The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales

 I played The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales

This game was released in 2026 by Square Enix for modern platforms. I played the Nintendo Switch 2 version.

This is a fantasy exploration-action-adventure kind of game, very reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda or classic Ys. Running around, hitting enemies with a sword, solving dungeons. Exactly my genre of game.

My overall verdict for this game after completing it would be..... "it's pretty good.". it's a good game. But unfortunately, there were several aspects of the game that felt disappointing or underdeveloped.

The basic premise of the game, without getting too deep into the story specifics, is that Elliot the adventurer has been tasked by King Hichard of the Huther Kingdom to investigate the old ruins. Upon discovering a "doorway of time" that leads to another age, the king's minister Kaifried takes it upon himself to travel back in time to betray the king and seek power for himself. Elliot rushes after Kaifried to stop him before he changes history, and he eventually meets up with a fairy named Faie who can help him overcome Kaifried's newfound power.

Later in the story, the princess falls mysteriously ill, and Elliot must travel through more doorways of time to go back in time even further, to discover the cause of the princess's ailment. And eventually...he will save the world from a great evil.

The game takes place in the continent of Philabieldia, a land full of hordes of bestial tribes (the regular enemies you encounter) that are in constant conflict with humankind.

The story takes place across four eras:

The Age of Safekeeping is Elliot's present day, with the Kingdom of Huther, a castle town with the king and princess. 

The Age of Reconstruction, with the Village of Littlehope, a settlement built upon the remains of a once-thriving nation.

The Age of Magic, with the City of Weyzn, a town of magical research and innovation governed by nobility.

The Age of Budding, with the tribal village of Hitoyori, a settlement of humans who fear the magic of the beast tribes.

Also mentioned throughout the game is the Age of Myths, but disappointingly, you never actually go there at any point.

As a side note... the name "Philabieldia" apparently is what you get when you try to localise the name "Firebirdia", which is from the original Japanese version of Elliot. (Try reading it Japanese-style: fi re bi ru di a). It's named after a fire bird because there are legends of a great phoenix sleeping within the mountains of this land. ... but that intended meaning seems to not have been noticed at all by the English localisers, so they just came up with something that matches the phonemes, but it ended up nonsensical and weird-sounding. ...and it's hilariously so easy to mis-read Philabieldia as Philadelphia, it's ridiculous. 

I've noticed this in modern English translations of Japanese games - these days, they're all so scared of re-naming anything. Everything must be accurate to the Japanese source, even if a different name would fit better for English audiences. They'd rather make up some nonsense than find a good fitting name. ...Is the target audience for role-playing videogames nowadays just Japanophiles, or what?

anyway. ...

The graphical style of this game is nice. It's Square-Enix's signature "HD-2D" style, which was first introduced for Octopath last decade. Seems like they're still going all-in on making as many HD-2D games as they can, even after so many years. It's nice to see. (my favourite one of these was the Live A Live remake they did a few years ago)

The environments, especially the towns, are set up in a way that makes it feel like a sort of pop-up picture book. And the scale and scope of the world is kept small and relevant, kind of like the setpieces of a stageplay, or even a puppet show. The towns are small, but Faie does say, "Whoah, this place is huge!" and that kind of stuff in order to give you an idea of what it's supposed to be like in-fiction. It's more about the storytelling than the actual layout design, it seems. Just like with a stageplay, they want you to use your imagination a bit.

This kind of suspension of disbelief is also required when thinking about the doorways of time Elliot travels through. Even though they're just out there in the open, nobody else in the whole world seems to know about them, and so the secret of time travel is Elliot's to keep. ... It feels a bit too...contrived, maybe? I think it would have made more sense if Elliot needed some kind of device to resonate with the doors to use them or something, but.... no, they're just doorways that are out in the open, but nobody else in the world ever stumbles across them. ... ...yeah, I dunno about that.

Some imagination is also required for the dialogue scenes too.  NPCs will talk about things in very straightforward terms that don't feel like natural conversation, but do make sense for a story with a hero like Elliot as the lead. Everything in this story revolves around Elliot being the hero, even if that means the story has to go out of its way to get him involved with matters that otherwise don't pertain to him.

While I do prefer to see a more naturalistic and fleshed-out world in my RPGs, I think it's okay for a game called "The Adventures of Elliot" starring the dashing hero Elliot to be... you know, focused entirely on Elliot. It's fine. It works for what it is.

That being said.... a lot of the dialogue in this game is on the rather bland side. It's not bad, just, a lot of it isn't the most engaging. When doing sidequests, it can feel like a bit of a slog watching so many of these dialogue scenes that are functional, but lacking punch. ...I'm not really sure what the solution is.

...

So the game is an action-exploration kinda game, you get a sword and can use it to whack enemies. You can charge the sword by holding the button, which will fling a shockwave forwards. You can also acquire several different weapons throughout the game: a spear, a bow-and-arrow, a boomerang, bombs, a hammer, and a chain-sickle. Each one attacks enemies in its own way, so it's up to you to decide which one you like the best. You do need to replenish arrows and bombs, but the other weapons don't cost any resources to use.

I ended up literally never using the spear or hammer for anything, ever. The boomerang was useful as a ranged option before I ended up getting (and preferring) the bow. And the chain-sickle ended up being my preferred ranged option when I didn't want to waste arrows.

Bombs are super-powerful and always useful, but you can blow yourself up too if you're not careful. 

Throughout the game you can also find and equip "magicite", which is used to power-up your weapons. Some of the magicite effects are pretty simple, such as just increasing damage dealt. But other ones can be pretty specific. There's a bow magicite that makes it so that your arrows are more powerful if you have fewer than ten remaining, which is fun at encouraging you to not be too thrifty with your shots. There's a boomerang magicite that lets you throw two of them at once, but they become weaker.... which is actually pretty good if you primarily use the boomerang to interrupt enemies rather than damage them. There's a bomb magicite that makes them take longer to blow up, but the explosion is more powerful. Makes it harder to use on fast-moving enemies, but the extra strength is real good. 

Some of them change your weapon behaviour entirely - there's a boomerang magicite that makes charged attacks orbit around Elliot rather than fly forward, which can be nice to use as a shield versus projectiles. There are several spear magicites which only come into effect if you're swapping between spear and another weapon often, which ... kinda seemed a bit too specific for me to want to mess with.

But each magicite you find does add another way to customise the weapons to your liking. It's quite varied and intricate, and it does lead to a nice variety of possible playstyles. I found the ones I liked, and I'm sure different players will find their own weapon combinations they like too. Who knows, maybe the spear is super-powerful and I just don't know it. I think they did a great job giving us a large variety of playstyles.

I do like how the game allows you to pick and stick with the ones you prefer, but maybe it's a little sad that the game never really makes it necessary to experiment with them all. I feel like there is a whole world of spear and hammer techniques in this game that I don't know about, simply because I preferred to use the boomerang and chain-sickle. 

I think it would have been cool if there was a battle arena side mode where you were restricted to just one specific weapon, for example.

There does exist a trial arena in this game, which includes an endgame boss-rush trial, but they never restrict your build options. There are only four trials in the arena, which feels like wasted potential. I think it would have been cool if there was more to it. And if they designed challenges that really put to test everything that's possible with the systems they built. Oh well.

Elliot also has a shield, which blocks enemy attacks when you hold the button. If you sustain enough shield damage, it temporarily breaks and you can't shield again until the cooldown finishes. Later on in the game, once Elliot acquires the Moonmirror shield, you can also press the button with perfect timing to parry with the shield, which avoids shield damage and stuns the enemy. Or if it's a projectile, it reflects it back. I always enjoy "perfect guard" moves like this in action-RPGs, so I find this very fun.

Faie the fairy is Elliot's travelling companion. She appears in the game as a little blue butterfly who can be controlled with the right stick. She can be controlled independently of Elliot, though she can't fly too far away from him.

They actually do allow you to set a second controller to control Faie if you want, so The Adventures of Elliot can be played as a co-op game. I like that they thought of this. Maybe fans of Secret of Mana's co-op play will enjoy this.

As you progress the game, Faie learns five different spells. Ignite, Sprint, Warp, Vacuum, Copy. These are mostly used for solving dungeon puzzles, though they can have other utility as well. Ignite is a pretty decent fire spell that will be Faie's main method of dealing damage to enemies, especially once you find the upgrade that adds a little burst of fire to it. Sprint makes Elliot dash really fast, which is nice to save traversal time throughout the game. Warp lets Elliot teleport to Faie's position, which is mostly useful for puzzles. Vacuum makes a tornado that sucks in enemies, and Copy turns Faie into an invulnerable copy of Elliot who attacks with the same strength... these last two I didn't end up using much, since Ignite was more than powerful enough to deal with enemies just fine, and I didn't want to have to keep swapping abilities all the time, cause it gets a bit fiddly to do so. Though Copy can be particularly strong when a boss is stunned and it's your chance to get attacks in. Two Elliots mashing the sword at once can really drain the boss HP pretty quickly.

...

The exploration in this game is open-ended, though the story progression is linear. 

The world map size is fairly small in this game, but that doesn't mean exploration is too simple, as there are lots of caves and dungeons to find throughout. You can pretty much just run around the world as you please, and enter the dungeons whenever you come across them, with very few roadblocks preventing you from accessing places. 

Dungeons in this game are easygoing affairs for the most part. You kind of go in, run around a bit, solve a few simple puzzles, defeat a few enemy rooms, find treasure, and leave. Each dungeon has its own theming to help it stand out, such as a desert dungeon full of sand pits, an ice dungeon with slippery floors, a water dungeon with rising and lowering water levels, a volcano dungeon with platforms that rise in and out of the lava... Oh, this is all very standard videogame dungeon theming, isn't it?

The Adventures of Elliot does invite a lot of comparison to The Legend of Zelda, but I have to say, the dungeons in Elliot are nowhere near as interesting or as memorable as the dungeons seen in a Zelda game.

In Zelda, the design of the dungeons really does encourage you to really think about how everything fits together, in order to solve some kind of big-picture puzzle, or to figure out how to cleverly use a new tool to manipulate the environment in specific ways to progress.... meanwhile, with Elliot, the dungeons really are just a series of small rooms full of enemies, platforming, or simplistic isolated puzzles that don't necessarily need to relate to anything else too much. Elliot dungeons are straightforward affairs that don't feel like big stops on your journey, whereas a Zelda dungeon is a significant event that requires your full attention.

I still enjoy it. But Elliot isn't replacing Zelda in my heart any time soon.

The world layout is exactly the same between the four different eras, and the dungeon locations are in the exact same place in each age.

Each dungeon only has one age where it is a complete fully-explorable dungeon. If you visit a dungeon in the wrong age, you may only be able to explore two or three rooms and find one treasure chest. When you reach the chest at the dead-end, Faie will say "Oh, that's all? Maybe we could continue exploring in another age...".

So yeah, while each dungeon has four different versions of itself depending on which era you are in, only one of them will be the dungeon's true form. I think this is good, because otherwise we'd have to do every dungeon four times, which would get extremely repetitive.

