In the introduction, Maxim and Selen have an inspirational speech.

This was a time before there was GameFAQs and when your main source for information was Nintendo Power or the like.  I remember hating the dungeons in the game.  Looking at them now, they’re still pretty difficult.  Many of them have multiple levels, and some feature warps between various areas.  Due to the screen size, you can have the Phantasy Star III issue with wandering down dead ends that you could’ve seen if the screen was bigger.  However, the dungeons aren’t as samey and easy to get lost compared to Phantasy Star III.

I also remember feeling frustrated with the plot.  The writing wasn’t that bad, and I do remember being pleasantly surprised that they used lower case letters in the translation.  In the beginning of the game, a team of four heroes head in to kill the Sinstrals.  They’re successful, at a cost.  Later, your hero and his mysterious childhood friend Lufia are caught up in the strife as the Sinstrals return.  A good amount of the game involves finding the children of the original four heroes to remake your party.  My main frustration with the game, back then, was that the game seemed to be paced with the assumption that you were pretty young.

For example, at the very start of the game, the hero says that he likes Lufia’s pie.  She hurries off to bake one.  However, a mere ten paces from the kitchen, someone mentions that there’s monsters in a nearby town.  The hero runs out in a panic to go talk to the knights about the attack – and Lufia is infuriated that he left when she was about to give him the pie.  You then get townspeople telling you to make up with her and that she’s crying.  The innkeeper scolds you for leaving.  You have no way to apologize to her.  I understand the humor of the clueless hero and sort of romantic misunderstanding between the two of them but to talk to her, you need to advance the plot.

To advance the plot, you need to get orders to scout at the town under attack.  Then, you need to leave town and grind to about level four, and then walk a short way north to a new town.  You should be strong enough at that point to walk another short way north to a cave.  After traveling through the cave, you go to the town under attack and then can head back home again.  There, you can talk to Lufia.  Dragon Quest games tend to use this kind of plot pacing where you have some kind of crisis, you go do a mission or explore a dungeon, and then the plot is wrapped up.  Lufia’s execution, at times, just doesn’t work for me.

I think part of my lack of patience for the game is the battle system.  The game, for example, does not retarget enemies if they die.  You also have a staggered turn order due to your agility stats.  So, for example, in the introduction, you start a battle, and you get to pick orders for Artea (your fast elf character) and Selen (your mage).  Then, usually, Maxim (the ancestor of the hero) and Guy will have their turns.  Artea tends to act after Maxim’s orders are picked, and Selen tends to move after one enemy and after you pick Guy’s orders.  This does allow you to retarget enemies as the round goes on, but you still end up occasionally missing.  This is particularly annoying if you’re using magic, since you can end up wasting MP.  Add in a long rambling dungeon, and you can imagine how things can get frustrating.

The reflection in the floor and the shadows cast by the pillars is a nice touch.

I suppose my main problem with the game is that it feels like a medium budget retro-themed title.  The first area in the introduction, for example, attempts to emulate lighting effects and reflective floors.  However, the sprite work feels inspired but limited, and for all that it’s lovely, there’s none of the fancier effects that higher budget games might use.  (For example, in the picture above, a fancier game might have a reflection of the heroes in the floor, a more varied landscape, or emulating tinted light for the sunset.)  Ignoring the gloss, the gameplay and the battle system is basically like Dragon Quest.  The graphics look like the best NES game ever, but definitely aren’t the best the SNES can offer.  The music is catchy and competent.

While fighting a Sinstral, Artea pauses to look at the inventory you get at the start of the game. You have no information in the game about what these items do.

Unfortunately, the game keeps a lot of retro elements that don’t really improve the game in my mind.  The game is pretty grindy, and the battle system feels kind of awkward.  You have a range of magic and items, but you’ll spend most of the game using a very small set of spells.  Buying items does let you see what you can and can’t equip, but isn’t too informative about upgrades and downgrades for your characters.  Dungeons are long, complex, but amount to a slow pace from beginning until you can find the end.  The plot’s pacing can feel pretty slow and some of the big revelations are blatantly obvious before the game finally admits that you can know something.

