Super FamiComplete #93- Musya: The Classic Japanese Tale of Horror

 

Title: Musya: The Japanese Classic Tale of Horror (NA) Gousou Shinrai Densetsu: Musya (JP)

Release Date: 04/21/1992

Developer: Jorudan

Publisher: Datam Polystar 

We are so close to the end of April 1992 already, it's hard to believe, with a large handful of games left before we move into the breezy summer months (though July 1992 is a pretty packed release month). This one is a strange one. A weird personal anecdote; when I first started buying games to build a collection rather than at random, I saw this game and got it confused with Hagane, one of the most valuable SNES carts that you can find. I assumed that I found a very valuable game for the price of a song at a used game store, only to find I had a, at the time, comparatively worthless game on my hands. Now, though, this game has shot-up in price like many other SNES games lately, and it is regularly going for around $100 on ebay and Amazon. 

Background

You all remember Jorudan, right? The Shinjuku based developer that created GDLeen, one of the inscrutable early Japanese only RPGs that we played for this blog? They are also the creators of the weird metroidvania mech platformer Xardion? Well, they are back again with some Castlevania-lite action platforming. 

The game is set during the medieval age of Japan, but it is unclear during which century in particular. The main character is not a samurai, but instead a spearman who wields a pike. After a particularly bloody battle, your protagonist, Imoto, takes refuge in a nearby village, which happens to be located near a cave that leads to the Japanese underworld. The demons, spirits, and general boogeymen who live in this cave have stolen the local shrine maiden with hopes of throwing open the gates to hell and unleashing their spookiness upon Japan and the world. Imoto then decides to descend into the cave and rescue the maiden. 

This game, which surprisingly wasn't exclusive to Japan and did receive a limited North American release, does remind me of a Super Famicom game known as King of Demons which has as similar premise and play style. 

Now the subtitle says a "classic Japanese tale of horror," but I am having trouble researching whether this was based on any particular tale. It certainly features a lot of classic Japanese spirits, monsters, and general Yokai, but it doesn't seem to be based on any particular story. Many "ghost" stories in Japan deal with more personal stories and serve as cautionary tales, less ghost-busting. There are a few action-oriented stories that come to mind, such as the slaying of the oni lord Shuten-Doji by the samurai Minamoto Raiko, but that is an exception. Usually a Japanese "horror" story will be more like "a traveling merchant meets a woman on a bridge who turns out to be a demon; he must hide in his house and refuse to let anyone in until an exorcism is complete." Usually they focus on one type of spirit or monster as well, but this type of "the gang's all here" approach to yokai and spirits was having its heyday in Japanese pop culture from the late 70s to the early 90s (and is still popular today; I mean look at Nioh). 

Gameplay

This game is very much a Castlevania like by way of a Japanese visual motif. Imoto moves very slowly and his jumps are, normally, very shallow in their width. Imoto, being a spearman, can jab with his spear (his main attack), and spin his spear to deflect projectiles. Imoto can also do this weird crab walk shuffle if you hold the shoulder buttons down, though I can't see the purpose of this gameplay wise. Finally, and most useful of all, Imoto can do this crazy tall high-jump if you hold down up before you jump. This jump is so long-lasting that you can bypass many dangers just by jumping and hovering over things for a couple seconds.

Imoto has a few other tools that should be noted. He has an extensive health bar, allowing up to 16 hits before he dies, as well as three lives before having to restart a level from the beginning. Throughout each level are power-ups that will increase his armor or the range of his spear; if you die, though, you lose all of your upgrades. Finally, Imoto can find scrolls that allow him to summon some of the guardian spirits of Buddhism to do a screen clearing blast. 

The game plays out over seven stages, though really you just play the first three stages twice, and then have an ultimate final stage to work through. Each stage caps off with a boss fight against a prominent and well known yokai. The repeating stage gimmick is explained as you find the shrine maiden about half-way through the game. You leave the cavern with her before she says that an evil priest is still trying to open the gates to the underworld, which means you have to reenter the cavern from the beginning to get back to the gate. In a weird choice, you can actually choose to say "nah" and just leave well enough alone, ending the game prematurely. The stage repeats are exactly the same except for the boss that you fight at the end (except for the third/sixth stage which even repeats the same boss). 

