Madou Monogatari (or Puyo Puyo Origins)

[boojiboy7]

So hey all, I play dungeon crawlers, and I also sometimes play Puyo Puyo, so I decided to go back to the beginning of it all and play the game the Puyos and most of the characters are from, Madou Monogatari.

What Is It?

Madou Monogatari is a series of dungeon crawlers (and later roguelikes) made originally by Compile, though since they disolved, taken over by Compile Heart. The series centers on the adventures of Arle Nadja, who completes first person dungeons (a la Wizardry) as part of her adventures. Interestingly, the games don't give the players numbers or stats. Health and overall condition are indicated by a close-up view of Arle's face and by what she says during and after combat. XP is only indicated by some orbs around the edge of the screen that fill up as she gets experience, but there is no real way to see what level she is or any of her stats. Combat too is all based on menu options and then textual/graphic response. You never see a number of HP or damage numbers or anything. It's a cool distillation of the experience of dungeon crawling, but not without its problems.

Madou Monogatari I: Mitsu no Madoukyuu

or "The 3 Magic Stones", Played on the Game Gear, via emulation

So originally, the MM series was developed for the MSX2 and the PC98 (more on this later) as a trilogy that came all as one, but when porting it to the Game Gear, Compile released it as three separate games, with some changes. Really, every version of this game has weird changes, but I’ll get to that maybe (the PC98 version is WILD).

So the story here is that Arle Nadja wants to graduate kindergarten (the PC Engine CD version is subtitled “The Fiery Kindergarten Graduation”), but has to climb a tower and grab three magic spheres along the way to prove her abilites. So the teacher locks her in the tower and she is off.

(I am just grabbing images from MobyGames because I played this on a Miyoo)

In combat, it zooms out so you can see all of Arle, and she’s just the cutest kid. This does present an issue though of you can’t really see her facial expression, so you just have to go on what she says for her health and such, which isn’t really too hard.

It’s really a pretty breezy game. I finished it in like two days without spending too much time on it, but of course I drew maps. Some of the riddles were a little weird, though that could be a byproduct of the fantranslation as much as anything, and GameFAQs mostly cleared it up.

A lot of the characters that later show up in Puyo are residents of the tower, from erstwhile rival Camus (or Kamyu in the fanslation), to Puyos of each color, to Suketoudara the muscle fish. All of them have their own little lines and pretty decent sprites. It’s all so clean and friendly, really.

Of note is a Zombie enemy you fight like 5 times, and each time you fight him, he loses another body part until the last time, you are just fighting some legs. It’s a really funny progression.

Arle is just the best. She’s so happy and positive almost all the time, even when she’s almost going to die. It’s so wholesome in a completely not annoying way. The end of the game even made me tear up just a little. The last two fights of the game are against a cockatrice and some kind of malevolent spirit and both are really rough. The cockatrice starts turning Arle to stone, and each turn she gets more petrified until she either turns to shone and loses or beats the enemy before that. The final boss is just hard as heck, and Camus/Kamyu even shows up sometiems to help and gets his ass handed to him. During the fight, Arle talks about not being able to move because she is so scared. When you finally beat the boss, she talks about how she felt so hopeless when she couldn’t move, and how she never wants to be hopeless again. It’s just such a cute “I’m gonna be a tough kid” moment and I wanted to hug this silly little kid in the game. She then slips on some ice and flies out the top floor of the building, helplessly falling she thinks to her death until she is caught by her teacher and classmates and congratulated for finishing the tower. It’s so fucking adorable.

PC-98 Version

So this version has the same layou and general gameplay as the GG version, but more text and the enemies are presented a lot more realistically and have sometimes horrible deaths. Arle is still a cute as heck kid though.

The werewolf, for example, is this cute lil guy whose jaw drops when he dies in the GG version:

In the PC-98 version, he is a realistic looking werewolf who Arle can literally light on fire:

It’s a little less wholesome, but also kinda funny and Arle is still just Arle the cute kid powering through it all.

