Royal Stone - Hirakareshi Toki no Tobira (Game Gear)

 Back when I was a teenager, one of my friends' bedrooms had no windows, and a bunch of us used to hang out in there, watching anime and playing videogames. The lack of windows is relevant because he had a Game Gear lying around, and we'd sometimes take turns playing through stages of a little turn-based strategy game named Crystal Warriors (which was called Ariel: Crystal Densetsu in Japan), and the Game Gear's screen was bright enough that if someone was playing it, it was possible for someone sat next to them to read comics by its light.

 

Anyway, Royal Stone is the sequel to Crystal Warriors, though it only ever got released in Japan, unfortunately. I can't remember anything about the plot of the first game, so I can't comment on that, but Royal Stone is a true sequel in every other aspect, replicating the original's concepts but in bigger, better, and more sophisticated ways. Crystal Warriors had crudely drawn characters wiggling weapons at each other, Royal Stone has detailed characters full of personality attacking each other in cool little psuedo-3D scenes. Crystal Warrior's towns were crude and all identical, being more like slightly glorified menus than actual places, while Royle Stone's towns are like those you'd see in most 8-bit RPGs. The element system carries over too: Water, Fire, and Wind all have a Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship, while Earth (usually reserved for important characters) is neither strong nor weak against any of the elements.

 

I assume that Ariel was a big hit in Japan, as its clear that this game was a lavish production. It looks better than some contemperanous 16-bit console RPGs, and I feel confident in saying it's the best-looking game of the Game Gear's original lifespan (and the Game Gear is a system with no shortage of great-looking pixel art), not being bettered until 2020's GG Aleste 3. It even has a seperate copyright credit for the character designer (Kugatsuhime, of Monster Maker fame) before the title screen appears, which was pretty rare in general back then, and even moreso for a handheld game. The plot has also had a lot of effort put into it, not just in the writing, but also the presentation. There's various twists that occur, a bunch of different factions warring against each other, a protagonist with a tragic backstory and more. Like I keep saying, it's all so much more than you'd expect from a handheld game in 1995.

 

And as for the presentation of the story, it's mostly pretty standard for this kind of game, with you going around towns and talking to people, and also your enemies taunting you or declaring their intentions at the start of battles. But there's other things too: there's flashbacks that are shown in the game's graphics but with a sepia toned pallete. One particularly impressive example uses the game's battle engine to tell the story of the protagonist's dad getting betrayed and falling in battle. Furthermore, when your party members fall in battle, they're just dead and gone, and they all have a unique line of dialogue to act as their last words. One character uses this to declare his love for the protagonist, something that he never mentions at any other point!

 

Royal Stone is an excellent game, and has impressed me in so many ways the whole time I've been playing it. There was an instance somewhat early on, the first time I lost a couple of characters in battle, where I was ready to give up on the game, thinking my diminshed force might make the game unplayable. But I persevered, and with some slightly better strategy to compensate, I still got through the next few battles and gradually recruited a few new friends. I think that's probably one of the best compliments you can pay a strategy game, isn't it? That you can make up for having a weaker force by just thinking about what you're doing a bit better? Unfortunately, SEGA exhibited some of their trademark wisdom, and decided no-one outside of Japan would be interested in playing what was probably the best handheld strategy/RPG at that time, and so the only way to play it in English is via a fantranslated ROM. But we are lucky enough, at least, to have that available to play, and you definitely should.