Infernos
Reviews
Dark Law: Meaning of Death (SNES)
Tabletop RPG with JRPG elements that plays like an adventure game
The Good
Dark Law is rather non-traditional JRPG on the Super Famicom as it focuses more on exploration and storytelling rather than combat. It's the last game in a "trilogy" of games with similar themes and mechanics, the two previous games being Dark Lord for the Famicom and Wizap! for the Super Famicom.
Like it's predecessors Dark Law is way less linear than your typical Japanese-style RPGs. In some ways it reminds me of SSI's Phantasie games. Dark Law doesn't have a single linear path along which the player is forced. Though the main plot might sound cliché on paper, its structured in an interesting way, as the story is told through a series of short stories ("scenarios"). They may seem standalone at first but it all ties together neatly by the end. And like the subtitle (Meaning of Death) hints, each chapter has something to do with death and generally tackles mature themes like dealing with the death of a loved one and moving on.
Quests are obtained in town and correspond to the level of your lead character. Each scenario is a short quest which the player can complete to advance the story and build up experience. Most scenarios have little to no mandatory fights and play much more like a classic adventure game, without the point and clicking, obviously but with plenty of puzzle solving. The puzzles themselves are pretty logical, turning valves in the right order, etc. In particular the wine bottles puzzle in scenario 9 was quite clever in my opinion. There's even a built-in hint system (Rest->Info) in case you get stuck. But here's the thing, if you want you can abandon scenarios or don't do them at all and instead gain experience and level up in the sealed cave/labyrinth which has 10 floors and tons of monster of increasing difficulty. The end goal is to fight the evil King Daruk when you're at level 13 or above, how you get there is up to you. The replay value certainly is good, there's a couple of choices you will have to make during the game that effect the outcome (there are five different endings).
You start by creating a party of 1-4 characters, of which any three can be in your party at one time. While the men are stronger, they need more experience to gain each level, the two female characters gain levels faster (less EXP required). The job system is pretty varied, there are 27 jobs in total, each gives you one or two skills. Only a couple jobs are available right at the start with more becoming available if your character's stats meet certain requirements and/or you have already acquired specific skills. For example, to get Monk you need dexterity: 8, intelligence: 11, luck: 9, while Knight takes strength: 17, avoid force: 15, intelligence: 11, quickness: 12 plus requires the Jump and Sword Master skills.
The 18 skills you can acquire varies in their usage, some can be used in combat (like the various sword skills), others - while traversing the game world (jump, unlock). For example, most treasure chests are behind locked doors, so you will either need to learn the Unlock skill or you can try to guess a 2-4 digit code. But you can't just use the weapons/items you found in them straightaway, you'll have to identify them first by either taking them to a shop where it will be done for a fee or get the Judgement skill. However sometimes you'll make mistakes and become cursed and that's where the Dispel skill comes in handy. Unlike Dark Lord, there is no cap here on how many skills one character can learn.
Combat is like in a tactical RPG and plays similarly to Dark Lord. Battles are turn based and each character can be moved around individually. Your movement range depends on your AP (based on your Agility stat). Your character(s) can walk up to the monsters and melee attack as well as use items and magic. With bow and attack magic such as Fireball you can also attack from a position away from the enemy.
The magic system is pretty interesting as well. You're presented with a grid of 18 stones (initially 15, the remaining 3 you have to find), and you can create a formula of up to five stones (you can use the same one more than once). The stones themselves are divided into 4 types: Aspect (Earth, Water, Fire, Wind), State (Liquefaction, Vaporization, Solidification, Division), Medium (Sword, Armour, Shield, Feather, Horn, Blood, Bone, Flesh) and Chaos (Thunder, Heaven). If you buy Fireball at the Magic Guild it will cost you 160, but if you research it, it costs just 12 gold.
Naturally for a 1997 Super Famicom game the graphics are good, featuring big sprites and nice pixel art. It's also one of the very few games that run in SNES hi-res (512x448) mode. Though the backgrounds in town clash with the overall aesthetics as they appear to be pre-rendered (which was all the rage around the time this game came out).
Also a bar takes up roughly one third of the screen. At least the color of it can be changed as there are 7 window styles.
The soundtrack provides both peaceful and rocking tunes, however there's not a lot of music tracks overall so it will get a bit repetitive.