There is an undeniable charm, even with the elements that I find annoying.  I still like Lufia, even when the romantic misunderstandings annoy me, and I still remember getting the replacement for Artea and how much it seemed to be an accomplishment.  Would a modern player love the game?  I suspect if they didn’t mind the battle system, and they loved the plot, it’d be an easy sell.  However, every time I try to replay the game, I get as far as getting lost in a dungeon, and it’s really easy to see only the flaws in the game.

The art here for the Peach Orchard Oath looks more refined and detailed compared to the previous game. Guan Yu's lost the reddish facial coloring, and his beard is surprisingly short.

Gameplay wise, the game starts at a later point than the previous game, and there’s some assumptions about how much the player knows of the story of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  For example, the introduction to the game mentions the death of Dong Zhuo and implies that he’s a tyrant. In typical depictions, Dong Zhuo is a cruel perverted tyrant, and an easy man to loath.  If you’re familiar with the canon, you instantly know who Dong Zhuo is, and why it’s good that he’s dead, and you know about the main events of the novels.  Similarly, you don’t get a lot of details about who you’re fighting.  I don’t mind it, since it’s not that hard to look up exactly who someone is, but I can see it being a negative for people who don’t know what’s going on.

Dong Zhuo, on the left, dies before the game begins. This could be his foster son, Lu Bu, on the right, who participated in his death.

Even without a lot of knowledge, the game does have some good tricks.  For example, when leaving the first area, your sworn brothers, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, join your party.  It’s surprisingly effective to get a “Your brother joins your side” kind of message.  Similarly, it really does make you feel like you’re a hero when people welcome you and call you a lord in shops.

Cao Cao, according to people in town, is a scheming and dangerous man. Starting the game with your brothers joining your side is surprisingly effective.

Difficulty wise, the game starts out with an easier curve of difficulty.  I can literally get to the first mini-boss and win with a good amount of ease by just picking up some armor at a cave to the north, and sleeping after I gain a level to refresh my troops.  The lack of rations makes it easier to explore with a greater radius since you don’t have to worry about buying more food or choosing armor or food.  You also start with a better supply of armor and equipment.

A short walk from the first town gives you a trove of money and items.

As for looks, the game is more detailed than the previous game.  I haven’t seen any amazingly detailed effects, but it’s definitely not ugly.  The music is pleasantly catchy, and the auto-battling system is still a charming and nice feature.  The enemy attack rate feels a little high, but it’s not too annoying since I haven’t had to grind and the auto-battling is pretty painless.

The water simply flashes between two colors, but the detailed structure of the tiles makes it really look like waves. Here, the party heads out looking for Yuan Shu.

I can see why people say it’s better to start with this game instead of the previous one.  It still has some retro styled elements (slightly wonky item management, needing to use the menu to talk, and typical NES style graphics.)  However, the catchy music, the auto-battling system, and the speed of getting you into the meat of the game is pretty notable.

The layout of the first town requires some mild walking if you want to sell items (it's the shop above the dragon sigil house.) However, it's got wide paths (so NPCs aren't a problem,) and a convienent inn.

The introduction to the game shows the Peach Tree Garden oath. Note that Guan Yu (on the left) has a different skin tone compared to Liu Bei (middle) and Zhang Fei (right.)

Starting off with the story, Destiny of an Emperor is based off of the ancient novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  This book tells the story of warring kingdoms in ancient China, and heavily favors the kingdom of Shu.  The military general and later emperor of Shu was a man named Liu Bei.  In the game, you play as Liu Bei, rising in power along with his sworn brothers.  A famous incident in the novel is the Peach Tree Garden Oath, where Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei swore to die the same day and work for a peaceful empire.  Much like a game based of of a show, games based off of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms tend to focus on the little details of the story. So, for example, Guan Yu has a “red face” in the book, and he tends to be depicted with a different skin tone in various games.

In the first town, the man to the south near the white horse will give you some free rations. Note the variety of tiles even if the graphics are very square and simple.

The game starts with Liu Bei’s mother telling him about the Yellow Turban rebellion, and Liu Bei heads off to attempt to fight it.  The game has pretty standard Dragon Quest style menus to talk to people, but there are some interesting features.  Moving around items doesn’t kick you out of the items menu, which isn’t the most efficient method, but it’s better than some 1989 era games.  The battle system uses soldiers for your HP, and you need rations to keep from losing soldiers as you walk around. You get 1,000 rations at the start of the game, and I ended up with 600 extra ones after doing some simple plot progression.  Fighting basically involves using spells (situational combat tactics) and focusing your attacks.  Common enemies can be killed using auto-battle techniques.  Named generals get special music, and you can fight them while just walking around.  You can have your attacks transfer from a dead enemy to another living one, which is a nice feature that doesn’t pop up often in 1989 era games.

