Game 57 - Mother 2 (Part 1), 4th year anniversary

Mother 2: Gyiyg Strikes Back! (MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲)

Released 8/27/1994, developed by APE and Hal Labratory

 

This is the second game in the Mother series, which began on the Famicom in 1989, continued with this game, and concluded with Mother 3 for the GBA in 2006. The designer has said he has no plans to make any more games. The games do not share plots or characters, just a similar feeling. They are all set in a contemporary-seeming world (though not actually Earth) and star kids with psychic powers fighting against strange monsters and animated objects. There are parts that intentionally parody Dragon Quest, and silly aspects.

Mother 2 is the only game that was licensed in the US (as EarthBound). I remember the hype around it in Nintendo Power and the scratch and sniff inserts that had burp and fart smells. I never played it; by 1995 I had lost interest in console RPGs and was playing computer RPGs like Might and Magic and Ultima.

The first thing you do is gave everyone names. I went with all the default stuff except Kurisu for the main character (later you have to name the player as well, though.)

A meteor lands near Kurisu's house in Onett, and he decides to go see what's up. After some wrangling he takes a bat and heads off.

The monsters are visible on the map, which is nice. They tend to head for you. Each monster actually represents a single enemy, but if other enemies are close by when you get into a fight they will join up. You can also get attacked from behind, although it's relatively easy to avoid this. Another nice feature is that if you level up enough, enemies will run away from you, and if you do fight them you'll automatically win (although even fleeing enemies might not be automatic wins).

The battle system is standard DQ2. The "PP" are psychic power points used for the psychic abilities. One interesting quirk is that the HP are displayed on a rotating dial, and so when you take damage it takes a few seconds for it to count down. If you end the battle the HP will stop counting down, and if you heal, it heals from the current spot on the dial (and stops it from going down further). So if you are fast you can heal someone who has taken lethal damage.

Anyway, Kurisu goes with some neighborhood bully/friends to the meteorite place.

There he learns from a little bee who has come from 10 years in the future that a chosen boy and three friends will defeat Gyiyg through wisdom, friendship, and courage. But back at the bully's house his mom kills the bee, who in his dying moments says that you need to find eight places that are "Your Sanctuary" locations. A Sound Stone will record the sounds in each place. The first one is actually in Onett, the Giant Step. So that's our first goal.

The most important thing in the game is the telephone. When you call your dad, he deposits money in your bank account and lets you save the game. This is basically in lieu of getting money from monsters but it's nice because when you game over you only lose half of the money you're carrying. ATMs are conveniently located all over the place. You can also call your mom to get rid of homesickness, and later order pizza or call an item storage place.

I found the inventory limitation annoying, especially since it tends to get filled with key items and items that might be useful in specific situations but are hard to justify keeping because of how few items you can carry. In general I do not like limited inventories, and for me it's always a negative when managing inventory space is a constant element of the gameplay.

The first goal is the Giant Step in Onett. The beginning part of the game shows a common problem in RPGs of this era; since Kurisu is all by himself you basically just have to level up a bunch to have a chance to beat the early bosses. We have to take down a gang leader in the town, and then the mayor gives Kurisu a key to a cabin that leads to a cave that leads to Giant Step.

 Every "Your Sanctuary" place is guarded by a boss that appears as a star of light. The boss here is a big ant, but once he's beaten the giant step is beyond the cave. The Stone of Sound records the sound and that's 1 out of 8!

Now Kurisu has to beat up a bunch of policemen to be allowed to go to the next town -- a lot of stuff was censored when this was brought over as Earthbound but somehow in 1995 Nintendo didn't think this was a big deal. Maybe because it's framed as them testing you to make sure you're strong enough to go on.

The next place is Twoson, where we beat up yet another crime-related figure.

In Twoson we meet the scientists Apple Kid and Orange Kid, who make various devices throughout the game. We also learn about Paula, the second character. She's been captured by some kind of blue hooded figures from Happy Happy Valley, who will use her as a human sacrifice. Apparently the cultists were changed in the English version to look less like the KKK.

