Brain Lord
Jul. 30th, 2015 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroYears ago, Remeer's father left to try to search out the world's last dragon, as their bloodline was the last of the legendary Dragon Warriors who could fight great evil with the help of the dragons. He never returned, so Remeer has set out on a similar quest.
I was recently reminded of the existance of this game, which I played a little of years ago but never finished (or, as far as I can tell, wrote about). It was one that never got a lot of coverage back in the day, which is surprising, because most Enix games that made it to North America got something. It's an 3/4-view action-rpg in a similar vein to later Ys titles or perhaps its contemporary Lagoon.
Apparently it's considered by some to be in the same "series" as The 7th Saga and Mystic Ark, as it was developed by the same folks and uses some of the same names and graphics. (Did you know that "Remeer" and "Lemele" are different romanizations of the same name? "Ferris" also appears in Mystic Ark, as the alternate protagonist.) There are graphics that clearly look like the same designers were involved, too--there are robot enemies that resemble tetujin, and other that look like squashed versions of the orcs and demons from 7th Saga.
Plot- and character-wise, though, there aren't really any connections. While the character personalities are slightly better than 7th Saga, that's not actually saying much. There are other adventurers who you repeatedly encounter in the towns and dungeons, who'll react to various situations and offer tips (while generally being useless and letting you do all the work). Remeer is a silent protagonist whose motivations are generally left as "find dragons and/or dad." And as the game only has two towns and five dungeons, there really aren't many plot beats: Look for a dragon, look for treasure, look for kidnapped people, look for the dragon again, kill the Dark Lord. That's pretty much the plot.
There's a very heavy emphasis on puzzles in the five dungeons. (And without much hand-holding: It jumps into the real stuff right off the bat.) For that matter, the difficulty level of the fights is nothing to sneeze at, and the controls make it fairly easy to slide into pits or drain all your HP stepping on spikes for a second or two. (You can't grind, either--your character's stats come from item boosts only. Random drops power-up your floating fairy helpers.) And boy oh boy, do they love jumping and platforming puzzles. The later dungeons get really dickish with these--disappearing floors, slippery floors, moving floors, all with irregular-motion platforms between them. And after several caves where you can use the "light" jade (instead of one that will help you fight) to see in dark areas, they just drop that ability and give you permanently-dark maze rooms. (You can't use teleport items to escape those rooms, either.)
There are only two status ailments in the game (numbness and poison), and while numbness is irritating, poison is horrible. It never goes away naturally and the slightest touch from a scorpion (or many traps) will inflict it. I ended up loading up with antidote herbs before the later dungeons.
There's an odd sort of inflation that I've seen once or twince before: Most enemies give you 100 or 200 gold; nothing gives less than 100. Nothing costs less than 500 gold. Why not drop off the last two digits from everything? Have most enemies drop 1 gold and simplify some of shopping!
On a related note, there's a ton of stuff to buy in the first town and a few equipment upgrades, but the overall enconomy is weak, and unless you need a few more of the less-useful healing items, there's nothing to buy starting around the fourth dungeon.
(I will say that this is still significantly better than Lagoon: It has edge gravity and falling in holes isn't instant-death; your weapon actually has reasonable reach; magic works on bosses; and the story isn't total nosensical crap.)
Overall: It's an "action-rpg", but the emphasis is very much on the "action" part--you can't really grind (or, at least, it provides no benefit) and much of the game's length comes from repeatedly trying to do the action sequences without dying or falling in holes. I suspect this didn't get a lot of coverage because it was sold as a puzzle-heavy rpg, but ends up playing more like a nasty Zelda romhack.
I was recently reminded of the existance of this game, which I played a little of years ago but never finished (or, as far as I can tell, wrote about). It was one that never got a lot of coverage back in the day, which is surprising, because most Enix games that made it to North America got something. It's an 3/4-view action-rpg in a similar vein to later Ys titles or perhaps its contemporary Lagoon.
Apparently it's considered by some to be in the same "series" as The 7th Saga and Mystic Ark, as it was developed by the same folks and uses some of the same names and graphics. (Did you know that "Remeer" and "Lemele" are different romanizations of the same name? "Ferris" also appears in Mystic Ark, as the alternate protagonist.) There are graphics that clearly look like the same designers were involved, too--there are robot enemies that resemble tetujin, and other that look like squashed versions of the orcs and demons from 7th Saga.
Plot- and character-wise, though, there aren't really any connections. While the character personalities are slightly better than 7th Saga, that's not actually saying much. There are other adventurers who you repeatedly encounter in the towns and dungeons, who'll react to various situations and offer tips (while generally being useless and letting you do all the work). Remeer is a silent protagonist whose motivations are generally left as "find dragons and/or dad." And as the game only has two towns and five dungeons, there really aren't many plot beats: Look for a dragon, look for treasure, look for kidnapped people, look for the dragon again, kill the Dark Lord. That's pretty much the plot.
There's a very heavy emphasis on puzzles in the five dungeons. (And without much hand-holding: It jumps into the real stuff right off the bat.) For that matter, the difficulty level of the fights is nothing to sneeze at, and the controls make it fairly easy to slide into pits or drain all your HP stepping on spikes for a second or two. (You can't grind, either--your character's stats come from item boosts only. Random drops power-up your floating fairy helpers.) And boy oh boy, do they love jumping and platforming puzzles. The later dungeons get really dickish with these--disappearing floors, slippery floors, moving floors, all with irregular-motion platforms between them. And after several caves where you can use the "light" jade (instead of one that will help you fight) to see in dark areas, they just drop that ability and give you permanently-dark maze rooms. (You can't use teleport items to escape those rooms, either.)
There are only two status ailments in the game (numbness and poison), and while numbness is irritating, poison is horrible. It never goes away naturally and the slightest touch from a scorpion (or many traps) will inflict it. I ended up loading up with antidote herbs before the later dungeons.
There's an odd sort of inflation that I've seen once or twince before: Most enemies give you 100 or 200 gold; nothing gives less than 100. Nothing costs less than 500 gold. Why not drop off the last two digits from everything? Have most enemies drop 1 gold and simplify some of shopping!
On a related note, there's a ton of stuff to buy in the first town and a few equipment upgrades, but the overall enconomy is weak, and unless you need a few more of the less-useful healing items, there's nothing to buy starting around the fourth dungeon.
(I will say that this is still significantly better than Lagoon: It has edge gravity and falling in holes isn't instant-death; your weapon actually has reasonable reach; magic works on bosses; and the story isn't total nosensical crap.)
Overall: It's an "action-rpg", but the emphasis is very much on the "action" part--you can't really grind (or, at least, it provides no benefit) and much of the game's length comes from repeatedly trying to do the action sequences without dying or falling in holes. I suspect this didn't get a lot of coverage because it was sold as a puzzle-heavy rpg, but ends up playing more like a nasty Zelda romhack.