On the left, you can see the party, and on the right there are the enemy forces. The text is due to getting an ambush on the enemy.

The game’s a little tough and unfair early on, but you only need three levels before you can pretty easily progress the plot.  You do get a good feeling of a heroic destiny in the plot.  For example, one person in an early town says that a prophecy says Liu Bei needs to kill the Five Tigers to rise to greatness.  At the time, you are hunting down the generals called the Five Tigers.  At the same time, you’re being offered a country if you can defeat the Yellow Scarf rebellion, you have townspeople being polite, and you can actually get an enemy general to defect to your side so you can use him to get a bridge lowered.  It’s surprisingly effective at making you feel like you are important to the local politics.

Note the different tiles used for the castle. It really does make it feel like this is a more rich and sumptuous building.

Graphically, the game uses very square tiles, but there is a decent variety in them.  The character sprites on your party members have enough variety that you can kind of tell which character is which, and you get fairly large character portraits in battle and in conversations. Musically, the game is pretty pleasant, and has a variety of tracks. In combat, you can get special battle music for named generals, and you get a tiny strip of terrain to show what the area is like.  Some party members get yellow health bars to show that they fight especially well on certain types of terrain.

Here, you can see the character portrait for Zhang Liang after a fight.

All in all, Destiny of an Emperor is an ambitious game.  It’s got some rough edges, but it’s pretty charming.  The sequel feels like a remake (though it starts at a different point in the story.)  I suspect a modern remake of the Destiny of an Emperor series would be pretty fun to play.  Even now, I quite enjoyed exploring the game.

TOME, back then, did have story arcs.  You started the game, and you could fight off bandits that took over a house in town (which gave you storage space), you could gather mushrooms and avoid deadly dogs, or you could delve into a dungeon.  Most roguelikes tend to fall into two categories.  Some have towns, multiple dungeons, and sometimes special rooms or areas for quests.  Others have a single dungeon (which may have special rooms, special floors, or themed levels.)  Typically, roguelikes have random generation for the dungeon like areas.  Plot wise, many roguelikes keep the plot in quest text, or in item descriptions.  If you play one type of character and reload, you’re only getting a different story due to your capabilities (the order of quests or the type open to you) and due to the randomizer.  For a lot of people, they don’t play roguelikes for the story, and don’t care about the story.

Character building and “balance” tend to be important to roguelikes.  Many games offer you a range of various options, with bonuses and negatives.  They also tend to try to force the player to keep moving and to keep the difficulty fairly high. This may include things like monsters hunting you down if you spend too much time on a level, or reduced experience if your level is too high.  If you’re good at roguelikes, you can abuse pathfinding or stairs to attempt to avoid damage (by dancing around columns or retreating up stairs.)  In turn, roguelike designers have attempted to design ways to make this more difficult.  Some games, like Dungeon Defenders, pare down the size of levels and the amount of time a game takes to something like a ten minute game.  Due to death being cheap and easy, there’s sometimes an element of luck as you progress through the game.  In a standard RPG, this level of difficulty would usually be a negative.

Some games, like Nethack, are based around a learning curve.  You need to learn, much like starting a new SaGa game, what a sword with an unusual amount of damage means.  Or why you’re in an area with a bunch of boulders that you can push.  Or how to identify items or steal from shops.  You can, in turn, also die very quickly.  IVAN or ADOM are good examples of roguelikes which can and will kill your character quickly.  Many roguelike fans tend to say that death is part of the experience of learning how to play the game, and it’s only unfair when it’s too hard to learn how to avoid it.