The Bad
The start is quite brutal, you're short on money thus under-equipped, low on HP and don't know any magic. Many early enemies can downright slaughter your party so don't be afraid to use L+R to escape from battles and save wherever you can. The tabletop RPG approach also means there's going to be plenty of random elements in the game, meaning a lot of stuff is down to pure luck. Hell, there's even a "Luck Shuffle" option in the settings.
The effects of leveling up, beyond the obvious HP and MP increases, are random - a character can gain or even lose a point in each of his/her stats or learn a skill or two.
In the third scenario you'll run into Eleanor Zombie. She has a spell that can kill your entire party in a single turn.
However, she doesn't always use magic right at the start so you will just have to keep reloading over and over until she doesn't use a magic attack on her first turn. Very frustrating!
It doesn't help that early on the battles tend to become tedious affairs where you're going to end up constantly trading hits of 1 damage. Another aspect that greatly contributes to the slow battle pace is that combat messages are on by default. What seems like remnants from western first person dungeon crawlers, they report everything that goes on, showing a lot of redundant information like: "Oak jelly attacked with its sharp claws!", "Player unleashed a lethal blow!" and so on. Luckily the combat messages can be turned off in the configuration menu but every time you load the game you will have to set them off again as it doesn't seem to save that particular setting. The AI itself is hardly something worth writing home about. Sometimes they will only react to you if you're in their range, other times they just seem to start aimlessly wandering around, paying no attention to you. And in areas with different elevation, instead of using the stairs/slope they will just try to get to you by the most direct route which of course means rubbing against cliffs/walls and becoming easy targets for bow users.
A problem that Dark Law inherits from its predecessor is that a lot of important things aren't explained in-game at all. I can only assume the game's mechanics are explained in the manual. But still, while in a game like Chrono Trigger the mayor's house at the start is dedicated to explaining how the various mechanics work, here you're left on your own to figure out a lot of important things. That resting at a save point restores some hp or how the job system works. For example, to use magic you need to learn the scroll ability and believe me, when you get to scenario 5 you'll get slaughtered by the zombies if you don't have fire-based spells. However the guild where you can choose the jobs doesn't have a single word on what job gives you what skill, it only mentions the income. Similarly you're going to find weapons/accessories that you can't equip and no explanation which job you need to be able to use them. A minor gripe but when buying armor you can only see the offensive & defensive strengths and not the weight, in other words - how equipping certain armour or shield will effect agility.
The cave/labyrinth has some 4-5 rooms that are copy-pasted all over for a very samey look. And as there's no auto map feature here, navigating the ten floors with several similar looking rooms can become confusing. And though the interface has been greatly improved compared to Dark Lord, there were some features that were quite useful in the first game but have been removed in this game. For example, in Dark Lord the select button changed the party order which was very useful if your lead character (the one in front needed a specific skill) here the select button isn't used at all, instead you have to go in the settings.
Though Dark Law is a much longer game than Dark Lord which could be completed in less than 10 hours, it still feels too short as some of the best skills you're most likely going to acquire only when there's the final boss left.
The Bottom Line
Dark Law ain't for everyone, at first it seems to tick all the wrong boxes: tedious, clunky, frustrating, vague, random... you name it.
However if you get around the first impressions and stay with it, looking past its quirks, there's actually a unique game waiting underneath.
Completely unlike any other RPG on the system - extremely rewarding.
And there's a good English fan-translation by Aeon Genesis. Just make sure you do your homework and read up about how the job system works and what the various skills do before playing the game to save frustration. Make no mistake about it - this game demands planning ahead.
For a different fusion of Western RPGs and JRPGs also try the SaGa series. Three of them are on the Super Famicom and Romancing SaGa 3 even has an English fan-translation.
By Infernos on April 20, 2015
LayLa (NES)
Good action game when played with a guide, otherwise Layla will have you on your knees
The Good
While other action games might limit its protagonist to his/her main weapon and an additional sub-weapon or two, in Layla there are 7 weapons at your disposal: Pistol, Machine Gun, Hand Grenade, Flame Thrower, Throwing Ax, Bazooka and Beam Saber. How many action games, especially from 1986, can you name with a vast arsenal of weapons such as this one? But it's not just the variety of fire power you can choose from, the puzzle is figuring out what works best against certain enemy types. The pistol is your standard weapon and it's the only weapon effective against all enemies, though it has infinite ammunition it's not that powerful especially in the later stages unless you spend a lot of time powering it up by finding pistol tiles (maximum is 30). The other weapons all have limited ammo (255 max) and only work against certain enemy types. For example, the Flame Thrower only works against living organisms and is useless against robots, whereas the Bazooka is no good in the asteroid caverns but it's very effective against those pesky robots that appear in the later fortresses. Grenades allow you to break boxes underneath you (unlike some other games your grenade can't damage you) and the Throwing Ax is a surprisingly powerful weapon especially against most bosses. While the Beam Saber is likely going to be your least used weapon as it's slow firing and only harms a couple enemies and is completely ineffective against all bosses but when it strikes, it continues to pass through a defeated enemy and strike whatever lies beyond (you can get a special bonus if you manage to kill three enemies with one blade).
