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Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled
Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled is a retro-rpg released around the same time as Nostalgia, but where that was inspired by the remakes of FF3 and FF4; this owes its graphic engine, battle system and narrative style to FF6 and Chrono Trigger. While Black Sigil could have won on setting and story—it really is rather engrossing—the poor system and buggy programming dragged it back down.
The first problems you notice are annoying little quirks like the high encounter rate and lack of battle transition. The encounter rate is high enough and the battles are repetitive enough (and the battle options are few enough in the early game) that they get tiring pretty fast. The battle system looks like Chrono Trigger, but it adds the quirk that characters actually need to move to hit enemies with their attacks. And your characters can't move through each other or the enemies, so many of the battlefields can block off two of the three characters from attacking except with magic. (The enemies seem to _always_ have a long-range attack.) Add to that the fact that your main character is cursed, so he spends the first half of the game with random unpreventable status ailments in every battle. Because the designers didn't think this was fun enough, for one dungeon, you're given a second character with the same curse and your mage is made useless by having her magic sealed. Not fun, not clever, just frustrating.
The other problem is that the early game is very "keep moving forward", sealing off places as you leave them, but many of the critical weapon and armor upgrades can't be bought in towns, they're in easily-missed chests in the places you can't get back to. And sometimes the towns are the places you can't get back to, leaving you with a dungeon ahead, needing to grind to handle the enemies, but with no place to rest or buy more items.
This problem goes away after about the halfway point. If you do all of the optional sidequests when they first become available, even if you run from about half the encounters, you get more than enough experience and good enough equipment to handle everything...just make sure you have status ailment protection. Monsters in later areas really like inflicting status ailments on you. Actually, their attempts to make later-game battles difficult continues with “who thought this would be fun?” not because they’re hard, but because most battles take a while either because the enemies use paralyze/sleep/confuse attacks to delay you, or because they have boss-levels of hit points that take forever to whittle down.
Oh, and I encountered a bit of bad coding I haven't seen...well, ever, as even NES rpgs were usually good about this: In one town, I walked up the side of a bar to talk to an NPC at a table, and the waitress walking back and forth walked up after me, blocking me in. Not only did I not have an option to push her back, squeeze around her, jump over her or whatever; but she was apparently programmed not to turn around until she'd reached the wall, which she couldn't because I was in the way. My only option was to reset, losing 20 minutes of progress. In the late game, there was a sidequest (Air Magera) I simply couldn’t do, because the game froze when I entered that area. People have also noted glitches in other sidequests and a sequence that replays if you do it in the wrong order.
I think what that comes down to is that the game wasn't terribly well playtested, either looking for glitches or for balance. After grinding for a while about a quarter of the way in, two of my characters learned a dual tech called "Absorbus Maximus" (yes, the spells were apparently named by a Harry Potter dog-Latin fan), which absorbs massive amounts of HP and MP from enemies in a wide range, and it restores enough MP to pay for casting it even if the enemy had zero MP to begin with. It’s a bit of a game breaker from the point you get it until the late-game when your physical attackers get really nasty and you get the best MP-regenerating items.
The graphics are a mix: The sprites are clearly inspired by FF6 and Chrono Trigger, and they do a decent job of making towns look different and putting cute affectations in places. Also, the options menu allows you to brighten or darken the screen, which I applaud as an option on a portable system and think more games should have. However, it's still often hard to tell where you're supposed to be going and which background items are able to be manipulated, a problem compounded by the high encounter rate. Would it have killed them to include a useful mini-map?
After you frustrate your way through the first sequence of dungeons you can never return to, missing upgrades in equipment and one-shot items, you realize that referring to a FAQ that includes maps becomes very handy. If you follow a map and don't go into the dead ends or trigger an absurd number of extra random battles wandering in circles, the dungeons become much more tolerable. You also don't miss the critical upgrades or sidequest-important items. Honestly, I wonder if the game would actually be better if you could mod it so there were no battles at all (random or spiked).
Something that stands out in the late-game is that your characters max out at three-digit HP, while the damage they do is in four digits, and enemy HP totals (even for random encounters) are regularly in the five-digit range. Which means for draining effects, you get the amusing "translation" from monster numbers to character numbers--your spells drain 2000 HP and regain 200; their spells do the reverse. It also means that the armor that reflects damage from melee attacks is useless--the monster does 40 damage to you (out of 500 HP), and your armor does 40 damage to it (out of 12,000 HP).
The plot is the game’s saving grace. It starts with a little less "punch" than you might have come to expect, but it picks up quickly as characters are introduced and the pacing is quiet good. You're a knight in a society where everyone has magical powers except you. The last guy who didn't have magical powers started a war and killed lots of people. Everyone treats you like dirt except your adoptive father and sister. Go.
It goes from there into an adventure in dimension-hopping, political intrigue, airships, angst, and rivalry. The characters have actual personalities, they get a bunch of witty lines, and most of their actions actually make a decent amount of sense with their characters. Most of the twists have resolved by the end-game, and though the actual ending is short, it changes depending on which sidequests you did and which optional characters you recruited. Also noteworthy: You reach a town in the desert, where every bookshelf has some advice for travelling in the desert. One of them reminds you to bring your towel.