The story progression doesn't force you to visit the majority of the dungeons, interestingly. They do exist mostly as optional exploration content, which I very much enjoy. I like that the game truly does let you explore at your own discretion. 

The plot of this game is very linear. If the next quest marker tells you to go somewhere or talk to someone next, that's what you gotta do. But you do have the freedom to go everywhere else first if you want to. You can choose between exploration and story progression at any time, pretty much.

This basically meant that, whenever I arrived at a new age, I would halt the story progress to go explore literally the entire world all over again, and only then would I return to the main quest. .... Maybe this is not how the designers expected the player would behave...? It did start to feel repetitive once I reached the fourth and final age. ... maybe they were expecting players to pace exploration and story a bit more evenly?  

The thing is, though, it is rather disappointing how the world is basically unchanged in each age, aside from the town in the corner, which is either Huther, Littlehope, Weyzn, or Hitoyori depending on the age. But pretty much everything else in the overworld is identical between eras. And that's a disappointment.

I would have loved to have seen more variation in the world layout. Because as it is, you basically just have to uncover the same exact world map four times throughout the journey. It's not nearly as interesting as it could have been if they decided to add more changes. 

I was also disappointed to see how the whole idea of the beast tribes was not explored to any degree. I was anticipating that we might travel back in time and find a village or settlement where the beast tribes were not always so violent, or something else that would expand their role in the world. But no. They literally exist just to be gameplay enemies, and they don't have a whole lot of story relevance other than "these guys attack humans". It's a missed opportunity for sure.

...

I felt like, as a time-travel story, this game really didn't utilise time-travel in interesting ways the way I was hoping. For the most part, the four different ages are entirely self-contained.

...Occasionally a sidequest done in one age will affect a future age in a very minor way. For example, if you complete the sidequest where Elliot helps an old picture book author create a new storybook in the Age of Reconstruction, when you return to the Age of Safekeeping afterwards, the two kids who are reading stories will have their dialogue updated to imply that the book they're reading is now the same one Elliot helped with. ...Doing sidequests in the past affects the future only in very self-isolated and largely inconsequential ways like this, that are only really reflected in throwaway NPC dialogue.

And sometimes, it doesn't seem to make... chronological sense? There's sidequest where you need to investigate why a group of rogue automata are gathering around a spot and attacking anyone who approaches. So you go back in time, and discover that these automata were originally protecting someone who died in this spot, and were never programmed to stop. So you go back even further in time, and rescue the man so he doesn't die. When you go back to the present, the questgiver asks if you figured out why the automata were there, and he thanks you for solving the problem. ..... but if we truly did change history so that the automata never guarded this spot, how does he still have memory of the problem to begin with?? Hello???

There's another sidequest where you help establish a construction company in the Age of Budding, and they go on to become world-renowned builders. After completing this quest, when you return to the Age of Safekeeping, there's NPC dialogue saying how this famous construction company even built Huther castle! .... ... but.... but in the timeline that existed  before Elliot completed this sidequest, why is there the exact same castle anyway?

I feel like, maybe the castle should have changed to look upgraded or something after completing this quest? to imply that the new construction company caused a better future? But instead.... history is "changed", but nothing actually comes of it. Why not? It would have been so cool if completing this quest completely changes the look of the castle or something.

The game is full of frustrating little inconsistencies in the rules of time travel that are kind of just brushed aside for the sake of status quo. The threat of a bad guy changing history for the worse never actually materialises into anything you see. History is never changed for the worse, and Elliot never has to fix time-travel induced problems like that. And I find it annoying how Elliot was so concerned with Kaifried going back in time and changing history, but has no problem changing history himself. That feels like very simplistic "well it's only bad when the bad guy is doing it" kind of storytelling that doesn't sit right with me.

It's just.... okay, so. Let me mention something here. So the HD-2D style of modern Square Enix games is designed to call back to the old 16-bit days of RPGs. This is a deliberate feature of these HD-2D games. ... and when you think of 16-bit Squaresoft games, especially when you've got time-travel on the mind, obviously, obviously the first one that comes to mind is Chrono Trigger. Right? I'm not just bringing up a legendary game like Chrono Trigger out of nowhere here. ...Elliot can't help but invite comparison to Chrono trigger just by its very nature as a classic-style time travel game by Square. 

Right? Right.

Well. If I compare Elliot to Chrono Trigger... I'm sorry man. Chrono Trigger just blows it out of the water and it's not even a contest.

Elliot's utilisation of time travel is just straight up boring when compared to what Chrono Trigger was able to do with it. Chrono Trigger has so many fun and interesting ideas that play with the concept of travelling through time, and it can affect the world and characters of the game in fun and unique and memorable ways. And I know. . . ... I know Elliot is doing its own thing. And that a comparison like this isn't exactly fair. But the comparison is right there, and it's just so disappointing to see that Square is still not able to match something they made in 1995.

Anyway. With all that being said, The Adventures of Elliot does actually have one lategame plot twist that utilises time-travel in a good way. Elliot unwittingly rewrites a significant part of history about himself, and I actually did find this twist compelling. The last parts of the story were quite fun and interesting to watch due to this. ....... I only wish the whole game was like that. Seems like they saved all the interesting stuff for the end.

...

Overall, I actually did have a good time with this game.

The gameplay is really fun, I always enjoy bashing monsters, running around, clearing dungeons, and finding upgrades. It's all good stuff.

I was just... so let down by the game's half-hearted implementation of a time-travel story. I feel like Square Enix's HD-2D team needs to be way more ambitious. 

...That's why I liked Live A Live - that's an RPG where one of your party members is a robot powered by turtle soup. why can't the HD-2D team make something as inventive as that themselves, huh?

Brandish 2: The Planet Buster

 I played Brandish 2: The Planet Buster

This is a dungeon-crawling action-RPG developed by Nihon Falcom and released in 1995.

Originally, it was made for the PC-98, and was then later ported to Super Famicom. 

There was never an English release of Brandish 2, but two different fan translations were created by dedicated fans over the years, one for SNES, and one for PC-98. I decided to play the SNES fan translation version on emulator.... mostly because setting up PC-98 emulation is really really annoying and fiddly. 

(...though I'll have to figure out PC-98 emulation if I ever want to play Brandish 3, since that game didn't get a console port.)

Brandish 2 is a direct follow-up to the first Brandish game, which I wrote about previously. 

The main character Ares (aka Varik) returns as the playable hero, and his archrival Dela (aka Alexis) returns as well.

While travelling in the deserts surrounding the kingdom of Bundevia, Ares is captured and thrown into prison by the evil king Badorrer. 

Ares's Planet Buster Sword, which he found during the events of the previous game, is taken from him and locked away in the castle tower.

Now Ares must escape the prison, retrieve the Planet Buster, and put an end to Badorrer's schemes. Along the way he encounters Dela again, who wants the Planet Buster for her own reasons. She agrees to help Ares retrieve it in exchange for getting to keep the sword after Badorrer is defeated. Along the way, Ares meets a few other characters, including the king's hired mercenary Karl, and a mysterious woman named Helene.

In the ending cutscene.... Ares does give the Planet Buster back to Dela, but she soon finds out that the sword has been drained of its power and has disintegrated into dust in its scabbard. Ares doesn't tell her this, instead he just throws it to her and flees on horseback. The game ends with a funny scene of Dela chasing after Ares. ...Her antics in this game are still mostly comic relief.

...

The gameplay is largely similar to the first Brandish. The exact same camera system is here, with the same somewhat-disorienting 90-degree snaps whenever you turn. The control scheme also remains unchanged for strafing, shielding, jumping, resting, and attacking. Examining / Interacting has been made a bit less cumbersome - you no longer need to specifically swap between the hand or the magnifying lens cursors, you can instead just press the interact button in front of something, and it will work.

But on the whole, Brandish 2 feels very much like ...just playing more Brandish. They didn't overhaul the gameplay at all. So if you really liked the first game just the way it was, Brandish 2 offers another full adventure of the same exact stuff. And I think that's great!

There are some definite improvements to the UI and playability. Now you can have your inventory and minimap displayed on screen at all times, with the ability to toggle them on and off if you would prefer to not have them in the way of the view. I liked having the map on, but the inventory off. It's nice to be able to look at the map without having to keep pausing all the time.

Unfortunately for me, this game didn't change the way the map fills out. It still only uncovers the exact tile you step on and its surrounding tiles, which means you still have to meticulously walk into every corner of every room to fill in the map. And you still are left with holes in the map if any tile can't be reached.. .... You know, I kind of wish that they made it so that, once you uncover every possible tile, the rest of the unreachable tiles would get automatically revealed on the map. That would also make it easier to get 100% map completion too, since it would be easier to see which floors weren't done yet. After the ending cutscene, the game said I got 99% map completion, and I don't have any idea where I could have possibly missed a tile of floor somewhere. :(

...

The main difference with Brandish 2 is the structure of the adventure. It's no longer a linear trek through 40+ floors of a tower going only upwards and upwards. Instead, the world layout of Brandish 2 is much more open-plan. Ares will travel through a series of different areas, which connect to each other at various points, sometimes with multiple exits and branching paths. Some areas also have shortcuts that lead back into previous areas, so backtracking is also a lot more convenient too. Backtracking to previous areas is sometimes a part of the progression, and all the added shortcuts really do help you get to where you need to go quickly. It feels a lot nicer to move between areas now that everything feels so connected.

Additionally, there are a couple of towns now! Brandish 1 did have a few NPCs and shops here and there, but Brandish 2 has a few cute little towns to explore. It's nice that there do exist a few safe areas outside of the typical mazelike dungeon floors.

This new world layout makes the game feel a lot more fully-realised. I quite like it.

The areas in Brandish 2 have a lot of variety. They are: Prison, Islet Cave, Wharf, Castle Wall, Castle Town, Woods, Ninja Yashiki, Dark Zone, Castle, Tower, Laboratory, Fortress, Nucleus.

A few of these areas are reminiscent of Brandish 1, especially the returning Dark Zone, which has the exact same aesthetic as before (but a new layout).

The Laboratory, Fortress, and Nucleus all have the same kind of icky organic aesthetic from the final area of Brandish 1, where the walls are made of pulsating flesh. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that....  I don't think it's supposed to actually be exploring inside a living creature any more, like I was speculating with Brandish 1. It's kind of just indicative that it's an evil bad guy zone, I guess.

And it's nice to see some outdoors areas - the Woods have nice green grass and trees, which you don't get to see much of normally.

The areas have around 1-4 floors each, so none of them are as huge the main areas of Brandish 1, which were 10 floors each. This means that the game has a lot more visual variety to it. The scenery around you changes more often as you play through the adventure. It makes the game feel a little less repetitive, and it makes it easier to remember what happens in each area.

When I was looking up information about this game, it came to my attention that the Super Famicom version I was playing is actually a truncated version the game. Around 18 floor layouts were just completely removed from the SNES version...which is a little disheartening to hear about. This includes two entire locales, "Ice Zone" and "Green Zone", of which I've never seen and know nothing about. These areas remain exclusive to the PC-98 original, so if I truly want to see everything Brandish 2 has to offer....... I think I might want to get that PC-98 emulator working, huh. :/

But on the whole, despite the removed content, the SNES game does not feel incomplete, and nothing critical to the story is missing. I think they were doing their best, trying to fit something that originally came on FIVE floppy disks into one Super Famicom cartridge.