I’ve been playing a lot of Dungeons of Dredmore lately and enjoying the occasional Infocom reference within the game.  A friend of mine has also been playing the game.  He’s favoring a dodging unarmed character, which is giving him trouble when he can’t easily avoid enemies.  However, he’s doing pretty well.  I, like most roguelikes I’ve puttered with, am trying variations on mages.  One character, for example, is a ley walker, alchemist, golemancer, and mathematician.  Translating this from game terms, my character recovers magic quickly, can brew health and magic potions, can summon pets and create walls to funnel things away, can teleport, and has buffs and debuffs.  The main problem with that character is that she can’t do hand to hand combat, and my strongest attack is summoning thermite.  Thermite floats around a monster, and then either moves to the floor or from body to body (if the monster dies.)  They can then be spread if you touch the cloud of thermite.  Due to her low HP, blundering into thermite is a pretty bad idea. On the other hand, I destroyed a monster zoo (a room full of closely packed monsters) via just sitting behind a wall brewing potions while my thermite and pets killed everything.

I suppose one reason why I’m enjoying Dungeons of Dredmore is that the game is pretty kind with allowing you to make it more simple.  I’m on a lower difficulty level, sans permadeath, and I’m doing smaller dungeons (to increase levelling, and to make exploring go by more quickly.)  I am enjoying the fact that different builds play in different manners.  For example, my unarmed mathematician can’t fight a zoo unless if he has a favorable location so he can get his debuffs down and push enemies away from him.  My golemancer can make walls for a good location, but she needs at least 56 MP to get her thermite / pet robot working, and that’s not counting getting the walls up to protect her (and she’s starting with about 80 MP.)  My pyromancer demonologist, on the other hand, has killed several zoos via just setting up walls of fire and covering the floor with tons of fire, and then was promptly killed by accidentally getting too much fire damage, or damage from debuffs leaving her way too weak.

The randomizer also makes things more interesting. Early on, my pyromancer tried to upgrade her shoes on an anvil of Krong, and promptly had them cursed.  I haven’t seen a single pair of shoes which she can wear for the past 8 levels. (I have seen, mind you, two pairs of plate mail shoes, but they’re bad for mages.)  She has, on the other hand, just about the best staff in the game (and a scarf that apparently helps her strangle things.)  My golemancer has pretty terrible equipment, but she’s got a full set of equipment.  My unarmed guy has a ridiculous amount of elemental damage on his kicks and punches (thanks to Krong and random drops,) which includes a great deal of existential damage.  Apparently being kicked in the groin makes monsters question if they exist.

I suppose, for me, roguelikes offer the chance to build your own story, via the ways the game helps / hinders you due to randomness, and the ability to build a custom character.  They don’t offer a complex plot, and death tends to be very cheap and easy.  Still, there’s a certain appeal of heading down another set of stairs, and seeing what ridiculousness awaits you.  If you don’t mind a learning curve, and you love character building, then you’ll probably find a roguelike that works for you and feels like a great game.  For other people, rpg fans or no, a roguelike is an unfair obtuse game that kills you just when you think you’re doing well. Still, the character building aspects are fascinating to me.

For example, I’d love to see a SaGa game that let you build your character like Dungeon of Dredmore’s skills.  While yeah, you’re not getting an amazing story, there’s been rpgs that I wished just let you get to the meat of the game as fast as a roguelike lets you get to exploring. Many roguelikes don’t offer flashy combat or flashy graphics.  Your strategy depends on the enemy abilities and positioning, and the random dungeons make the strategies vary from area to area. Strategic RPGs could steal ideas for combat.  Randomized loot is another area that could be interesting to RPGs.  For example, consider how some RPGs offer loot based on your level or based on the area of the game.  After a certain point, chests with randomized loot in Might and Magic games are pointless.  Dungeons of Dredmore, however, is still interesting, since I can turn unique items into experience (with a skill,) or I could find another hat that makes my fighter better at making enemies question their existence.

From top to bottom, this is Albert, his sister, and two guards fighting an enemy in the caves. The 13 damage is from the enemy using a knife.

Albert wakes up in bed, and is asked to take care of some monsters in the cave to the east.  I picked a right handed Magic Knight (father and mother) for my Albert, and he had 40 HP.  He started with a sword, a knife, and 4 castings of a Light spell.  His sister, Diana, had a sword and about 70 HP, and the two guards with him had HP in the 40′s.  One had a knife, and the other had a knife and a bow.

Basically, one more turn and I would've died fighting the first boss.

