Ouka Houshin (央華封神), launched 12/16/1999, developed/printed by ESP, MediaWorks, and EXE Create
It is a sport based mostly on a tabletop RPG, by the identical individuals who did Sword World and Report of Lodoss Conflict. These video games have been based mostly on Western fantasy requirements, whereas this sport relies on Chinese language mythology, and particularly the Investiture of the Gods work that additionally supplied the premise for Houshin Engi.
It’s the sort of SRPG that I’m not overly keen on; alongside the traces of the Dragon Pressure/Brigandine type of sport. In distinction to these video games this does have particular story battles, however for my style there’s nonetheless an excessive amount of repetitive combating in opposition to random enemies which can be emanating from castles or different buildings. That is all the time my largest problem with this type of sport.
I do just like the graphics. The characters have a pleasant design, and happily they didn’t attempt the 3D polygon type that by no means works. The maps permit for sufficient rotation that you would be able to see what’s occurring, aside from town maps that are very onerous to navigate.
Music and sound: The music is appropriately Chinese language-themed. The necessary story dialogue is voiced.
The story is fairly skinny on the entire — there are such a lot of characters that few of them are given any depth, and the story doesn’t actually rise very far above “cease the evil folks.” Your crew is made up of sennin (mainly Daoist sages who’ve gained magical powers by way of their austerity and different religious devotions) coming to Earth to cope with evil beings who’re corrupting the world and attempting to convey again some evil presence by hatching an egg. They wanted plenty of characters due to the best way the system works, however it might even have one thing to do with the supply materials. The left particular person within the first picture above is kind of a important character, however even the principle character isn’t actually all that properly developed.
The essential concept is that you could cleanse the Yin vitality from all of the areas and restore the Yang.
The system entails an overworld map and battles.
The overworld map consists of a variety of factors, a few of that are villages and others are caves/shrines/and so forth. The yellow locations have been cleansed to Ying, and the blue are Yin. The traces popping out of them present connections between Yin or Yang factors. You can also make a number of totally different teams of out your characters and go round to the locations (most of them even have Sage powers that may quick transport). In the event you go to a spot that’s Yin you will have to struggle a battle first, then you may cleanse it. While you cleanse the fitting locations you get the connection traces and this offers you toku, which mainly acts as cash. Enemies will come out of sure Yin locations and attempt to recapture the areas, though when you cleanse sufficient locations in an space (or perhaps full story occasions) the Ying degree will flip to “MAX” after which the enemies can’t take it over anymore.
Extra locations open up as you cleanse sure areas and full sure story battles.
This all occurs in actual time, and your characters aren’t mechanically healed after battle. So that you do typically have to spend time ready to be able to get better their MP or HP.
The battles are fairly customary SRPG grid battles; characters have their very own forms of weapons with totally different ranges and areas, and there’s a pretty difficult magic system that I by no means fairly found out — utilizing the spells is straightforward sufficient however the best way you be taught them entails gaining ranges but in addition one thing that you simply acquire from cleaning the assorted locations. However some characters discovered enormous quantities of magic whereas others discovered virtually none, and I used to be by no means fully positive why this was.
On the entire the sport was tough to determine, and that is partly on account of issues being needlessly difficult, and points with the interface. The instruction booklet shouldn’t be very clear on many elements of the sport. I didn’t determine the best way to purchase issues till close to the top of the sport (it’s a must to use the facility to return to the clouds after which purchase issues from the sages), and even then the best way to equip issues was not easy. I did finally determine it out with a mixture of the instruction guide and the sport itself, however managing all of the totally different teams wasn’t very enjoyable both.
The map design is usually generic; there are solely a handful of precise story battles.
Lastly, the stability. With out combating plenty of additional battles (i.e. ready for guys to come back out) it’s onerous to maintain your ranges even, and it’s a lot simpler to only use a single group for many of the duties, and have some facet teams to cope with a number of the generics. On the entire I didn’t discover the sport too difficult till close to the top, when the distinctive enemies began having much more energy and the power to forged very damaging spells that typically hit the entire map (you will get these too).
However the last battle was a distinct story and a scenario that has develop into acquainted to me now. It represents an enormous leap in issue; the boss has a number of locations that you would be able to injury it however they preserve altering, and it has very damaging assaults. I checked out a video of the boss and so they have been way more extremely levelled than me. So I believed I’d grind a bit, nevertheless it seems that after you get to the purpose the place the ultimate boss is revealed, you can not struggle any extra battles, so that you’re caught with no matter crew you will have at that time (except there was some method to prepare that I by no means found out). In order that’s the place I finished — I feel that is the fifth or sixth sport that I’ve needed to cease on the ultimate battle.
In order I stated above, I nonetheless don’t actually like this type of SRPG.