There are some other gameplay choices that make this game a frustrating platformer. For one, Imoto's base spear, which you will be using most of the game because it is really hard to hold onto the power-ups, is super weak. Every enemy will take four or five hits to kill. As well, the game loves to flood the screen with enemies from all angles, and many of these enemies are much faster than poor Imoto. Finally, the respawn rate of enemies is almost instantaneous. In the first level, there are these slimes that hang from the ceiling and try to drop on your head; by the time you kill one of them and they "poof" out of existence, his replacement is already fading into existence. At one point, I used a screen clearing attack to kill all the enemies, and by the time the animation had finished and I could control Imoto again, the enemies had already respawned and were heading towards me. Its a little ridiculous. 

Add onto this the fact that the platforming is really finicky; you have to be exact in your jumps with landing in the center of platforms or you will just fall through the platform to your death. This led to many frustrating restarts of levels. 

The boss fights aren't too bad. They aren't as random as enemy placement feels, and are pattern based affairs. Plus it was a joy to see the reimagining of some popular yokai. 

Design/Aesthetic

This is the one area where this game really sings. It is a legitimately creepy setting for a game. It starts with a cavern that is loaded with ghosts, and then enters some creepy catacombs; this opens to a huge room loaded with demon eggs that is really quite freaky. The final level in particular is very creepy, with a wasteland loaded with bodies and skulls impaled on spikes. The final boss arena is really creepy, with living mummies (a real thing that radical Buddhist monk sects would practice), surrounding a devilish altar. 

The enemy design is top-knotch too, with very grim and fearsome incarnations of well known yokai. The first boss, for example, is a Tanuki, which in a lot of media is a cute and cuddly raccoon-dog, but here is a large bear beast that drinks alcohol and has huge testicles (at least in the Japanese version). There is also a Kappa (turtle goblin) boss that is quite leery, and the final boss is a pretty stunning sprite too. 

I like the fact that this game leaned into the horror aesthetic; all the yokai seem foreign and otherworldly. Nothing is inviting or welcoming in this game. If the gameplay was just a little tighter, then I think this game would be talked about even still as a retro horror classic. 

Music

The music utilizes a lot of samples from Japanese instruments. Overall, its okay...nothing amazing, but nothing grating on the ears. 

Ads/Art

Final Verdict

Overall this is a neat game, but one that is not very fun to play. The novelty, though, is worth at least checking out. I am sure there are some kids who received this in the 90s that have fond memories of it. It is a bit of a collector's item nowadays, so expect to pay a pretty penny for it. 

Capcom A to Z- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

Title: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (NA)

Platform: Nintendo DS

Release Date: April 12, 2007

It's been a minute since we updated this project due to the length of this game, but I am finally read to talk about Apollo Justice. This was a really good entrant in the Phoenix Wright series! I was pretty apprehensive due to the new protagonist and was afraid the game was going to lose some of its charm but...yeah its really just another Phoenix Wright game through and through. The protagonist even looks like Phoenix. 

Background

As the fourth main title in the Ace Attorney series, Apollo Justice takes place 7 years after the initial trilogy of games, and there have been some changes in the lives of our characters. You start playing, not as Phoenix Wright, but instead as a plucky young defense attorney named Apollo Justice. He is the protégé of a friend of Phoenix's, Kristoph Gavin, and his first case is actually defending Phoenix Wright on the count of murder. Apollo has all the typical quirks you would expect from a protagonist in this series: he is an underdog do-gooder who gets by with some shrill yelling and an unerring sense of justice (his catch phrase even being "It's Time for Justice!"). 

Phoenix is one of the few returning characters (the Judge is the only other prominent one), and he has fallen on some hard times. He has been disbarred due to falsifying evidence, and is now a piano player at a local borscht restaurant who moonlights as a poker card shark. He also is much more calm, collected, and confident in this entry; he seems to always be one step ahead of Phoenix and serves as a kind but aloof mentor figure.