Outside, it was pretty easy to get down to the cave without any major fights, but inside the cave you’re highly unlikely to get to the boss without at least four fights.  One of the monsters mixed in the random groups included a fat pale troll that seemed to be almost impossible to kill.  Fleeing battle isn’t too bad, but I couldn’t find any way other than Albert’s medicine to heal.  If you didn’t know the right path through the cave, you could probably get into an unwinnable situation.  The boss of the cave did about 50 HP damage with his fire magic, and Albert only had 45 HP when I got to the boss.  Everyone with 1 HP in the screenshot above died during the boss fight.

I tried Gray’s story.  He has a simple stealth mission, but the difficulty curve, again, is pretty rough.  I tried to max out Willpower on Gray, to make a more fighter / paladin like build.  You’re supposed to avoid the dinosaurs in his area, so you can only fight the wolves and birds that are in the area.  These do between a tenth to a third of the health of him and his companions if they’re a more dangerous grouping.  Dinosaurs kill you as soon as you get into battle with them (Three hits of 100+ damage, and practically no chance to flee the battle before they start hitting.)

While the sprites are very square and the tiling is obvious on the path, the game is pretty in motion and the towns feel alive with the number of NPCs.

Unfortunately, getting through the dinosaurs to advance the plot is almost entirely up to luck.  Basically, you can only pass dinosaurs quickly on the left or right, or slowly if you are behind them.  Passing from the front, or taking too long while beside one will get you into a fight.  You need to head through a U shaped passage while dodging about twenty or so dinosaurs to get to where the egg is hidden.

With our turn order scrambled by an ambush, one character prepares to cast a spell while Gray and his companion work their way to the front lines.

Of course, making Albert a mage type of character isn’t a great idea.  And dodging enemies gets easier with time.  What’s the game like, ignoring those issues?  The music is gorgeous and the graphics have a lot of nice details.  For example, when Albert’s fleeing his castle while it is under attack, his running animation is much faster than normal. People have fighting / casting sprites in battle, and while they’re not super detailed, you can tell the difference between Gray’s mage and Diana.  Ironically enough, the idea of creating your own hero and visible monsters would’ve been seen as a great game in 1992.  However, I doubt that people would’ve gotten past the flaws in Romancing SaGa if it had been released in the US.

Near a tree, you can see one of the visible enemies in Romancing Saga.

I was warned that there were a bunch of issues with the game.  For example, you need 30,000 gold for a quest, but you need to sell an item when you have 9,999 gold to get a jewel (representing 9,999 gold.) Any excess gold while you have 9,999 gold is lost.  I was warned that the final boss would probably be impossible for me to kill.  You cannot get all the items to weaken the final boss (since some quests weren’t finished.)

I wasn’t expecting that the music is lovely in the game.  I wasn’t expecting that the graphics look a lot like a mix of Final Fantasy IV’s towns with some pretty complex battle sprites.  I wasn’t expecting to feel as lost as I was.

To be more specific, you don’t pick a character in the SNES version.  You pick your gender, and then your character.  Then you pick the jobs for your character’s parents (which effects your stats, not that you can tell exactly how save from the the titles.)  Finally you pick your dominant hand.  Then you’re given a pretty world map, and then you’re shown where you are in the world.

In the case of Gray, you start on a ship with two other characters, and are left, almost penniless, in a remote town.  Asking around town tells you that there’s a dinosaur egg that could be sold for tons of cash.  So, your character heads out, dodging triceratops to attempt to steal an egg to escape the island.

Or you would, if you didn’t get ambushed and find out that it scrambles your turn order so certain characters can’t attack.  It’ll take me a while to get something actually interesting out of this game, I fear.  It’s still fascinating to try though.

This is the starting area of Legend, with the hero on the left at the bottom of the screen. This feels a lot like Twin or a dozen other RPGs, doesn't it?

One oddity about the game is the way the menus are laid out.  For example, the first menu starts with your typical “talk.”  However, the second command is status, and searching the area is moved down to the last option.  Go into status, and you get status of your character, items, magic, equip, and ranks.  Usually, equipment is moved higher up the list, and it’s odd that they couldn’t manage to combine searching with talking.

On average, most attacks due about 6 to 7 damage a round for every 2 monsters. You can see how the hero's low HP can make this a problem.