By the time I reached the end of the game, it felt worthwhile, but there were some tricky spots in getting there. If a ROM-hack comes out that fiddles with the encounter rate (or you can get that effect with an Action Replay), it’ll do this game a great service.
The first problems you notice are annoying little quirks like the high encounter rate and lack of battle transition. The encounter rate is high enough and the battles are repetitive enough (and the battle options are few enough in the early game) that they get tiring pretty fast. The battle system looks like Chrono Trigger, but it adds the quirk that characters actually need to move to hit enemies with their attacks. And your characters can't move through each other or the enemies, so many of the battlefields can block off two of the three characters from attacking except with magic. (The enemies seem to _always_ have a long-range attack.) Add to that the fact that your main character is cursed, so he spends the first half of the game with random unpreventable status ailments in every battle. Because the designers didn't think this was fun enough, for one dungeon, you're given a second character with the same curse and your mage is made useless by having her magic sealed. Not fun, not clever, just frustrating.
The other problem is that the early game is very "keep moving forward", sealing off places as you leave them, but many of the critical weapon and armor upgrades can't be bought in towns, they're in easily-missed chests in the places you can't get back to. And sometimes the towns are the places you can't get back to, leaving you with a dungeon ahead, needing to grind to handle the enemies, but with no place to rest or buy more items.
This problem goes away after about the halfway point. If you do all of the optional sidequests when they first become available, even if you run from about half the encounters, you get more than enough experience and good enough equipment to handle everything...just make sure you have status ailment protection. Monsters in later areas really like inflicting status ailments on you. Actually, their attempts to make later-game battles difficult continues with “who thought this would be fun?” not because they’re hard, but because most battles take a while either because the enemies use paralyze/sleep/confuse attacks to delay you, or because they have boss-levels of hit points that take forever to whittle down.
Oh, and I encountered a bit of bad coding I haven't seen...well, ever, as even NES rpgs were usually good about this: In one town, I walked up the side of a bar to talk to an NPC at a table, and the waitress walking back and forth walked up after me, blocking me in. Not only did I not have an option to push her back, squeeze around her, jump over her or whatever; but she was apparently programmed not to turn around until she'd reached the wall, which she couldn't because I was in the way. My only option was to reset, losing 20 minutes of progress. In the late game, there was a sidequest (Air Magera) I simply couldn’t do, because the game froze when I entered that area. People have also noted glitches in other sidequests and a sequence that replays if you do it in the wrong order.
I think what that comes down to is that the game wasn't terribly well playtested, either looking for glitches or for balance. After grinding for a while about a quarter of the way in, two of my characters learned a dual tech called "Absorbus Maximus" (yes, the spells were apparently named by a Harry Potter dog-Latin fan), which absorbs massive amounts of HP and MP from enemies in a wide range, and it restores enough MP to pay for casting it even if the enemy had zero MP to begin with. It’s a bit of a game breaker from the point you get it until the late-game when your physical attackers get really nasty and you get the best MP-regenerating items.
The graphics are a mix: The sprites are clearly inspired by FF6 and Chrono Trigger, and they do a decent job of making towns look different and putting cute affectations in places. Also, the options menu allows you to brighten or darken the screen, which I applaud as an option on a portable system and think more games should have. However, it's still often hard to tell where you're supposed to be going and which background items are able to be manipulated, a problem compounded by the high encounter rate. Would it have killed them to include a useful mini-map?
After you frustrate your way through the first sequence of dungeons you can never return to, missing upgrades in equipment and one-shot items, you realize that referring to a FAQ that includes maps becomes very handy. If you follow a map and don't go into the dead ends or trigger an absurd number of extra random battles wandering in circles, the dungeons become much more tolerable. You also don't miss the critical upgrades or sidequest-important items. Honestly, I wonder if the game would actually be better if you could mod it so there were no battles at all (random or spiked).
Something that stands out in the late-game is that your characters max out at three-digit HP, while the damage they do is in four digits, and enemy HP totals (even for random encounters) are regularly in the five-digit range. Which means for draining effects, you get the amusing "translation" from monster numbers to character numbers--your spells drain 2000 HP and regain 200; their spells do the reverse. It also means that the armor that reflects damage from melee attacks is useless--the monster does 40 damage to you (out of 500 HP), and your armor does 40 damage to it (out of 12,000 HP).
The plot is the game’s saving grace. It starts with a little less "punch" than you might have come to expect, but it picks up quickly as characters are introduced and the pacing is quiet good. You're a knight in a society where everyone has magical powers except you. The last guy who didn't have magical powers started a war and killed lots of people. Everyone treats you like dirt except your adoptive father and sister. Go.
It goes from there into an adventure in dimension-hopping, political intrigue, airships, angst, and rivalry. The characters have actual personalities, they get a bunch of witty lines, and most of their actions actually make a decent amount of sense with their characters. Most of the twists have resolved by the end-game, and though the actual ending is short, it changes depending on which sidequests you did and which optional characters you recruited. Also noteworthy: You reach a town in the desert, where every bookshelf has some advice for travelling in the desert. One of them reminds you to bring your towel.
By the time I reached the end of the game, it felt worthwhile, but there were some tricky spots in getting there. If a ROM-hack comes out that fiddles with the encounter rate (or you can get that effect with an Action Replay), it’ll do this game a great service.