Then there's Barrier - a defensive weapon that grants temporary invincibility, very helpful, especially on the last two stages.
And finally, the Special Option, selectable by pausing the game and pressing select. It has 4 different effects depending on the direction that the arrow is facing. While the 1000 points bonus is pretty useless, the other three: remove all breakable walls on screen, destroy all boxes on screen and damage every enemy on screen all can come in pretty handy. As a trade-off though using the Special Option also reduces Layla's health.
Carefully managing your weapons arsenal and using everything you got is the key to this game. If you take out the maze part, the game's overall difficulty is fairly mild, as long as you don't rush it. You only get one life but the 8 password disks you need to find in order to finish the game also act as the password/continue mechanism, allowing you to continue from that asteroid if you die. Also, when you die you don't have to enter the long password again, you can just press the select button to pick up on the level you were on. You only have to write it down if you're going to turn the game off.
Although at first the controls might seem a bit loose and sluggish to some, pick up the speed power-up Roller Skates (you can collect a maximum of nine) and Layla will start running faster (the longer you hold a direction down, the faster she will run) and jumping higher. You can press down while moving at full speed to stop immediately, this is very useful in stages with falling spikes. Another useful technique if you can't get a running start is to hold down before pressing the A button, this will allow you to jump extra high. If you master the stages you can blaze through the early ones in a couple seconds - Layla is very fast, but also very controllable.
Owning to the technical limitations of its 1 Mbit cart the visuals are repetitive but for a 1986 title it's certainly not that bad - caverns have 4 different color palettes (purple, blue, yellow and red) and the fortresses all have different backgrounds. The technical execution is solid, the only sprite flickering I saw was in places with multiple shutters going up and down. There's also good enemy variety with 24 different enemies all of which are pretty distinctive and not just palette swaps. Plus, unlike some other games, the enemies don't knock you backwards when they hit you. Some cute design touches as well, for example, when Layla dies she turns into an angel and floats to heaven, while enemies turn into (or drop) life restoring food items like ice cream, cake and apples. Layla is also a very import friendly Famicom game. The small bit on the title screen is the only Japanese text you're gonna see in the whole game as the ending is fully in English.
The Bad
Advertised as a "Maze Action Game" on the box and cart, the maze part might not be that evident at first but just wait till you get to the fortress in Asteroid 5. Not only do you have to find the password disk but also rescue Layla's sidekick Iris (who has blue hair on the cover, but green hair in-game) otherwise you won't be able to hurt the final boss.
This complex fortress features many non-linear elevators that lead all over the place, dead-ends and two never-ending hallways. And unlike Metroid where you could go left and right, in this game you cannot go back once you scroll past an area. But you see this isn't just about mapping the damn place out, there's also one specific spot in this stage where you have to fall down a gap (something that you won't need to do ever again). How is one supposed to figure that out is way beyond me... Especially considering that falling down gaps results in a hefty penalty: health reduction and more importantly halving of your ammunition, pistol and speed level, so that's the last thing you would normally try. It shouldn't be surprising then that not one but two guide books were released for this game back in 1987.
Inconsistent difficulty is another issue. For example, the fortress in Asteroid 6 compared to the previous one is a total breeze. Similarly, the fortress in Asteroid 7 though large is also manageable. But then comes the last one... besides the fact that it's the most complex one of the bunch, featuring several floors that trap you in never ending loops, you also have to navigate all the way through it TWICE.
