ARETHA（アレサ）

ARETHA is a GAMEBOY RPG that came out in late 1990, and the English spelling of the title can't help but make me think of Urethra. And if a tube full of piss isn't the best way to describe this game, I don't know what is.

Yes, that's the official title

Putting aside the questionable decision to romanize "Aresa" as ARETHA, one might certainly be tempted to buy this game based on the cover. I suppose it did well enough to spawn a whole series?

This game did come out only one year after the GAMEBOY's launch but I've played enough RPGs on the GAMEBOY to make a fair comparison. Heck, the first SaGa game came out almost a year before and was way better than this headache. It had amazing innovative features like being able to talk to NPCs in the same screen! 

If only I could see the dialogue IN THE GAME...MIND BLOW

I vaguely remember finishing this game on an Anbernic GAMEBOY shaped device in a stupor while shoved in what seems like ever shrinking economy seats on a plane. This year, I went a little crazy with Chinese Android handhelds because I freaked out about tariffs. BTW, speaking of tariffs, every time I post about how shit the world has become, it seems like we figure out a way to make things even worse.

GOOD JOB MERICA! WE DID IT!!!

Anyway, the only thing that motivated me to finish this game was being stuck in a metal box thousands of feet above the ground. The mechanics are so broken, I couldn't even enjoy old school grinding.

If you fight too many enemies, they disappear until you enter a new area. Then it changes to new enemies that more often than not will totally destroy you. And since the previous guys disappeared, there's no way to grind on weaker enemies.

Thank god for save states because there were times I had to keep retrying to get less enemies that I could handle because multiple enemies were a death sentence. They can pound on you for multiple consecutive turns without giving you a chance to do jack.

I can never decide which color scheme to use with GB games...

The game was filled with the usual fetch quests but often with weird and very expensive random items you had to buy in towns.

The main character pops in at random times and reminds you what to do but at some point, I missed giving something to someone and I was almost ready to give up even following a guide.

Thanks for only telling me the obvious shit!

The story could have been kind of interesting but there were so many fetch quests, I literally had no clue what was happening. Not to mention weird and baffling game design decisions for instance, the inn keeper would often be out so you just have to go back in and out a few times. What's the fucking point?!

Where's the fucking manager?? I'm going to change my character's name to Karen

Your grandpa heals you for free at the start but of course that doesn't last long. You can withdraw some money from an ATM (huh?) like 30000 pera to start. But the money scale was so wack, I didn't even feel like counting all the zeros for stuff that costs 26500000 pera or whatever. Huh, where's the commas, you ask? Lol, what you think this is PS5?

Grandpa looks younger than me, fuck I'm old 

The menus and UI are just shit as well. I guess I can't be too harsh. I can only hope that one day, somebody can figure out how to show you which weapon is for who and whether it's better than what you have equipped or what each items do. I can dream, can't I?

No idea how much Healing B is better than A and no I don't give a fuck

At least according to the guide, DEF actually has no effect on your damage. It said don't waste money on armor so I guess that's one less thing to worry about. Innovation!!

The music is pretty mediocre, like I've heard worse but the GAMEBOY already demonstrated how good music can be on the device with games from 1989 and it's not up to par. Yeah, I've heard worse when it comes to game music so it's ok, I suppose? You spend most of the time hearing only a few of these tracks though so it gets old pretty fast.

It has music, so yeah... it's there.

I followed the guide and fast forwarded through until I got to the climax final end, which consisted of fighting like ~15 (or so I lost count) regular enemies you encountered already and was blissly freed from ever having to play this game again. Yes, you read that right, you don't even fight the final boss.

Yeah, I finished this game... Sigh I dunno man, I'm dumb

Score: 1 "I'd rather pay tariffs than play this shit (JK, China's supposed to pay right? Still waiting for the check)" out of 5

I can only hope playing this game was worth it as maybe the rest of the series is amazing (doubt). Not that I remember the story anyway.

I love quirky mechanics as much as the next person when it works but there's a fine line between quirky and broken. Actually no, this game just sucks, slightly better than Avalon Code, but that's not saying much.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Dragon Knight II（ドラゴンナイトII）

You know, these are complicated times and I don't think I'm alone in thinking everything is going down the shitter in more ways than one. But oh well, life goes on, and there's nothing like a classic DRPG to remind you of the simpler days before hawk tuah crypto scams or trying to make rent in this economy. If you're looking to just explore some dungeons while enjoying some old school art, Dragon Knight II will fit the bill perfectly.

The days when you didn't have to buy no crypto for some hawk tuah

In the second iteration, all the girls from the village have turned into monsters. The cool part of this story setup is as you rescue these girls, the weaker enemies no longer show up in random encounters, which really cuts down on the grind from useless encounters. I played through the PCE-CD version, which features voice acting but cleans up all the nudity. So you can either opt for some pixel boobies on the PC or voice acting and auto-mapping.

Don't expect anything more risqué in the PCE-CD version

For completeness, I took on the burden of also trying out the NSFW PC-98 version. It's pretty much the same except the major difference of what happens when the girls you rescued come visit you at the inn to "thank you". The PC Engine version features more comedic episodes without any actual hanky-panky going on. 

Just a friendly village neighbor stopping by for a chat!

The 18+ version, well let's just say that you're probably safe because this village supposedly doesn't have any young men and well, it's a fantasy world anyway right? So no reason to worry about STDs!

I'm always impressed at how good these early PC games look given that it came out in 1990. In fact, I would argue it looks better than a lot of art these days, notwithstanding all the AI shit recently. Putting aside the seggs, this is a fun and simple DRPG you can finish very quickly especially if you follow a guide. You do also get some party members and one can even use magic, which I've mostly just used to escape the dungeon.

 

Don't remember if the PCE version had panchira but definitely not acceptable "modern standards"

Score:  3 "Does hair color count as DEI?" out of 5

Overall, I just had so much fun, I was tempted to give an above-average 3.5 score but objectively, it's a fun and simple dungeon crawler. It's certainly a good reminder of how people weren't so anal about stupid shit back in the day. I liked it so much, I might even finish the PC-98 version to see the rest of the "action".

Oh, I forgot to mention that there's not a single strong female character in the entire game. Sofia is not nearly obnoxious enough to match up to "modern standards". In fact, the whole premise of the game is literally damsel in distress. Awful game, 0 out of 10! (Courtesy of IGNorant)

If you want to see more boobies, play it yourself

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely