De Ja

~ DE JA ~
NEC Interchannel / Elf
Super CD-ROM
1996

Positive initial impressions led me to believe that De Ja had the makings of an elite digital comic. The opening cinema and first few moments of play acquainted me with an Indiana Jones-like protagonist and seemed to promise high adventure of the treasure-hunting, monster-battling sort, with Elf's typically charming anime femmes tossed in for good measure.

But after spending a great deal of time on a single dull scene with no apparent method of tale advancement in sight, I realized what De Ja is truly all about. Ridiculously lengthy back-and-forth discussions and wordy internal monologues temper high hopes for fast-paced plot progression. Even "climactic" encounters with evildoers are drained of tension as the garrulous characters prattle on and on and on. A solid soundtrack ends up wasted on a comic that clocks in as an epic for all the wrong reasons. Being a somewhat-rare late release, the debacle commands a relatively hefty sum on auction sites, and thus should be dismissed out of hand even by fans of the genre.

The opening moments are pretty misleading.

Forget about acquiring wealth and dueling with villains; your character spends most of his time contemplating matters or engaging in terribly dull discussions.

Once he's done with any given chain of seemingly interminable chats, he's able to undertake heroic endeavors like panty pirating.

There's no shortage of fruitcakes to come across while you're out and about.

After you've put in a significant amount of time wandering around town and harassing the local women, you'll finally get to do some adventuring--which will mainly consist of hopping aboard trains and planes to reach destinations where not much of anything is going on.

A typical late-game maze sequence is dressed up as a walk through the woods.

As for good parts, there's a fairly amusing (and all-too-brief) fight scene that sees the main lout finally get what's coming to him.

And, well, there's this, too.

Persist beyond those unforgettable episodes and you'll encounter some "puzzles" that may prove troublesome. Here's the correct solution to one of them, though it won't get you anywhere until the protagonist himself realizes what needs to be done.

For the doorknob puzzle, enter 6 and 9 (of course).

The game's "final challenge" calls for you to spread eight "visits" amongst eight different girls. If you go about things correctly, you will have encountered one of the ladies more than once, leaving another unseen.

The ending is actually pretty nice but stands as insufficient reason to endure the monotony that precedes it.

Susa-no-Oh Densetsu

~ SUSA-NO-OH DENSETSU ~
Hudson Soft / Kadokawa shoten / Dynamic
HuCard
1989

Susa-no-Oh Densetsu doesn't do things in typical HuCard-RPG fashion, a fact it makes clear by kicking off with a very violent, very bizarre succession of images.

However, the promise of the opening sequence might be forgotten as soon as one begins play and lays eyes on the overworld, where everything seems to assume a microscopic stature. But take a few steps and watch as monster sprites begin peeking out from the seas and forests. Battles here aren't random; instead, they commence when one of those sprites manages to collide with your avatar. Pull off a few nifty maneuvers to avoid immediate contact and you may end up making a mad dash across the field with a gaggle of pursuers hot on your trail.

You'll be caught eventually, but don't let it get you down, as the fights are the best part of the affair. Each rumble sees a variety of creatures--some very large, some very odd--surround your warrior, who brandishes weapons as disparate as axes and rocket launchers. Indeed, you'll need to make good strategic use of both your long- and short-range weaponry, not to mention your mystical powers, to survive the game's monster-laden mazes.

Those mazes don't even bother to switch out of the up-close perspective utilized for scrums, so mid-labyrinth combat ensues the very instant you happen upon an adversary.

Backing the fighting and reconnoitering is a fantastic score that composer Takahito Abe himself cites as his best work.

But while the music is unquestionably wonderful, and the affair on the whole is compelling, Susa-no-Oh struggles for a good long while to make its mark. It treads along in "solid if unmemorable" territory as its plot, while not quite a cookie-cutter tale, lacks the sort of captivating moments that would help elevate the production to the tier where the greatest RPGs reside. Indeed, the game just seems to embarrass itself when it strives to create drama by presenting bosses and dungeon entrances in "cinematic" fashion.

Only when Susa-no-Oh forsakes its attempts at fanciness and focuses on doing what it does best--presenting fun, rewarding combat scenes--does it finally manage to assert itself as a title worth remembering. The all-out brawls that take place towards the end of the adventure are sure to leave lasting impressions on those who survive them.

Unfortunately, it's not a given that everyone who plays the game will get to experience those late-game showdowns. Susa-no-Oh is not a good first choice for people who would like to delve into the PCE-RPG library but are unable to read Japanese. Lots of helpful information can be garnered here, but some essential, well-concealed items will remain undiscovered unless the player has luck on his side.