 Phoenix has also adopted a teenage daughter named Trucy, who is a magician who helps bring in money with her "Wright Anything" talent agency and magic shows. Trucy serves as your "Maya" (basically your sidekick) for this game. 

With all of these changes, the player is thrown into the deep end. The lack of familiar faces can be a little disconcerting at first, as Phoenix, who drifts in and out of the story, is your only real familiar face. In fact, the overall mystery for this game is figuring out how Phoenix got into the state that he is in, and the mystery behind Trucy and her parents. 

Apparently the creator of the series, Shu Takumi, took a backseat during this game, writing the scenario but serving more as an advisor/supervisor for the project. He did this because he felt that he told the story he wanted to tell in the original trilogy, and wanted to see what an almost new story would be like in different hands. 

Gameplay

The game, per the series, is a visual novel that plays out in two separate gameplay settings. There are the courtroom scenes, which play out very similarly to the original trilogy in that you are listening to witness testimony, pressing them for information, and then presenting evidence to poke holes in their testimony. If you remember, the whole series takes place in a warped version of the Japanese legal system, where you are guilty until proven innocent, and you are given only three days at most to prove this point. At any time, if you lose the confidence of the Judge, he can declare your defendant as guilty. Thus, much of the gameplay is continually introducing doubt to the testimony of witnesses until you can definitely prove your defendant had nothing to do with the crime. 

The added wrinkle that they added to this game was the use of "tells" in that your witnesses will give away when they are lying by a certain behavior. For example, in the first full case, one of the witnesses is a self-proclaimed scholar (and panty-thief because of course), who will turn the pages in his book when he is unsure of his testimony. You have to pinpoint this behavior with your "Gramarye," a mystical ability which lets you spot such tells, and then call the witness at the appropriate time. Per usual, in these games, these ideas are usually gated to only be used at certain times, and even if you can tell when a person is lying, you have to wait until the prompted moment to use the ability. 

The other half of the gameplay are the "investigation" moments, in which you go to the crime scene and related areas and look for clues, question witnesses/bystanders, and other such investigatory activities. If you have played the other Ace Attorney games, these are usually known as the parts of the game that drag, as really you are just moving from place to place, clicking on everything on the screen, asking everyone everything you can think of, and really just hoping that you are hitting flags that push the game forward.  Apollo Justice sadly, does not improve this much; you might work your way through an entire area, but not realize that the one clue you picked up opened up a new question for a witness in another area. It's a drag. They added a new "foot print" and "fingerprint" analysis tools that utilize the touch screen of the DS, and these are also really finnicky. For example, in one of the missions you have to get a toe print off a pair of sandals, but the game won't let you inspect and take the prints until you look at the sandals from the exact right angle that the game wants you to look at them. I played this on an emulator which did not have the best sensitivity and controls, and this was maddening to get right. Apparently in the actual DS copy, it is still annoying as there are a ton of message boards asking for help on how to use fingerprinting/footprinting correctly. So, bottom line, the investigations are a drag; for a game that sings in the courtroom scenes, they really want to keep you from playing them.

The characters and writing are still top-knotch, but I can honestly say that if they cut out like 1/3 of the dialogue, this game would be a lot more palatable. I understand that this is a visual novel, but the amount of text that doesn't drive the plot forward or provide meaningful character development is staggering. The game is really in love with its translation, and they want to you read every joke and giggle every time Apollo rubs the back of his neck in chagrin. This game is only four cases long, but they really drag those four cases out. 

Still, the mysteries are good, if a little overly complex. There are double crosses, secret identities, withheld information, and the rest of the courtroom and mystery cliches. The last case, in particular, is really neat, as they change to an "experimental" legal system of using a jury instead of just the judge for the case. It does a great job, as well, of tying in the murder of the individual case to the overarching mystery. It is probably the best final case since the first game with the Mannfred Von Karma/Miles Edgeworth murder mystery. 

Overall

This is a really good entrant in the Ace Attorney series, and while it is easily overlooked, I highly recommend checking it out. 

