Super FamiComplete #57- Battle Commander: Hachibusa Shura no Heihou (Redux)

 

Title: Battle Commander: Hachibusa Shura no Heihou

Release Date: 12/29/1991 (Japan Only)

Developer: Arc System Works

Publisher: Banpresto

Here we have yet another Compati Hero game. It's only the THIRD game in franchise that we have played so far (more if you count that we have had an Ultraman game and two other Gundam games). If you don't remember, the Compati Hero series follows the "slightly deformed" and chibi versions of Gundam, Kamen Rider, and Ultraman. We already had SD: the Great Battle and a Super Dodgeball clone, and now we have a strategy RPG. Bad news is...it's all in Japanese, and there has not been a reliable translation made...so this probably won't be a long playthrough. 

Background

Well the title translates to something rather interesting; it is an invocation for good fortune in battle. It translates, very roughly to "Battle Commander: May Heaven bless your Armies, Children!"

Kamen Rider, Ultraman, and Gundam are each a piece of Japanese 80's pop culture, encapsulating the heart of  tokusatsu programs, anime, manga, and television. Each was the star of their own respective program, and were beloved characters. The SD format was pretty beloved in the world of Japanese video games, and had been done as a practice since the days of the NES, with titles like Kid Dracula (a chibi version of Castlevania). Even some modern games continue this style, such as World of Final Fantasy.

Now the developer of this game is Arc System Works. Nowadays, they have been known for their fighting games, such as the Guilty Gear and Blazblue franchises.

Gameplay

The game itself is a 4x strategy game (four x stands for exploration, exploitation, expand, and exterminate) in the vein of series such as Advance Wars or Masters of Orion. The goal of the game is simple: you build your base, expand your units, and slowly attack and diminish your opponents sphere of influence, units, and base. In other words, a simple strategy game with a Compati Heroes veneer over top of it. 

You move about the map in little squads of SD creatures. You build these squads by recruiting enemy monsters or purchasing them with resources. In a cute twist, the recruits you manage are purchased via a Japanese capsule machine; in other words, you could get a basic recruit or a super powered "rare" recruit depending on your luck. It seems that the key stats for a unit are how well it performs in land, sea, or sky, and how well it attacks vs those values as well, setting up a pretty rudimentary rock, paper, scissors style combat. Do you focus your units on one particular weakness? Or do you go for the jack of all trades style and take acceptable losses in one portion of your army? 

The maps themselves are quite large, and it looks like even the early battles take quite some time to complete. The game plays, similarly, to the Ogre Battle series, in that your squads patrol the map, and enemies are invisible until the fog of war clears (weirdly you can see the whole map, but the enemies just pop up out of the blue). If the goal of the stage is to defeat all the enemies, then the levels can take quite some time. Some of the missions, it seemed, lasted for well over an hour.

The sprites are really bright, cartoony, and adorable, much like the other games in the Compati Heroes lineup. The enemies, especially, seem to be lovingly designed. One enemy was a Pharaoh with an upside down skull for example. That's just neat. 

I am going to be honest; this game is inscrutable. Much of the notes I compiled was from watching about ninety minutes of a let's play of the game. This game is very menu intensive, with many different options for customization, not only to units, but also to squads as well as bases. I tried to play the game myself, but I couldn't figure out how to effectively attack with each unit. 

   

Final Verdict

This is a very obscure forgotten "gem" for the Super Famicom. It is so obscure I can't find any music for it on youtube, and only one playthrough. No art, ads, or the similar either. Should you add it to your collection? Probably not, as it is pretty inaccessible unless you read kanji.