The Kids give you an Octopus Erasing device (which was changed to a pencil eraser in the English version).

Paula is trapped in Happy Happy village, but she gives me a Franklin Badge to survive the electrocution of the leader.

Once I managed to beat Mr. Franklin, the cultists all go back to normal, Happy Happy Valley is freed, and Paula joins. She has a lot of attack moves (including the PK Fire from Smash Brothers). She can also use a "pray" technique that I always forgot about but can recover PP and HP when she uses it. Now we can also proceed to the second Sanctuary, the Lilliputian Steps, after beating the mole boss.

Now we need to go to the next town, but the tunnel leading there is inhabited by ghosts. The ghosts are scared away by cars, but how do we get a car? We have to release the Tonzura Brothers from their debt to the night club owner. These guys had their designs changed in Earthbound, possibly to avoid having them look like the Blues Brothers.

The dude from earlier gives us a big wad of bills and runs off to find himself, and so we can use those bills to free the Brothers, and have them take us to Threed (which is Threek in the JP version -- the Legends of Localization writer wonders if they change this to avoid 3 K = KKK?)

As we might have guessed from the ghost tunnels, this place is overrun by zombies. And we quickly get captured by them, switching the action to our third character Jeff. He's at a boarding school of some kind and is the son of Dr. Andonuts ("an" here is the red bean paste, this is a donut hole with the red bean paste in it). Paula has called out to Jeff in his dreams, and he sets out to save us. 

Jeff has no PP so cannot use psychic powers. His ability is to use various items and fix broken things you find -- I never really found out how to make good use of him and he was by far my weakest and most useless character.

Jeff's dad has a UFO that takes him to Threek, and crashes into the place where Kurisu and Paula are trapped, freeing them. Now we have three out of the four party members! After beating a zombie tent and getting "fly honey", Apple Kid gives us Zombie Paper to lure all the Zombies out, and we can then proceed to Saturn Valley.

The things in the Saturn Valley look strange and have a strange way of talking. Some of them have also been enslaved in the Belch Factory, where we go next. The boss of this part is disgusting and I actually turned the sound off because I really got tired of the burp sound effects while fighting him (I somehow don't have a picture). But the Fly Honey distracts him and he's not all that hard. There's a nice hot spring afterwards to cleanse all the yuck away, and the third Sanctuary is nearby.

The zombies are also gone from Threek so we've saved another town. Off to the desert! A traffic jam ensures we have to walk.

 

The desert itself has some archeological digs and such. This part involves switching back and forth between the Desert and the large city of Fourside. There, somehow Pocky (my bully neighbor) has become rich and lives in a huge tower. Also the Tonzura Brothers have been put in debt again -- idiots. But we can free them from their debt (again) by clearing the monsters out of a desert mine and receiving a diamond in return.

 

Now it's time to deal with the rich man Montoli (and Pocky). He's getting his riches and power from this evil statue on the Moonside of town, a strange alternate dimension with unusual monsters and where it's Opposite Day.

 

We beat a devil statue inside the dimension, and Fourside is back to normal. The strange collector near Kurisu's house in Onett had the same statue but I never went back to see if his dialogue changes or if there's anything you can do there. Anyway, Montoli is grateful that we freed him from the evil statue and lends us his helicopter to go to Summers, the next town....but Pocky steals it instead. So now we need Dr. Andonuts help, and it's back to Winters again. Jeff is able to fix the UFO he rode to Threek before, and go back to Andonuts. While Andonuts makes a flying machine to get us to Summers, we can investigate the fourth Sanctuary.

That's about the halfway point of the game so I'll end here. I'm already finished with the game but I'll do the second post next week so that I won't skip too many weeks from playing Sangokushi Eiketsuden on the other blog, which looks like it could be a somewhat long game.

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This is the 4th anniversary of this blog; it's hard to believe I've been doing it for this long. Thank you all for reading and commenting!

