Case of Dungeons (PC98)

It's time for that rarest of treats: a Japanese microcomputer game that has an English translation! Well, a partial one, at least. The character names are romanised and the names of the items and some of the enemies are translated, and not much else. But that does make it a lot easier compared to playing the raw Japanese version, and there doesn't really seem to be much of a plot to be missing out on, either. Anyway, Case of Dungeon is a simple isometric dungeon crawling RPG.

To start of with, you pick one of many pre-made characters from a little book at the start of the game. There's knights, mages, elves, thiefs, and so on, and one little odd thing I noticed is a few sneaky little Addams Family references, with some of the characters' names containing "Fesuta", "Gomezu", "Wenzudi", and "Motesha", though there's no "Paguzuri". The characters aren't at all balanced, with some having stats that just totally put the others to shame, even when you take into account the differing amount of points you can add to stats yourself when you select one. Once that's done with, you enter the dungeon, on your quest to (I think) kill the Black Dragon.

As mentioned, everything's seen from an isometric viewpoint, and the game is controlled with either the mouse or the arrow and Z/X keys. You don't directly move your character, you move an arrow around the screen, where it'll be pointing in one of four directions, then press Z to make them take one step in that direction. It's pretty slow, as the dungeon is procedurally generated and revealed one space at a time. Every now and then, you'll also enter a random battle. The commands for the battles aren't translated, so I'll tell you what they are here: from left to right, you've got escape, magic, and attack. Your item window is also open during battle, and oddly, using items and changing equipment doesn't use up a turn, so if you're about to die, you can just eat a load of bread until you get back to full health.

Something that was clearly done to extend the length of the game is that the stairs down to the next floor of the dungeon won't appear until you've explored every last tile on the current floor, except for those covered by locked doors. (On the subject of locked doors, you do start with a load of keys, and they're pretty commonly found in chests, too, but it's not worth the effort of going into your inventory and using them, as doors are almost always generated in frong of walls, or in the middle of rooms. So you can just either walk round them or they don't lead anywhere anyway. Weird.)

This, more than anything else, is what killed this game for me. I was actually fine with the incredibly slow walking speed and the slightly glitchy battle menu, but after I'd gotten a few floors in, I was traipsing around the place looking for the one last unexplored tile somewhere that would make the stairs appear for over 20 minutes. I saved my game and gave up. I might never go back to that file, but you never know. It's a shame, as despite having everything going against it, Case of Dungeon was, like The Hunter, it's a game that really held my attention despite really being quite boring.

I can't really say that I recommend this game after saying that, can I? But if you're more patient than I am, maybe you could give it a shot? Everyone like isometric graphics at least, don't they? Oh, and for some reason, the translated version doesn't seem to be listed on romhacking.net or on the "beginner's guide to PC98"-type articles going around, so here's the link.

Curiosities Vol. 16 - Zero no Tsukaima Fantasy Force

This post is also about that game's sequel, Zero no Tsukaima Fantasy Force 2nd Impact, since they're both a little off the beaten track, but I didn't think they were interesting enough to warrant a whole post each. The most interesting thing about them really is their method of distribution: they were never actually available to buy, but were extras included with the limited editions of the PS2 visual novels Zero no Tsukaima: Muma ga Tsumugu Yokaze no Nocturne and Zero no Tsukaima: Maigo no Period to Ikusen no Symphony, respectively. Because they were limited edition extras, that means they have their own discs and PS2 game ID numbers, so they can be counted as games in their own right, and not the kind of thing I covered all the way back in Curiosities Vol. 8.

Are they any good, though? Well, they're alright. The first game is a horizontal scroller that's easy enough that I one credit cleared the first loop on my second attempt. It's got some cute little touches, though, like how your charge attack extends a line of text from your character's mouth that damages enemies, in a nice little homage to the Parodius games. The second loop is a lot tougher, too, with a greater number of enemies acting more aggressively and even shooting revenge bullets right from the start. Maybe they should have included the option to start there as a hard mode?

The second game is a vertical scroller, and it takes a big step up in quality. There's two characters to choose from, each with their own sets of weapons, and there's even a two-player co-op option! The RPG-like backdrops and the fact that one of the characters rides a dragon really bring to mind Namco's Dragon Spirit/Saber duology, which is definitely no bad thing. Again, it's a little easy, though I only got as far as what appears to be the final boss this time round. One weird thing they included is a bad powerup that reduces your bomb stock by one. I don't understand that at all.

Both games are pretty fun diversions, but not much more than that, and definitely not worth tracking down what are probably now rare and valuable Japan-only visual novels from over a decade ago. There's no real scoring systems in them, which is fair enough, since they're deliberately evoking an oldschool feel, but I think what really kills them for me is that they don't save high scores, which was an annoyingly common problem with PS2 shooting games, as I remember. In summary, emulate them if you're curious, but otherwise you're not missing out on anything special.