...

I think the bosses are a bit more difficult in Brandish 2 compared to the first. ...though you still always have the option to save and rest to recover HP anywhere, so they can still be cheesed to death with patience. But I do see that more effort was put into making the bosses feel more like a tough obstacle to overcome. 

On one hand, I appreciate the extra challenge, but in effect, it really only made me have to leave to go rest more often per boss. Which is a bit on the lame side. 

I do know that being able to leave bosses half-way through to go rest and heal with no penalties is an intentional part of the game's design. (And the PSP version of Brandish 1 even has an added NPC recommend this strategy to you before the first boss). ...But I dunno. It's always been a bit of a weird thing.

I think it feels more weird in this game compared to the first Brandish, because more of the enemies in this game are humans. The bosses in the first Brandish were mostly big monsters. So I guess it feels weird in Brandish 2 to leave a human boss's room, heal up, and return, without them having anything to say about it. You'd expect a human to be smart enough to follow you out the door, wouldn't you?

I did notice myself running out of magic far more often. It's possible that MP regeneration was slowed down, or maybe MP cost of spells was increased. Either way, I found myself having Low MP the majority of the time. It made me have to rely on my weapons more.

The Fire spell was not as powerful as it was in Brandish 1. I think this is because, unlike Brandish 1 where it can last you the whole game, now you can actually acquire an upgraded version of Fire called Flame, which has the same MP cost but deals more damage. Though neither spell was as good as the new "Blitz" spell, which shoots a huge laser in front of you. Once I got Blitz, the game actually became super easy. The final area was kind of a breeze, actually. I think the difficulty might not be so well-balanced in this game compared to the first.

...

...I don't really have much else to say about Brandish 2. It was another fun adventure using the exact same gameplay as the first Brandish. I really enjoyed it, and I'm glad to see that they made more than one game of this style. It's a bit of a shame they never released it in English.

I do want to play Brandish 3, but..... PC-98 emulation is a pain. And there isn't a fan translation for 3 yet. I may go for it another day.

Uh anyways, that's about it. I'm a fan of Brandish now! Unlike Ys, Falcom never continued this series into the modern day. There are four Brandish games, plus the PSP remake of Brandish 1, and that's all that exists. I suppose dungeon crawlers don't have the same widespread appeal that Ys's more fast-paced action-exploration has.

---

Update: 27/09/2026

So I did try the PC-98 version of Brandish 2 after all.

The game was mostly the same as the SNES version, but it did indeed have a significant number of additional floors to explore that were not present in the SNES game.

The Green Zone and Ice Zone that aren't in the SNES game are essentially just a "part two" to the Islet Cave area - instead of the shrine of Adonis at the end of the Cave immediately exiting out into the Wharf town, now there's these two areas to go through in between.

...I suppose if they needed to make cuts, it makes sense that these areas were the first to go. They're perfectly fine levels, but they don't add any significance to the journey aside from being just more levels to get through.

The vast majority of other areas in the game also had new sections that weren't in the SNES version. Most notably is the Castle Wall - in the SNES, it is 4 screens, one for each corner, that can be traversed in a simple loop. Whereas on PC-98, it's 10 screens, and the traversal is significantly more mazelike. It turns what was simply a passageway area into its own sprawling thing to figure out.

And every other location, aside from Dark Zone, Castle, and Nucleus, also has additional floors to explore. And there are plenty of unique setpieces and puzzles that are not found on SNES. ...Including a magic spell called Wall that makes a wall tile appear in front of you, which is almost entirely useless.

I also found the difficulty curve was more punishing on PC-98. on SNES, I never really had to grind, but on PC-98, even with the best possible equipment and a high level, enemies still deal heavy damage. It's quite harsh.

I have to say..... while the PC-98 original version has more content, it is also a lot more exhausting to play.

The SNES version may be pared down, but I felt like it was overall a much nicer-paced adventure.

...this comparison might demonstrate that having a higher number of levels doesn't necessarily always mean the game is better overall.

I think.... I'm going to give the edge to the SNES version still. It feels more fun to just traverse around the world in that one. Whereas on PC98, the extra levels make traversal feel a bit more bogged down. 

I'm very glad to have played both versions so I can see the differences. And I did like seeing the full uncut version of the game.

now that I've got PC-98 emulation figured out, it might be time for Brandish 3 next? We'll see.

Brandish

 I played Brandish!

This game was developed by Nihon Falcom in 1991 for various Japanese computers. In 1994 it got ported to 16-bit consoles, and the SNES version was given an English translation and was released in America in 1995. ...Europe did not get this game at all. 

I played the English SNES version on emulator.

I was interested in Brandish because it's a classic action-RPG by Nihon Falcom, the developers of Ys. And I sure love Ys!

So let's see what else they've got for me!

Brandish is a dungeon-crawling action-RPG. The game starts with Varik and his arch-rival Alexis having a confrontation, when suddenly they both fall into a gigantic underground realm - the sunken ruins of an ancient kingdom known as Berimya, which was once protected by a dragon, but fell to an evil king around 1000 years ago. In the Dragon's dying breath, it cursed the king and the kingdom, sinking it deep into the earth, buried for eternity.

Varik must now find his way out of the huge maze, and throughout the journey he will occasionally meet with Alexis who is also trying to escape. 

Despite Varik being the playable hero, Alexis is the character prominently featured on the cover artwork of most versions of Brandish. ...even though you barely see her within the game itself. 

Every time you meet up with Alexis, a funny scene plays out where she says, "There you are! Now is the time for my revenge!" and then she accidentally triggers a trap door and disappears down a hole. ...this happens like three or four times throughout the adventure, it's pretty good.

At the end of the game, you end up helping Alexis fend off a monster, and when you beat the final boss and escape to the surface, she no longer wants to kill Varik. Happy ending I guess.

...It seems the names 'Varik' and 'Alexis' were made up by the localisation team for this English SNES version. In every other version of Brandish, and all of its sequels, the two characters are named Ares and Dela. ...To be honest, I do like the localised names better, but if I ever play Brandish's sequels, I guess I'll have to get used to the canon names. 

There isn't much story in Brandish beyond this, so let's talk about the gameplay!

...

Brandish is a top-down dungeon-crawling RPG.

This game's most notable feature, especially compared to all other RPGs on the SNES, is the camera perspective system.

This is a rather oldschool-feeling, tile-based game that plays on a grid. You are always looking at Varik from behind, and whenever you turn left or right, rather than Varik's sprite changing to face left or right, the view of the entire world rotates instead. This can be quite disorienting when you first start playing, especially because it is not a smooth camera motion - the view instantly snaps 90 degrees each time you press left or right. This definitely takes some getting used to. And, I would also say it makes for a game that might be difficult to follow if you're watching someone else play.

The very first room in the game does seem to be intentionally designed to allow players to get used to this unusual camera setup - it's a uniquely-shaped room where each side looks distinct, with treasure chests on both the north and south ends. You start the game facing north, and the southern treasure chest is not initially visible because it is obscured by the southern wall. Once you rotate yourself to face south, then you'll be able to see it. ...the thing about this camera perspective system is that it allows them to hide items and switches and other things behind walls and pillars like this. It's an important part of the dungeon layout design of the game. 

It seems like they wanted to create a game with a slightly more 3D sense of space than what was normally seen at the time. It works, but it does take some adjustment to not get disoriented every time you turn left or right. Thankfully there is a compass on screen at all times to tell you where you're currently facing. And you can bring up a map of the current dungeon floor at any time, which is incredibly helpful in navigating. You uncover the map as you explore, so you can easily tell where you haven't been yet.

...this camera system makes Brandish feel like a weird cross between a regular top-down JRPG and an oldschool first-person dungeon crawler. It kind of plays exactly like a first-person dungeon crawler, except it's not first-person. 

I feel like someone who struggles with keeping a 3D map in their mind might not be able to get on well with this game.

...

The controls are another thing that take a bit of getting used to. Up moves you forward one tile, and down makes you walk backwards one tile. Left and right rotate the view of the world left or right. If you hold L or R, then left and right make you strafe without turning, which is useful if you are navigating a maze and don't want to lose your place visually. ...but it is funny seeing Varik walk sideways and backwards when you do this. He's always facing forwards, and there literally aren't any graphics in the game for Varik facing left, right, or downwards at all. In fact, you never actually ever get a good look at Varik's face at any point. He's a mysterious fellow indeed.

Learning this control scheme is essential for fighting against the various monsters who roam the mazes. Positioning yourself so that you can properly face yourself towards the enemies is important. As you play through the game, it does become second nature eventually, but I certainly did struggle to get to grips with it at first.

To fight enemies, you need to press the A button. Normally, this just makes Varik hold out his shield, so at first you might be confused at which button actually attacks. But if you press A while an enemy is nearby, then Varik will attack in front of him. It's things like this that might make the game feel a little unintuitive compared to something like The Legend of Zelda where you just have a sword button that makes you swing the sword, simple as that. 

Your weapon has a limited number of hits it can take before it breaks. You will find a steady supply of new weapons as you explore the dungeons, and if you really do run out of weapons, you can always punch enemies. There are also potions of hardness that can be used to add more durability to your currently-equipped weapon.

As a prize for defeating certain bosses, you will find unbreakable versions of the swords that last forever. They will be weaker than what you find lying around at the point you get them in, but they are certainly better than your fist! 

I do wonder if the unbreakable weapons somewhat undermine the weapon durability system. After getting one, I kind of didn't really bother switching weapons all that often any more, unless I was up against a tough boss who demanded maximum attack power from me. So I ended up with a huuuge surplus of spare weapons that I kept finding and not using. ...instead, these weapons are good for selling to shops for extra cash.

You can hold out your shield with the A button. If an enemy shoots projectiles, you can block them by holding A. And there are a couple of areas with arrow traps where quick thinking with the shield will save you.

Varik will also automatically hold out his shield when an enemy is right in front of him, which will block enemy melee attacks. If your shield is strong enough, it can completely negate the damage, which can keep you safe as you find moments in between enemy attacks to swing your weapon. The combat system is a bit more nuanced than it first appears if you actually pay attention to your enemies' behaviours and aren't just mashing the button.

That being said... mashing the button is not always a bad way of doing things even if you do end up taking a lot of damage. And that's because this game lets you rest and heal your HP at pretty much any time.

If you press L+R, the screen goes dark, and you begin refilling your HP. However, if an enemy interrupts your rest, you take a huge amount of damage - very often it's enough to be fatal, unless it was like a low level bat or something, in which case it still hits for a huge chunk of damage.

You have to be careful when resting to recover HP. Make sure you do it in a safe area free of enemies, otherwise you'll get interrupted and die. But once you know how to heal safely, it makes the game rather easygoing. It quite literally is free healing at any time.

The risk from resting scales in difficulty quite naturally - at the start of the adventure, resting will restore your health pretty much instantly. But as you level up more, you gain more total HP, so resting to full health will take longer, which means you're vulnerable for longer. It makes resting more risky the further into the game you are. 