Another oddity is the difficulty level.  The game feels like a pretty generic RPG.  You have four heroes who are tasked by the king to find the “mantos” to bring Lemeria into a new era of peace.  The heroes, from what little I can understand, are possibly children of other heroes.  Considering that this feels like a pretty generic RPG, it’s odd that your starting cash isn’t enough to cover getting some basic equipment.  You can easily get poisoned or wounded in battle.  The main FAQ for the game suggests grinding to level 9 before continuing to progress the game.  With the best equipment that I could buy, I still felt very fragile at level 3 just sticking near the first two areas.  While games are never that realistic, it’s odd that your heroes are too weak to walk from your hero’s house to where you start the game without running from every battle.  Thankfully, running has a high chance of success, and there is a free source of healing.  A final oddity is that your hero’s mother (the source of said free healing) lives underground in a tiny house on the edge of town.

Entering Baracas, you can find some houses to the north, and shops to the right. Below the hero is his mother's basement house.

The town layouts are pretty typical Gameboy RPG fair.  Shops have large obvious signs, and the paths around towns aren’t that windy and annoying.  The music is notable for being pretty nice.  The battle theme, for example, has a good amount of variety, and seems to have a “you’re in danger” varient.  Monster art is pretty similar to something like SaGa 1 / Final Fantasy Legend II, and there’s something akin to the Dragon Quest charm to some of the designs.

So, summing it up, Legend’s got some nice music, and some competent graphics.  The game feels a little awkward, since there’s non-standard menu layouts, and some odd difficulty curves in the game.  I suspect someone who’s desperate for a nostalgic retro Gameboy RPG would adore the feel of the game, but I’m not sure that I’d love the game even if I could read the dialogue. I did enjoy poking around at the early areas of the game, for all of my complaints.

The hero's present stats. Notice that we have 1492 credits. The grinding will take a while.

The monsters, as per usual, are worse on the new continent, and there’s a money grind as well.  Basically, if you bought the best of the new weapons, you’re looking at 28,000 gold.

One curious thing about how levelling works in the game.  There’s actually a sort of anti-cheat function.  Experience levels seem to be dependent on your stats.  So, for example, if you give yourself extra points to build the character, you’ll level more slowly.  You will also get less EXP if you’re wearing better armor.  It may actually be better to fight with bad equipment till you hit the level you want and then upgrade.

Other than that, I fear, I’m merely pushing my way through grinding in the game.

So, here’s the odd thing.  In my mind, yeah, innovation can be amazing.  I really do enjoy, for example, the Hex battle system in Wild ARMs 4 and 5.  If you haven’t seen the games, it amounts to a battlefield with spaces.  Your party can group together, can change elemental affinities (or status effects) on the spaces, and the enemies can move around in a similar manner.  It’s a really noticeable change from the earlier games which had a more typical Dragon Quest style row of fighters.  I don’t necessarily enjoy playing SaGa games, but I’m fascinated by the sheer variety of new systems that are introduced in the various games.

Silva Saga II isn't an amazingly beautiful game, but it's definitely not a NES game in scope or appearence.

However, I think my main reaction to people’s complaints about novelty is that it’s not really good criticism some of the time.  It could be bad criticism due to ignorance.  For example, on a certain forum, someone talked about the new Silva Saga II translation.  Someone’s response was “Well, it’s a SNES game and you can’t expect that much, but it looks like Final Fantasy, and I can’t stand such a samey ugly game like that.”  Silva Saga II doesn’t have the best graphics on the SNES, but it’s almost laughable to me to call it identical to Final Fantasy.

The first town in Final Fantasy pops up almost anywhere when you talk about the game. It looks nothing like Silva Saga II.

Some games are very similar between games in the series.  Let’s look at Dynasty Warriors / Samurai Warriors / Warriors Orochi.  All of the games from these series play fairly similarly.   If you hate Dynasty Warriors, you’ll probably hate Warriors Orochi.  On the other hand, if you’re neutral toward one of the games, you may find the subtle changes in another one to be to your taste.  For example, I’m quite fond of Warriors Orochi.  The game doesn’t cover the sequence of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so I’m not dealing with another Yellow Turban revolt.  The goofy voice acting and drama is actually pretty fun to experience.  I enjoy the layered objectives.  For example, you have ability objectives (kill three officers to unlock the ability to run faster, say,) the mission objectives (lure the enemies to the east for an ambush,) and the occasional secret objective (succeed with the luring to get a new character.)

