Defenders of Oasis

 Defenders of Oasis

I just played Defenders of Oasis.

This is a Sega Game Gear game released in 1992. This game was also released on the 3DS eShop, and that's the version I played.

When the 3DS eShop's closure was announced, I went ahead and bought as many interesting-looking games I could before it was too late. ...And this was one of them! Might take me a while to work my way through all the games I bought....

Defenders of Oasis is a small traditional JRPG-style game for the Game Gear. 

The setting is a fantasy world with an "Arabian Nights" flavour to it. You play as the Prince of Shanadar Kingdom, who has to defend his kingdom from the evil Empire of Eflaat. The Empire is looking to steal three powerful rings that can be used to awaken the power of a dark god.

The game for the most part plays like a rather simple old-school RPG with traditional turn-based battles. It's pretty fun, though as always in these kinds of games, the random encounter rate can feel a bit too high.

The battle system has a couple of interesting quirks to it that set it apart from other old-school RPGs. Interestingly, the "Poison" status does not behave like typical RPG poison. It actually behaves more like a "Doomed" status, where you are given a set amount of turns before you get KOd instantly. Normally in other RPGs, this kind of instakill status effect is rare and reserved for high-level threats. But in Defenders of Oasis, poison is super duper common. Thankfully poison cures (called "Snake Act" for some reason) are cheap in shops. 

...Though honestly, there is never any real worry about failure in this game, even with the constant threat of instakill poison. Firstly - after a battle ends, all KOd party members are revived, which is handy... but the bigger thing that affects the stakes of battle is actually the game's saving system. 

The game does not feature a save option at all - instead, the game relies entirely on autosaves. And the autosaves in this game are generous. In fact, they are INCREDIBLY generous. This game actually does an autosave before EVERY SINGLE random encounter. This means that, if you get wiped out by a monster, you can just reload the save and you're right where you were before the fight. This also means that you never have to worry about running away from battles either - if you fail to run, you can just reboot the software - and since it saved just before the fight started, you will reload exactly where you left off, in basically the same way as if the run DID succeed. ...In fact, you don't even need to bother selecting the "run" command in the first place... Just reboot the game the moment the battle begins lol. You lose literally no progress doing this, and can skip any encounter you want.

So it's weird. This is a game with some tough enemies and frequent encounters, yet it also gives you a way of bypassing them extremely easily.

However, you'd better not skip too many battles, otherwise you won't have enough EXP for the tough bosses, nor enough money to buy the next equipment. 

...it's certainly a strange dynamic, to have a game that is simultaneously very oldschool-feeling in its RPG design, yet at the same time very very player-friendly like this.

...

Early on in the adventure, the Prince finds a magic lamp, and gains the Genie as his companion.

Later in the game, the Prince also meets two more companions: Saleem the sailor and Agmar the thief.

The Genie is different from the other three party members in that he does not gain EXP or use equipment, but instead he upgrades his stats by using specific items - Gold, Hemp, Crystals - basically things that can make jewelry I guess. Some of these items can be found from enemy drops or bought, but for the most part these are found in treasure chests.

The Genie is also the only character who has MP and can use magic spells, including healing and buff magic.

One of his spells lets him take a nap inside his lamp for the rest of the battle, withdrawing from the fight and recovering some MP. This is actually the only way to restore MP in the whole game other than resting in town, so it's quite useful, despite how silly it is.

I like that they made the Genie so unique compared to the other three characters - it makes a rather simple RPG a little more interesting.

The dungeons are typical classic RPG-style mazes with constant enemy encounters, though they do each have some unique setpieces and puzzles that make each one stand out. Inside the dungeons you can also find ancient scripture written on plaques that gives the Genie new spells, as well as some that just offer puzzle hints.

Unusually for an old RPG like this, there is no "world map" overworld area at all. There are only four or so towns, and the surrounding areas around the towns are just pathways that lead to the nearby dungeons. The only way to travel to other towns is to use the Genie's teleportation spell, which is interesting - it's the only time I've seen a teleportation spell in an RPG be necessary to travel to the next town in the story - normally these kinds of things are only used for revisiting previous areas.

The lack of an overworld is a good thing for this game in my opinion - it keeps the story short and streamlined, and it suits the fast pace of the adventure better. And a fast-paced short adventure makes a lot of sense for an RPG on the Game Gear, a device that notoriously had really terrible battery life lol.

Overall, it's a fairly typical retro RPG, but it's one that I really liked. It's very short, simple, fast-paced, and rather abnormally player-friendly with its autosaves. I do think there are way too many enemy encounters (as is typical of this era of RPGs), but aside from this, I don't have anything bad to say about this game at all. It's a fun game! ...Though ultimately it's not too remarkable. I do like the theming though - an Arabian Nights-style setting with a magic genie in a lamp as your companion makes for a nice change of pace from the typical medieval style of RPG fantasy.