Though it isn't ever truly risky, because dying isn't even a huge deal. You can save your game at any point, and even if you forget to save, the game autosaves every time you change floor. Going upstairs, going downstairs, and even when falling into a pit trap and landing on the floor below, it will always autosave. Pretty cool for an old game.

As you kill enemies, you gain experience, though annoyingly the SNES version doesn't actually show your EXP value anywhere in the menus. It just happens behind the scenes, it seems. When you level up, you become stronger. 

In addition to your EXP level, there are three other things you can level up - every time you land a hit with your sword, you train your "arm strength", which makes your sword attacks stronger. Every time you land a hit with a magic spell, you train your "knowledge", which makes your magic spells stronger. And every time you get hit by an enemy's magic attack, you train your "magic endurance", which reduces damage from enemy magic. Wearing armour does nothing for magic defence. 

I think this is a fun little system. It encourages you to use both swords and magic evenly, which is certainly helpful when you come across heavily armoured foes who are weak to magic, and magical foes who are immune to it.

Varik also has the ability to jump by pressing the B button. He will jump forward, passing over one tile, and will land on the next one. This is primarily used to jump over pits, traps, and other obstacles, but it can actually be used to jump over enemies too, if you've been cornered and need to reposition. Jumping is also faster than walking forwards, and there are a few moments in the game where you need to outrun a boulder (indiana jones style), where continuously jumping to go faster is the way to do it.

The Y button is used to interact with the tile in front of you. By default it is a hand cursor, but if you hold L or R, then the cursor changes into a magnifying lens. The hand cursor is used to take items from the floor, open doors, and activate levers. The magnifying lens cursor is used to examine objects, read signs, and get item descriptions.

...this game has the kind of controls that might make more sense when you consider that Brandish was originally designed to be played with a mouse on a computer. They did a great job making everything fit onto a SNES controller, but compared to other games that were designed for the SNES controller to begin with, Brandish can feel very clunky. Despite all of this, it is very possible to get used to it and be able to play smoothly. Once you're in the groove, it plays quite nicely. But it takes some work to reach that point. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of players who try this game for the first time will be immediately put off by it and not want to play.

...

This game takes place entirely within the labyrinths of Berimya. Each floor has a staircase upwards that leads to the next floor. There are four main areas you explore in order: Ruins, Tower, Cave, Fortress. (and there's a mini-area called the Dark Zone in between the Caves and the Fortress)

Each area has around 10 floors, give or take, for a total of 45 floors to traverse through in order to reach the top.

Halfway through the Ruins early on, there's a "Worship Room" that contains a small sculpture, depicting the entirety of Berimya as seen from outside, which is there to give you an idea about how this is all supposed to make sense from a worldbuilding point of view: The Ruins of the kingdom lie at the bottom, and a huge Tower rises from the middle of the ruins. The Tower rises straight up into a huge mound of earth that contains the Caves. Atop this mound of earth sits a gigantic green dragon, who watches over the kingdom below. 

When you eventually reach the final area, the Fortress, Varik notices how fleshy and squelchy the walls have become... the Fortress seems to take place within the innards of some gigantic creature... this is either the body of the Dragon itself, or it might also be the evil king from the intro cutscene, who was said to be transformed into a monster by the Dragon's curse or something like that. I'm not entirely sure. It might also just be a particularly fleshy cave and not actually a creature's innards?? The game didn't really explain it.

...

Exploring the floors in this game is very much like an old-school dungeon-crawler. Each floor has passages to traverse, items on the floor, enemies to kill, and traps to avoid. There are also the occasional shops where you can buy and sell equipment and items.

Your map fills in automatically as you explore, but annoyingly, it only fills in the tiles you stand on and the tiles directly adjacent to them, and no more than that. That means that, if you want to fill in as much of the map as you possibly can without it being full of gaps, you need to be annoyingly meticulous and make sure you stand in each corner of every room. And even when you fill in every possible space, the map will still be full of gaps, because there are bits and pieces behind walls and over water etc that you can't ever get close enough to fill in. ... It's rather annoying. 

.... after the ending credits, the game shows you a map completion percentage, and it seems that it only considers floors that are possible to reach, so actually achieving 100% map completion according to the game is perfectly doable, even if the map doesn't really look complete.

In order to progress through each floor, all you need to do is find a path to the stairs that go up.

There are all sorts of things you might need to do to solve each floor: hit switches to open passageways, bash open breakable walls that may be hard to spot, find keys to open locked doors, defeat all the monsters in the room, solve teleporter mazes, solve riddles, figure out the correct path from a maze of dead-ends... you know how these sorts of dungeon games go, right?

Every floor is a maze, but the layouts are distinct and varied enough so that it doesn't feel repetitive. Each floor has a unique gimmick or at least a distinct personality that makes it memorable. When I return to a previous floor and open my map, I can definitely remember "oh right, that was the floor where such and such happened". It's a great thing that the game does not feel too repetitive, as that can sometimes be a real problem with this type of game.

The entire game is fully backtrackable. There are never any floors that are locked permanently after leaving them, so you can return to any part of the game any time you like. Sometimes it can be useful to backtrack, as you might want to revisit a shop on a previous floor. 

The most useful things shops sell are the armour upgrades and the magic spells. These tend to be the most expensive items they sell, but they are certainly very useful if you can afford them. Enemies do not drop money in this game - the only way to get money is to sell items you obtain from treasure chests or find lying around. This kind of means that there is a finite amount of gold in the game... but this should never actually become a problem, because there is definitely plenty enough to buy everything important.

When you buy a magic spell, it sits in the inventory and can be used by equipping it. Magic never runs out, so you only need to buy one of each spell. Magic costs MP, which recovers slowly over time.

The most useful magic is Fire, which shoots a projectile forwards. It's an incredibly strong and useful attack, and once you get it, it'll be indispensable for the entire rest of the game. 

I would say the next most useful magic is the Warp spell. It costs 100% of your MP bar to cast, but it allows you to teleport to any already-explored tile on the current floor. It is such a huge timesaver if you ever need to backtrack to previous floors.

...I suspect that the presence of the Warp spell is probably the reason why the map only fills in the tiles you step on. ...they don't want you to be able to warp to any part of the floor you haven't been to.

I also like the Healing spell. Despite the fact that you can rest at any time by pressing L+R, the Healing spell is actually incredibly good. It doesn't just instantly heal you, rather it casts a regeneration effect on Varik that lasts for a good while. So you can cast Heal and then fight an enemy, and every time you get hit, you are immediately already recovering the HP back. It's super cool. You can also use it to negate the damage from the poisonous swampy tiles that are prevalent in the Fortress.

...

Overall, I really really enjoyed my time with Brandish. I found myself compelled to keep playing, because I wanted to see what was on the next floor. It was strangely addictive. 

The adventure was nicely-paced. It's not a short game, but it doesn't feel like it drags on either. I spent around 20 hours on my playthrough, which I felt was the perfect length for a game like this.

As far as dungeon-crawlers go, Brandish is very easygoing. You can heal at any time, you can see your map at any time, and the game just showers you with spare weapons and other treasures, so the resource management is not difficult either. And you can save anywhere, so there aren't really any harsh penalties for dying either.

If it wasn't for the extremely weird perspective system, or the unusual janky controls, I would actually heartily recommend Brandish as a great beginner's dungeon-crawler. It's a game that I think any RPG fan could finish without too much issue, as long as they are willing to adapt to the controls.

...Though it's definitely a game for people who really like exploring dungeon mazes, first and foremost. Because visually it's a bit bland and confusing, and it's light on plot and worldbuilding. RPG fans who prefer their games to have a deeper story aren't going to find that in Brandish.

...

just a few more miscellaneous thoughts about the game, I guess...

...This game has a rather silly inventory trap. There are two types of potion, H. Potion for health, and M. Potion for magic. However, you will also often find bottles of "H. Poison" and "M. Poison". These do the opposite, and deplete your health or magic... You need to pay attention to what you're actually drinking, because the Poison items look identical to the Potion items, and their names look similar at a glance.

You can stack certain items together into one inventory slot in order to save space, however if you accidentally put a stack of Poison into a stack of Potions, they will "cancel each other out" and you will lose them all. It's funny that you have to worry about this. It's a trap that only affects players who aren't paying enough attention.

There were a few puzzles in this game that I didn't like. I even had to look up the solution to one puzzle because it was so obtuse. There was a room full of buttons on the floor, and the hint was "You must be able to see Southeast from the far door." ...there wasn't anything located southeast in this room. ...It was completely baffling, and nothing I tried made any sense. ... ... ...It turns out, the solution was to press the buttons in a certain pattern so that the pressed buttons spell out the letters "S" and "E" on the floor.   .... absolutely insane. I would have never even considered that as a solution. ...

But there were also a few puzzles that I really did like! One that stood out to me was a floor switch that is supposed to open a door, but when you step on it, nothing happens. A sign has a hint that it requires a lot of force to press this switch. If you go up one floor, you can fall down a hole and land on the switch, but still nothing happens. What you need to do is go up two floors, find the exact right hole, which perfectly aligns with the previous hole that will then land on the switch. And the door opens because apparently the force from landing from two floors up is what it takes. I enjoy when the game asks me to think about how the dungeon connects together like this.

In the Tower, there are two items that cannot be picked up. They are positioned right next to a pit. You can stand on the tile with the item, but in order to pick up items in this game, you need to be in front of it, and it's not possible to stand in front of these because they're right next to a pit. ... It's a rather bizarre thing. I checked guides and walkthroughs, and yeah. These items really are completely impossible to pick up. Weird.

...

Around one year ago, there was a release for a version of the game called Brandish Renewal on the Nintendo Switch, under the "EGGCONSOLE" series of old emulated Japan-exclusive games. ... however this version has unfortunately been de-listed from the eShop. No-one can buy it any more. ...I guess I can consider myself lucky, because I did manage to buy it before it went away.

It's basically an emulated port of an updated NEC PC-9801 version of Brandish, and it doesn't have an English translation, even though I bought it from the English eShop. The game remains entirely in Japanese.

This was a version that used a mouse cursor, but annoyingly, since it's on Switch 1 (and was never updated for Switch 2), there's no way to use a real mouse here. Instead they mapped the left and right sticks to dragging the mouse cursor around the screen. It's awkward, but it does function. Interestingly, this version of the game displays your inventory and minimap on-screen at all times, which is really cool, but in exchange, the screen space for the main view of the game is quite limited compared to the SNES version.

Aside from this, I was quite surprised when I realised just how faithful the SNES version was when I had a look at this version. Every dungeon floor layout was brought over one-to-one, with absolutely no level design differences at all. Pretty cool. Normally I would expect to see some weird inexplicable layout differences between versions for a game like this.

The Renewal version does have a few interesting differences compared to the SNES version - the pit traps in the Dark Zone are visible here, which makes navigating a whole lot simpler in this area. And you can actually see what dropped items look like on the ground now - on the SNES version, items just appear as a generic pouch icon. ...........and with this, I could finally see what the two un-pickup-able items in the Tower were. They are a leather armor and an invisibility potion. Wow, nothing special at all. ....and yeah, they are still impossible to pick up in this version too.