Regardless, being that the card can be had for under five bucks, purchasing it is hardly a massive gamble. The excellent music and enjoyable battles make it quite likely that most players who make headway in it will ultimately consider it a winner.

21 Emon

~ 21 EMON ~
NEC Home Electronics
HuCard
1994

Roll the dice, move around the board, and make some good cash--those are the tasks you're charged with in NEC's 21 Emon, which is something of a light, cartoonish rendition of Monopoly. Constructing (and subsequently upgrading) hotels is the main method by which you can amass your fortune.

Emon mandates that there be four participants in the goings-on, but all four can be of the actual-human sort if you have pals who for some reason are interested in playing such a game. They'll likely be repelled immediately by the assortment of "merry" tunes on offer, but perhaps you'll be able to lure them back with the prospect of selecting from three different playfields, one of which is stationed in the depths of outer space.

Clearly, the basic premise, unabideable audio, and limited options will "win" the chip nothing but detractors. Also of little allure are the simplistic mini-games that players must occasionally partake in, among which are whack-a-mole and a tile-flipping memory test.

Tossing additional wrenches into the mix are the here-and-there "pick-a-card" spots, which enable contestants to earn a fast buck or put a quick sledgehammer to their opponents' work.

As players are asked to do very little in it, the game is quite accessible even to those who can't read a bit of Japanese (though it's doubtful that anyone would actually want access to this rubbish). Some menu scouring will unearth "deeper" functions such as property auctioning, but taking advantage of such "features" is hardly essential to succeeding.

Ultimately, its general simplicity makes the game a repetitive bore, and while its graphics are quite nice and colorful, there is nothing particularly cute or crazy to happen upon, which is a bit surprising for a product with an unquestionably cartoony base. In fact, the Super Momotarou Dentetsu games, perennially the butts of jokes along the lines of "I got this chip for free but I was the one who got ripped off," are much deeper and far more endearing than this title. And considering that Emon often goes for over eighty dollars in complete form, I suffer no qualms in suggesting that people avoid it entirely.

Record of Lodoss War

~ RECORD OF LODOSS WAR ~
Hudson Soft
CD-ROM
1992

This game has a reputation for being heavier on strategy than most other traditional-style PCE RPGs, but that's pretty much baloney. It's standard role-playing stuff with a battle system that has you view the action from an overhead perspective as your characters and their enemies run around the field--think Fang of Alnam or Emerald Dragon. Actually, the fights most remind me of the scrums that take place in old Ultima Exodus for the NES; so if that's your idea of good "strategic" combat, you'll probably have a ball with this. Just keep in mind that the battle graphics are ugly, each brawl can last an extremely long time, and you'll be rewarded with very few experience points for most of your hard-earned victories.

That doesn't sound very promising, but the game is actually pretty good. What makes the battles tolerable are the frequent item drops. It's fun to acquire pieces of special equipment and deck out your characters with them or sell them off for big bucks (which you'll often have to do, as gold is about as scarce as XP). And the names of all the weapons, spells, and items are presented in katakana, making the game a breeze to play--unless you can't read katakana, of course, in which case you'll have to put in a lot of time and experimentation to make efficient use of magic and equipment.

And you probably won't want to devote more time than is absolutely necessary to learning the game's fundamentals, as the Lodoss War expedition is a vast and lengthy one. This isn't a linear adventure, as there are many spots where you have a choice as to which part of the world map you'll explore next. There are also many secret paths to discover and certain entryways that either can't be accessed or don't even exist until you return to their respective areas at a later point in the quest. And some of the late-game dungeons are absolutely enormous, maybe too damn big in a couple of cases (but at least you can save your game whenever you want, and you'll typically come away from dungeon forays with lots of useful loot).

This is a long and hard game, and after all the trials and tribulations it puts players through, it comes to a very abrupt end, so some may not feel particularly satisfied when all is said and done. But I think most people who won't ultimately enjoy it will arrive at the realization very early on and quit before they've invested much time in it. The folks like me who'll dig the nonlinearity and equipment managing will find themselves spending plenty of long late-night sessions with the game. And fans of T's Music will want to check out the work done by the company for this title, although a lot of it isn't red book fare, and while it has its good moments, it has plenty of mediocre ones as well.

Lodoss War is a fairly dark game thematically, which is reflected in the field visuals.

The battle scenes also aren't particularly pretty, but they do give you a wide variety of foes to tangle with.

Few experience points are doled out to victors in randomly occurring fights, but you can earn lots by aiding certain people in completing special tasks...

...many of which involve taking down a tough boss.

Gold also is in short supply, but your enemies drop plenty of items that can be sold off in town marketplaces. You make your way around each town by selecting destinations on simply sketched maps.

There's no such easy way of navigating the oftentimes-enormous maze areas, however.