Contrary to the mazes, most boss fights are particularly easy with some bosses needing just 1-3 hits if you use the right weapon, meaning the fight can be over in just a few seconds. I'm not a fan of "Nintendo hard" difficulty/cheap boss fights, but some of the ones in Layla are pathetically easy as a result there's no satisfaction in beating them. Furthermore, unlike general enemies there's quite a bit of palette swapping going on for the bosses. The first boss Bamoh appears as an optional sub-boss again in stage 5 and then again as a purple palette swap in stage 6. The same with stage 2 boss who appears again in stage 4 just with a different color. The first form of the final boss is also identical to the seventh fortress boss.
Less than 2 minutes into the game and I bet most that have played it got stuck in this one particular spot on the first asteroid cavern, I know I did. You desperately try to find which blocks are destroyable then a mini tornado shows up because you hanged around in one spot too long and kills you. Turns out what you need to do is press down and you will teleport to the floor below. It is mentioned in the game's manual so no complains there. The problem however is this function is relegated to only a couple designated spots throughout the whole game so it feels like wasted potential as it could have been used better, giving the player more control over where to use it. During Layla's travel between the asteroids there's a bonus shooting round (think Gradius) where you have to destroy enemy formations. These stages are totally pointless as they're only for points. Couldn't the reward actually been something useful like ammo or the increase of pistol level?
Recovery time is practically non-existent so you can go from full health to very little health rather quickly in some of the later stages at which point the screen will flash red and make an annoying sound. The music, like in most dB-SOFT games, including their two previous Famicom titles Volguard II and Galg, was handled by Yasuhito Saito and though it isn't terrible but like quite a few Famicom/NES releases from the time it's simple and repetitive and will get on your nerves sooner or later.
The Bottom Line
Borrowing the name from Eric Clapton's classic rock song, Layla
is dB-SOFT's second side scrolling action-shooter game following Cross Blaim for the MSX which in some ways can be considered the predecessor to this game. Overall, despite the complex and sometimes nonsensical maze part it's a nice English-friendly Famicom game with a cute main character and enjoyable & challenging but manageable action part and a large stock of different weaponry. Just grab yourself a guide when you get to the fifth's asteroid fortress to save the frustration.
By Infernos on February 21, 2015
Test Drive: Off-Road - Wide Open (Xbox)
Solid off-road racer lacking in features
The Good
Test Drive's off-road spin off series didn't get off to a great start. The first one was absolute rubbish, the second one was an improvement but not by much. The third game, on the other hand, I have very fond memories of, so I was eager to check out the fourth and last title in the TD off-road series
and fortunately Wide Open is among the good ones. The game generally lives up to its title featuring three vast areas (Hawaii, Moab desert and Yosemite National Park) where you can free roam.
This Xbox version packs more content than the PlayStation 2 original. There's a stadium race mode, Moon level, two extra vehicles (Chevy Avalanche and Moon Buggy) and it supports 4 players. There are 18 off-road vehicles to choose from. The 12 standard cars feature the likes of Jeep Wrangler, Chevy Blazer, Dodge Ram, Ford Bronco, Mercedes-Benz ML430 and, of course, the Hummer in both wagon and soft top versions. Each has a stock, modified, pro and unlimited versions. There's 6 special vehicles as well, such as Humvee, Shelby Durango, monster truck and my personal favourite - the mighty Dodge T-Rex 6x6. Vehicles are divided into power and speed classes. Power accelerates and climbs better while speed goes faster so you need to pick your route accordingly.
The soundtrack is good, there's 12 songs in total (and not 14 as advertized on the back of the box). Metallica's "Fuel" is the featured title and its a great fit. In addition to rock/metal songs from 8 Degrees, Celldweller, Fear Factory, Phantom Black, Quarashi and Unloco there's some breakbeat tracks from 303 Infinity and Digital Assassins as well. It may not be for everyone's tastes but I think it matches the off-road racing action rather well.
The Bad
The open nature of the locations is mostly wasted. A great feature would have been some kind of race editor where you can set your own checkpoints to create custom races. Because as it is there's not really that much to do in Wide Open. In terms of single player there are 12 tournaments in Career mode, 27 single races, plus the Xbox exclusive 18 stadium events (you can only drive the unlimited class trucks in these events and they handle like crap with terrible understeer so I didn't find them fun at all plus there's no reward for completing them). Also, if you make a game with free roaming you have to give the player at least some incentive to explore, sadly the only thing you can do in Wide Open is search for nine Blue Moon Cafe signs (3 in each location) to unlock the Moon level.