The Renewal version also adds a little casino slot machine minigame, which I guess serves to fix the problem of there otherwise being a finite amount of gold in the game. I guess. It reminded me of the Pokémon Red / Blue slot machine. Like, it played pretty much literally exactly like that one.

... The Renewal version also keeps a tally of how many times you use the Rest command. Every time you rest, the screen goes dark, and you see an ominous red tally which counts how often you rest. It doesn't do anything at all, aside from making me self-conscious about how often I use this feature.

I think, overall, I prefer the SNES version, but it was nice to be able to check out what the game originally looked like before it got ported! I hope that the developers of the EGGCONSOLE series can get it back on the eShop at some point. I read somewhere that the reason it got delisted is because it used a version of MS-DOS to emulate the game, and apparently, they didn't have the proper license from Microsoft to use MS-DOS for this purpose?? Or something like that?? Whatever it is, it seems to be a legal issue.

I also briefly tried out a TurboGrafx-16 CD version on emulator just to have a look. It's pretty bad. Definitely the worst version of the game that exists. The controls are even jankier due to the TG-16 only having two buttons compared to the SNES's 6. Absolutely not recommended. I didn't play past the first room because it didn't seem worth my time.

There also exists a PSP remake titled Brandish: Dark Revenant. This was released in Japan in 2009, and... in 2015, it got on official English version. Since nobody was making PSP discs in 2015, this translated edition was digital-only. And yes, they used the names Ares and Dela for this, making them the canon official names outside of Japan for the first time, completely retconning Varik and Alexis. Oh well.

By the way, in the crossover fighting game "Ys vs Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga", one of the unlockable characters is Dela from Brandish! That's pretty cool. I still wasn't too keen on that game, but it's nice to see that Brandish has a bit of presence like that.

Uh. anyway. That's all. I like this game. I may play Brandish 2 pretty soon too.

E.V.O.: Search for Eden

I played E.V.O.: Search for Eden

This is a 1993 SNES game developed by Almanic and published by Enix, released in Japan and America, but not Europe.

I played it via emulator.

I'm gonna talk about pretty much the entire game, from start to finish. :D

E.V.O. is a very unusual sidescrolling action game.

You play as a creature chosen by Gaia, the spirit of the planet earth, to evolve and travel through time in order to reach Eden.

Apparently this is some kind of trial set up by Sol, the sun, father of Gaia. The creature who can evolve and pass every trial will marry Gaia, and live together in Eden for eternity.

...There's also some kind of plot going on about mysterious crystals that are affecting the evolution of the planet's species in unexpected ways.

The game starts in 500,000,000 BC, Chapter 1: "The World Before Land". You begin as a little fish. 

You can swim around the water, and you can bite enemy fish.

When you defeat an enemy, it drops meat. It looks like a cartoon hunk of meat on the bone. 

Eating meat heals you a bit, and gives you "Evolution points".

At any time, you can open your menu and see your options for evolution.

You can evolve a body part by spending Evo points.

Body parts are evolved in a modular fashion. It's kind of like upgrading parts of a robot or a car... except here, it's evolution. 

There are eight sections in the evolution menu:

Jaws, Horn(s), Neck, Body, Hands & Feet, Dorsal Fin, Tail, Back of the head.

Each upgrade costs an amount of evolution points, normally the better ones cost more.

When you buy an upgrade, it is immediately applied - apparently your body can evolve immediately due to a "mysterious time stream". That's what it says every time you buy an upgrade.

Upgrading Jaws increases bite power. Upgrading Body gives you more defense. Upgrading your various fins (some of which are in the Hands & Feet menu) gives you more agility and HP.

And some options are mutually-exclusive - for example, if you upgrade your "Horn" to get a swordfish nose, it forcibly downgrades your Jaw to its basic form... I suppose you gotta choose between stabbing or biting. If you want the strong jaw back, you do have to buy it again...

Annoyingly, the game doesn't do anything to inform you about what each upgrade will do. You just have to buy it, and then check your stats menu to see if any of the numbers look higher. ...Generally, you want to go for the more expensive options, but there are a few upgrades here and there with unique properties - for example, the angler lure from the Horn menu will attract enemies towards you.

The upgrades are certainly useful for increasing your survivability. In order to complete this chapter, you need to solve a maze full of tough enemy fish, dash through a path of volcanic rocks that rain down, and defeat the boss of the chapter, a big shark. 

You'd be hard-pressed doing all of this without evolving into the best possible fish. So... you'd best get to grinding out those evolution points! Find a good spot to repeatedly kill enemies that yield lots of Evo points, and then just... grind 'em out. And if you keep getting bested by the high-point-yield enemies, maybe you could start by grinding on the weaker enemies first, and then come back to the stronger guys once you have a better jaw or something.

For better or for worse... this is basically the gist of the gameplay in E.V.O. You travel through a series of several very straightforward levels, you come across an insurmountable obstacle (usually a boss), and then you need to figure out which of the previous areas had the easiest grinding spot, so you can farm points to evolve your parts for better stats. And once you get 'em, you can continue. ...

To be honest, as awful and grindy as this sounds... I don't actually mind it too much. It's kind of an interesting task, figuring out how to grab Evo points as efficiently as possible, and learning which upgrades help you in what ways. And it's rather chill, just kinda hanging out in these areas for a while, rather than speeding through everything.

Though I certainly do have some complaints, but I will save them for the end... Let's continue.

...

So after beating the shark, Gaia intervenes and transports you ahead in time through a magical portal.

You arrive in 300,000,000 BC, Chapter 2: "Early Creatures of Land". 

Gaia gives you a new amphibian body, which has its own set of new upgrades to aim for.

You start the amphibian phase as a blank slate - all of your accumulated Evo points are gone, and none of your fish upgrades carry over or have any bearing on you for the amphibian phase.

...to be honest, it was a little bit disappointing to see that nothing I did in the fish era carried over at all. Chapter 2 is a fresh slate. 

Again, we can upgrade our Jaw, but now some of our body upgrades will increase our jumping power too. There is a new way of attacking enemies, in this new era - jumping on top of them, like in a platformer. We can upgrade jumping height, speed, and attack power by evolving various fins, gills, and tails.

The different methods of attack actually do have their own separate attack stats. The stat menu shows: "Biting", "Strength", "Kick", "Strike", and "Horn". Though even now, some of these are still not applicable... kicking, for example, isn't introduced until later.

The levels in this game are accessed via a world map screen, with each new level unlocking once you complete the previous one. And you have the ability to return to previous levels whenever you like. (for the most part).

The vast majority of levels in this game are....... extremely simple. Often consisting of nothing more than a flat straight line, with some enemies roaming about.

These areas are normally named after what kind of enemy you can find within. In the amphibian era, there is a level called "Land of timid Ikustega" full of weak ichthyostega enemies and nothing else. And immediately afterwards is "Land of bull Ikustega", where you see a bunch of tougher ichthyostega creatures. 

If you ignore the enemies, these types of levels take about 10 seconds to complete. It's literally, literally just a flat straight line. And not even a particularly long one either.

...I suppose the idea wasn't to make each level feel like a "videogame level", despite the Mario-esque world map presentation... but rather to make it feel more like an ecosystem, where each type of animal inhabits their own little part of the world, and you visit them in turn as you make your way through. I can definitely appreciate the intent, but....... I would have appreciated it more if these levels had some actual level design in them too. :/

Soon after, there is a fight against Boss Ikustega, which is pretty tough if you don't grind for Evo points to get some better jaws, skin, and gills. So, better hop to it! Go grind some better body parts.

The controls in this game are a bit on the janky side - there seems to be a bit of a delay when you jump, and it's not always obvious how far your bite extends in front of you. It's difficult to avoid taking damage in this game, which can be especially dangerous, since there is no invulnerability period after getting hit. You can take multiple quick hits in succession and die before you realise it. When you die, you don't lose progress, but you do lose half of your Evo points, so it does mean you gotta grind even more.

You don't get any healing items or anything (in fact, this game doesn't have an inventory at all), but you do have one way to heal - whenever you evolve, you also get all your HP back. So you can be fighting a boss, and when you're low on health, you can just evolve a horn or something cheap to restore health. Some upgrades do give you the option to spend points to remove them too, so you'll never be left without any available upgrades to use for healing. ...You can just keep evolving and un-evolving a horn to heal during fights as much as you want.

 ...it can get expensive to do this, but hey, that's what all that grinding was for, right? If you still can't beat a boss after upgrading every possible body part to maximum, you still have the option to grind more points to use for healing like this.

....to be honest, I do wish there was just a more direct "spend points to regain health" button in the game. Having to heal indirectly like this isn't exactly intuitive. ...Though it is kind of funny. It's not an oversight either, as the instruction booklet specifically mentions that evolving restores health.7

After that boss, you need to cross a desert full of sandworms. Having good jumping skill is useful here, because you want to be off the ground as often as you can. I do like how the environments, despite being extremely short and simple, still occasionally encourage you to make use of your upgraded body parts for different purposes. 

...

After fighting a big killer bee as the last boss for this chapter, Gaia again intervenes, transporting us into the next era.

It is now 200,000,000 BC, Chapter 3: "The Age of Dinosaurs".

Again, we are given a clean slate to work with. A brand new dinosaur body! ...And again, none of our amphibian upgrades carry over to this chapter.

...So, okay, there is actually a way for the previous evolutions to get another chance to shine.

This might be a good time to mention the coloured crystals. I'll get back to talking about the dinosaur era in a sec.

There are four types of crystals you can find in specific spots throughout the game. You can eat them to receive their effects. They do not come back once eaten.

Yellow crystals give you some advice. This is mostly for tutorial kinda things.

Blue crystals give a large amount of Evo points.

Red crystals temporarily transform you into a unique form that isn't normally possible to evolve into. The transformation lasts only a few minutes or so, so it's kind of like a temporary powerup. There are only about... four? or so of these in the game, two of which are quite well hidden. So this doesn't come up much.

and Green crystals....... let you recall a previously-saved configuration.

So. okay. At any time, you can pause the game, and save your current self into a logbook. There are 50 slots in this logbook, which is plenty to work with.

When you eat a green crystal, it adds a one-time-use option to the pause menu, "Review of Evolution", which lets you temporarily transform back into any one of your saved creatures. Once the timer runs out, you return to normal.

You can hold one green crystal at a time - eating another one will just waste it forever. You can't farm these, they are only located in a few specific spots throughout the game.

So... if you made sure to save your fully-upgraded fish or amphibians to the logbook, then yes, with the power of a green crystal, it is possible to play as your old evolutions again, albeit only as a temporary powerup. But sometimes that's all you need to get a head-start in collecting enough Evo points to upgrade your current form, especially if your old fish or amphibian can easily defeat a boss that your current dinosaur can't.

And it's even possible to save the rare red crystal transformations to the log book, if you want to use their power again. That's pretty cool.

And.... the fact that the logbook data is saved completely separately to the main save files means that you can enhance repeat playthroughs by using green crystals to temporarily turn into lategame creatures early. It's almost like a new game plus of sorts.

