Moldorian: The Sisters of Light and Darkness (Game Gear)

 Long before this game had an English translation patch, I was curious about it. The boxart looks interesting, and there's something about the title that made it sound like it might be a little more interesting than most 8-bit RPGs. Like, "Moldorian: The Sisters of Light and Darkness" sounds like it has a more specific vision in mind for its story than more vague titles like Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, and Dragon Quest, right? Unfortunately, in most aspects, it's as generic as can be, and as soon as I stop typing this review, I'll probably immediately forget everything I know about it.

 

The game starts with a bit of ludonarrative dissonance, as everyone seems eager to tell you what a useless milksop you are, and how you'd be long dead if your childhood friend wasn't always looking out for you. But then you and said friend go out into the nearby forest on some minor fetch quest, and she's significantly weaker than you in every respect. Then, when it comes to entering the deeper forest where the first boss is, she gets scared and waits outside. This turns out to be a bad idea, since it's durig this time that she gets kidnapped by a flying monster. And so, your actual quest starts: to save the weak and defenceless damsel who's also you big sister figure who always has to protect you.

 

I think I've played about six to eight hours, and the story doesn't get any more interesting or original in that time. There's a part where you have to take a secret exit tunnel out of a palace that's gone into lockdown, part where you have to get a rare fruit to make special medicine, and so on. The one interesting plot element that turned up is that a werepanther rescues your party at one point, before running away again. I suspect that this werepanther might be your dad, who went missing after going to rescue your friend slightly before you did. But this dangling thread isn't enough to keep me playing the game, so I guess I'll never know.

 

There's something in the game's mechanics that's kind of unique, but unfortunately, it's not in a positive way. Instead of picking your commands from menus in battles, you instead press a combination of a direction and a button to do each possible thing you might want to: right and button one to attack, up and button two for you're mage's fire spell, and so on. The problem is that you've got to memorise all of these things (though in the time I've played, I've only just got a character who can use magic, and she's basically just a healer, since her attack magic is so much weaker than the other party members' normal attacks, which don't use MP), and you only get about a second to remember and input the command you want, or the game just skips your turn and goes onto the next character (which is probably an enemy). I can see what they tried to do here, and it's just a shame that they didn't dump it after realising it was no fun.

 

This isn't a game that's completely without merit: it looks okay, and I think, in 1994, an RPG that's somewhat on par with the console RPGs of five or so years earlier with a running time to match definitely had a worthwhile place in a handheld's library, even if it is a bit generic. Unfortunately, it's not 1994 now, and I think every Game Gear RPG is available (officially or otherwise) in English, and I'm pretty sure that the only that isn't better than Molodorian is Defenders of Oasis. And even that game has the advantage of having a more interesting setting than this one.

Hashiriya - Ookami-Tachi no Densetsu (Playstation)

 There's a certain look that I really like in racing games, and unfortunately it's very much a product of its time. Grainy textures, low poly models, driving around empty roads in the dead of night, all that stuff. It's mostly seen in drift racing games inspired by the manga Initial D and the 90s Option VHS magazine that people used to post lots of gifs from on Tumblr many years ago. Hashiriya is not only one of the best-looking of these games I've ever seen, but it's also definitely taking a lot of inspiration from those two sources.

 

The main single player mode has you picking from a bunch of characters, each with their own cars, and each a member of a different faction. They all also each have their own storylines, told in lengthy dialogue scenes between races. It'd be nice if someone translated these someday. There's no decision making or anything in these scenes, and you can definitely 100% play the game without being able to read them, but these scenes are unskippable, so it'd at least be nice to be able to understand what's happening in them. But yeah, you pick a character, and you have to win a bunch of races as them to get through the story. It doesn't seem like you unlock anything for doing so, though. Which is fine, I guess.

 

There's also a time trial mode, and a mode where you can set up single races how you like. Especially nice in this mode is that you can choose the time of day, so tracks that are always night time in story mode can be played in the daylight, and vice versa. It'd be even better if there were weather options, too. All of these features and nice graphics and such would be worthless, though, if the game didn't feel good to play. Luckily, it does! It's not quite Ridge Racer or Daytona USA, but it's still nice, it doesn't feel like you're constantly crashing the car, nor do you feel like you have to crawl around the tracks to be able to take corners adequately.

 

It was a big relief for me, as when the translation patch for Racing Lagoon came out a while ago, I was kind of disappointed to find that I didn't enjoy how the racing felt in that game at all. Of course, that game looks amazing and it's by Squaresoft, so naturally my expectations were high. So a story-heavy racing game with really great-looking graphics that also plays well was a great find for me, especially since, like I said, being unable to read the story doesn't block you from being able to play through the game.

 

This is definitely a game worth playing. It's fun, looks great, and has a really nice atmosphere. It only has a few tracks, which is a little disappointing, but it's also actually pretty standard for racing games of the time. The massive array of tracks in Ridge Racer Type 4 is definitely the exception rather than the rule. But if you like this kind of racing game, then this is a very good example of it. It's a little surprising it isn't more well-known outside of Japan, to be honest. I would've thought the graphics alone would have gotten it some attention.