Super FamiComplete #92- True Golf Classics: Pebble Beach Golf Links

 

Title: True Golf Classics: Pebble Beach Golf Links (NA)

Release Date: 04/10/1992

Developer: T&E Soft

Publisher: T&E Soft

Here we have our sixth golf game for the SNES/Super Famicom, and our first golf sequel, or at least another entrant in the True Golf Classics series. This is the series that focuses on a "classic" course that is from the PGA tournament series. First we had Waialae Country Club in Hawaii being showcased, and here we have Pebble Beach Golf Links in California on display. 

Background

T&E Soft, if you recall or for the uninitiated, was the C Tier developer during the 90's who churned out sports games (this series being one of their heavy hitters) as well as the RPG Hydlide series, of which we will have to eventually cover the execrable Super Hydlide. One thing of note is that they did manage to develop for most of the major consoles and portable consoles from this period, which I always find need. It seems like this is one of those workhorse developers who focused more on quantity over quality in their products. It certainly will not be the last we see of them on this blog. 

As far as the country club in which this game is set, the Pebble Beach Golf Links is a course in Pebble Beach, California (on the Monterey Peninsula just south of San Francisco by a couple hours). It is considered an incredibly scenic golf course, several times winning the #1 golf course in the United States by such publications that care about such things. There are three other courses in the Pebble Beach area, of which this is the most prominent (though all four are owned by the same "Golf Links" company). This course has been the key course in many a PGA, Majors, and U.S. Open tournaments, and is also regularly featured in many other video games too. 

One neat fact is that in the 1990s, a group of Japanese investors purchased and owned the club, but had to sell due to it coming to light that one of the investors had heavy ties to the Yakuza. 

I can dream...

It really is a beautiful stretch of land, as much of the Pacific Coast is worthy of a scenic drive. I really like the fact that the course is right up against the water, but in a series of cliffs versus beaches. Here are some of the highlights. 

Gameplay

It's another golf game to be certain. It plays incredibly similarly to Waialae with some marginal chances to the UI and gameplay. Unlike the other golf simulators of the time, this one is a bit more demanding in the things that you have to consider before you swing. There is shot placement, power, backswing, club, etc; these are things which nowadays are pretty part and parcel of the golf genre but much rarer back in the 1990s. 

Sports games are, again, really hard to come back to after enjoying modern sports titles which do a pretty bang-up job of replicating the sport. This game is just too slow, the environments can't be replicated with much fidelity, and your eyes get tired after a while looking at the faux-3D and the chunky character model. 

Music

Remember the best kept secret in video games is that old golf music is usually pretty good. This game is no exception. Give it a listen...

Final Verdict

Yeah go ahead and skip this one. My "I got it" button was pressed pretty quickly with this game. It's a SNES golf game. Not a bad one, but again these have been pretty much relegated to their place in history by modern sports titles.

Super FamiComplete #91: Othello World

 

Title: Othello World (JP)

Release Date: 04/05/1992

Developer: Dice

Publisher: Tsukada Original

Similar to our entry on the Shogi game, this is an episode dedicated to a video game version of a board game that is wildly popular in Japan, Othello. I have limited experience with this game, as well, but like Puyo Puyo, it is a game that is pretty easy to pick up. The catch is, also like Puyo Puyo, the skill ceiling in this game is pretty high. This is a game, similar to chess or Shogi, where there are grandmasters and world class competitions. 

It should also be noted that this is a Japanese only title.

Background

The game Othello is named after the Shakespeare play of the same name. The play focuses on the a general who protects the city of Venice, Othello, who is convinced by a subordinate, Iago, that his new wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him. The jealousy that festers in Othello ends up being his undoing, as he murders his wife. It turns out that Iago was jealous of Othello's advancement, and propagated this on purpose to ruin him, and poor Desdemona was innocent. Othello kills himself in his grief. Race is an important issue in the play, as Othello is a Moor (historically black), while Iago is white, and his prejudiced views against Othello hinge, in a large part, on race. This is a long winded way of saying that the game, which utilizes white and black pieces in a "war" against each other, has been made a little problematic by 2021 standards, so the name is now known by the much more innocuous name of Reversi. 