It's... actually a really cool system. Though to be honest, I did not fully understand how green crystals worked for the majority of my playthrough, so I didn't really use them much. But I very much appreciate this feature now that I know about it.

...

So anyway... Dinosaur chapter.

This chapter is rather similar to the previous one, with plenty of simple flat levels full of enemies to grind on. Though instead of ichthyostegas and bees, we now contend against various different types of dinosaurs. And just like "Ikustega", they all have names that vaguely sound like what they're called, but not really. Such as "Syrocosaurus" for styracosaurus, and "Tyrosaurus" for T-rexes. ... I wonder if these weird names come from SNES technical limitations, awkward localisation from Japanese, or are they like this just to add a bit of a fantasy flair? ...Or perhaps combination of all three?

Your dino body now gets the option to evolve a longer neck. This does improve your jaw reach, but it also makes it awkward to eat things off the ground. In fact, you pretty much just can't eat things that are on the floor at all if you choose to evolve a longer neck. In order to compensate for this, whenever you kill an enemy, the meat will levitate upwards until it reaches the same elevation as your head, so you can still get your Evo points. ...this is a bit of a clumsy solution tbh, but I guess it makes sense.

We also get the option to evolve into a dino who stands upright on two legs. Pretty cool, but it still suffers the same problem of being unable to eat off the ground..

Halfway through this chapter, we can find an optional level called Mt. Brave. You can climb up the mountain, and once you reach the top, there is a ledge, where you can bravely jump off. If you do so, you will suddenly evolve into a bird in mid-air.

The bird form is like a pteranodon, and it actually has access to pretty much the same upgrade list as the regular dinosaur. But... because it counts as a new form, you lose all your Evo points and have to start from scratch the moment you evolve.

This means that if you invested a lot of Evo points into your current dino form and don't particularly want to grind points all over again, it's probably best to stay as a dino. The added ability to fly as a bird is fun, but because the levels are so simple, it doesn't really help very often. (though there is a secret level that can only be accessed by flying). 

That being said, if you managed to reach Mt Brave without investing too much time into upgrading the dino beforehand, it probably is a good idea to opt for the bird form, since the bird has a strong kick attack the dino lacks, and the added maneuverability from being able to fly can be pretty helpful. It's all a matter of whether you're bothered by the extra grinding, I suppose.

In the Jaws section of the evolution menu, the best jaw is the T-rex jaw, which can be used by both the bird and the dino. There is a hawk-like beaked face available too, but it's just.... not as good as the T-rex one. If you want the best upgrades, your bird is gonna look a bit mismatched. I do kind of wish they made a special case where the bird-like face gets extra damage if you're in bird form or something like that, because there's no real reason to keep the bird face once you can afford the T-rex jaw upgrade. A bit of a shame. 

...

At the end of this chapter, we fight a herd of Tyrosauruses, but the action is interrupted by an asteroid shower. The famous extinction event that killed all the dinosaurs is upon us, and Gaia rescues us with a time portal, just in time.

It is now 65,000,000 BC, Chapter 4: "Ice Age".

Unlike the previous three chapters, you don't immediately get your current body replaced with a new one. So you can keep your dino body or bird body. But as soon as the chapter begins, you enter the "Cave of Judgement", and the ghost of the Syrocosaurus from before will judge whether you are worthy to receive a new type of body for this era... one of a mammal. ...I don't know if there is some kind of event I need to trigger beforehand in order to be considered worthy, but indeed, I was allowed to upgrade if I wanted to.

Unlike the transition from fish to amphibian, or the transition from amphibian to dino, the mammal upgrade is completely optional. It will reset all your points, but the mammal form does have some distinct advantages. For starters, mammals won't slip on the icy floors of the ice age, so it is already immediately advantageous to upgrade. And mammals also have a wide array of forms they can take - you start as a little lion cub creature, but you can mix-and-match parts from bunnies, horses, and rhinos, in order to create a creature with distinct attributes. Horse body has the best kicks, bunny body has the best jumps, rhino body has the best defense.

The Ice Age has one particularly difficult maze to solve - Fort Bird-man. A temple built by evolved birds who wield spears and swords. This is a bizarrely harsh spike in difficulty. Up until this point, the levels have been fairly straightforward, with a couple of small mazes here and there, but nothing too challenging. But now we have Fort Bird-man, which is an extremely confusing maze full of teleporters. It's confusing because the environments don't have distinct enough landmarks to easily tell where each teleporter sends you, and to make things worse, if you jump back in the same teleporter you came from, it goes somewhere else entirely! And in fact, the only way to reach the end is to immediately re-enter the same teleporter you just came from, once you arrive at the correct one.

 ... ... I eventually gave up and found a map online. I'm sorry, but I was starting to get really frustrated.

I'm not sure what's up with this ridiculous difficulty spike, nothing else in the game is quite like it, and I honestly find it rather unfitting.

Especially considering how all the previous levels in this game have mostly been flat straight lines.

...

Well, once you clear the Fort and defeat the boss of the Ice Age, a yeti, Gaia once again intervenes and transports us to the final chapter. 26,000,000 BC, Chapter 5: "Early Man".

This time, the small regular stages are full of more recognisable animals, such as grizzly bears, mooses, and alligators.

This chapter allows you to keep whichever bird, dino, or mammal you have, but there is now one new option, available only if you are a mammal.

There is now the option in the Body menu for the evolution into a "Ramothecus". ...which is another bizarrely misspelled name for... ramapithecus. Which is an early form of ape. ... I had to look up so many words for this review lol.

...anyway. This option is actually greyed-out and inaccessible. Because... it's apparently a bit of a secret.

So...despite this chapter taking place after the extinction event, you can still find some surviving dinosaurs, apparently being kept around by the strange evolutionary power of the mysterious crystals. (in fact, there were also still dinosaurs in the Ice Age chapter too...)

If you find a small patch of hidden stegosauruses, they will teach you the secret. You apparently need to have a cat's face on a bunny's body, and then the secret of the Ramothecus evolution will become available.

If you ever choose to evolve into the Ramothecus, you become locked-in to the ape evolution and can no longer return to four-legged animals. At this point your only evolution option is "evolve further". If you keep evolving further... you become a human man! A caveman. Initially holding a club, but if you "evolve further" one last time, the club will evolve into an axe. somehow.

Once you become a man, there are no further evolution possibilities. The only choice in your menu becomes to increase height and decrease height, which is good because at least you can still use that to heal when you need to. But being a human man is the end of the evolutionary line.

To be quite honest.... the human man evolution kind of sucks. His axe is as strong as the T-rex jaw's bite, which is pretty good, but other than that, he doesn't have much going for him. He can't kick, his jumping is average, his defense is okay, and his tackle is mid-tier. ... and most stupidly of all, he also can't eat things from the floor. And not for any sensible reason like the long-necked dinos. They should have let him.... use his hands? to pick things? from the floooor??? 

It would have been really cool if the developers went all-out to make the final secret human man evolution something wondrous to behold, but they really didn't. There really is no gameplay benefit to evolving into a man. The only reason you'd do it is because it "feels right" as part of the story of evolution, in order to reach the "end" of the upgrade chain. But for actually playing the game and beating the bosses, being the man is kind of a huge detriment. He's just not very good. :( And once you've got him, you're stuck with him.

anyway. uh. there's a part of this chapter where you have to save the whales from the "Rogons", evolved shark-people, who use laser guns and ride atop other sharks. They are bitter because the whales evolved to leave the ocean, became mammals, and then sought to return back to the ocean as if they owned the place... ... ... I think the story's gone a bit off the deep end here, haha. Not complaining though. This is great stuff. :D 

The final boss is Bolbox, a gigantic single-cell organism who claims to be the strongest creature in the world. It has absorbed the power of the crystals and intends to go to Eden itself. ... This boss is really difficult because it is a boss rush of six enemies in a row, some of which are really tough unless you know what you're doing. Hopefully you've got enough Evo points to make use of healing mid-battle, especially if you're stuck playing as the human man.

Once Bolbox is defeated, the player meets Gaia and is accepted into Eden. They are granted the intelligence to create civilisations for the future. 

It is then revealed that the strange crystals originated from Mars. A couple of Martians were trying to help Earth evolve by sending them these magical crystals, but they now realise that it is probably better to allow earth's creatures to evolve naturally.

It's an interesting ending that.....kinda explains what's going on, but not really.

And so that's the whole game!

...

My overall thoughts on the game....

Well, I do like it. I really do like it. The concept is very unusual and interesting, and the gameplay is fun enough. I really do like the diversity in the creatures you come across, and the game taking place through different eras of prehistory is honestly really cool, and something I haven't seen very much of in games.

The vague nonsensical story about the crystals that contain magical evolutionary power is a fun premise, although I do think it kind of gets in the way of the core concept of having the game be about evolution through the ages. ...I mean, if you can still find dinosaurs after the extinction event, it kind of undermines the whole thing, wouldn't you say?

Despite mentioning the grinding so much, I actually don't think that's the game's biggest problem.

I think the biggest problem is the level design. If they had made the levels take longer and be more involved, giving them more platforms, hidden alcoves, dead-ends, treasures to find, etc... then there would be a lot more going on than just the enemy grinding. Instead of the main gameplay being to figure out the best grinding spot, they could have made it so you naturally kill a bunch of enemies as you explore, which would certainly reduce a lot of the tedium. And having more exploration-focused level design would also make that awful Fort Bird-man less of a weird outlier. ...

I also take issue with some of the game's music. It's not bad music at all, but a lot of areas have very short repetitive tracks. They wouldn't be a problem ordinarily, but since the game expects you to grind so much, hearing the same repetitive music over and over certainly doesn't help the feeling of tedium.

...Since I don't mind the grinding too much, I did enjoy the game overall. Though some people may have different levels of tolerance for this kind of stuff.

So yeah. That's E.V.O.: Search for Eden. A very unusual action game for the SNES, and one I very much enjoyed playing! It has its issues, but it is definitely unique and charming enough to be worth a playthrough. And it's not all that long either! Good game. :D

Skies of Arcadia Legends

I played Skies of Arcadia Legends!

This is a GameCube game released by Sega in 2003. It is an expanded port of a Dreamcast game from 2000. I played the GameCube version.

The hero of the story is Vyse of the Blue Rogues, a young pirate who journeys around the world with his childhood friend Aika, and a mysterious maiden named Fina, in their quest to obtain the six Moon Crystals before the ruthless Valuan Empire can get their hands on them.

The game is a fairly typical JRPG in terms of gameplay and game structure. You can walk around, examine things, talk to NPCs, and there's an overworld with towns and dungeons to explore.

The world of this game takes place in a series of floating islands in an endless sky, and nobody knows what lies at the bottom of the clouds. Everyone travels around by airships, powered by the magical energy shards that fall down from the six moons.

The six moons sit in the sky above each of the regions of the world, each one influencing the climate down below.

The red moon of fire sits above the desert nation of Nasr.

The green moon of life sits above the jungle nation of Ixa'Taka.

The yellow moon of lighting sits above the power-hungry Valuan Empire, which is bathed in perpetual dark thunderclouds.

