Arabian Nights - Sabaku no Seirei Ou
Sep. 4th, 2013 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroHundreds of years ago, Suleiman defeated Ifrit, the king of djinni, and bound him into service. When Suleiman was defeated and Ifrit swore revenge, Suleiman bound him into a contract ring, requiring that he pass through 1,000 hands and grant 1,000 wishes. Now, the young woman who found the ring has the gall to wish for peace, so in order to complete the final wish and get his freedom (and revenge), Ifrit must enlist the woman's aid and regain his true power to bring peace to the land.
By all accounts a standard rpg: Grind to gain levels and upgrade equipment, follow the plotted line (which gets very faint as the game goes on), talk to random people for event flags. The zoomed-out world map reminds me of Chrono Trigger, the 3/4-view battle scenes of Breath of Fire.
Nearly every battle drops a consumable card that can be used for in-battle effects (and enemies use them, too). Each has an element and a rank number, and higher ranks override each other, so you might need to play a card to (for instance) overcome an enemy's "nullify physical attacks" effect. Otherwise, cards affect the side that played them for three turns before expiring. And interesting quirk is that they take effect at the end of each round (including the ones that deal damage), so if you win the battle before then, they don't affect you.
There doesn't seem to really be any healing magic, though there are a few regeneration cards. Virtually all healing is done with items. Ifrit gets attack magic as you release his sealed power, Harty gets status effect and buff/debuff spells as he levels up, and your main character eventually learns summon spells that bring an additional djinn in as a fourth character to fight for one battle.
I'm reminded of Dual Orb 2 regarding stat inflation: Your HP and damage dealt ends up in the quad-digits very early on, and you never deal single-digit damage. Why not remove a digit from every number?
The encounter rate is very high; irritatingly at times. (I eventually got sick of it and used cheat codes to remove random encounters. I suspect that halved the overall time I spent on the game.) On the world map, this and the slow movement can be frustrating, though it is mitigated when you get a magic carpet, and later a flying bird.
Several of the dungeons are giant, repetitive mazes with little to find, and the game has no mini-map system, which again makes things frustrating when combined with the high encounter rate. (And in case you hadn't had enough of battles, there's a quest that requires you to get 10 items that must be stolen from enemies--in theory they also randomly drop, but never did for me--in an area where monsters are mountains of HP and can inflict paralyze. Whee!) While there are also some small, more manageable dungeons, these appear to mostly be the "optional" areas.
Those optional areas are actually a rather cute bit: You need to recruit all of the other djinn to your cause in order to get the best ending (and get all the summon spells). Each one you miss becomes a mini-boss in the final dungeon. Hunting down those other djinn is the other major source of length to this game (besides random battles), and even with that, you can easily clear the game and get the best ending in under 15 hours. For a SNES rpg, it's pretty short.
Major props to the fan translator: The game has a "diary" system that updates with each plot event, and all of that is fully translated (in addition to normal stuff like dialogue and system menus). The translation doesn't take itself terribly seriously (there's an Evil Cult of Evil, for instance), but is generally fun and gets a decent amount of personality across.
Overall: While this is far better than, say, Villgust (there's an actual plot that holds together, characters with personalities, and a battle system that isn't totally broken), it's only "okay." A short game padded out with too many random battles and empty mazes. There are far better fan-translated SNES rpgs out there.
By all accounts a standard rpg: Grind to gain levels and upgrade equipment, follow the plotted line (which gets very faint as the game goes on), talk to random people for event flags. The zoomed-out world map reminds me of Chrono Trigger, the 3/4-view battle scenes of Breath of Fire.
Nearly every battle drops a consumable card that can be used for in-battle effects (and enemies use them, too). Each has an element and a rank number, and higher ranks override each other, so you might need to play a card to (for instance) overcome an enemy's "nullify physical attacks" effect. Otherwise, cards affect the side that played them for three turns before expiring. And interesting quirk is that they take effect at the end of each round (including the ones that deal damage), so if you win the battle before then, they don't affect you.
There doesn't seem to really be any healing magic, though there are a few regeneration cards. Virtually all healing is done with items. Ifrit gets attack magic as you release his sealed power, Harty gets status effect and buff/debuff spells as he levels up, and your main character eventually learns summon spells that bring an additional djinn in as a fourth character to fight for one battle.
I'm reminded of Dual Orb 2 regarding stat inflation: Your HP and damage dealt ends up in the quad-digits very early on, and you never deal single-digit damage. Why not remove a digit from every number?
The encounter rate is very high; irritatingly at times. (I eventually got sick of it and used cheat codes to remove random encounters. I suspect that halved the overall time I spent on the game.) On the world map, this and the slow movement can be frustrating, though it is mitigated when you get a magic carpet, and later a flying bird.
Several of the dungeons are giant, repetitive mazes with little to find, and the game has no mini-map system, which again makes things frustrating when combined with the high encounter rate. (And in case you hadn't had enough of battles, there's a quest that requires you to get 10 items that must be stolen from enemies--in theory they also randomly drop, but never did for me--in an area where monsters are mountains of HP and can inflict paralyze. Whee!) While there are also some small, more manageable dungeons, these appear to mostly be the "optional" areas.
Those optional areas are actually a rather cute bit: You need to recruit all of the other djinn to your cause in order to get the best ending (and get all the summon spells). Each one you miss becomes a mini-boss in the final dungeon. Hunting down those other djinn is the other major source of length to this game (besides random battles), and even with that, you can easily clear the game and get the best ending in under 15 hours. For a SNES rpg, it's pretty short.
Major props to the fan translator: The game has a "diary" system that updates with each plot event, and all of that is fully translated (in addition to normal stuff like dialogue and system menus). The translation doesn't take itself terribly seriously (there's an Evil Cult of Evil, for instance), but is generally fun and gets a decent amount of personality across.
Overall: While this is far better than, say, Villgust (there's an actual plot that holds together, characters with personalities, and a battle system that isn't totally broken), it's only "okay." A short game padded out with too many random battles and empty mazes. There are far better fan-translated SNES rpgs out there.
