

Now Chapter 3, where we have a big bridge that's broken and requires some elven shoes to fly across. The elf with the shoes doesn't trust us humans, though, so we have to save the elf's daughter from yet another corrupt commander. Time for another cutie kamen segment, although this time they parody the Mito Komon movies.

Then the elves also decide to improve our half-elf child's magic abilities, which requires them to wear sheer clothing.

Then it's off to the air tower to beat the boss, where there are invisible platforms you have to traverse.

She's not a tough boss, especially now that the little elf girl has a strong mass heal.

Chapter 4 is in a water area, so the boss is the water follower:

We first have to deal with some slavers (Cutie Kamen style). The water lady doesn't like them either because she wants to capture all the girls herself. Here, we get the "King Sailor Outfit" which you equip to make the characters naked, with special poses:

Does this flag my blog?

Also one of the characters leaves temporary for a personal vengeance, which is annoying because now one of the parties is down a character.

The water tower has the boss, and once again she slinks back to Dynaster having accomplished nothing:

Chapter 5 is the last chapter, and we're back at the capital city to save Minerva's parents. First off, we get tricked with fake "Dragon Armor", which is the most powerful armor. This is how they think the "most powerful armor" is supposed to look:

That looks like it provides great protection against monsters. Anyway, it's cursed, and now that means that until we can get it removed, it provides the lowest possible defense, making this chapter a bit harder. Eventually after many sequences and dungeons we find the sage who can remove the dragon armor.

He also reveals that Dynaster is actually Minerva's sister, who was given to him as a baby based on a prophecy that said she would bring ruin to the kingdom. He trained her as a wizard but then she turned evil because she was so upset about how the king treated her.

So now let's head back and deal with Dynaster! The last place is two fairly large dungeons but they're not too bad. Healing items are plentiful in the game so you can just beat everything up.

She's not that bad. By now my technique was just to have Tua block until she's needed for healing, then the other two people attack.

Oh no, the sage was the secret enemy!

Dynaster helps out against the sage but it's the same technique. Then there's a final final boss:

Apparently the SNES version has some special transformations for this fight but not the PCE one. Same technique.

A fanservicy ending scene where Dynaster decides to go out on her own instead of staying in the castle. Minerva follows!

Despite all the fanservice this is a fairly good game. The battle and levelling system is fun and everything goes quickly. You don't need to grind. The visuals and voice are great. When I get to this game on the SFC I'll play a bit of it just to see how it transferred over but I would definitely recommend this game.