The blue moon of wind and water sits above the isolated nation of Yafutoma, located high, high in the sky.

The purple moon of ice sits above the uninhabited Land of Ice, a vast frozen expanse.

And the silver moon of void sits right above.... a mysterious shrine, located near Vyse's hometown? Hmmm...

The story involves Vyse's journey as he explores the world, finds the Moon Crystals, and fights the Valuan Empire. Along the way, Vyse will gain confidence in his abilities as a captain, and will eventually lead his own crew aboard a ship of his very own.

Vyse is the brave, dashing hero. Aika is his rambunctious and energetic childhood friend. And Fina is the soft-spoken, yet determined maiden from another world.

Along the way, the team meet three other heroes, who join and leave the party as the story dictates: Drachma, the old sea captain who is trying to hunt a giant whale. Gilder, the charismatic gunslinger who's always getting himself into trouble. And Enrique, the Valuan prince, who rebels against his family's cruel methods.

The characters and the storytelling in this game are quite well-done. The cutscenes are very well-animated, with plenty of bespoke motions for each scene. The dialogue between the characters is great at showing everyone's personalities and motivations. The faces and animations are also very expressive - Aika has some particularly funny expressions whenever she gets annoyed with someone. 

Even though the character models are simple, they are wonderfully animated and expressive.

The story of the game is a sort of action-hero kind of plot, with good guys versus bad guys, and Vyse always jumping in to save the day with his swashbuckling swordplay.

However, it isn't an entirely simplistic plot, and the story does become more serious as the stakes are raised and the heroes become more desperate toward the end.

The story is overall a good and satisfying story. And the cast of fun and likeable characters really makes you care about seeing it through.

...

As you explore around the environments, you can examine objects with the A button, and Vyse will comment about them, showing his opinions and giving us information about the area. There's a huge amount of flavour text for the environmental objects in this game, and they even update whenever it's relevant as the story progresses. It gives the world a huge amount of life to see all of this added detail. I like reading it all.

The NPCs in each village are just as detailed. The NPCs in this game all have unique and distinct character designs, which is something I always like to see in RPGs. Though the game does copy the same shopkeeper characters between each town, for some reason.

Each NPC stays in their designated spot the whole game, but their dialogue does update as the story progresses. And they do play with this in silly ways too - one NPC in Sailor's Village is always rolling around on the ground for some reason. And every time the dialogue updates, his reason for rolling around is also different each time. There's a subtle sense of humour here.

When you talk to NPCs, the camera zooms in to show them closer, so you can get a good look at them. And they all have very expressive animations too. There's a shopkeeper who fiddles with his moustache, there's the guild hall keeper who puts away his book when you approach... All sorts of lovely little touches that makes everything feel more alive. It's great stuff.

...

The world map is explored by airship - you can sail freely up and down in 3D space as you travel between the floating islands that make up the world. There is no fast-travel system, nor any teleportation magic - all travelling has to be done via the ship in the overworld

At first, your explorable area is quite limited, as there are barrier reefs and walls of wind preventing you from accessing areas too early. As you progress through the game, your ship receives upgrades that allow it to pass through more types of overworld barriers.

The progression of the game starts off unassumingly formulaic at first. It seems like it'll be a straightforward journey of collecting each Moon Crystal from each dungeon in turn. ...but partway through, things become much more complex, and the story strays from the Moon Crystal quest several times. It's always fun to see what is going to happen next.

At one point, there is a moment where you must amass 75000 gold in order to fund the construction of a new base of operations. And this isn't some sidequest, this is mandatory! The prior dungeon did give you a lot of gold for defeating the boss, but if you decided to spend that on weapon and armour upgrades, you'd better be ready to grind for money!

Honestly, I think it's pretty cool. I do like an RPG that isn't afraid to actually make you pay attention to its various systems, including things like how to earn money effectively.

...

As you explore the world, you may notice your compass spinning wildly - this indicates that there is a "discovery" nearby. A discovery is a hidden landmark of some kind, which appears in the overworld when you find it. It could be an ancient artifact, a manmade structure, a strange plant, a local delicacy, a natural phenomenon - there are all sorts of things. Every discovery you find has a little description which tells you more about it - the history, the mythologies, the local legends, and anything else that might be interesting.

When you make a discovery, you can sell the information about its whereabouts to the guild hall in town. You can also buy hints about the locations of discoveries that are yet to be found. When you sell a discovery, you get a lot of money if you found it all by yourself. If you bought a hint beforehand, you get less money, but still a decent amount. And if you leave it for too long, then a rival explorer named Domingo will have found it first. If you sell info for any discoveries marked as "Found by Domingo", then you only earn a paltry sum, just a token prize for reconfirming what they already knew.

I think this system is quite fun - this is a pirate game after all, we're supposed to be in an age of exploration, and the game provides that feeling well enough with these discoveries. This is a great way to flesh out the world with more interesting worldbuilding that allows the game world to feel bigger than what is playable. Some of the discoveries are little villages or towns that you don't get to visit... but just seeing that there are more settlements out there helps the world feel more realised. Plus, the system where Domingo can find them before you adds just a touch of urgency to keep you wanting to look for them. It's fun stuff. 

Though it has to be said, some of the discoveries can be very difficult to locate without using an online guide. There are 88 discoveries to find in total, and some of them are in some very hidden spots, and several of them move around! There's a particularly annoying discovery for a swarm of butterflies that flies around the whole world, high in the sky, almost out of view. It's difficult to find them even if you already know exactly what you're looking for. ...

Annoyingly, you do have to contend with a barrage of random enemy encounters while roaming the skies in your ship, so searching for discoveries without a guide can be a tiresome affair.

The guild hall also has another function - it has a selection of wanted posters, and you can choose to accept their quests to defeat the opponent and claim the bounty.

These wanted poster fights can actually be quite a lot higher-levelled than your team is at the point where they become available, which may force you to have to come back later. The prizes from these optional fights tend to be really good though.

I do enjoy when a game gives you the opportunity to fight way overpowered foes. Because it gives a particularly tactically-minded player an opportunity to test their knowledge of the combat system.

...

Your party members can equip one weapon, one armour, and one accessory each.

Sometimes the armour has specific attributes, such as "strong versus fire", but, to be honest... most of the time, I'm going to be equipping the armour with the best stats, and if the extra attributes ever end up helping, that's just a circumstantial lucky moment, I guess. I wonder if it would be beneficial to plan my equipment with the enemies in mind... but wouldn't that require me to already know what my foe is like before I fight them? 🤔

Well, it is actually possible to swap your equipment mid-battle in this game, which is good. But, I never...remember to. Haha. It's always a fiddly kind of thing to remember to do that.

The fact that there is only one accessory slot for each character is a little bit limiting. Because I found myself settling on a "favourite" accessory I never wanted to take off, which means that, for every new one I acquired, I would look at it, and then immediately disregard it because it wasn't better than my favourite.

For Vyse, I kept the Captain's Hat on him for the majority of the game, an accessory that significantly boosts Attack. For Aika, I eventually settled on an accessory that blocks status conditions, which is super-useful in avoiding being completely devastated when bosses use party-wide status-inflicting attacks.

The game has all sorts of accessories with all sorts of effects, but with the limitation of only one slot per character, I don't think there is much opportunity to make use of them all. Because I'm never going to want to remove the Captain's Hat from Vyse, the strength bonus is just too crazy good to not keep.

Even though it would make the game easier, I think it would actually be more interesting if characters had two accessory slots to work with. They could also make some bosses harder to compensate, right? Oh well.

Thankfully, whenever it's time to say goodbye to a temporary party member, all of their gear goes back in the inventory. It's good that I don't have to worry about them losing my stuff.

In addition to equipping your party members, you can also equip your airship with equipment. Various different cannons and various different armour platings and furnishings. Again, the slots are annoyingly limited, which means that some of the more unique items get left on the wayside in favour of the more practical ones.

The ship's stats are useful for the ship combat, which is a whole thing separate from the regular combat system..

...I guess I should talk about the combat system then!

...

The regular combat system is for the most part a typical turn-based JRPG combat system, though it does have a few unique aspects that make it stand out.

Your available commands are:

Attack, Magic, Super Moves, Focus, Defend. ...and Run.

Each party member has their own HP and MP, and there is also a shared party-wide SP gauge.

The SP gauge is always reset to its default value at the beginning of every battle, while HP and MP are persistent. The default SP value increases as your party members' "Spirit" stat increases via level-ups, though it doesn't increase very often.

Regular attacks are interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, you have the ability to select an elemental affinity for your weapon at any time, just by pressing the X and Y buttons to toggle between them. There are six elements, each corresponding to the colours of the six moons.

Unfortunately, it's a little difficult to actually make good decisions about your element, because the game never actually gives you information about the opponent's elements at all.

There is one boss fight against two guardians, one fiery and one icy, where it's pretty obvious, but aside from that, I never found it necessary to particularly care about what element my weapon was.

The elemental chart is shown in the game's instruction booklet, and it's kind of interesting - it's not particularly balanced at all. Fire and Ice are strong versus each other, of course... and Silver weapons don't have any elements that resist them at all. So if you are ever in doubt for which element to use, Silver will at least never be detrimental.

The other thing regular attacks have is that they can be countered. Any time you use a regular attack, there is a chance that the enemy will immediately respond with their own regular attack.

This actually goes both ways too - regular attacks from enemies can be countered by the player's party too. Which is pretty fun.

But this does lead to some interesting strategic decisions - if you are fighting a boss with particularly strong attacks, it might be a problem if they can get too many hits on the same character in a single turn. So it might actually be a good idea to select Defend instead of Attack in these cases, to eliminate the risk of taking a counterattack. It's an interesting little wrinkle in the combat system.

Every magic spell costs 1 MP to use, plus some of the partywide SP gauge. The SP cost is variable depending on the spell, but the MP cost is always 1.

All characters learn the same list of spells, but different characters learn them at different rates. Fina learns spells the quickest, and by the end of the game, it is likely she will have learned every spell in the game. Vyse learns spells at an average rate, and he will probably not have learned every spell by the end, but it could be done if you wanted to grind.

The element of spell you learn depends on which element weapon you finish combat with. If you set your weapon to green, then you will earn some Green Magic EXP. This applies to the whole party, not just the wielder, so you can have your whole team learn four colours at once by making sure everyone has their weapons set to different elements. .... this is the other reason why I never particularly bothered to care about the elemental effectiveness system when choosing my weapon colours - learning spells was a way more important reason to swap elements!

The spells are... honestly, I never felt like using them as much as my other options. At the beginning of the game, MP is quite limited. And towards the end of the game, my SP was FAR better used for doing Super Moves rather than magic.

Magic is useful between battles for healing, though, since the SP cost is irrelevant outside of battle. Even a strong partywide heal still just costs 1 MP. That's pretty good.

The best spells to use are the heals, revives, and party buffs. 

The worst spells to use are the enemy debuffs. Because... debuffing basically never works in this game. ... it's a common problem with older RPGs, where trying to cast debuffs on enemies often fails and wastes your turn. And Skies of Arcadia, sorry to say, is one of the worst examples of this problem I have seen. I have basically never gotten a debuff to work against a boss. And for regular enemies, there's no point in trying to debuff them when I could just damage them instead. ...

