Disc Station #11 (PC98)

This volume is the final Disc Station to be released for the PC98. But, Compile did at least let the system go out with a bang, as this disc is packed full of stuff!
Firstly, there's Jump Hero Gaiden, which is a turn-based strategy game starring characters from Compile's Jump Hero series of platform games. I didn't play much of this, since as regular readers will be aware, I often have very little patience for stumbling through text heavy games that are all in Japanese.I'm sure it's probably fine, though. Similarly, there's also a demo (or is it a full game?) for some RPG, called Melpool Land Stories, that I also didn't play.
There's another Apple Sauce Room-style clicking game thing, too. It's called Tanken, and it takes place in a jungle. It seems a bit more complex than previous games of this type, as there are parts of the image that, when clicked on, open up another, smaller area with stuff to click on! Plus, there seems to be an actual objective: to find three objects that will open the pyramid on the horizon.
Next up is Tanukids, which is basically a top-down version of the old SEGA arcade game Flicky. You play as a dad tanuki (who wears a tie!) who goes around the various stages gathering his many kids to fetch back home, and avoiding the various other animals of the forest who want to stop this from happening for some reason. While there's nothing terribly wrong with Tanukids, it is a little bit boring. You'll probably only play it once or twice.
The fifth game on here is Karakuri, and it's a lot better. It's another top-down action game, but this time you play as a teenage girl with a rocket launcher charged with the task of riddeing a large Japanese mansion of clockwork robots. The rockets you shoot create fairly big explosions, as do shot enemies.So, you can create chain reactions and kill multiple enemies with a single shot, and in grand old arcade traditions, your score increases exponentially the more enemies you kill in one go. The only complaint I have about this game is that it is really, really short and a little too generous with the extra lives.
The sixth (!) game is Firelive, a card game that's worth playing for the awesome character art alone! In it, you play as a guy who wants to form a band, and decides to recruit band members by beating them at a simple card game. The cards are numbered one to five, plus there are joker cards. There's three cards to choose from at a time, and two dice are rolled each turn to decide who picks first. The object is to get a hand of five cards worth more points than your opponent. Obviously, the cards are each worth the number they have on them, but you can also make poker-style hands like two pairs, full house, et cetera to score massive bonus points. The player with the lowest scoring hand has the difference deducted from their life poins, and the game ends when one player runs out of life points.
I really enjoyed playing this game, and like I said, the character art is really excellent too. Definitely my highlight for this volume of Disc Station. THe only downside is that sometimes the game randomly decides to add fifty points to one player's card, which seems pointless and unfair.
Like the previous volume, there were various promotional videos on the disc, the highlights this time being a really cool advert for the Mega CD game Shadowrun, and coverage of what appears to be a pro-Puyo Puyo tournament event.

Brave Prove (Playstation)

One thing I've noticed about the Playstation's library over time is that there's quite a few games (often by smaller developers) that seem to be heavily inspired by games that were, at the time, exclusive to SEGA consoles. The most well-known examples being Gunner's Heaven/Rapid Reload and Panzer Bandit, which pay "homage" to Gunstar Heroes and Guardian Heroes, respectively. Gamera 2000 and to a lesser extent Omega Boost are very similar to the Panzer Dragoon games, and there are a whole bunch of Virtual On imitators (including Reverthion). Brave Prove is another one of those games, with the inspiration in this case being the Story of Thor games (called Beyond Oasis in America, for some reason).
Not that being an imitator is a bad thing, Gunner's Heaven and Panzer Bandit are both great games! Brave Prove is, too.
Most of the game is spent fighting enemies and exploring dungeons (or exploring the countryside between towns). Like in the Thor games, you fight with a short sword, and have a few special moves that are done with combinations of the d-pad and attack button. Also like Thor, you gradually meet and recruit various elemental spirits who allow you to use magic. There's even a type of enemy that's almost exactly like an enemy you fight in the Thor games.
I've enjoyed playing this game a lot, and it's often hard to get me to like RPGs. Where Brave Prove succeeds is that there's very little in the way of dialogue and cut scenes. Of the five hours I've played so far, I estimate that less than 10 minutes has been spent skipping through boring text boxes. The lack of text also makes the game accessible, despite being untranslated. Although there is one guide for the game on GameFAQs (amazingly, written all the way back in 1998, only a month after the game's release!), I've only had to consult it once or twice, and those times were just when I'd gotten lost. You aren't missing anything from being unable to read the text (except the plot, but that's almost definitely boring cliched tripe anyway).
There's not really much else to say, really. It's an action RPG. It looks and sounds really nice. It's fun to play. It's very similar to the Story of Thor games. There's practically no language barrier. The End!