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Play With Your Buddies / Let's play Chaos World (obscure yet awesome NES JRPG)
« on: May 14, 2009, 07:27:24 am »
I don't know how many people are really interested in these, but I'm finding that I really like doing Let's Play threads--they give me an excuse to replay cool old games I'd probably be playing anyhow, except this way I can pretend I'm doing something vaguely constructive.
So without further ado here's Chaos World, the best RPG ever made for the NES. Final Fansaywhatnow? DIDN'T THINK SO.
Most people have probably never heard of it, seeing as it was never released outside of Japan, appeared late in the Famicon's life cycle, and didn't really have a franchise. It's not like the developer went on to become known for this kind of game, either.
Yes, that's the company that does Harvest Moon. Apparently before they were in the business of making monotony simulators they made ridiculously awesome standard JRPGs.
Since I don't read Japanese I'm playing using the fan translation from Aeon Genesis (coincidentally, I just noticed they were the ones who translated Ball Bullet Gun). Copyright diehards will be relieved to know that the ROM I am using it on was not downloaded illegally but rather obtained through a vague but completely legal series of events too elaborate to be detailed here. Suffice to say it involved a beach umbrella, a freight car's worth of cashews, a barber, a rabbi, a stuffed moose, six quarts of grape Kool-Aid and exactly two and a half live ducks.
It's been a while since I've played through this but I seem to recall the translation as being pretty decent at least as far as dialogue goes, although some of the interface menus aren't very polished and there are actually a few incomplete bits. But that's okay as the incompleteness shows up in combat messages that are pretty easy to figure out from context.
It's a pretty good looking game as far as NES games go. Battles aren't quite as impressive looking but the scenery is very nice.
OK! Let's begin.
There's not a ton of room for interactivity in this game but that's probably alright as the LP following on this forum doesn't seem to be active enough to sustain highly interactive threads. Still, there are a couple choices to make as far as our lead character goes.
(I had mentioned the fan translation left some of the menus unpolished, hence why the dialogue box is clearly large enough to fit "Priest" but Th(ie)f and B(i)sh(o)p get truncated; presumably there wasn't enough room to expand the Japanese strings without lots of rearranging within the ROM.)
We need to choose a name (5 letters), a class, and a gender. The gender is not merely cosmetic; it actually does have a pretty marked impact on a character's statistics. Normally this would offend my egalitarian sensibilities but I am prepared to cut Chaos World some slack on account of its general awesomeness.
Generally speaking, male characters lean towards physical offense and defensive magic; female characters lean towards physical defense and offensive magic. In some cases there's not a huge difference between the two genders, but for some classes the male and female options play rather differently.
Fighters, priests, and wizards are all standard-issue RPG classes. Knights are mostly fighter clones; there exists only 1 NPC of each gender for each class, so presumably knights exist so that players can double up on physical attackers if they want. Thieves are second-string attackers with good physical defense and a very little bit of MP to cast basic utility spells. Shaman are middleweight fighters with the ability to cast both priest and wizard spells (but with less MP than either); they also have outstanding magical defense, but not much physical defense. Bishops are more powerful, better-rounded versions of shaman--which is to say, they do fricken everything although not quite as well as the specialists--but this comes at the cost of having obscenely slow levelups compared to other classes.
We'll eventually be able to recruit up to a party of 4 by hiring NPCs; as mentioned there will be 1 NPC for each class/gender combo, but there won't be one that's the same as the main character (so no doubling up that way). For now we only get to pick the starting character's class/gender, so call out suggestions.
So without further ado here's Chaos World, the best RPG ever made for the NES. Final Fansaywhatnow? DIDN'T THINK SO.
Most people have probably never heard of it, seeing as it was never released outside of Japan, appeared late in the Famicon's life cycle, and didn't really have a franchise. It's not like the developer went on to become known for this kind of game, either.
Yes, that's the company that does Harvest Moon. Apparently before they were in the business of making monotony simulators they made ridiculously awesome standard JRPGs.
Since I don't read Japanese I'm playing using the fan translation from Aeon Genesis (coincidentally, I just noticed they were the ones who translated Ball Bullet Gun). Copyright diehards will be relieved to know that the ROM I am using it on was not downloaded illegally but rather obtained through a vague but completely legal series of events too elaborate to be detailed here. Suffice to say it involved a beach umbrella, a freight car's worth of cashews, a barber, a rabbi, a stuffed moose, six quarts of grape Kool-Aid and exactly two and a half live ducks.
It's been a while since I've played through this but I seem to recall the translation as being pretty decent at least as far as dialogue goes, although some of the interface menus aren't very polished and there are actually a few incomplete bits. But that's okay as the incompleteness shows up in combat messages that are pretty easy to figure out from context.
It's a pretty good looking game as far as NES games go. Battles aren't quite as impressive looking but the scenery is very nice.
OK! Let's begin.
There's not a ton of room for interactivity in this game but that's probably alright as the LP following on this forum doesn't seem to be active enough to sustain highly interactive threads. Still, there are a couple choices to make as far as our lead character goes.
(I had mentioned the fan translation left some of the menus unpolished, hence why the dialogue box is clearly large enough to fit "Priest" but Th(ie)f and B(i)sh(o)p get truncated; presumably there wasn't enough room to expand the Japanese strings without lots of rearranging within the ROM.)
We need to choose a name (5 letters), a class, and a gender. The gender is not merely cosmetic; it actually does have a pretty marked impact on a character's statistics. Normally this would offend my egalitarian sensibilities but I am prepared to cut Chaos World some slack on account of its general awesomeness.
Generally speaking, male characters lean towards physical offense and defensive magic; female characters lean towards physical defense and offensive magic. In some cases there's not a huge difference between the two genders, but for some classes the male and female options play rather differently.
Fighters, priests, and wizards are all standard-issue RPG classes. Knights are mostly fighter clones; there exists only 1 NPC of each gender for each class, so presumably knights exist so that players can double up on physical attackers if they want. Thieves are second-string attackers with good physical defense and a very little bit of MP to cast basic utility spells. Shaman are middleweight fighters with the ability to cast both priest and wizard spells (but with less MP than either); they also have outstanding magical defense, but not much physical defense. Bishops are more powerful, better-rounded versions of shaman--which is to say, they do fricken everything although not quite as well as the specialists--but this comes at the cost of having obscenely slow levelups compared to other classes.
We'll eventually be able to recruit up to a party of 4 by hiring NPCs; as mentioned there will be 1 NPC for each class/gender combo, but there won't be one that's the same as the main character (so no doubling up that way). For now we only get to pick the starting character's class/gender, so call out suggestions.