Another reason why spells aren't so great is because of items. There are items that basically do the same job a spell does. Healing, buffing, and even casting offensive magic, there are items that can do all of these things. And the difference is, it doesn't cost any SP at all to use an item! 

Quite often, I wouldn't have enough SP to use both a Super Move and heal on the same turn.... unless I stopped trying to heal with magic, and instead healed with an item. Then it's all good!

The downside of using items is that you have to spend money on buying more of them if you use them a lot... Which is fine for the game-wide balance, but for the in-the-moment balance, items are just plain better than spells. Which is a bit of a shame.

So, the Super Moves, unlike magic, are unique per character. They are learned by finding rare Moonberries, and using them on your party members, which unlocks their super moves. Moonberries are found in chests throughout the game, but they are also rare drops from certain enemies, so they are not a finite resource. (though they aren't good for anything other than unlocking super moves, so farming too many spare moonberries doesn't do you any good).

Super Moves are strong and unique attacks. Most Super Moves focus on dealing high amounts of damage, and they cost large amounts of SP to use. There are also some with unique effects too.

Vyse has the best super moves for dealing with single enemies. Cutlass Fury in the earlygame, and Pirate's Wrath in the endgame. They are Vyse's main heavy damage-dealers, and you always want to go for these moves during bosses. 

Vyse also gets an interesting super move, Skull Shield, that makes the team immune to regular attacks and counters, though it doesn't do anything if the enemy chooses to do something other than a regular attack... some strategy may be required to make good use of some of these moves, it seems.

Aika has the best super moves for dealing with groups of enemies. Lambda Burst hits every enemy, and does a lot of damage as long as they aren't resistant to magic. Her lategame move Omega Psyclone is even stronger. She also has a unique skill called Epsilon Mirror, which renders her completely immune to damage for one turn and restores 10 MP. 

Because of this MP restoration, I used Aika as my main healer between battles. Whenever she got low on MP mid-dungeon from all the between-battle healing, I'd make sure to get into a battle and use an Epsilon Mirror to get it all back for free. Free healing, no wasted potions. Pretty sweet!

Fina's super moves are interesting, as she has the ability to remove enemy buffs with Lunar Cleansing, cast regeneration on the team with Lunar Blessing, and with her most powerful super move, Lunar Light, she can completely revive all allies to maximum HP, including downed allies. That certainly came pretty handy in the hardest endgame fights.

I would say that, overall, Aika has the most useful super moves. If you keep getting into encounters with groups of enemies, Lambda Burst can very often just kill the majority of them right away. It's super good. Especially when dealing with lower-level enemies who you just want to get rid of. There were definitely entire dungeons I traversed where my strategy for every encounter was to just open with Lambda Burst right away. 

Focus is pretty simple - it spends your turn in exchange for adding some SP to the gauge. This is useful when you really need Vyse to use Cutlass Fury next turn. Having a buffer of SP is good.

And Defend will reduce any damage by half. Very useful if you want to keep Fina alive, since she is on the frail side, and her incredibly useful super moves aren't so good if she's dead. :(

.... Overall, I actually really enjoy the mechanics of this battle system. The partywide SP gauge is the main unique element that makes this game stand out. It's quite a strategic system, and some of the tougher bosses can be a real exciting test of endurance!

However...... the biggest problem with this battle system is that everything is really really slow! As a 2000s-era JRPG, the animations, the camera zooms, everything is just.... so.... slow... :(

You really do have to just accept that this is a slow-paced combat system, and just take it as it comes. Otherwise you'll get too frustrated and impatient. Slow down, leave your modern expectations at the door, and learn to enjoy it as it comes. ... ... ... ...Yeah, even then, I still wish it wasn't so slow.

There is a way to skip some of the super move animations, but it requires you to press the Start button at the very beginning of the animation. If you wait too long, the animation becomes unskippable. ... .... I'm not sure why that is. I actually didn't realise you could skip animations until a significant way through the game because the input is so specific. That's no good.

...

And as I mentioned, there's also an entirely separate combat system for fighting enemy ships. Ship-to-ship naval combat!

In these types of battles, you see a timeline that shows the enemy ship's status for the next four turns - green means no significant threat, yellow means a strong attack, red means a very strong attack, and if there's a "C" icon, it means they are extra vulnerable that turn. ...you have to then place four commands, one on each turn, in order to make the best of the situation. For example, if the "C" icon is on a red turn, that means you'll have to risk taking heavy damage in order to deal more damage to them. Or you could play it safe and defend on the red turn, and miss out on the bonus damage.

Your options are to shoot your equipped cannons, use magic, focus for SP, or defend. 

In this system, even the regular cannonfire costs SP to use, so you do need to manage your SP well.

Occasionally, some turns will be marked with a special cannon icon, which indicates that your super-cannon is possible to use on that turn. It costs a ton of SP to fire, but is also the main way to make a dent in an otherwise heavily-guarded enemy. You always want to be able to hit as many of those special cannon opportunities as possible.

Between rounds, you also get dialogue choices that affect what the next set of four turns will look like. The choices can be things like, "Vyse, should we approach from the top, or should we stay back?"

Depending on your choice, the timeline will look different, though it is not always obvious which choice leads to which outcome.

.....so, these naval combat sequences are honestly my least-favourite part of the game. And the main reason for that is that...... oh man, if you thought the regular combat was slow-paced, these naval combat scenes are GLACIAL. They are ridiculously slow. It's absurd. During one of these battles, you are very often just watching the screen, looking at two ships flying in the sky near each other, with nothing but fancy camera angles going on for an extended period of time. It's ridiculous. Between each turn in a round, there's like 5 to 10 seconds of just NOTHING happening. It's absurdly slow.

I wonder if it was designed like this in order to give the naval battles more gravitas? Since it is a battle between two huge war ships, it should feel grand and heavy, right? ....but I think it is a real detriment to the game, unfortunately. I really do wish there was a way to skip these slow animations and just focus on the strategising, which is the good part.

oh well. anyway. what next.

...

The dungeon design in this game starts off very straightforward. In fact, it's not until the third or fourth dungeon before you start seeing any branching paths to any significant degree. The dungeons start off straightforward and easygoing, so all you need to really worry about is making progress and fighting the enemies.

Later dungeons do introduce some more decisions to make about which path to take, but it never really becomes too complicated.

The dungeons are nicely varied in terms of aesthetics and enemy design, which makes each one stand out and feel unique, despite the simple layouts. It works out fine overall. I wouldn't call the dungeon designs one of this game's strengths, but they do their job and are on the whole not a chore to explore.

The most annoying dungeon was the mine with lots of trapdoors, where if you take the wrong trapdoor, it leads back to the beginning. This one is especially annoying because you're not allowed to leave until you get to the end, but there isn't a save point until just before the boss. ..... This means you have to basically solve the whole dungeon just to save. I really wish they just put a save point in the room you land in after taking the wrong trapdoor. It's a bit of a bad oversight in my opinion.

...

This game has a hidden "Swashbuckler rating" that determines Vyse's reputation as a pirate.

When you get enough points, your title will upgrade. You get swashbuckler points by selecting the correct dialogue options during the cutscenes. You always want to go for the options that make Vyse sound cool and brave and heroic. If you get the choice between something like "We have to rescue them right away!" versus something like "Maybe we shouldn't go in there just yet...", well, the more heroic option gives you more points.

Your Swashbuckler rank starts off as "Vyse the Unimpressive", and as you continue making the correct dialogue choices in cutscenes, the rating can improve. "Vyse the Determined", "Vyse the Admirable", "Vyse the Valiant", allll the way up to the maximum rank, "Vyse the Legend". I believe Legend rank also has some additional requirements too, such as attaining 100% completion in other areas. I'm not too sure on the specifics.

The rank doesn't affect much - some NPCs will mention it, and shopkeepers will be honoured to greet Vyse with a high ranking, which is a cute detail.

There are a few bonuses you get for managing to reach Legend rank, including Vyse's ultimate weapon, as well as a bonus secret boss fight. These are cool rewards. :D

Other than these, though, it's not all that important.

There is a specific interaction where, if you accept one particular wanted poster quest, Vyse's rank temporarily becomes "Vyse the Fallen Pirate". This is because the wanted poster is for a Vyse imposter, named "Vize", who has been going around stealing and tricking people and sullying Vyse's good name. I think this is a funny detail, I like it when story elements can affect the game systems like this, it's cool. And of course, defeating the imposter restores Vyse's reputation back to where it should be.

...

Later in the game, once Vyse properly becomes captain of his own ship, we establish a base on Crescent Isle, and Vyse also can start assembling his crew.

This system actually reminded me quite a lot of Suikoden. It works in a similar way. You can find recruitable crew members all over the world - if they have their own name and a cool character design, it's a good sign that they might be someone you can recruit. Some of them will join right away, but others may require you to meet some sort of criteria before they can join.

There are 22 crew members to find in total. .... not quite the 108 from Suikoden, eh? But still, it's a sizable sidequest to find everyone.

Each crew member has a role, and there are two of each role to find in the game. You can toggle between the two characters for each role, each one providing some kind of mutually-exclusive bonus during ship battles. For example, there are two Engineers: Brabham, or Hans. If you have Brabham active, your ship gets +20 defense. If you have Hans active, then your ship instead gets +20 magic defense.

Some of the crew members are actually usable as commands during a ship battle too. There are two Sailors: Marco, or Robinson. Having Marco active will give you a command that doubles your SP mid-battle. Having Robinson active will give you a command that reduces SP cost instead. ...To be honest, some of these differences don't actually make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things...

Each character will appear aboard your ship somewhere, and they have unique and story-relevant dialogue if you go and talk to them. It can be very fun to see what everyone has to say in between each story beat, but in practice, it's really annoying to actually do this, because they only appear on the ship if they are the currently-active member of their role. The other ones just disappear when you unequip them. So in order to see all the dialogue, you have to do the rounds of your ship, talk to everyone, then toggle all 11 roles to the other option, then do the rounds and talk to everyone again. 

I honestly wish that all 22 members were just always visible and interactable on the ship at all times, without having to fiddle around in the menus to get them to appear. That kind of annoys me to be honest.

But I guess it makes sense, the idea is that you only need one member of each role aboard at a time, that's the whole reason you gotta choose in the first place. ...But I kinda just want to see all the dialogue lol. The actual gameplay differences between each crew member isn't so important.

Each crew member also takes their place in Crescent Isle. Some of them set up shop, while others just hang around and have dialogue. It's really nice just to go around talking to everyone. It's fun to see the island become more lively as you recruit more crew members.

...And this is definitely a rather Suikoden-flavoured aspect of the game, heh. :D

...

Overall. ... ... I really really really liked Skies of Arcadia Legends! It has such a fun cast of characters, the story is well-presented and interesting, and the combat system is quite deep despite its slow pace. I'm super happy to have played this lovely RPG that's been in my backlog for an incredibly long time. I do wish that if Sega ever releases this game for modern platforms, they include a battle speed-up button!