Multiplayer is a mixed bag, on one hand the Xbox version supports 4 players. Four players can free roam around the four locations and take part in all of the races but there's no AI. Only in two players mode you can compete against six AI drivers in single races and stadium events. However you can't make custom tournaments, there's no knockout races, you can't select different weather conditions, night races or even something as basic as number of laps. In King of the Hill mode you need to stay in a circle to gain points while fending off the other players from pushing you out. Though some may like it, I personally found this mode dull, like something off one of those cheap mini game compilations.
The AI drivers are needlessly aggressive and can spin you around with the PIT maneuver real easy, but you can't return the favour. This can make the races quite frustrating. The steering for some cars feel rather sharp and twitchy, add the fact that some cars are extremely easy to tip over on to the roof and you sometimes get the feeling that you're controlling RC cars instead of 2-3 ton rugged off-road machines. Out of all the Test Drive Off-Road games, this has the most one sided car list, everything besides the Mercedes is American. There's no Land Rover, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Isuzu or Toyota.
Wide Open was one of the launch titles for the original Xbox in the U.S. and though it doesn't look bad it's clearly a PS2 port thus doesn't really show off the Xbox's power. Vehicles look alright, but they certainly lack the detail. Water and fire look rather flat. Damage modeling is barely present, and basically amounts to just your spare wheel(s) and mirrors falling off. Replays are very basic, you can't select a different angle or focus on other cars. Menu selection requires the use of the directional pad instead of the thumbstick. Options are bare bones. For example, the only way to turn the announcer off is to turn off the entire sound effects. And frankly you won't be missing much because the engine sounds are subpar. Instead of proper base rumbling torquey sound, here you get something that sounds more like blenders or lawn mowers. Environmental sound effects are minimal, mostly consisting of looped bird chirping and coyote howling. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is okay but if you're expecting proper positional audio - hear from which side a competitor is coming up behind you, you're not gonna get that here. And though the soundtrack is good it's also very limited with just 12 songs in total and will get a little repetitive sooner or later but unlike the other two Test Drive games on Xbox, this one doesn't support custom soundtracks.
A rather unconventional feature of this game is that you can change the pitch of your truck in mid-air with the right analog stick. Though its fun doing front/back flips and barrel rolls on the moon in a 6x6 moon buggy, otherwise I found this feature bizarre and more belonging to a trick game rather than an off-road racer with cars.
All races are checkpoint based and it isn't very forgiving, miss a checkpoint by a millimeter and you'll have to reverse it. If you've played Smuggler's Run you will notice a lot of similarities with this game in that regard, and no surprises there because not only it was made by the same developers Angel Studios (now known as Rockstar San Diego) but they also share the same game engine. And essentially Wide Open does feel a lot like Smuggler's Run only with licensed cars but without cops... and smuggling stuff.
The Bottom Line
Wide Open is a solid arcade-style off-road racer worth a look, but ultimately, despite the extra content in the Xbox version, the game's CD roots (on PS2 it came on CD) are apparent as its lack of features means that after some 2-3 days, once you've seen all the game has to offer, there's not much reason to come back.
Similar games on the Xbox are slim pickings with only another launch title 4x4 Evo 2 coming to mind. If you like Wide Open definitely check out the Smuggler's Run series and for open world off-road games you might want to give FUEL a shot.
By Infernos on December 20, 2014
Robot Alchemic Drive (PlayStation 2)
A unique and very fun giant robot game with plenty of flaws as well
The Good
You might know the Japanese developer Sandlot from their Earth Defense Force series about shooting giant ants but they're also the creators of a very specific type of giant robot games. Taking inspiration from the 1956 manga by Mitsuteru Yokoyama "Tetsujin 28-go" (released abroad as Gigantor), here you control a character, who in turn controls a giant robot via remote. It all started with the PlayStation game Remote Control Dandy back when Sandlot was still part of the now defunct Human Entertainment. Robot Alchemic Drive (RAD from now on) is the first official Sandlot game and the only one of it's kind that got released abroad. Unfortunately it came out just a few days after Vice City in the US so it mostly went unnoticed.
The sense of scale is very impressive, you're a small human controlling a gigantic robot (called Meganite in-game). Plus, all the buildings are completely destroyable - the entire city is your battlefield. But what really makes this game unique is the remote control thing. There's hundreds of giant robot games out there but only a handful that are controlled by remote. You can control either the Meganite or the hero but not both at once. All the action takes place from the hero's viewpoint. You can position the hero wherever you want - on top of buildings, down on the ground or even on your Meganite's shoulder. This brings a totally different dimension to the table as you need to maintain a safe position for your character at the same time have a good enough vantage point so that your Meganite's attacks actually connect.
