Langrisser Millenium WS: The Final Century (ラングリッサーミレニアムWS THE LAST CENTURY), 3/9/2000
Though the Langrisser sequence correct ended with V, Masaya continued to develop a number of extra Langrisser video games although I don’t know the way a lot (if any) the unique improvement crew was concerned. The Dreamcast Millenium sport was an odd action-strategy hybrid, however this Wonderswan sport is within the type of Langrisser 1 and a couple of.
I don’t know if the storyline is instantly associated to the opposite Langrissers. It does have the swords Langrisser and Alhazard in it, however I didn’t see any apparent connections to the opposite video games past that. It might simply be that I don’t have an awesome grasp on the Langrisser lore, although.
The sport is fully in black and white, after all. Luckily the textual content is a big, readable font. The graphics do generally intrude with the gameplay — it may be laborious to inform precisely the place your characters can transfer as a result of the highlighted ranges mix in with the background. I had this drawback with SRW Compact 1 as nicely however that they had solved it by Compact 2.
The interface as an entire is inferior to it may very well be. You will get the wanted data with out an excessive amount of bother, however the sport doesn’t have the auto-moving troops (I neglect when that was launched), the tools interface is extra annoying that it must be, and the battle sequences with no animation are just a little complicated to determine because you get no info in any respect about what occurred, you simply have to have a look at the HP of the models afterwards (particularly chaotic throughout enemy turns).
The story is fairly comparable in type to earlier video games. It performs out over 17 phases, with one single department within the story. I didn’t do each routes so I’m unsure precisely how the story modifications — the best way the selection is framed, it doesn’t sound like it is a drastic story change alongside the strains of the “Imperial” route of Der Langrisser. However I’m unsure. (I did discover one Japanese blogger reviewing the sport who mentioned there was mainly no distinction; it ends in you becoming a member of one in all two sides however regardless, the opposite aspect performs the identical position within the story and also you get the identical remaining boss.)
The primary character is a 15 yr outdated boy who farms along with his mother. Some thieves assault to steal their animals, and after preventing them off it seems that the boy is definitely the prince of a defeated kingdom and that his “mother” just isn’t his actual mother, however the remnant of the Imperial guard of that kingdom. So the boy has to exit on a quest first simply to beat the bandits, however will get swept up into a bigger plot involving two sisters who’re attempting to forestall an historical weapon from waking. It’s all fairly typical stuff with nothing too stunning nevertheless it works as an ordinary RPG plot.
The gameplay is just about what you’d anticipate from the older Langrissers. It’s utterly flip primarily based and on a grid. They’ve added a number of new forms of models (the thief/straight sword, and monk/fist models) so the compatibility desk is a little more advanced. However they don’t have any monsters, so I assume it really works out to about the identical in the long run.
Maybe as a result of system limitations, you solely have 5 commanders with a max of 4 models every. The enemy forces are usually small too. The map design just isn’t as various and sophisticated as L1 or 2 both, with most missions simply being you vs enemies on a flat map. Just a few of the maps contain any form of obstacles.
The sport is kind of straightforward. The start components can pose a little bit of a problem right here and there, nevertheless it appears to be simpler and faster to degree up than within the different video games and when you attain the MC’s third class (a lot much less the non-obligatory King class), the sport doesn’t supply a lot problem anymore. The enemy AI can be not particularly good in some instances; there have been a number of maps the place the commanders of the enemy models acted earlier than the remainder of their troops, and got here in and attacked somebody who killed them from full HP on the counterattack.
In the long run, this sport is notable because the final hurrah for the standard Langrisser type (going even again earlier than the real-time experiments), however the sport is so brief and simple that it’s not going to really feel notably fulfilling to people who find themselves itching for extra of the traditional gameplay, particularly when mixed with the black and white graphics and sometimes clunky interface.
Having mentioned all that I ought to put in my typical caveat for handheld video games from this period. It may be considerably unfair to evaluate them now as a result of a giant benefit of those video games on the time was that you possibly can play them away from dwelling, and even simply in your house however with out having to be within the TV room (or take up the TV another person may wish to use). So even when the video games have been less complicated and shorter than the primary console video games, they have been nonetheless usually price enjoying. However that benefit doesn’t exist anymore except you insist on enjoying every part on authentic {hardware}.