PCE Game 36 - Alshark

Alshark (アルシャーク)

Released 8/26/1994, port developed by Ocarina Systems

This game was initially released on computer in 1991, and this port was done 3 years later (along with one to Mega Drive CD). The result is similar to what we've seen with previous computer games ported to PC Engine -- an old fashioned and somewhat peculiar system with voiced cutscenes. It's frustrating to see the designers spend all their effort on adding in the voiced cutscenes, but do nothing to address the interface issues. 

The original developer of the PC game was Right Stuff. It seems to have been their first game. They went on to make Emerald Dragon (which I played earlier), Sword Master (which I played on my SRPG blog), and Alnam no Kiba (which I'll be playing later). They struggled after 1994 and went bankrupt after releasing their last game in 1998.

The main character is Shion. At the beginning of the game, a mysterious comet or asteroid has come down nearby and his dad goes to investigate, telling Shion to stay home. But Shion rounds up his friend Shoko and they decide to go see what's up.

 

They grab one handgun from Shoko's house and head out.

The battle system makes it look like there will be some sort of grid or positioning system, but it's just a normal RPG system and the way everyone is represented on the battlefield has no purpose. Whether it's a hand-to-hand attack or a gun attack the position doesn't matter. It's the usual Dragon Quest II system.

Reaching the asteroid area, Shion and Shoko see Shoko's dad with some of the Imperial troops (who are the villains of this game). Shoko's dad seems manaical and they kill Shion's dad and the other humans, and then leave. As Shion's dad is dying, he tells them to find Scrap Joe who will help them out. Heading back to town, they find that Shion's mom has run away from home, so they chase after her, taking the house robot Saru for help.

After picking up a few items from shelves, I headed down to Hamack, hoping to find Scrap Joe.

Scrap Joe is in a garbage dump near the town, along with a bunch of robots that attack. Once we find him, he's an ornery old cuss. But once he knows who he are, he changes his tune -- it turns out that he was close friends with Shion's and Shoko's dads. So he agrees to help, and shows us his ship that he's outfitted himself. It turns out Shion's mom headed off planet so we'll try to save her.

 

We manage to catch up with the ship that took off from the planet, and get onto it -- Shaina (Shion's mom) is there, captured by the Jagma Forces which are the elite troops of the Empire. Maon (Shoko's dad) is also there, ranting about some great mission he has, and that even his beloved friends couldn't be allowed to stop him. He's found some great power. We might have all been killed but a woman named Milets comes in to rescue us, and Shaina is freed. Maon leaves, telling us not to interfere anymore.

Milets takes us to her ship, where we join her in doing missions -- the first one being on a nearby planet Zajil. We use Joe's ship, and he has a menu:

Using "scrap" that you get from beating enemies, you can upgrade the ship's components as well as make weapons and armor for your group.

 

Now we can fly the ship through space. I found this part very hard to navigate.

 There is a map but it's difficult to understand, and there aren't any landmarks to help you know where you are. Every so often you get in a fight, where you just watch the ship shoot the enemy until it dies. Just wandering around I gained a bunch of levels because the enemies could barely hurt me. Eventually it turned out that the planet I needed to go to was really close to where I had started, but you move so fast that you blow past it in a second if you aren't inching along.

This is where I stopped playing. The story seems potentially interesting and some of the gameplay elements might work, but it just feels like a 1991 game and with the PC Engine I'm not interested in a game where I'm just going to be holding down a turbo button for every fight.

Next up is Mother 2/Earthbound!

Game 56 - Cyber Knight II

Cyber Knight II: The Ambition of the Terran Empire (サイバーナイトII 地球帝国の野望)

Released 8/26/1994, published by Tonkin House 

 

 

This is a followup to Cyber Knight, originally released for the PC Engine in 1990, and then an enhanced port for the Super Famicom in 1992. It was one of the earliest games I played on this blog, although I didn't finish it because I found the system obnoxious and the random encounter rate too high. Nowadays I would probably enable cheats to finish it, but at the time I just skipped because it had a translation patch.

This game is better than the original, but I still don't like it. It didn't get good reviews at the time, so I'm not alone, but I think I just don't appreciate what the designers were trying to do. 