The Mega Drive version

This version is completely different than the others. New layout, and instead of turn based combat, it's a real-time thing presented from the side and you enter fighting game style directions plus a button to do moves, which means you basically can't get anywhere without looking up the first two motions. In this one, instead of trying to gather the Magic Stones, there are test questions and riddles all through the tower that Arle has to solve. I haven't gotten too far in this one, but it seems cool and different. We played a bit for Megadrive Monday and I will definitely loop back to it.

TL;DR: So yeah, play these games maybe? It seems like most versions have an English fanslation at this point, so yeah.

[L]

NOT POSTING THE MSX ORIGINAL???

What about this pixel art!!

Do any of the other versions even have the best enemy of all time (Trio the Banshee)?

Also, important distinction: all the remakes that add characters from Daiyouchien and onward are rank retcons This is an executive Leon opinion. I don’t mean they’re bad, I mean they’re faking continuity that wasn’t there.

[L]

Anyway, let’s talk mechanics: #1 is actually very good as a tutorial for the remaining two entries. Every spell you obtain is one you start with in the successive two games, and you obtain no more spells afterward. Here are a couple of spells I think are worth talking about:

Diacute

So here’s how this game’s offensive spell system works: you have the base Fire spell and the base Ice spell. Sometimes the elements differ in efficacy based on enemy type, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that just when you think you’re due to get an upgraded Fire 2 or Ice 2, you instead get Diacute. What Diacute does is just double the effect of the next spell (suggesting an etymology of “Di-”, two, and “acute”, in the sense of a narrowed or sharp angle). So, you start using Diacute + Fire in place of this hypothetical Fire 2, even though that takes two whole turns. And it does start putting dents into the bigger enemies with an effectiveness beyond that of just two Fires (possibly because it only applies magic defense once? I don’t know nor care for the full details).

Now, the absolute genius part - and this is something you’re never explicitly told and just expected to eventually twig onto as you keep playing and keep meeting even stronger enemies - is that the effects of Diacute also applies to itself. Once you realise this, you start doing Diacute + Diacute + Fire, and get the effect of four fires in three turns. Then you realise that Diacute is not just a stand-in Fire 2, but every single “Fire upgrade” for the entire rest of the game. All in all, the game designers managed to condense an entire series of spells into just three - Fire, Ice and Diacute. It’s a really elegant way to have a progression of spell power in a minimalist take on the dungeon-crawler.

Warp

Warp is the go-up-a-floor spell. Every dungeon is a series of square floor of spaces, and warp takes you to the previous floor at the same coordinates, saving you needing to use the staircases. Introducing this only at the 3/4 mark into game #1 allows the designers to show off a neat puzzle trick that they can’t do elsewhere (and that you’re probably already anticipating based on this description). The dungeon in #1 is a tower of 6 floors (in MSX) progressing upward - which is to say, earlier floors are below later ones. Thus, there are times it is required to use Warp not as “fast-travel” but to reach blocked-off areas in later floors, by studying each floor’s map, traveling down to matching coordinates in earlier floors, and using it there.

This is only really possible in this first game: you receive Warp after already reaching floor 6, so it’s too late to use Warp to “skip” exploring floors. Since you start with Warp in games 2 and 3, both of those games thus feature dungeons that only extend downward, so later floors are below earlier ones, and Warp can only ever “go back” (thus becoming a proper “fast travel” spell).

[idiot]

been meaning to play the first one for ages but have decision paralysis on which version

[boojiboy7]

@L

NOT POSTING THE MSX ORIGINAL???

I haven’t gotten to play it yet, but I will now because yeah, that is some gorgeous art. Looks like it has an English patch already, yay.

@L

all the remakes that add characters from Daiyouchien and onward are rank retcons

I don’t think this includes the GG ones, as those were released before Daiyouchien. I do like the idea (which I originally saw in a vid Daphny sent me about the first Ys games) that these constant remakes of older games that change slight things over and over function a lot like the oral stories of the past, leaving it up to the audience to decide what is the “real” story.

