Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible II（女神転生外伝 ラストバイブルII）

It's fitting that I finished Last Bible II just before Labor day because slogging through this boring RPG was quite laborious or as our most eminent and erudite statesman today would say, "much bigly labor (at the golf course)".

I just like to snatch me some Gorgon pus- uh... where is it?!

Now, the first Last Bible game was localized as Revelations Slayer Demon Gods Ultra Cross-fire Deathrays on Sharks... or something, whatever the 'merican marketing folks thought would sell. Yet surprisingly, NOA decided to ditch the series starting from this one. I dunno, maybe because the game starts with mass infanticide? I don't know what the problem is, Reggie? Do you hate the bible? Don't tell me you're one of those atheist anarchist Antifa violence, yes there will be actual violence people??

Hey mom, what does "dispose of all babies" mean?

As we all know, there was no ratings board back in the good ol' days so really how were the parents to know not to buy this for kids? After all, it has cute anime kids on the cover and you can barely make out the crowd of demons in the backgrounds. Oh yeah, sorry not demons, these are magical beasts（まじゅう）cause you know, think of the children!

Oh I'm sure she'll be crossing her arms in the game as well. It's for kids after all!

However, thanks to the magic of Nintendo's "emuparadise killer" eshop, we now know that the series went from Cero A from the first game to Cero B. Oh thank goodness parents know not to expose their kids to infant genocide until 12 years old... um what? Cero B for "Sexual Content"? Spoiler alert but um... there's no sexual content unless they're referring to the monster designs in which case what's different from the first game? Oh right, ratings are totally subjective and arbitrarily.

I heard a rumor there's a patch that unlocks some hot green tea!

Anyways, I guess I should get on to talking about the game but I honestly don't have much to say about it. It's just a boring RPG all round and yes, even though it's a Game Boy game, it just doesn't have much going for it even ignoring the primitive graphics.

Is this 60FPS? Cause 30 gives me migraine headaches...

While in the first game, you kind of knew there were going to be 3 Gaia Masters for your party, this game is similar to FFIV in that people come and go throughout the story. I might be exaggerating by even calling it a "story" cause yeah, events occur but they're just kind of random as you go from one generic town to the next. There's so many towns I don't even remember their names or care. I do have to say the highlight of the game is Safia cause she's a girl that was so naughty, they had to lock her up. I don't mean naughty in any sexual way though despite her attire (and the Cero rating).

Waaait! My pants!

They added a token demon magic beast fusion system and some other ways to grow demons such as carrying an egg and defending it from attacks. Honestly, I really can't think of a reason why you would want to play this game. I only made it through thanks to fast forward on my PSP err... I mean... they have fast forward on 3DS virtual console right? But yeah, seriously, save your 617 yen unless you have an unhealthy obsession with playing things in order.

Score: 1.5 let's see if this qualifies as an Adsense violation out of 5

Wide open arms, damn false advertising!

The game got particularly annoying near the end when it started getting coy about where you were supposed to go such as buying a certain type of claw to open a floating rock to get the Lapis. Thakfully, there was a playthrough on YouTube but then I had to wonder why I didn't just watch the rest like the kids these days.

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 Quest II（ドラゴンクエストII 悪霊の神々）

My first thought when I started Dragon Quest 2 immediately after DQ1 was that I didn't like it. I don't want to sound like an old fogey that hates change but man, I really don't like the changes they made from DQ1.

Yes, this is totally going to be recurring theme here.

I don't want to say something as cliched and hackneyed as "with great power comes great responsibility" but dammit, you can't just tack more shit onto a finely tuned game and expect it to come out decent.

Sure, if you start a series with only one party member, the next natural progression is to add some more party members. I didn't even notice but DQ1 only had exactly one enemy each battle. Oh boy have I noticed it now!! Consider the average length of a one-on-one battle in DQ1. Yes, the whole thing is kinda slow but given that the only turn is either you or the enemy, everything ends pretty quickly. Now take that same slow battle and triple the size of the party (hence button presses) and increase the enemy count up to 7 enemies.
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You still here? Cause I think I just went into a temporary coma. Maybe the slowness wouldn't even be that bad because of course I'm multitasking this game if not for that AWFUL battle music. OH MY GOD. I thought something was up with the emulator on my PSP but NO, it's totally craptastically accurate.

