Paladin's Quest - Part 2

Well it's been a while since my last post. My wife and I have both started school again and started looking for a new place to live closer to the city so that's been consuming lots of my time.

Anyway enough of that, Paladin's Quest!

This is from the game's intro... I should have addressed it in the last post but oh well, here it is.




This is the Tower of Gabnid!

Just a little more gushing about the art. Does this look like a tower to you? I never understood how it worked at all... how do you enter it? Through this tiny spike at the top of building? At any rate, despite the inherent confusion of this image, It has also always intrigued me. I've never forgotten the Tower of Gabnid seemingly balancing on this tiny spike.










So this is a great little series of events. Essentially this dungeon, Denebra Mountain, is really small. If you could just walk to the summit from the beginning it would be over in a snap, but they extend the dungeon by sending you on a wild goose chase to repair a bridge.

In doing so you end up retracing your steps a few times, extending the length of the dungeon by making you walk all over it a few times. Too much of this can make a game extremely irritating, thankfully, I don't think Paladin's Quest does this often; Paladin's Quest tends to administer its challenges not by the length of its dungeons, but by the difficulty of the random battles in the dungeons. It makes the game seem much more threatening.






Man, check out the mouth on Jarmlu.

Crazy. That's all I've really got to say. Oh and why is he so much different than all the other pupbirds?





Maybe I can get a link to the song going somehow... The song, Godom Lullaby, that plays at this point is both haunting and beautiful. LINK'D!

We're at Jurayn now. Just another weird window text arrangement. Is it just me or do you find it a little confusing, too?

This is my strategy! Now that I know how to properly upgrade your spirit levels, (just use them once per battle; it's all about the number of battles, not the number of times used in a battle) I have Chezni and Midia at very healthy spirit levels already. Since this game's dungeons are relatively short, and Sophie's Crown restores 800HP to Midia any time in battle, you can usually get straight through a dungeon and its boss without running out of healing bottles, before your next re-fill.

With all of this in mind, I use spirits in battle almost exclusively... Therefore I don't need a primary weapon... Meaning that I can grab 2 shields for Chezni and Midia! Extra defense! Woot.

Alright that's it for this post, maybe I'll get to Daphne's cave for the next post? We'll see how it goes!

Paladin's Quest - Part 1

So my first game to start off this blog is going to be Paladin's Quest.

WARNING SPOILERS ALL OVER THE PLACE.

What an interesting game. What I loved about this game back in the day was the imagination behind it. The setting, the art, the races, the politics of Naskuot and Saskuot. It wasn't just another fantasy setting with human heroes on a very earth like world. Lennus was really like a different planet... I mean the trees were perfect circles!

That might have turned some people off but it intrigued me. Who thought this world up? For some reason, I have a memory of reading somewhere that Paladin's Quest, was based off of a novel. I have not been able to verify that anywhere, but I want it to be true. The fantasy of Lennus almost seems too well realized for such a "simple" SNES RPG.

I also remembered this game being ridiculously hard when I first played it. I think I eventually beat it, but I died so many times and ran from so many battles. It was unforgiving.

So here I go again, with a more mature perspective and sense of strategy :)





This true title screen only appears after the intro events that lead to Chezni leaving the magic school. Truth be told, I like it when games have title screens part way through their beginning.

So something that is interesting to me right away is the text spacing between dialog windows. Here are some examples:
















and...


















This kind of thing occurs all the time in the game; where sentences are spliced between two windows, leaving just a word or two left over in it's own window, causing things to read a little strangely. If you weren't really paying that much attention to the window previous or you skipped it by accident, you have no hope of figuring out what came first with only "school" or "anything special" to go by.

I'm sure it's just an artifact from the Japanese translation, but I think most games today would at least take the time to organize the ideas into some sort of "meaningful-chunks-per-window".






I remember when I first played this game, I found this part so mysterious. I mean, it's not, saying yes to this dialog option at this point in the game is really the only thing you can do. But I just remember being so intrigued the first time I played by this segment. What was going to happen? Scripted annihilation in battle? Yes!!!



















I wish this game had more exposition like this. It happens so infrequently in this game that it seems almost out of place but to me it gives the game more flavour. Back before you had lens flares and pixel shaders and so on, there was just your imagination. Remember those arguments that playing RPGs was like reading a novel? Well, you need more of this to make it count for anything.


Anyways... I'm actually a bit farther than these screens would lead you to believe. I'm about to retrieve the Pupbirds with Tiger, but there was already so much to say about the intro that I had to take a break to write this.

Till next time!

First Post

So I've been playing Paladin's Quest and Lufia & The Fortress of Doom for the SNES when I realized:

Hey, I've been wanting to start a video game blog for some time now, but what should it be about? Well, besides video games...

And then it hit me, classic SNES RPGs. From a modern gaming perspective. A revisiting, if you will.

Final Fantasy 2 and 3 (or 4 and 6 if you prefer), Mystic Quest, Illusion of Gaia, Paladin's Quest, Lufia, Secret of Mana, Evermore, Earthbound etc.... All these games hold a special place in my heart and in my mind, which seems to constantly crave nostalgic gratification.

So I figured I'd blog about it. And any other gaming goodies I feel like blogging about. It's a gaming blog, what more do you want?

Anyway, this is the obligatory first post, introducing my blog and what it's going to be about. The Vision. I don't really have much beyond this. Maybe I'll post some screenshots too, along with my entries. I'm open for any suggestions at this point.


I wonder if I'll regret any of this in the morning? I have had a lot of wine...


So, without further ado, Video Gamezzz!!!!!






I guess I should get around to figuring out which game I should start with...