Like its predecessor, Cyber Knight II tries to create a more realistic sci-fi system. What this means is that your main characters never gain any "stats" or HP, they just level up their skills. Your mechs never gain any HP, and the only way they can upgrade stats or get new weapons is by getting parts from certain enemies and then analyzing them back at the ship. But this can only be done once per enemy. This certainly is more realistic than having the mechs level up, or having some vague currency that can magically turn into mech upgrades instantly. But I think it makes the game less fun; there's a very pre-determined feel to your power levels. You have very little choice in how you upgrade or equip your mechs, and grinding is almost entirely eliminated, especially since defeating enemies earns you basically no experience.

I also feel that the galaxy is more style than substance. You make L Jumps to choose a system. Then S Jumps to go to a planet, and then you land in a particular place, and then leave the ship and explore. But typically each system has a single planet that you can land on, and a single place you can land on the planet. Then when you land, you almost always land right next to the city or base you're trying to go to. So the majority of the time it seems like you're just wasting time in menus to create the illusion that you're exploring the galaxy. And it means that in terms of what you can actually access, each star system is about the size of a small RPG town.

 The story is a direct sequel to the first game. The six characters were on the Swordfish ship, which was transported to another galaxy. They made it back to our galaxy, but they brought back "over technology" which the Terran Empire is now exploiting for their attempt to conquer the galaxy.

I will link back to the original post on Cyber Knight for the gameplay, which is basically the same. One big addition is the auto battle. This game has the same annoyance as the first game where if you try to attack but the enemy moves in or out of your range on their turn, you lose your turn. But this game has an auto-battle which is quite good and avoids this entirely because the auto battle is able to decide on its attacks after the enemy has moved. I don't think this is a good mark for the battle system that this workaround exists, but I ended up using auto battle on virtually every fight in the game except the boss fights where it's not allowed. The only other change they made is that when you are outside, the 3 members who are not in your main party can do support attacks or moves before the battle starts. Sometimes they can kill the enemies themselves.

The story is divided into five acts.

Act 

It turns out that while the main characters were gone, Earth underwent a lot of trouble, and now a military government is trying to recapture its glory by all out war with other systems. Our home base is a planet called Kyazarin where there is a resistance movement; this is the hub during the game where you get information and new missions. We head to Mars to try to find the Swordfish itself, but it's already been moved. A mysterious woman CJ appears here and there to give information. On the whole this act is just introducing the situation and fighting against the Earth forces on the outskirts.

Act 2

The main things that happen in this chapter are a plague on Gagarin, which kills a childhood friend of Nijina (one of our party members). Also an increase in terrorist activities and resistance movements, which we support ("terrorist" meaning resistance in this case).

I often found the boss fights hard, and the only way I beat a lot of them is that for some reason, Vind in the blue mech could not be hit by anything. I don't know if this is a glitch or just some broken game balance, but that helped me all the way through the game including the final boss. I doubt I would have finished the game if it weren't for that.

Act 3

Most of this act is devoted to us trying to get the leaders of 4 different planets. Some of them accept the documents easily, others have to be convinced (or unmasked as secret Terran Empire operatives). But by the end we've got the big alliance. Finally at the end of the act we find out where they've taken Swordfish, and infiltrate it to get its powerful Jump Generator, which will allow us to access more planets. However, MICA, the artificial intelligence that helped us out in the first game, has been removed from the Swordfish and we don't find it.

Act 4

In this act we supply the alliance with weapons, and also see that on some planets, dead people are rising again. Hmm...

Act 5 

All the mysteries are revealed here -- the dead people are rising due to nanobots, which are going to replace humans in the entire universe. The Terran Empire, in fact, is also being controlled by them. But we finally find MICA. She tells us that if we can defeat the Braniac Computer on Earth, she can interface with the nanobots and get them to stop. But this will instantly increase her intelligence a millionfold, and she'll no longer be MICA.