Seriously, not only did I multitask this game hardcore, I did it with the sound OFF. Even though there's actually some halfway decent songs in the game, I don't even care because this is the song you will hear for like 80% of the time. I dunno, maybe it's just me? SquareEnix must have thought this diarrhea is hot shit (LOL get it??) because they included it in Theatrhythm Dragon Quest out of the total TWO DQ2 songs in the game.

Yet another example of more isn't always better is the world map, which must be about 4X+ times larger than DQ1. You can even travel to the original town from DQ1 and though most of places in DQ1 are gone and it's scaled down, you can still get a sense of how small the original map was as it's just a small part of the world in DQ2.

Everything is all hunky-dory until you get the boat, then it becomes an open world of getting lost and trying to find shit on random floor tiles based on cryptic clues from random strangers. This game is worse than even Mother in terms of aimlessly wandering around with no clue of where to go or what to do. Now, you can find a very basic world map that barely does the job but I didn't know that until after navigating vast expanses of ocean to find tiny islands in the middle of nowhere.

Even the awesomeness of the PSP wasn't enough to make this game palatable

For kids bored out of their minds with the ONE game their parents got, I get how wandering endlessly around a vast expanse of nothing but ocean would be a good way to waste time (FUN!!). But as an old fogey with 8 more DQ games on deck, the last thing I want to do is wander for hours looking for a TINY TINY island town in the middle of nowhere to find the goddamn gold key. (Yeah yeah, I talked to the random guy that said the gold key was to the south and his vague "directions" were TOTALLY over-simplified.) So once again, time to load up gamefaq and a world map on the good ol' internets.

Once you load up a walkthrough, you'll need to find item after item scattered around on the world map and also completely invisible. At least DQ1 told you how many steps an invisible item was but DQ2 has you scouring around the floor like some kind of crazy lunatic assuming you even found the clue (aka gamefaq).

Despite the dead simple story, the first game had a kind of charm as it made fun of the standard RPG tropes complete with the ohime-sama dakko. However, it feels like DQ2 actually takes itself seriously and thinks it's all that because it's selling like hotcakes. The endless fetch quest after fetch quest obviously designed to be as obscure as possible combined with the endless stream of painfully slow, random encounters flavored with the wonderful burps of the battle "music"(?) really made me glad to finally put this game down for good. I feel sorry for the poor kids in that last cave with the pitfalls, endless loops, and resetting paths back in the day without a gamefaq and the miracle of saves states.


Yeah, ok, they made some cheap and easy improvements sure. Like how you don't have to keep buying keys as using it once won't break it (that totally made no sense btw). And sure, you can save and whatnot in other towns besides the very first castle but it really doesn't make up for all the crap they added that makes the game slow as molasses. And no, throwing in a halfhearted, token pafu-pafu ain't gonna cut it either.

Score: 1 random stranger told me to crawl around the floor aimlessly searching for some "dew yarn" and now I'm in an insane asylum points out of 5.

PS. Buying the DQ collection on the Wii was NOT cheap and while DQ1 was good, I'm hoping DQ3 at least makes up for the scalper price.

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 Quest（ドラゴンクエスト）

Starting all these classic RPG series from the first entry, I was beginning to wonder if they seemed bleh merely because I'm not hip and old-school enough to appreciate it. Perhaps I would have really enjoyed them if I had played them as a kid? But playing Dragon Quest made me feel a bit better because I've actually been having a lot of fun with it. Sure, I'm playing the Super Famicon version with vastly improved graphics and sound but then again, I played FF1 on the PSP and Mother on the GBA and those versions came out many years later than this version of DQ. You can see the differences in the various versions at hardcoregaming.

