I've never had a "least favorite" game before.
They say you're never the same afterwards.
Well, congratulations Astralius. You've become my first.
With all the awful games I've played in my life, and all the Deep Blues and Basteds and Night Creatures and Legions that I've managed to find places in my heart for, I've never come across a game that pissed me off because of its shittiness quite as much as this one.
Where do I begin...
-The heroes walk SLOWLY. And I mean INSANELY SLOWLY. You thought the Faussete Amour and Beyond Shadowgate people were slow? They're Sonics compared to this bunch.
-There are battles every step of the way. And in some cases, I mean that quite literally. Take a slow step. Battle. Step. Battle. Two steps! Battle. Time slips away and after a while you realize for all the battles you've fought, you've explored but one hallway of a dungeon that's absolutely massive compared to your small, slow, dimwitted character.
-The battles are carried out in a ridiculously goofy way. You'd have to see it to understand how goofy it is, but here's a hint: one of your options during the fight is to see your enemy. Yes, you read that correctly. See what the enemy looks like. Because much of the time in battles is spent with nothing but text windows on a black screen.
-The enemies in these battles take hit after hit after worthless hit from your incompetent band of warriors. When you finally win, remember that another battle is literally just a step away!
-This is one of those obsolete RPGs where you select attack targets for your characters at the beginning of each round, and if their target gets killed (or in this stupid game, runs away), they lose their turn completely rather than moving on to a remaining creature.
-The walking slowly stuff even becomes a pain in towns. Did you think you would be allowed to save and heal in the same spot? Hell no! The respective buildings are often at the opposite ends of town, meaning you have to trudge S-L-O-W-L-Y from one to the other. If you aren't familiar with the layouts of the poorly drawn towns, this can take quite a while. And watch out for "obstacles": I once encountered the SHADOW of a house that my character bumped into and was unable to pass!
-The inconvenience doesn't end there. Simply talking to a townsperson requires you to bring up a window and select a command. Want to sell an item in a shop? You can hold plenty at once, and items you just take off (say, an old suit of armor that you just replaced with a new one) get placed at the very bottom of the list. You can't just push down on the control pad, you have to press down repeatedly to move through the items. And you can't sell more than one item at once. So if your whole party just got new stuff, selling the old stuff can take forever. And you can store stuff in a certain type of building, but that would mean walking slowly to the building in the first place, and then "scrolling" through the stuff you want to store (or retrieve).
-Then there's the camel. Desert sands are too hot for our poor heroes, so they need to buy and ride a camel. For some reason, after each random battle that occurs, your character will resume play OFF the camel. So if you're accustomed to just getting on with walking after battles, you'll find yourself walking away from your camel (and getting scorched in the process). Then you'll have to walk slowly back to him (and get scorched in the process). You will likely be attacked again on your way back, even though you probably aren't more than two steps away.
-During one stretch of camel riding, I kept getting attacked over and over and over and over to the point where I LITERALLY was moving BACKWARDS. Finally I got off the stupid camel and charged ahead, not caring about the damage from the hot sands. I found some building and retrieved an item which apparently lets me see the battle spots in the desert. Practically the entire screen was covered in battle spots. It was so insane that I just laughed ruefully and shut off the system.
-You'd think a game that concentrates so much on music (the heroes play instruments to perform their magic attacks) would have a decent soundtrack. Of course, this one doesn't. It's quite bad, in fact. The enemy art during the endless random battles is also awful.
-La Valeur is Ys Book I & II compared to this game. But I'm only like ten percent of the way through, if that. More fun to come!