Though the control-scheme may seem complex at first it's actually very intuitive and allows for full control over every aspect of the Meganite: shoulder buttons control the legs, the arms are controlled with the two analog sticks, L3 and R3 buttons activate arm sub-weapons such as drills and hammers, torso is controlled by the d-pad, and the face buttons are used to transform and fire the projectile weapons like rockets and lasers. Still if you find it too complex there's also an easy mode with more traditional controls. There's quite a bunch of moves and attacks available, from basic jab, straight, chop, uppercut and hook to throws, rocket fists, flamethrowers, drills, lasers, missiles and different charged moves. All in all, combat feels immensely satisfying.
There's a choice of 3 different characters: two male (Naoto and Ryo) and one female (Yui). And even though the choice is largely cosmetic, there are few differences story wise. For example, if you choose the guys Ellen is their former fiancee while in Yui's scenario she's her closest friend. There's also three Meganites to choose from, each very distinctive and has its own unique arsenal of weaponry and special attacks. Laguiole is the fastest of the bunch and can transform into a plane, but also has the weakest armor and punches. Gllang is the most powerful and can transform into a mobile fortress (a tank, basically) but is also the slowest. And finally posterbot Vavel is the most balanced and traditional one and though it can't transform it has two modes which increase its offensive power but only for 3 minutes. The difficulty largely depends on which Meganite you select, for example, some fights will be rather easy with Laguiole because of its high mobility while with the slow Gllang you're going to have your hands full in some missions against faster opposition. Also, a couple missions change depending on which Meganite you chose at the start of the game. Plus there's multiple endings mostly depending on which and how many times you destroy certain buildings during missions so RAD's replay value certainly is very good.
Here comes the most controversial part of this review because most people would put the voice acting under the bad and understandably so - objectively it is pretty terrible. But for me the pure cheesiness of it... intentional parody or not, it was hard not to laugh. I think it suits a game about giant robots rather well, in B-movie or anime dub from the 70s and early 80s kind of way. Michael Teppner as Dr. Wiltz is absolutely killing with the goofy German accent, the really Japanese-y news reporter Mika Banhara (voiced by Satoko Iwahara) and her broken English is pretty hilarious as well and Nanao's "Robots kill people. A robot killed Grandma..." is just pure classic. Then you have some more minor characters such as Captain Hayakawa who talks with a very southern accent, yeehaw... scummy businessman, whiny JSDF tank guy and plenty of others provide funny moments throughout the game. Still if you find the English voice acting unbearable get hold of an Undub version by Mugi from the internet which replaces the voices with original Japanese dub from Gigantic Drive.
There are 53 episodes in total and most are about battling the alien robots Volgara. The game does keep it interesting by introducing other objectives like protect certain buildings, tanks, news helicopter/van, destroy jamming signals or satellite machines, stay on high places because of deadly gas close to the ground or put out a fire. Saving certain buildings will earn you money that you can spend on new parts and moves for your Meganite, as well as gear for the hero to increase running and flying abilities.
Versus mode is fantastic fun for two players, here you get to play as all 15 enemy types from the story mode, including the Godzilla-like Dantarion. But what really makes it great is that there's more than one way to win: beating your opponent's robot, stepping on the opponent's "controller" or finding the other player and blowing him/her up with grenades.
The Bad
The cutscenes are just static pictures (visual novel style) where the mouths don't even move. Also, when a cutscene occurs mid-game the hero stops while the world around him/her keeps going. These mid battle conversations can get rather annoying. Especially when they give the enemy time to get up after a hard hit or even fire at you (the last enemy Asmodeus and it's Ether Cannon). Or when you're controlling the hero and trying to fly from one roof to another and they call you while you're in the middle of the flight making you fall all the way to the ground level... urgh. Likewise, the BNN news reports after most episodes are repetitively dull as all they give you is a run down of how much damage was caused to the city and which of the story specific buildings were destroyed (the list of buildings acknowledged is pretty small, weirdly enough not even BNN's own building gets mentioned). A replay feature with the ability to see the battle from different angles and slow-mos would have made these reports much more exciting to watch.
