Mori no Oukoku (森の王国), launched 10/21/1999, Asmic Ace Leisure
This can be a fairly minor sport that appears to have come and gone with out a lot discover. Modern opinions had been blended, and what I can discover of latest opinions are the identical. All of them just about agree with my impression — some good concepts, however the sport performs too slowly and the graphics are unhealthy.
Despite the fact that I used to be round within the Ps period, I really feel like this type of 3D graphics simply by no means appeared good. There was by no means a time when the naked undeniable fact that it was 3D as a substitute of 2D made it acceptable to make use of graphics like this. By 1999 many corporations had discovered tips on how to do higher than this, although. This seems to be like very early Saturn/Ps efforts. The battle graphics are a bit higher:
Nevertheless, the map can’t be rotated and there are phases with massive bushes or buildings that make it exhausting to maintain monitor of the place the enemies are.
There are additionally animated assault sequences which may luckily be turned off.
The interface is fairly irritating. It’s not the worst I’ve seen, however there’s helpful data you may’t see in battle, the standing screens contain useless quantities of button urgent as a result of data is unfold throughout a number of screens for no motive, and within the outlets it’s troublesome to see clearly what you can purchase for every particular person.
The storyline is serviceable however nothing particular — I performed about half the sport, although. The essential concept is that your major character, who remains to be a child, is visited by a fairy and given energy to combat (together with making his raccoon buddy capable of speak). As a result of he has the pure coronary heart of a kid he’ll have the ability to cease the ineffective wars the adults are participating in, that are being influenced by some sort of darkish energy. The primary part of the sport entails making an attempt to rescue a princess who was kidnapped; the princess’ personal kingdom thinks that this was executed by the neighboring kingdom and so they put together to go to struggle.
The battle system is primary participant turn-enemy flip. You’ll be able to freely select the order of your characters. The transfer ranges appear like this:
In the event you transfer to the blue space, you are able to do a further transfer after your assault (together with your remaining motion areas). In the event you transfer to the inexperienced space you may assault/magic/and so forth however then have to finish your flip. In the event you transfer to the pink space, your flip ends there. The enemies in fact have this function as effectively, and generally it may be difficult to cope with enemy spellcasters who can transfer up, use a spell, after which retreat again out of your vary. Peak and going through are each vital for assaults.
Every particular person has three expertise ranges — assault, magic, and treasure (which works up if you open a chest or discover a hidden merchandise on the map). Any motion will give expertise to all three, however many of the XP will go to no matter motion you probably did. Every stage raises your stats. When you achieve sufficient ranges in a single space you’ll enhance your rank, which can will let you study a brand new capability — these talents are based mostly on the character for essentially the most half. You get assault strikes, spells, and passive talents (from the treasure stage). One very useful one is “cheer” which routinely recovers MP of surrounding characters firstly of every flip.
If the primary character reaches 0 hp it’s sport over. In any other case the character dies. To revive them, it’s important to have a sure consumable merchandise (which may solely be discovered on some maps) and it’s important to return to the Foresty Kingdom city to revive them within the church. As you journey round, the maps you might have cleared are slowly re-taken by the darkish forces. If certainly one of them will get totally pink you get a sport over. I don’t like the potential for this making you restart from the start — so far as I performed, not one of the locations even received all the way down to half inexperienced, and once I rescued the princess it restored all of them to full inexperienced. So it might be that in case you play usually, there isn’t any actual hazard of getting a sport over from this.
The battles themselves do require a point of technique. Your sight view is proscribed so that you don’t know who all is on the sphere. Particularly firstly, the enemy magic is tough, and you’ll lose an individual in case you aren’t cautious. The restricted resurrection objects does make you consider whether or not you wish to use one or hold going.
Finally I believe I may have completed this sport if I needed to. The interface and slowness of the sport are an issue, however the gameplay is OK. I nonetheless had fairly a bit to go within the sport, although, and so I made a decision it wasn’t price it to maintain taking part in.