SFC? Pfft! I don't even care about the graphics.
In fact, I'm so hip, I refuse to play anything unless it's ported to a TI-81

Anyway, I don't know if the SFC version was re-balanced or what but boy is it the good ol' classic RPG fun I was hoping for. On paper, this game should be just as mediocre as the others. It has a fairly high encounter rate and battles consist of repeatedly pressing Attack as usual.

The menu system is the usual DQ clunky mess, but like Mother on GBA, the SFC version has the 便利 (convenient) L button that pretty much does exactly what you want whether it's opening doors or talking to people. Of course, FF fans will then ask, why even have the menu at all and I totally agree. At least it's also nice for one-handed playing and yes, this is yet another multitask game.

It's also kind of crazy that the ONLY place you can save is at the very first castle but the maps and dungeons were manageable and small enough to make exploration fun even with the random encounters unlike some other games (*cough* Mother *cough*). You also learn a spell that will instantly teleport you back to the castle just when you get tired of trudging back there. Perfect! And unlike that sorry excuse of a teleport in Mother, it works instantly without having to find a mile of clear runway (which BTW was practically impossible to do so fuck that lame PSI ability).

Even if the battle system is primitive, the level progression and the economy are so well balanced, I always felt like I wanted to play just a bit more as a bit more grinding would net me enough experience and gold to gain the appropriate levels and equipment to progress with the game. Playing DQ1 after Mother really made me appreciate the motivation factor of a good economy that wasn't broken (ie NOT instantly buy all the best equipment and accrue tens of thousands of useless dollars for the rest of the game).

It's a game I wanted to play because I wanted to beat it, not because I wanted to be done with it, if that makes sense. And just when I got tired of fighting slimes, it seemed like the game read my mind and the hero learns a spell to avoid random encounter from weak enemies at level 15. Perfect!!

While the story is also as primitive as they come, it has those nice Aikra Toriyama moments that I really enjoyed. Yeah, most of you kids know about Dragon Ball, but my first encounter with Toriyama was Dr. Slump and man, that comic is so pervy and full of toilet humor, no wonder all the prepubescent boys loved it. Anyways, personally, when I think Toriyama, this is what I see in my mind:

This fan translator sure has a sense of humor. That or he loves pu...

So it brings a smile to my face when you (literally) carry Princess Lola to the inn and the next morning, the innkeeper says, "you guys sure seemed to have fun last night".

Not sure what's so embarrassing about a fun night of scrabble and pillow fights.
Wait, what were YOU thinking?

Because that wasn't enough fan service, in the SFC version, a girl in the first town will follow you to the inn as well basically getting you laid within the first ten minutes of gameplay. These retro games don't have the resource to waste time teasing LOL. As a nice bonus, the game doesn't stop you from taking BOTH girls to the inn at the same time. Obviously, I'm not the first to discover this as a let's play on youtube went straight for the threesome. Haters don't hate, it's just the perks of being the hot, sexy, irresistible hero

Every boy in Japan probably did this in the 90s. I know I did right away.

Anyways, as a Jhipster, of course I have to point out that all of this was censored for Dragon Warrior because THINK OF THE POOR CHILDREN!! In fact, pafu pafu I guess was censored all the way up to DQ7? I am really curious to know if it was finally included in the Android and iOS releases of DQ1. Is the world finally ready to handle the sheer delights of the *censored* pafu pafu  (only 20 gold!) action in 2014? Unfortunately, I have an extremely rare condition that makes me barf at the very thought of playing an RPG with no physical buttons so only time will tell, I suppose.

Was DQ finally released uncensored for the phone 28 years later?
Or did the social justice warriors win again?

Score: 2.5 yes I'm retro hip too! wannabe out of 5

In the end, DQ1 is a very, very simple and short RPG. It has barely any story, only one party member, no airship, and the tiny world map is centered around the first castle, also the only place you can save in the entire dang game.