Story leaves much to be desired and the sepia toned flashback sequences only make things even more confusing. Plot devices are introduced and then quickly abandoned. A timeline of when certain events take place would have helped greatly as would a more global look at what is going on around the world. The script could have used a proper edit as there's way too much awkward "..." in the middle of dialogue. And though the dialogue slightly differs in places, depending on whether you're playing as one of the guys or the girl, there's numerous spots where the creators didn't bother changing it, leading to some rather awkward moments when playing as the girl with other women blushing when spoken to. There's a couple mission (episodes 24 and 33) where you're only allowed to control Vavel with no explanation given. And even though the game has a separate tutorial function, many of the early episodes are nothing but tutorials. The game never stops reminding you that the select button launches the Meganite or that the red spot on the map is where you need to go... Jeez, yeah I get it. Speaking of the map, the game could have used an in-game map on the lower side of the screen like in the GTA games. Having to push the start button to bring up the map breaks the flow a bit.
The graphics in RAD are mediocre. Though the Meganites and their Volgara opponents have lots of detail, the human character models aren't nearly as great. There's only some 4-5 generic civilian models so you're going to see a lot of clones running around. Plus there's not a lot of walking animation outside of running so the characters move quite stiffly and appear like gliding. Buildings don't give off a shadow and crumble in a very two dimensional way, always leaving behind identical rubble patterns. Frame rate does get low in a couple spots as the game can't really keep up with robots smashing up the city while a dozen people are running around. The area with mountains and hills (Mount Chihaya) can get a bit glitchy, my Meganite fell through a solid surface (mountain) multiple times here. The enemies also weren't programmed to maneuver on this kind of area so instead of just jumping down they try to walk down a steep hill but of course fall clumsily. The camera can also get pretty annoying, as it not only has the tendency to follow the enemy when it teleports but also follows fired projectiles like Vavel's rocket punch. During this time your Meganite can just get pummeled and you probably won't even see it. You can switch to a manual camera by holding the X button while in Meganite mode and adjusting the view with the d-pad or analogue stick but this way you may have to constantly adjust the camera to keep up with action leaving your Meganite vulnerable that time so neither is ideal. And damn, don't you wish the main hero could have brought binoculars with him/her so you'd have a zoom in feature.
Navigating the menus will take a bit getting used to as Enix didn't bother changing the accept/decline controls when localizing the game so X is cancel and O is accept. The retry function in story mode could have been implemented better as you have to watch the cutscenes all over again if you lose instead of just skipping straight back to the gameplay part. The only thing you can do is speed it up by holding down the start button. There also doesn't seem to be a way to quit to the main menu once you're in-game, you have to lose first. Weirdly enough both these features are available in the challenge mode where pressing the select+start buttons either skips the cutscene or quits to the main menu. Speaking of the challenge mode, it's quite basic as all you can do is just replay any of the game's completed stages. There's no actual "challenge" - something that could pursue you to replay the missions like, for example, beat the enemy in a certain time or by using only a certain type of attack, etc.
There's a lack of location variety throughout the 53 episodes as most battles take place in the city of Senjo - mostly downtown or the new city center. Tokyo is only in two episodes and Rome is only available in versus mode but not in story mode where it's only shown in a news report. The enemy design also lacks variety, there's 15 enemy types in total but for most of the game you'll be fighting the same three enemy types with only mild visual discrepancies. Strangely enough the main hero is some kind of superhuman as you can get stepped on by a giant robot multiple times and still live and jumping from sky scrapers doesn't do any damage at all. The damage dealt to the hero wildly contrasts, as grenades and those shots the satellite machines shoot at you can kill the hero a lot sooner. A couple mechanics are severely underused as well, for example, on mission 14 your Meganite is given a frost beam to put out a fire in city hall but even though buildings on fire appear in a couple other missions as well the frost beam isn't seen again. The same with a pick-up mechanism which is used in two missions; one where you have to pick up a bus and the other one where you have to intercept an enemy transport ship.
Despite all the setup the game gives the final battle against the "mechanical god" Asmodeus with the doomsday weapon to wipe out humanity, it turned out to be a rather anticlimactic affair. At this point I was expecting the game to throw everything at me - jamming signals so I need to stay within a certain range of my Meganite while positioning the hero on a high building to avoid poisonous repton gas. Needing to destroy multiple satellites through out the city so that the Volgara doesn't teleport as soon as I'm about to hit him while picking up burning buses full of schools children and elderly citizens. Besides that cheap Ether Cannon attack of his, he's not really that tough, the first warlord Baron and his charging knee attack was certainly more difficult.