This is in fact what happens, and MICA then combines with the nanobots and they all go into another dimension. It turns out that CJ, the woman helping us for the whole game, was a manifestation of MICA that sent herself back through time to help us.

Overall the story is fine, but I just didn't like the gameplay. I can see some people really enjoying it because it's unusual. I know it seems like I complain when the game has a normal RPG system and then complain when it has a different one. But different doesn't always mean good.

Game 55 - Kijin Korinden Oni

Kijin Korinden ONI (鬼神降臨伝ONI)

Released 8/5/1994, developed by Pandora Box and Winkysoft

 

 

This is the fifth game in the ONI series of RPGs. The first four were all for the Game Boy. After this game, there's one more GB game, one more SFC game, two Playstation games, and finally a DS game in 2007. The game developer, Pandora Box, has been in this blog before for Danzarb, and I'm about to play their PSX SRPG Sengoku Cyber on my other blog. They are also notorious for the PS2 game "48 (temporary)", a legendary kusoge.

From what I can tell, this is the first ONI game to take place in the real world. It's set at the beginning of the Kamakura period, when Minamoto no Yoritomo is the Shogun. The game opens with his brother Yoshitsune's death, but it seems that after that, his spirit has returned to get revenge on Yoritomo. The main character, Hokutomaru, is a foster child of Yoritomo, and he sets out with Yoritomo's son Yoritoo (who seems to be fictional) to defeat Yoshitsune's spirit.

 The game actually begins with Yoritomo's daughter being abducted by an evil spirit raised by Yoshitsune, and we have to head out to rescue her. The interface is clean and easy to use, and I hope we're entering a period of games where this kind of thing becomes standard -- the walking speed is fast, you can see the stats of equipment when you buy it, who can equip it, and whether it raises their stats or not. You get descriptions of what techniques do both in and out of battle. There's no annoying inventory limit, and the battles are a decent speed. 

Characters do not have experience levels. Instead they have levels and XP in four areas -- attack, defend, speed, and faith (magic). All four will level up as you fight things, but if you defend or use magic in battle, or run from battle, you can level those areas. I don't know whether this actually increases the total amount of XP you get in a battle or just divides it differently. 

Speed is the hardest one to emphasize because running from battle is done individual per character, it often fails, and you end up getting killed while trying to run. So if you're going to try you need a lot of healing. I never did figure out what causes your HP and MP to increase. I think it has something to do with either your total levels or maybe average level but I'm not sure.

The battle system is mostly standard, but the magic is done through getting kami to join the party, associated with different characters. You can then use spells from those kami, although most of them require a certain Faith level to use. Some kami give several spells, with stronger versions appearing as you gain Faith levels. Overall this is a nice system; the only problem is that virtually all of the kami are optional, meaning that you may miss important magic if you don't do a lot of backtracking or looking for out of the way places. This does mean there's a lot to do other than just going to the next plot location, but it's sometimes frustrating because you have to backtrack to places for no reason and with not many hints.

 

There is also another system involving five god weapons; each character is associated with one of them and when they get them, they can transform into yokai monsters. In that form they cannot use their spells but they have stronger attacks that are more effective against certain monsters. You can use the settings to decide whether they will start battles in their human or yokai forms.

We start out in Kamakura. The map is based on Japan, and a nice touch is that when you use the item or spell that warps you to different towns, you get a map of Japan.

Finally, there are NPCs you can get (to a limit of 8, I think). Some join automatically (like Naozane in the first town), others you have to pay money or give items to. One of the most useful is Zourin, who lets you run faster by holding down L or R. Others will heal you during battle or make attacks.

Saving Yoritomo's daughter takes us to the north of Japan, to an underground castle. Along the way there are some subevents and other things to do, many of which involve traditional Japanese yokai like onibaba (demon hag) or the like. We also get Hourin, a drunken priest, and a warrior Hitaka. Hitaka is looking for the god weapons so he can find the one that matches him. We do find one of the god weapons in the underground castle, but it's not Hitaka's -- it actually turns out to be Hokutomaru's.