Othello is played on an 8X8 board, with 64 tiles available to capture. The two players start in the center of the board, one player using black tiles (who goes first), and the other using white tiles. The goal of the game is to "flip" the other player's tiles to your color by placing a tile of your color next to theirs. You can only place tiles in rows or columns that have another tile of your color in them AND would sandwich your opponents tiles between them. When playing this game with my students (as I host a board game club), they always call this the "Oreo" game, as they feel it is like trying to make the largest stuf' Oreo. The complexity comes in the sheer number of available moves, and how you react to your opponent's actions. A player wins a match when all spaces are filled and their number of pieces is counted against their opponent. 

This game itself was developed by DICE (which stands for Dream Image of Computer Entertainment), and this was their inaugural game. After this, they were primarily a low key casino/gambling game developer or handling ports of titles like Strider or Sega racing titles. 

The publisher, Tsukada Original, is much more interesting, as they were the true "creators" of Othello as we know it, giving it its patented black, white, and green color scheme. They were primarily responsible for making Othello video games a thing throughout the 80s and 90s. 

Presentation

When it comes to games like this, the quality of the gameplay is pretty much tied to the game itself, and falls down to how well the game is translated and presented in the medium of video games. I will say, much like the previous game, the presentation in this case is pretty good. It has an "Alice in Wonderland" and general Fairy Tale theming, and like Puyo Puyo games, you are playing against different characters in and around that world. 

The first match (and the one I couldn't beat) is against the White Rabbit, and later ones are against characters like a fairy or an intensely creepy Pinocchio, and eventually jolly ole' Bill Shakespeare himself. The sprite art is really detailed and portrait-esque, which is a rarity for this early in the SNES's lifetime and really quite novel. The music, as well, is a constant presence and quite enjoyable (much preferable than to the gameplay silence of Chessmaster or the Shogi game we played before). 

Some parts of this game, too, are relatively trippy. When you start a new game, you get this kaleidoscopic image of colors and patterns swirling out of a magician's hat and this atonal cacophony of noises is playing. I thought the game was glitching until the White Rabbit jumped out of the had and the colorful swirl turned into a verdant grotto (the setting for your first Othello match). 

The game does do, what I am assuming due to my inability to read Japanese script, is a good job of tutorializing the board game. Every so often the action would stop and the rabbit would detail some rules, then give me an option to verify that I understood what just happened in the game. 

Music

The music, as stated previously, is pretty darn good!

Final Verdict

Much like Aerobiz, this game was surprisingly fun! Maybe it is just because I like classic games or due to the fact that the presentation is pretty inviting and whimsical. Who wouldn't want to play against William Shakespeare?

Super FamiComplete #90: Aerobiz

 

Title: Aerobiz (NA) Air Management (JP)

Release Date: 04/05/1992

Developer: Koei 

Publisher: Koei

So when I saw the cover for this game (the North American one as the Japanese one is pretty darn rad), and saw the business man looking wistfully at the planes flying outside his office, I thought this was going to be a slog. In actuality, this is a really well presented and entertaining management sim with enjoyable music and well explained interface. 

Background

Koei and later Koei Tecmo is a company that has a wide variety of strategy and management sim games in their portfolio. They have their military/government sims in the Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, and their exploration and trade sims in Uncharted Waters. Aerobiz hews more closer to the latter, but focuses on managing a business/corporation into, hopefully, being the leading company in a competitive market. 

In this game, the market in question is the air travel market. You run a corporation modeled off of corporations like United, American Airlines, Japan Air, etc, and you are fighting for market share while trying to expand your brand to airports and cities across the globe. 

Presentation

The presentation of this game is very charming; smartly, instead of trying to make this seem like a SNES game trying to emulate a computer game, they leaned into a SNES friendly presentation. This feels like an SNES game rather than an imitation or port.  Mode 7 is used to great affect, showing planes taking off from airports and landing across the globe. The world map looks like a map made in Final Fantasy IV that just happens to look like the planet Earth. The menus and characters of this game, who are mainly members of your board of directors, seem to be inspired by Pilotwings, with charming little portraits that will emote depending on your actions and the performance of your company. 

The menus, as well, are pictures and icons instead of words, and after some exploration and tooling around with the menus to see what icon stood for what (no legend is provided for you), it was all pretty self explanatory. While the menus used muted blues and a very "corporate" color scheme, the animations and pictures in the game are very colorful and inviting. Animations are used throughout to depict events in the game, which was a smart choice given the fact that it would have been cheaper just to use text to tell you the events that are transpiring. For example, events like planes being delivered will show a plane being taxied into your hangars, or a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new branch office being opened in a new city. It makes what could be a very dry business sim much more exciting. The game does a great job making the esoteric exciting!

Gameplay

When you start a new game in Aerobiz you have some upfront choices: the difficulty of the game, the number of players that will be controlled by a human (there are always three competing players in the game), and what city you want to base your airlines in. As for that last choice, this is a very important one; if you make your home office in a bustling metropolis like Los Angeles or Tokyo, you will have an easier time as the population and economic activity in that city will mean you will start with more planes available, more people needing to travel, and a boosted amount of profit. If you start in a more economically troubled city, such as New Delhi or a remote city like Honolulu, you will have a much harder time getting your airlines off the ground. For my game, I started in Tokyo. 

You also have to choose the "time period" in which you start the game. Yes, oddly enough, this game is tied to the historical context of the aviation industry. The two times periods you can choose from are 1963-1989, or 1989-2013, with the game making up events since many of those dates hadn't transpired at that point. As a history teacher by trade, I decided to go with the historical route and choose the first option. This will have dramatic implications on your game depending on where you started and where you are looking to expand. If you start and American company, you will have a tough time negotiating with the Soviet Union; if you start in Africa, the political instability of the region during the 1970s and 1980s will make labor shortages and decreased travel in that region a real problem. 

The last thing you are told before you start the game proper is your win conditions: you have several goals you can shoot for over the course of the game. You can dominate the globe by opening up routes to every major city (of which there are 22) or out-profit the competition by reaching a set number of daily passengers. If your airline doesn't maintain profit for four consecutive quarters and ends the year in the red, you lose. If you also go the entire time frame of the game without hitting your win conditions, that is also counted as a loss. There is also the historical goal which basically will determine whether or not you win or lose. In the first time period, this is creating a plane or route that makes single plan Trans-Pacific travel possible, as most planes need to stop and land in Honolulu in order to refuel. 

When the game begins, you will see at least two of your competitors go first, which is actually useful as it shows you what the early game is all about: opening routes. You will start with some planes already in your name, and your first turn should be spend heavy, as everything in this game takes time to get going. You will open up some routes to the few cities around you: you will set the number of planes that go on this route, how many flights a week, and the fare for the route. You will also start to be able to send your board members to different cities to open up negotiations; these negotiations are about purchasing "slots" for your planes (think terminal spaces). Most of these negotiations take about 6-9 months to complete. 

As well, you have other choices which will impact the long term development: do you spend money on advertising and shoot promos highlighting your routes (it is really funny when these fail as it will show the lamest commercial of crying cheerleaders)? Do you open up hotels in cities in order to make some side income? Do you look into purchasing charter companies, which, if you perform a stock buyout, will come automatically with planes and routes set? Do you order more planes hoping to have more cities and routes opened up soon (which on its own has a whole bunch of settings)? Where do you allocate your budget: maintenance, marketing, or service? All of these options will help boost your economy, either directly or supplementally.

After every turn (which takes place over a financial quarter), you are ranked and graded as compared to your competition, and at the end of every financial year, you are given a detailed breakdown on how you are comparing to your rivals. As well, over the year, you will be given news updates for goings-ons around the world, such as the Olympics being announced to be in a certain city, or political friction/events going on in countries. Knowledge of basic modern history will help you immensely in this game, as you can start to predict when key events are going to take place, and plan your routes to maximize on this plan. For example, the game begins with announcing that the Olympics will take place in Vancouver, and if you can connect some routes to Vancouver and build a hotel there, then you will get a massive boom in income when the Olympics finally hit there. 