The Bottom Line
If you like robot/mech games or movies about giant monsters wreaking havoc in the city you own it to yourself to check RAD out. Though it does have it's fair share of flaws and shortcomings, nothing even remotely similar has come out since in the West. However, if you're willing to deal with the language barrier and go the import route there's a couple similar games from Sandlot worth checking out. In addition to the aforementioned Remote Control Dandy for the PlayStation, there's also two titles for the PS2: Tetsujin 28-go and Remote Control Dandy SF.
By Infernos on August 30, 2014
Shining Force II (Genesis)
One of the best Tactical RPGs on the Mega Drive
The Good
Shining Force II is much less linear than the first game, which had a chapter based system so you couldn't go back to towns visited in the previous chapters and buy/find items or characters you missed the first time around. Here you can travel all over the game world and explore.
Shining Force's biggest strength, at least for me, has always been the character roster and this game doesn't disappoint in that regard: thief rat, phoenix, tortoise and golem (along with wolfman, birdman and robot classes from the first game). Adding to good replay value is the fact that there's quite a bit of secrets you can find in Shining Force II. Along with stat boosting items which were in the first game, now there's also secret promotion items with which some characters can be promoted to a special fighting class (the Sorcerer class has some wicked spells). There's also Mithril, which you can find in various spots and bring them to a blacksmith in a secret village who then makes powerful weapons out of them.
The first game had some good map design and so does this one - the fight with a sea monster on a narrow raft, chess board battle and one of the final battles where you're making your way up a tower. Some interesting enemies as well: Burst Rocks that explode and damage anyone near them, Prism Flowers that fire lasers which hit everyone on a direct line in a vertical or horizontal direction and Mist Demons that cast muddle (a spell that basically lets the AI hijack your characters and make them waste their MP or go after your own units). I only wished they were used more and in combinations.
Most of the stupid menu controls from the first installment have been fixed, for example, now you can just walk up to an NPC you want to talk to and press a button, in the first game you had to pull up a menu and select the "talk" option every single time. The AI makes moves quicker, acquired items are automatically passed to whoever has the inventory space to carry them and weapon vendors ask if you’d like to immediately equip newly purchased items. Also, like in the first game, you need 100 experience points to level up, but now you don’t lose the points that pass the 100 mark, like before.
Difficulty wise there's 4 options: normal, hard, super and ouch! (you'd expect "Ouch!" to be the hardest, however Super is actually the hardest difficulty setting). I played it on normal and the game starts out rather tame, but gets more challenging as you go on. I would say there's little to no grinding involved, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The graphics have been given a boost, with more colorful and detailed characters sprites.
The Bad
The story is rather lousy and cliché, here you have the typical "some clueless guy (or rat) breaks a seal releasing evil and now it's up to you, the chosen one, to defeat it". Add to that a very stereotypical "rescue the princess" trope and a plot twist you can see coming from a mile away and you have the story of Shining Force II.
The non-linear style of the game can sometimes lead to confusion on where to go next. It also leads to poor gating on at least one occasion where you can fight the very strong (at that point) Kraken which you're not supposed to fight just yet.
Speaking of confusion, there's a completely unnecessary control method, where the C button automatically searches, while the A button allows you to manually select the search option and on one occasion (getting the "Holy Sword"), an item cannot be found using the C search option, only by using the A button. Also, in the English localization the "Search" option in battle is gone, meaning every treasure chest and searchable spot only reachable in battle become useless.
The bosses are still annoyingly cheap as far as I'm concerned, some of them can get as many as three turns before you even get one. And yeah, I get that it's a design choice from making it too easy, but there are better ways of handling boss battles.
The Bottom Line
Most of the interface inefficiencies from the first game have been fixed in Shining Force II, delivering a more streamlined game that easily ranks amongst the best in it's genre on the Mega Drive. However, taking into consideration that there weren't a lot of tactical RPGs on the system (only the Langrisser a.k.a. Warsong games come to mind) that's not really saying a lot. When compared to SNES/Super Famicom tactical RPGs such as the Fire Emblem games, Bahamut Lagoon, Front Mission, FEDA or Tactics Ogre, it might come off as bit simple, lacking the complexity of the aforementioned titles. Nevertheless Shining Force II is still a highly enjoyable game with plenty of interesting characters and mechanics that set it apart from other games.
By Infernos on July 1, 2014