@L

Every spell you obtain is one you start with in the successive two games

Interestingly, this isn’t true in the GG version of 2. I mean, you get the same spells, but you don’t have them all to start with. You do seem to level to them pretty quickly though.

@L

the effects of Diacute also applies to itself

Holy shit I did not know this and this is super interestingly. I do like how in the first game, Arle casts fire with her right hand, ice with her left, and then if you use Diacute, she uses both hands, which is fitting with the “di” part.

@L

Since you start with Warp in games 2 and 3

I am going to have to play a different version of 2 to see if the GG version added the opening dungeon area, because it does go up, and you don’t start with Warp, so I wonder if that is a new feature or what.

@L

you receive Warp after already reaching floor 6

In the GG game, you get Warp as your method for getting to floor 6. What’s hilarious then is that the game right away is like “nope, can’t use it to get to floor 7”. These games are really funny a lot of the time.

[boojiboy7]

The general structure of the game seems the same across the PC98, GG, and PCEngine CD versions (haven’t looked into the MSX one yet, but I will). I would say the only ones to avoid for a first game are the MegaDrive version, which significantly changes like…everything, from maps to how to cast spells and so on, and the SNES one mentioned above that is techincally meant to be a retelling of 1, but seems really different in a lot of ways I haven’t checked out. Obviously, as me and L are talking, there are differences in the other versions, but I feel like they are relatively similar, especially for the first game.

One downside of the PC-98 version is that saving is a bit arduous, as you have to swap out discs just to save, which makes the “quick save” function not great. There are PC-98 emulators that support save states, though some games don’t like them and I haven’t messed with them much at this point.

[boojiboy7]

@L

Do any of the other versions even have the best enemy of all time (Trio the Banshee)?

Yup for the GG, though obviously lower resolution than the MSX. Otherwise, pretty faithful in the render:

Edit: Just went and looked up the PC-98 version and whoa, this one is something

[boojiboy7]

Madou Monogatari II: Arle, Age 16

Version: Game Gear
And so, having been able to graduate high school, our tiny heroine Arle grows up some, and in her 16th year is out on a mission to explore some ruins when…some weird dude spots her in the woods and attacks, knocking her out and putting her in a dungeon. Her reaction at first spotting this dude is “EEEEK! A PERVERT!” though thankfully nothing gross happens beyond the whole thrown in a dungeon thing. Apparently his name is Schezo and he wants Arle’s magical abilities, but he keeps stumbling any time he talks to her and accidentally threatening to kill her.

So we start in the dungeon after Arle steals a key to get out of her cell, and spends the next two floors, going up, getting a good chunk of her spells back and fighting the dark dragon that guards the dungeon and then Schezo. When she gets out of there, she makes it to the ruins, which then go down from there.

It’s obvious that Compile knew a lot more about how to handle the Game Gear for this one, as there are a lot more animations and such. The voice samples can’t be turned off, which I thought was going to annoy me, but now I like it. Especially great is how she stutters spell names based on how many Diacutes you cast before it. Overall, the game is harder in a way that definitely assumes you got good at the first game, which is nice.

Arle has grown up a little, both in how she looks (not creepy, thankfully) and in how she reacts to things. She is still a very positive kid, hopeful and able to overcome things, but she doesn’t get as frightened about what she is up against.

Arle, age 5 versus age 16

The floors in this one have been pretty good. Floor 3 of the Ruins is literally called “Warping Hell” and damn, you gotta just map the one yourself, which is fine because I was already doing that. Now I am on Floor 4, labelled “Wall Hell” where you have to smash into walls to break them down to find out how to get through the level. It’s kinda ridiculous.

Bonus stuff

So I tried out the MSX version, which someone says is in English. It is not. The menu options almost are, but the rest of the game is not, and given how textual this game is, kinda a problem. Still might play through them though.

