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chuckroIn the World of Shelldorado, the elder Hermit Crab of the village of Shell summons the Fire Shell Hero from another dimension and tells him of the sealed-away demon Fat Badger, who was sealed in the Aura Sphere and sunk into the ocean. But a meteor hit the ocean and the Aura Sphere was catapulted into the village. The tsunami created by the meteor also swept away the other three elemental shells that empower the rest of your party (that Babu, Kupi and Poyon are searching for). The Aura Sphere must be returned to deep underground, via Dorado City. But then the boat to the mainland sinks, and the hero wakes up in Prickly, home of the Cactus Tribe. Prickly is attacked by monsters that turn everyone into shells and suck them up into a spaceship. Yeah, it's that kind of a game.
Every time I think I've seen pretty much every jrpg from the SNES era, another one I've never heard of pops up. It's really amazing.
The fan translation team is a lot of the same folks that did Lennus 2, from the looks of things. I'm not sure how much is them and how much is the game, but they get very goofy with the puns and the characters' manner of speech. (This should be clear from things like the main villain being named "Fat Badger"; though the FAQ/walkthrough of the untranslated game calls him "Fattobajah", which might imply the absurdity is intentional.)
The difficulty level at the start is really badly balanced. Of the encounters outside the first town, at level 1, you can win a battle against one Pug...and that's about all. Anything else, you need to run and then heal before you try to trigger another battle. Gaining single level is enough to make it more manageable, but it's a seriously bad first impression of the battle system. (Of course, when you can reach the second town you can buy equipment and recruit a full party, that makes all the difference as well.)
The battle system is pretty standard jrpg turn-based fare; reminiscent of Dragon Quest. The autobattle lets you set up and name your own tactics, which is a nice innovation. The encounter rate and speed of leveling are both reasonable for the era.
There are a large number of characters, who each apparently have their own lines and sidequests. You can build a party to your liking in the guild (the character types fairly clearly match up to standard classes), but they all have backstories and associated personalities, which is a nice touch.
"Map abilities" come from a second set of party members, who you recruit and then can summon to have them complete a task, like moving heavy obstacles or hooking a rope to climb. This is a clever approach to map abilities in an era before most standard jrpgs had them.
Overall: I think, especially given that there are a slew of games that do something a little new and different with the concept, I'm just not feeling the bog-standard repetitive jrpg right now. Which isn't a slam against this game, which has some clever ideas and is definitely a solid step into the SNES era of jrps (I may even revisit it eventually), but I'm not feeling it.
Every time I think I've seen pretty much every jrpg from the SNES era, another one I've never heard of pops up. It's really amazing.
The fan translation team is a lot of the same folks that did Lennus 2, from the looks of things. I'm not sure how much is them and how much is the game, but they get very goofy with the puns and the characters' manner of speech. (This should be clear from things like the main villain being named "Fat Badger"; though the FAQ/walkthrough of the untranslated game calls him "Fattobajah", which might imply the absurdity is intentional.)
The difficulty level at the start is really badly balanced. Of the encounters outside the first town, at level 1, you can win a battle against one Pug...and that's about all. Anything else, you need to run and then heal before you try to trigger another battle. Gaining single level is enough to make it more manageable, but it's a seriously bad first impression of the battle system. (Of course, when you can reach the second town you can buy equipment and recruit a full party, that makes all the difference as well.)
The battle system is pretty standard jrpg turn-based fare; reminiscent of Dragon Quest. The autobattle lets you set up and name your own tactics, which is a nice innovation. The encounter rate and speed of leveling are both reasonable for the era.
There are a large number of characters, who each apparently have their own lines and sidequests. You can build a party to your liking in the guild (the character types fairly clearly match up to standard classes), but they all have backstories and associated personalities, which is a nice touch.
"Map abilities" come from a second set of party members, who you recruit and then can summon to have them complete a task, like moving heavy obstacles or hooking a rope to climb. This is a clever approach to map abilities in an era before most standard jrpgs had them.
Overall: I think, especially given that there are a slew of games that do something a little new and different with the concept, I'm just not feeling the bog-standard repetitive jrpg right now. Which isn't a slam against this game, which has some clever ideas and is definitely a solid step into the SNES era of jrps (I may even revisit it eventually), but I'm not feeling it.
