Title: Hokuto no Ken 5: Tenma Ryuuseiden: Ai Zesshou
(Trans. Fist of the North Star 5: Legend of the Demonic Shooting Star: A Chapter Beyond Sorrow)
Developer: Shouei
Publisher: Toei Animation
Release Date: 07/10/1992 (Japan only)
WARNING: SOME VIOLENT AND GORY IMAGES DUE TO SOURCE MATERIAL
Sometimes you just need to clear the blogging pipes to get restarted on a project. Hokuto no Ken 5 is a Japanese only turn based RPG, and honestly this is going to be more of a research dump than actually playing through the game. I played about a half hour and hit the "I get it" button, and did a further watch of a let's play on Youtube (shout out to Batista_Harpu's let's play series SNES Super Side Quest), and of course researched this pretty obscure game as thoroughly as I could.
Background
Fist of the North Star is a particular favorite anime and manga for me. I have distinct memories of finding its ridiculous hyper violence and post-apocalyptic "Road Warrior" style setting quite enjoyable as a teenager scrolling through Showtime after dark. It was just so unlike other cartoons and anime of the early aughts, only learning that the anime was way older than I initially thought. I remember back when Netflix was first a company that would send you DVDs, and one of the first things on my queue when I signed up for the service in college was the dvd of the "first volume" of the anime; in reality it was the first main saga a chunk of the next arc with an unceremonious ending. They never did release the next part of the classic dub, which is a shame because the dub is one of those "so bad it's good" releases.
For the uninitiated, Hokuto no Shinken or Fist of the North Star takes place in a world that has been ravaged by nuclear war, and the rulers of this world are warlords who command roving bands of mutated muscle bound biker thugs. Each warlord generally represents a different fictional martial art or fighting style, such as an army of Green Berets or a roving band of beast men led by the giant Father Fang. The protagonist, Kenshiro, is the heir to the titular Fist of the North Star, a martial art that targets the vital chakras of the body and cause the victim's body to distort, twist, and eventually explode in a shower of gore. Kenshiro is on a quest for vengeance against his former friend, Shin, who stole his beloved, Yulia, and left Kenshiro in the desert to die. The gnarly scar left on his chest from this encounter is shaped like the Big Dipper constellation, giving him the nom de guerre of the Man with the Seven Scars. After he defeats Shin and his entire army, the first major saga of the anime, Kenshiro then has to deal with the other heirs to the Fist of the North Star, who have generally all become warlords themselves.
Kenshiro is hilariously dead pan as a protagonist, with nothing really seeming to phase him. Until about 10 volumes into the manga and about 50 episodes into the anime, no antagonist really seems to be able to threaten him. He is just too darn competent and powerful, and no one can seemingly withstand the destructive force of his body popping martial art. There are some other standout characters, such as Rei, who can slice people into ribbons with his hands, or the giant prison warden Uighur, who shoulder rams people so hard that they pop, or the aforementioned Father Fang who famously head butts a man so hard that it causes a man's eyes to bulge out the sides of his head. All in all a lot of campy, gory fun.
Now this game is the fifth in the series of RPGs and platformers made for the the Nintendo systems, and this itself is also an RPG. There will be two more games in this lineage for the Super Famicom, but those will both be in the far off future and also fighting games instead of JRPGS.
This game was developed by Shouei, which mainly developed video games in the Hokuto no Shinken series with Toei Animation, the production company behind the anime, as the producers for the entirety of the series. This was a relatively short-lived development house, with only working on some Pachinko games and a Puss in Boots series of games developed handheld consoles (no relation to the character from Shrek).
Toei Animation, the publisher in this case, is one of the most famous anime production houses, working on juggernauts such as Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and of course Fist of the North Star. They actually produced, and still produce, a great many of video game projects surrounding their many anime intellectual properties.
In a bizarre choice, this game is more of an "alternate universe" fan-fiction than a retelling of the canon events of the story, with all the main cast of the Hokuto Shinken universe appearing as cameo party members than really acting as the...well main cast. In this version, the main events of Hokuto no Shinken have not occurred exactly, so characters who would have died by the time other characters are introduced are still alive...it is a jumbled mess honestly.
Perhaps even stranger, Kenshiro is not the main character, but instead you play as two generations of heroes who must rally the various martial arts factions from the main story against a common foe. You play as the "Hero" who is the descendant of the Tentei Ken school of martial arts, whose beloved has been stolen by a rival gang of warlords known as the Makotei Ken. The Tentei Ken school, through ancient accords with Hokuto, Nanto (the Southern Star Fist), and other martial arts, call upon these schools to help the hero regain his lost love. Eventually, this conflict is carried on by your Hero's children, who are technically the heir of both the Tentei and the Makotei schools, and you play as these characters for the second half of the game.
The story was written by a pretty well known anime screenwriter, Hiroshi Toda, who worked a lot in translating manga to anime in the 80s and 90s, and was overseen, as far as generic plot, by Buronson, the original author and artist behind Fist of the North Star. I imagine it is hard to write scenarios for video games due to constraints from the manga and anime publisher: you can't wildly change characters, plot beats, or otherwise, or introduce anything that would mess with the overall canon of the source material. It is games as a marketing service to promote, but not surpass, the original material. You can either just retell the story, or create something wholly new but tangential to the main plot.
Buronson
Gameplay and Presentation
This game is about 25-30 hours long of good old fashioned turn based RPG goodness, with your party of adventurers traveling from town to town, righting small-scale wrongs along the way towards the overarching and climactic showdown with the main villains. The combat is traditional turn based, with you choosing between "hard strikes" to deal damage, "soft strikes" which are your debuffs, and vital point strikes to heal yourself and comrades. There are no real gimmicks beyond this which is sad to say: you have an HP and MP meter you manage, with items to buff as well, but other than the setting there is really nothing unique about this combat.
I think the big letdown, in this case, is the presentation. While I love the tall, detailed full body battle sprites, which is reminiscent of the style of the manga and anime, the presentation of the world and combat is really bland. The world is all grays, browns, and mud colored, and the world sprites are really low detailed. As well, the animation during combat and in the world is really poor at capturing the action from the series. While the original anime could definitely be accused of some cheap and shoddy animation, it made up for it with the bombastic violence and over the top action. This on the other hand, is just poorly translated to video game form. The battle sprites do not have much animation, which makes everything look choppy and without much impact; attack animations also look really silly, especially when defeated enemies "pop" like an over inflated balloon (it looks more goofy than violent). This is made much worse on the overworld map. For example, at one point some enemies, in a cutscene, are trying to attack this grandmaster character, who sends them all "flying back" with his attacks, and instead they just screensaver slowly off the side of the screen.
The game also seems very grindy: all the best equipment comes from enemy drops, and so much of the playthrough that I watched was just spent milling about a dungeon fighting random battles. Leveling up also seems to take quite some time. What a slog!
The music I found to be pretty annoying: it is going for a stereotypical "Chinese" sound font, and it is really tinny and obnoxious. One thing I will give it credit for is the voice samples, which is rare for a console game of this vintage; granted, you will mainly hear the same ones over and over again, so take that with a grain of salt.
Final Verdict
What a mess! From playing this game to watching the let's play, this game just seems like a chore rather than fun. I respect myself and my time too much to fully engage with this game, and honestly, you should too. Please skip this title if you are doing a revisit of Super Famicom JRPGS. It is boring, and doesn't even come close to the fun and energy of the source material.
No comments:
Post a Comment