For some people, Warriors Orochi is too similar to other games in the series.  The little changes, however, are enough to make it interesting to me.  I suppose my main complaint with saying “It’s too similar” is that sometimes there’s a lack of thought and consideration.  For example, saying that a game plays the same, and ignoring the interesting plot isn’t considering that the plot may be a selling point.  Or, in the case of Dynasty Warriors, a game that plays similarly and it is a selling point that you’ll get a similar experience.  Another lack of thought could be sheer ignorance.  Complaining that, say, a game is too samey when it’s not samey at all, or a game has nothing interesting for anyone when it’s really just boring for that person.

So, all in all, novelty to me isn’t a selling point.  It’s potentially good or bad, but it’s not why I play games.

Note the reflections in the water for the hero. The sprite work in the game does look pretty nice.

Much like Silva Saga, the difficulty level is pretty low in Silva Saga II.  Let’s start with the battle system.  Fights, much like most Dragon Quest clones, come randomly and pretty regularly.  However, you have four ways to deal with a fight.  One is to use your statues.  Much like the statues in the NES prequel, they use magic and have weak physical attacks.  After a battle, all status effects (save for “damage” which is the equivalent of death) are cured and HP and MP is refilled.  Statues can be combined after a few levels to have stronger spells.  You can use mercenaries.  You’ve got a wide variety of men and women which can be hired for a price dependent on their starting level.  Once you hire them, they don’t cost any more money, and they are cured like the statues after a battle.  They have no magic, and are stronger then the main party.  Your third option is to use the main party which needs normal healing and status effect healing like any normal group of people.  Your final option is to run and you can use a mix of spells and items to make this more easy.

This early boss in Silva Saga II is a pretty easy fight. Of the four bosses I fought, all of them could be poisoned for some extra damage.

If you fight every battle, you will almost never need to do any grinding.  Compare this to, say, the cliche of needing to be level five before you leave the first town, and you can see how this game feels surprisingly easy.  Add in that items are all over the place in towns.  On average, you can get three to four healing items and at least a hundred gold from just checking out items in towns.  Money can be a little hard to get in the game, but you’ll only be short on money if you buy all the equipment you see.  Since you don’t really need to upgrade everything, you can keep your money at a pretty decent level via just doing what the plot wants you to do.  There’s also subquests which offer you extra money, so you can take side paths if you feel short on money.

A simple early side quest gives you money for delivering fabric between two towns.

Random events in the game makes playing through the game more varied.  For example, you can randomly find rare gems while riding around in a canoe. These can be turned in for some money with certain NPCs.  I watched a friend play the game, and then ran my canoe around the same area.  He got three gems and I found three pebbles and one gem.  My friend entered a cave, and ghosts healed him to max and offered him about 200 gold.  I went into the same cave and the ghosts challenged me to win a battle to prove I could survive.  In SaGa games, there’s random events, but you tend to feel like you’re clawing to survive in the early game.  Due to the easiness of Silva Saga II, I wasn’t upset at all that my ghosts weren’t as friendly.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from some odd design choices.  For example, your party members are people who showed up in the prequel.  However, they say next to nothing.  It’s actually unusual that one of them is upset that you’ll replace him.  Each one has similar stats, traded equipment, and traded skills.  You’re basically replacing your priest with a priest with another face.  Your statues can be combined, and there’s some obscure choices that let you make a third level combined statue (so basically A + B = C and C + D = third level statue.)  It’s impossible, as best I can tell, to have a party of four statues that are combined this way, and I strongly doubt the average player can figure out how to make a party of three of them, due to the odds of making a poor choice.

Senna complains when it is time for him to leave. However, you can't calm him, and he'll leave no matter what. This is his only major dialogue.

So, forget the optimizing of statues and the lack of character of your party members – is the game fun?  Yes.  It’s a charming romp with attractive graphics and pleasant music.  The battle system offers a number of ways to make it pleasant for the player, and you don’t have sudden horrible spates of grinding.  You have an ambitious day night system (complete with the time of day being shown in the battles,) and different dialogue depending on the time of day.  I suspect a remake would probably focus on making it easier to experiment with the statues, and probably add more dialogue for your party members.  Other than that, the game doesn’t really feel that dated (taking into consideration that it is more in the retro Dragon Quest style of RPG.