If you ever get lost in the sheer amount of different plates you must keep spinning, you can always consult with your board, which is a great tool where the game will tell you where your current corporate strategy is wanting. For example, in my game, I learned that I was allowing too many slots to go to competitors at airports, and I wasn't spending enough on service. I was basically turning my airline into Spirit rather than Japan Air. 

Music

The music in this game is really good! It keeps you invested and tapping your toes while reading through your reports and making decisions. 

Final Verdict

I am really surprised with how much I loved this game. I enjoyed the time I spent with it (which was one complete game which I won), and would be happy to revisit this someday down the road. I really want to try a playthrough with a more remote location as a starting point, and experiment with some different strategies. 

Super FamiComplete #89: Ultima VI: The False Prophet

Title: Ultima VI: The False Prophet

Release Date: 04/03/1992

Developer: Infinity

Publisher: Pony Canyon/FCI Plus

Here we have another CRPG being translated to the SNES, and from a venerable series as well. I will be upfront with saying that my experience with Ultima as a series is incredibly limited. I have played maybe one hour of Ultima Online and perhaps 30 minutes of a 3D Ultima game that I played on a computer while my being babysat as a kid. CRPGs, in general, are a genre that I am relatively new to, but starting to explore more as I am getting older. As I am new to the genre and still learning some of the basics like how to navigate the menus and execute actions, these entries on this blog are ones that become very tiresome to sit through. NES and SNES translations of CRPGs usually are not known for their ease of use (see Drakkhen as that is a game that should have been on the PC over a SNES game), and they often implement the CRPG UIs and controls in an inelegant manner. 

This all being the case, I will be honest that I only played a little bit of this game. I found it very frustrating and was not having fun, and seeing as how this game takes around 20 hours to complete, I didn't find it worth seeing it through to the end. 

Background

Ultima is a series that broke ground in the RPG genre in general, translating the trends for RPGs as a tabletop game to a new genre for video games. As such, Ultima is one of the primary pillars of the CRPG genre. It was developed by Origin Studios, and was the brainchild of Richard "Lord British" Garriott. Lord British is also a self-insert character in the games as well, as the benevolent god-wizard-king who rules over the world of the game. 

The series takes place in the world of Britannia, and the character, since Ultima IV, has always been known as the Avatar. In VI, the Avatar is captured by this race of gargoyles, and starts the game on an altar about to be sacrificed to their sinister gods. They are rescued by their companions, and they are tasked by Lord British with repelling an invasion of these gargoyles. Over the course of the game, you learn that the gargoyles view you as harmful and instigating party, and the goal of the game, in an interesting twist, becomes making peace with the gargoyles. 

Gameplay

The player views the world from a birdseye view. The player's avatar and companions all navigate the map on a grid. As a visual aesthetic, I find this really unpleasant. It is hard to distinguish doors, characters, enemies, or items from one another. Seeing NPCs move in this view is also strange too, as the animation is very simple and lacking frames, which gives everything this SimAnt style movement. Very unpleasant overall. 

For the player, though, everything moves at a crawl. Everything is chosen off a menu of verbs: attacking, talking, using, interacting. I just wish something was simplified; as a boy spoiled on a mechanically simple by comparison RPG series, Final Fantasy, I was harshly missing moving as one character (instead of a horde of a party) and pressing an "interact" button instead of having to pick it off a menu. 

I also had that feeling while playing of being unsure of what I was doing, as a player, had any affect in battle or gaming scenarios. Like, the game opens with a battle against the gargoyles in Lord Britain's throne room. By the time I figured out who I was controlling and having them attack who I thought was a gargoyle (again its hard to tell), the battle had already been won by my companions. Just very frustrating overall. 

Music

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Final Result

I know I really didn't give this game a fair shake, but I am very greedy with my video gaming time, and this game really just wasn't enjoyable for me. Honestly, I would try to play this again, but on my PC rather than as an SNES title.