I peaked at Tengai Makyou 2 and my thoughts from a year or two ago still hold so:
The biggest stumbling block is all the menus and items really going hard on the obtuse naming. The title screen has an explainer for New Game and Continue like if they were Inaugurate and Recapitulate. That definitely establishes a mood. On the one hand you see all the budget they threw at it, and on the other it isn’t that much more impressive than the average Super RomRom.
Far To Earth No Jakotei: Neo Metal Fantasy
Thanks to everyone watch me walk around a dungeon for three hours. This is by Human, and Human really know how to make a video game. Everyone kept praising the character portraits, music, the names. Names like Sadness, Skelt, Mobile Monroe, Niko Tesla, Laddy. I kept praising the writing. When have I said in these 800 posts that the WRITING is good? Never? The characters are sharply written.
The intro shows our party, Pink Hair Girl, Centuar Man, Blue Sphere, and Legendary Hero. You are ready for adventure.
The story is for 300 years the Legendary Hero and The God Of Destruction fought. Eventually the Hero defeats and banishes the God and he falls into a deep sleep. Thousands of years pass. Legends and rumors are forgotten. A small village keeps the truth alive and guards over the Hero’s resting place. A young girl is turning 16 and thus part of the responsibility for the hero’s resting place. She’s told to go visit the tomb.
As a horny teenager growing up in a closed community, your sexual outlets are few. So she kisses the Hero’s statue. And the statue disappears and is replaced with an 11 year old boy. The boy has no memories and no name. She and him hurries back to town. The evil empire’s floating fortress city is parked right near by. The Emperor kidnaps the girl and her parents and ignores the child. He hopes to resurrect the God Of Destruction. Who knows why.
The village elder is a coward and goes “boy you must be the resurrected hero and thus you gotta rescue your oneechan and her parents by yourself. Your ancient sword is in the basement, srybye.” You set out. The ancient sword sitting in your inventory armed with a dagger. The battles are extremely fast. Blink and you miss status effects, damage limits, and rewards. The rewards screen auto-completes and dumps you back on the world map.
Eventually the slime from the intro falls from the sky hits me in the face and knocks me out. Luckily a travelling princess finds me and I join her party. We find a cyber-scope so we can break walls to find an imperial spy in the old city. I can use the conversation feature in the menu to get voicd character building party talk. There are cybernetic centaurs and machine guns and state-funded cable news and also Cyber Wizards and Dragon Men and NETRUNNERS. Reminds me of Shining Force in the “sure whatever.”
As we saw the hero and his party at the beginning and we have them as a child you might be interested to know this is the same year as Dragon Quest V.
I’ve probably played for 4 hours and I am on…story block 3 of 18 according to one guide. I can’t find opinions about this game anywhere. I’m the first, along with my friends, to have an opinion about this game on the internet. It got a 21 in Famitsu, they hated it.
It’s very playable. Unlike all these other RPGs it likes the player character. It can be dangerous but believes in you. I’m genuinely curious where the plot will go. It feels like it has legs and drive where Babel kind of spun in circles. It’s good.
On the other hand I opened up a list of JRPGs on the SNES in 1992-3. Shin Megami Tensei, 7th Saga, Romancing SaGa 2, Secret of Mana, Alchest, Final Fantasy V, Dragon Quest V, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia. Maybe unfair but the PCE and Megadrive can’t begin to touch that, and I would be lying to myself if replaying one of those wouldn’t be more fun than this.
On the other hand if I did replay this I’d be like, the one English speaker who has. And I like the dialog and find it pleasant. Seems like it might be just as long as TM2 if it doesn’t speed up though.