However, the game's perfect balance just makes it FUN, which despite everything is the most important part of a game. Despite other games that seem to know just how to be the most frustrating (*cough* Mother *cough*), DQ1 introduces the right spell at the right time to make the whole experience a smooth and enjoyable ride. I can definitely see why those Japanese kids went so crazy over this when it came out. The music in the SFC version is also pretty good. A real orchestra would have been even better but still very relaxing. Maybe in the next remake?

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

Breath of Fire（ブレス オブ ファイア）

I finally made some headway on catching up on some of the "classic" RPG series in the 90s by beating Breath of Fire recently. The game starts out with premise of a goddess, wars, blah blah, none of which really applies to you and is promptly forgotten. The only thing you need to take away from it all to enjoy the game is that there's some bad guys and they're trying to take over the world. I can't really fault it for being an RPG trope unless there's a good decade or so to become a trope so I'll let the cliche premise slide for the early 90s. It does have a nice, very dramatic beginning with your home village getting attacked, etc., etc.

The rest of the story reveals a diverse set of characters that have interesting premises but are unfortunately barely fleshed out. The most interesting for me was ダンク (Dan-ku) for reasons that have nothing to do with the game but more because he was a grey (purple?) thief with big lips from the town of Bleak. Nintendo of America obviously had to do a bit of "localization" work which I found highly amusing.

ダンク (Dank?): A more innocent (racist) time

The other notable bit of "censorship" was coloring in some pixels purple to make a princess bath in purple clothes(?) unlike those Japanese weirdos who bathe naked... I guess? This is really the only small, tiny bit of fan service in the entire game. Thank goodness Nintendo of America was there to protect impressionable kids from this bit of nudity and morally corrupting collection of pixels.

Oh right, POOL, gotcha! Cause that TOTALLY makes sense!

The story overall is pretty thin as there's very little dialogue overall. There were only a few moments where I was really enjoying the story such as what happened with Nina while the rest were just annoying fetch quests on top of fetch quests to the point that you forgot what you were trying to get in the first place.

The gameplay suffers from a common flaw among games of this type in that battle is reduced to pretty much fight and heal. Thankfully, there's an auto-battle option so that you could do something else for a few minutes (such as play another game) and then come back and heal as necessary. Besides the dragon powers, I didn't even explore any of the spells or items because there really was no need. The only difficult battle was the Gremlin, a VERY over-powered boss for no reason I can think of. There is this annoying feature of where certain bosses have a lot of hidden HP left after you drain the bar. In this case, there was a LOT of hidden HP and you had no clue as to how much was left. It felt more like a balancing issue especially since the final boss was so easy.

Given the primitive gameplay, I was at least thankful for the lack of any real need for grinding save for a bit in the beginning and the Gremlin boss. Having experience apply to characters not in the party is a feature it turns out I'll sorely miss in the sequel especially since you can fuse most of the characters into your party anyway.

The only real difficulty in the game is that it's often not obvious where you were supposed to go next. And exploring the world with frequent random encounters is simply too annoying to make it fun. I tried to use a guide as little as possible resulting in over-powered characters purely from the constant barrage of encounters as I was trying to go places. I was also stuck for a while because you need to put certain characters in front to navigate certain terrain and the NPC character said せんとう which can either mean "combat" or "lead". It would have been obvious which if the game used Kanji. Having no Kanji was pretty annoying in general I have to say.

I can't comment on the English localization since I played in Japanese but based on the American Conan box art, I'm sure it was totally fine.

Is that guy supposed to be NINA?!!! SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BE FIRED FOR THIS!

I checked out the GBA version briefly but stuck with the Super Famicon due to the superior sound. The extra exp/gold and run ability would have made the game easier to beat but in RPG standards, it's not THAT long of a game. Certainly not very hard either.

Score: 2/5
Not a bad game by any means but is definitely the type I would play on the handheld while multitasking. Given the fact that this came out 2 years AFTER FFIV, really kinda puts it firmly in the "meh, it's not bad, I guess?" category.

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