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Old/obscure/underrated JRPGs

Ysaye

Arbiter
Joined
May 27, 2018
Messages
771
Location
Australia
Played Sword World PC for PC98 (1992).

Sword World is a Wapanese D&D knock-off, setting is the continent Alecrast to the north of Lodoss island (the animu Rune Soldier takes place on this continent). The world is called Forcelia. 500 years in the past the world had a Netheril-like highly advanced civilization that fell. Many of the game dungeons are remains of this previous civilization (an important place is the ruin of a once floating city).

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You create your own character (complete with rolling attributes) and gather a party of adventurers.

You go through several “scenarios”, aka sidequests, like dealing with undead/necromancer, finding missing person, taking care of drug dealers, work for thieves’ guild, etc. There’s a big variety in these scenarios, even entire questlines. There are at least 50 scenarios in total. In p. much every town you visit there’s something interesting to do or something interesting happens.

The game does have an overarching story interspersed between different scenarios, it deals with cultists trying to make ancient evil sea god (a giant ray) return. Indeed, the game unfortunately ends after the final of these quests (I didn’t get to do every scenario in the game).

Party members actually comment a lot, give advice, even crack jokes. You definitely grow to like them.

There are no random encounters and experience/gold are only acquired upon finishing a job. It’s a very low level campaign as you can only go up to level 5 in a single class. Then again you do need to multiclass as every class is needed: you need a shaman for at least one sidequest and a sage is needed to decipher ancient languages in dungeons or give information about rarer monsters.

Since it’s “Sword” World magic is p. low-key. Sorcerer spells go up to level 5, divine spells up to level 4. Plus to use certain spells like “summon skeleton warrior” like in the Lodoss animu you need dragon fang item, very rare and expensive.

Leveling up doesn’t automatically raise HP/MP, you need to either buy expensive items from temples or spend experience points separately. Then again it seems that in this tabletop system having more than 20 HP/MP is already an awful lot. And with good attributes/equipment you avoid a lot of damage.

I think the Lodoss games on PC98 with full party creation that I didn’t get to work are similar, i.e. various sidequests with hidden overarching story (or with the animu story as a backdrop).

One of the highlights of the game is probably a dungeon crawl in a dragon temple, with a layout shaped as a dragon. Or a run-off-the-mill monster hunt leading to an ancient laboratory… and a scroll in a hidden room leading to a yuge optional dungeon leading to Excalibur.

Also during an early thieves guild quest the party meets a unique character called Nightshade, it's nice bumping into her again several times after (even at the very end).

P. great game.

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That looks like the Sword World equivalent version of Realms of Arkania or a Gold Box game...does it implement the 1st edition rules or the second edition?
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
Played Rezel Cross for PSP.



Okay game I guess. I played this instead of Last Ranker that I lost interest in.

Combat and character development is copy pasted from FFX, characters are okay.

The game is divided in 21 chapters, the characters don’t form a full party until very late in the game. Until then haracters will meet on occasion, work together and part ways.

There are occasionally some stealth/puzzle sections where you need to use the characters’ unique powers to progress.

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abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
Played Blue Forest Story by Right Stuff (1996).

Right Stuff is the developer of great games such as Alshark and Libros de Chilam Balam.

There are two main characters and you can choose whom to play with in the beginning (Wallace and Rakjit). The two characters do have an interesting origin and there is the promise of a decent story but the game squanders it all p. quickly.

Combat is similar to Septerra Core or Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits. Combat frequency is very high. Battles look p. cool but the game is mostly devoid of challenge… Wallace has a special attack with an AoE sleep effect that works 90% of the time… and usually there’s a guest character with powerful damage skills.

The game has breakable weapons; in fact weapons break so fast you either need to keep around some spare ones which is a pain in the ass with limited inventory.

The game is very short, I guess you’re supposed to play with both characters to see the complete story (there are also several epilogue scenes to unlock) but since the game is mediocre at best it’s hard to bother. Only the music is above average.

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MrRichard999

Game re-worker!
Patron
Joined
Oct 6, 2013
Messages
839
Location
North East in the states!
Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech

OracleX

Augur
Patron
Joined
Jul 18, 2007
Messages
351
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
abnaxus at some point you need to make a list of the absolutely best untranslated jrpgs so MrRichard999 would get down to business :D
I gotta finish what I got on my backlog first though :P

Still plans to finish up the Lunatic dawn series?

I would need to get serious help with part 3 & 4 if I want to finish it... It has a lot of dialogue unfortunately.

finding a dedicated person to translate these games might be impossibru
 

MrRichard999

Game re-worker!
Patron
Joined
Oct 6, 2013
Messages
839
Location
North East in the states!
Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
abnaxus at some point you need to make a list of the absolutely best untranslated jrpgs so MrRichard999 would get down to business :D
I gotta finish what I got on my backlog first though :P

Still plans to finish up the Lunatic dawn series?

I would need to get serious help with part 3 & 4 if I want to finish it... It has a lot of dialogue unfortunately.

finding a dedicated person to translate these games might be impossibru

Unfortunately everyone I know is pretty busy with real life stuff and work... It's how it is at the moment but if anyone knows someone who would be interested I'd start dumping text.
 

AdolfSatan

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2017
Messages
1,871
Graphics and animations look pretty neat as well. I take it there never was an English language release of this, right?
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
Gonna finish Vain Dream 2 anyway, it's a solid game all things considered

Last time Warrick got raped by living armours when he had to go solo because I had missed a shop (the game is extremely gear dependent)

in a way, it fit, the dude's a boring putz, his wife handles all the important conversations and kills most of the enemies while he acts liek meat shield

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MrRichard999

Game re-worker!
Patron
Joined
Oct 6, 2013
Messages
839
Location
North East in the states!
Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
Gonna finish Vain Dream 2 anyway, it's a solid game all things considered

Last time Warrick got raped by living armours when he had to go solo because I had missed a shop (the game is extremely gear dependent)

in a way, it fit, the dude's a boring putz, his wife handles all the important conversations and kills most of the enemies while he acts liek meat shield

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What system is that on? You wouldn't mind PM'ing that to me would you? :)
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
The game tried everything in its power to prevent me from finishing (even encountered a game breaking bug xDD) but I did it.

Indeed with mithril armour bought from Dwarves (the merchant is easy to miss) the living armours can’t even touch you.

Endgame sucks though, two characters that were with you since the beginning and who killed the bulk of enemies with magic and ranged (melee is always terrible in Glodia games), leave and are replaced by two more melee characters.

There’s another magic character but she does nothing but cast some buffing spells.

This makes the final boss fight longer and more boring than it needed to be. Warrick the Putz mostly applied healing items in that fight.

I give the game a 7/10.

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Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,624
abnaxus got to say I'm fairly curious about this: are these games really short or are you spending the entirety of your free time beating them?
 

peacegamer

Novice
Joined
Sep 14, 2017
Messages
6
He could earn a lot of money with that level of Japanese language.

My theory is that he is on his retirement age and keep doing this for refreshment.



abnaxus got to say I'm fairly curious about this: are these games really short or are you spending the entirety of your free time beating them?
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
Hilarious emulation bug in Neko Project when finally I find another rpg game to play.

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You save a guy from a dungeon and then an earthquake happens in-game making the screen vibrate.

Neko project apparently can't handle "special effects" as it permanently FUBARs the screen

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So now I need to switch to T-98 Next for a while
 
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