There is an English version of the PC Engine CD one, which is…weird. Like it seems to use mostly the same layouts as the GG games, with some differences, but it also has a lot more spells (adding lighting to the base spells Arle can always cast) and adds in variants on the status effects the PC-98 version has. So like ICE STORM on an enemy and you might freeze them, FIRE burns them, LIGHTNING paralyzes them. I haven’t gotten too far in it, but it’s neat and the art is fun to see another version of. It also adds lots of dialogue with the monsters and such, and few added little subquests (like needing to take tea to the skeleton to revive him). There’s of course a new version of Arle:

[L]

Line delivery of the century

[rubyquartz]

I love the puyo puyo characters: the fish with hands and legs, the devil guy, all those dudes

[boojiboy7]

So Madou Monogatari II (GG) gets kinda brutal! It’s longer than the first game by a few floors, though at least one of those is a gimmick floor that we don’t have to really fight anyone one. Another floor starts with us turning right or left, and whichever way we chose, the other one is locked out for the rest of that playthrough, which is kinda fun. I mean, you could save scum it to see both easily (the game lets you save anywhere, and gives you 4 files), but I like accepting consequences, so I didn’t. But damn, floor 10 of the dungeon is rough, and actually made us use the Donpa Unpa, which is an item we gott that lets us drop a point and then warp back to that point whenever weu want. I had thought this was the last floor, but no, we then take an elevator all the way down to floor 100, which kicked our ass for a while in a way the first game never really did. We did grind a bit there, and managed to get to the final boss, Satan.

When we meet Satan, he is looking all debonair and sipping some coffee, though Schezo quickly catches up to us. Satan wants to take Arle for his bride, but Schezo (whose ass we have handed to him multiple times at this point, to the point where the last two times we saw him, he doesn’t even try to fight us) calls dibs.

The game then lets us pick which one we want, and if we choose neither (the sensible option) the two realize that Schezo just wants Arle’s magic power, and Satan just wants her soul, so they team up and kill her so each gets what they want. Fucking dudes, wtf. Whereas I didn’t save scum for the previous floor thing, I will absolutely save scum this because it’s pretty funny so far.

Also of note, the whole dungeon, we keep running into traps and letters from Rulue, who says Satan is all hers. We’ve never actually run into her though, so who even knows?

[boojiboy7]

Oh shit, the Satan fight was funny. No matter which one we choose, Satan ends up striking Schezo down, and then fighting us. His first form (pictured above) wasn’t too awful, just had to Diacute the hell out of an Ice Storm and I could drop him. After this, we have a kinda funny conversation with him, because Arle’s whole quest here was to get a gem called the Rubelcrack, which would then earn her the Staff of Uranus. After beating Satan the first time, we share this goal for our quest, and Satan gets PISSED because aquiring the Rubelcrack would mean removing it from the head of the Carbuncle (otherwise known widely as Compile’s mascot) and he won’t even let his future bride do that because he loves that Carbuncle. So we get to fight his second form:

This dude sucks. A lot. He does huge damage, and also can do an attack where he drains out life and magic to replenish himself. He’s ROUGH. But while fighting him, let me go back a bit to…

PIGMA

Way back on floor 9, we met a dude named Pigma, who promised he would make us an amazing staff if we gave him 10K in gold. Which sure, why not. And so he says “come back in ten hours” and vanishes, and Arle wonders if we got ripped off

So back in the battle with Satan, we are getting our asses handed to us. We are Diacuting up some spells, and using every healing item we can in between blasting them off. Just when we think it’s the end, MOTHERFUCKING PIGMA comes out of nowhere, with the Great Staff, which heals us and out MP, and we murder Satan.

With him out of the way, the Carbuncle sees us and cowers in a corner. Arle tells him she won’t rip the jewel out of his head, and he eventually believes her, and they leave together. She briefly thinks maybe she forgot something (flash to Satan lying on the ground) but blows it off. She talks about being sad she can’t get the staff of Uranus, but thinks about how awesome it is that she made a new pal, the Carbuncle riding on her shoulder. These games remain super cute, and I love that this ended with her saying “fuck dudes (nobody fuck dudes)” and leaving with her cutie pal.

[L]

For the record only about half the stuff described here was in the MSX original

The pig shopkeeper stuff is all in though, because it’s the greatest of all time