Sometimes, just discovering the entrance to a particular dungeon is difficult enough. If you can't read the in-game dialogue, you may not realize that a new route is available to you until you simply happen to stumble upon it.

The characters are a likable bunch, but they don't get to star in very many cinemas.

Windowed story scenes are effectively utilized to deliver most of the significant plot points. The game certainly doesn't lack exciting moments.

Mysterious Song

~ MYSTERIOUS SONG ~
Frozen Utopia / Darkness Ethereal
Super CD-ROM
2012

Sometimes there's value in having experience on the other side of things. The guys at Frozen Utopia undertook the project of remaking Darkness Ethereal's 1999 PC-based title Mysterious Song with a wealth of knowledge as to what makes role-playing games work, being veterans of many a 16-bit-era adventure themselves. They put their experience to good use in crafting a game that's remarkably sound mechanically, one that makes life easy and pleasant for the player. A dash button is provided so that trips to nearby caves or local shops never feel like arduous treks. Dialogue windows deliver their messages at once and can be dismissed just as quickly. The monster-encounter rate is quite tolerable, and when assailed, players can make use of a streamlined battle system to annihilate their foes. Party members gladly move on to new victims should the adversaries they targeted be killed by their comrades before their turns come up. And dungeons are purged of creatures that would be but mere nuisances once the heroes have demonstrated heightened levels of power by completing certain tasks.

It was hard for me not to favor Mysterious Song even before I had the opportunity to experience the aforementioned conveniences, as the title screen welcomed me with a wonderfully moody piano-dominated number. Most of the in-game tracks are of the atmospheric sort, and while they all sound good, some of the compositions are a great deal more effective than others. Among the winners are an extremely exciting boss tune and an intense bass-driven accompaniment to a late-game tower invasion. I could do without the animal noises mixed into the overworld theme, however; I don't want audio that makes me feel as if I'm in the middle of a jungle while my characters are traversing open plains.

That beastly cacophony isn't too difficult to deal with since the plains themselves are anything but eyesores. While they lack the sheen sported by those in some major PCE releases, MS's towns and fields boast appealing, distinctive looks thanks to solid tile work and effective utilization of interesting shades of green.

Even more impressive visually are the battle backdrops, some of which are of such high quality that they rival the best delivered by any other PC Engine RPG. The gorgeous backgrounds, however, are juxtaposed with enemy sprites that often bear promising signs design-wise but lack the size and detail that might have made them cooler and more sinister looking.

The cinemas, on the other hand, do come off pretty well despite some rough moments and the occasional awkward poses and expressions assumed by the characters. I only wish that there had been more to work with conceptually during these scenes; as it is, most of the cinematic material unexcitedly revolves around conversations between an often perplexed and whiny hero and a villain who enjoys speaking in musical metaphors.

The story on the whole is essentially a write-off, beginning with a typical "find out why there are monsters around" premise and building up to little of anything from there. Emotional moments are arrived at too quickly and occur too abruptly to make much of an impact. There are bits of amusing dialogue to enjoy, though.

Plot elements are not of the utmost importance here, regardless. MS is about grinding at its core, and thanks to the good work done in regard to mechanical aspects, players do have the wherewithal to make the most of what's on offer. And what's on offer is simple stuff, really. Spell and item lists are hardly extensive. Aside from an optional one, dungeons are a vanilla brand of maze, completely devoid of puzzles. The entire affair can be resolved in short order--a mere two or three hours should be enough for most players to reach and annihilate the final boss. There are some extremely cool unlockables to check out once said boss is defeated, however.

One of those unlockables is an "EX Game" mode, which features an enormous bonus dungeon. Some segments of this mega-labyrinth come off as pointless space; I was able to stick to one wall or the other while battering outclassed enemies for long stretches at a time. There is a puzzle to solve, though (and quite a good one at that), and the extra bit of story that's provided compares favorably with the specks of plot offered by the main mode. But I must mention that I encountered a game-halting glitch at one particular point. Perhaps it was a fluke, but due to the severity of the issue (there was absolutely no way for me to proceed), I must advise players to keep a save file around that enables them to resume questing at a point right before they delve into the bonus dungeon. The fact that I'd kept such a file handy enabled me to give the maze another go without beginning my quest anew (and thankfully, the glitch did not appear the second time around).

But had I been forced to start all over, I actually wouldn't have been all that irritated. Mysterious Song is made of such sturdy stuff mechanically that it truly makes it difficult for the player to stop playing. Granted, it'd be nice to see the title's many positive attributes placed in an epic context. But if taken as a short, fast-paced grinder that plays wonderfully and features some nice (at times great) music and artwork, the game can surely be deemed a success.