When we return to Kamakura, Yoritomo now tells us that Yoshitsune is going to try to get the three sacred treasures -- the jewel, the sword, and the mirror. (These are the Imperial Regalia which were most recently presented at the current Emperor's enthronement, although there are doubts as to whether they are genuine. As this game indicates, they were all present at the battle of Dan no Ura at the end of the Genpei wars and may have been lost then.) Yoritomo himself has the jewel, and so he wants us to look for the Kusanagi Sword and the Yata Mirror so that Yoshitsune can't get them. The Mirror is in the capital (Heian), so that's where we head next.

It turns out the mirror was stolen by some ruffian children who also steal our money. They live in a squalid village outside the capital. They're actually all orphans, and two older girls look after them. When we convince them that we need the mirror, they return it and one of the girls, Akoya (I think), joins us.

At this point there are a whole bunch of optional places you can go to get various gods for your characters, but the next requirement is to visit Kuraiyama where a demon named Ryomensukuna (from Japanese legend) tells us where we can find the five God Swords. Supposedly if we can find them all, the way to the Kusanagi Sword will be revealed.

So this is the usual RPG trope of traveling the world looking for X number of objects. Hitaka rejoins us along the way which fills out the party to the full 5, of course all of our characters are the God Sword wielders. We have to go all over Japan, including up to the north and down to Shikoku and Kyushu (not Hokkaido though). Along the way we meet Benkei who has become a tengu, gain a lot more gods, and beat up a bunch of monsters. The main revelation in this part is that the main character is actually Yoshitsune's son. (This part is probably half the game's content)

Finally we have all 5 swords, and it's time to go to Dan no Ura to get the Kusanagi Sword. But it turns out that Ryomensukuna was deceiving us, and he now has the ghosts of the dead Heiki soldiers pull us (Genji descendants) down into the land of Yomi.

A mysterious voice helps us break free, and along the way we meet some helpful dead such as Tomoe Gozen. Eventually we learn that Yoritomo's goal is to kill all yokai, even the good ones, and that we need to stop him. After several areas we recover the Kusanagi Sword and use its power to escape Yomi. Now it's time for the final battles. First up is Yoshitsune, who is in a long dungeon in the NW of Japan. We also meet Ryomensukuna, who is apologetic -- he never intended for all of this to happen, although it's a little bit of a false apology I think. In any case he acts as a heal/save point.

Yoshitsune himself is not that hard; by this point it seems like I was quite strong and could handle the bosses. It turns out as Yoshitsune was dying, he was possessed and turned into a yokai by another monster, who wanted to use him for his own ends. Of course we kill him too. Yoshitsune, as he dies reveals that he was actually married to a yokai (so the main character is half-yokai) and he was killed by Yoritomo because he refused to participate in killing all of them.

Now with Yoshitsune gone, it's time to deal with Yoritomo. He's back in Kamakura in the small starting palace. There's also an optional super boss, but you have to have certain items before you do the Yoshitsune part since you can't leave Kamakura once that's done. So I was not able to try.

Yoritomo himself is not very hard, neither is his yokai form after that.

But after Yoritomo is beaten, it turns out that he himself was being controlled by Abihiko. He says that he is the god of the Genji (although Abihiko is a real mythological figure I don't see anything suggesting he was ever associated with the Genji).

And here we get a common thing in these RPGs -- the final boss is a huge leap up in difficulty. He has three parts. The main body does an all attack that did 2/3 of my character's HP, so I died very quickly. I tried 5 times, but it turned out that I just had to grind. Once I had done enough grinding I was able to first take out the right part (which heals) then the middle part (which has the devastating attack) and finally the last part.

After you beat Abihiko the palace crumbles. I wonder what percentage of JRPGs have the final dungeon crumble after the final boss and force the heroes to retreat. It's one of the most common tropes.

So overall this is a fairly decent game. It suffers from a few flaws common to these old games, primarily that the random encounter rate is too high. But it has a lot of Japanese mythology and history in it, there's some complexity to the system, and the interface is smooth and playable. I would definitely put this among the best games I've played so far.