>>11391045
[cont]
Faithful to the original Momoden, this scenario has the most trolling, for instance the Kappa enemies are back: they can steal your items or even all your money and run away with it. One of the towns also has a literal tourist trap which can leave you in debt.
Not the best scenario gameplay wise but the final dungeon was fun. This scenario has a Zelda style second quest but I didn't bother with it because outside of the protagonist, very little seems to differ.
Urashima's scenario: the protagonist is based on the story of Urashima Taro, however the story has very little to do with it (after all, this was already used to some extent in the original Momoden). Instead it revolves around a Tanuki King who is causing mischief all around the continent with the help of his minions. Urashima is joined by a tanuki, himself the son of the Tanuki King, as well as a sumo wrestler. This scenario is just like DQ2: gameplay wise Urashima is like the prince of Cannock, the sumo wrestler is like the prince of Midenhall, and the tanuki is like the princess of Moonbrooke. It is also the most challenging scenario and requires the most grinding. The final dungeon is a grueling 10 floors area filled with puzzles and deadly enemies! You will die a lot! This scenario isn't shy on humour either, for instance one of the goal is to solve the issue in "fart village", the issue being everyone can't stop farting.
Yashahime's scenario: she is the daughter of the demon lord, IIRC the same one Momotarou defeated in the first game. These demons are now living in peace with humans but the demon Mandala is rebelling and Yashahime has to stop him. This scenario is like DQ3: the player must pick 3 extra party members out of 7 and they all have their specialities, many of which ressemble classes from DQ3. [cont]

>>11391045
>>11391050
[cont]
For instance DQ3's Goof-Off and Sage were divided into 2 characters: one full-on Goof-Off who can go as far as putting a curse on the player, and another character who is useless until lvl 16 at which point he becomes extremely powerful. I didn't use either though, I went with Ashura, Fujin and Raijin which turned out to be an extremely efficient party. The player must go up 13 floors of Hell, fighting several bosses along the way, and many floors have their gimmicks like a floor which is on fire or a floor covered in ice and snow.
This scenario offers the most customization and was fun because of it. It is also a bit grindy but less than Urashima's, I was always below the lvl recommendations the game gives and managed to get by, though this probably has to do with me picking strong characters from the start.

All in all the game has decent graphics though dated by late 1993, it looks more like a game from 90-91 (I mean, it is), good music, nice humour, and decent challenge. There are also some QOLs, for instance it is possible to get an explanation of what items do at any time (on the field, in shops, and even in battle), equipment shops also let you know how strong each piece is and who can equip it, there are convenient ways to warp back to town or to quickly return where you left off.
I wasn't expecting much but I enjoyed this game a lot, especially Urashima's scenario and its final dungeon which puts DQ2's Path to Rhone's to shame, which is not surprising considering DQ2 is my favourite DQ. This game definitely earnt its place in the "Comical medieval Japanese folklore" Famicom RPG subgenre. My only nitpick is how long the pauses for the text are during combat but that doesn't seem to be an issue in the PC-E version. Oh and obviously since we're dealing with shorter scenarios, overworld exploration is rather limited.

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>SD Gundam Gaiden - Knight Gundam Monogatari 2 - Hikari no Kishi

Released in 1991 and second in the trilogy. It continues the story of the first game but isn't a direct sequel, to the point this could be played independently.
As with the first game it's a pretty standard DQ clone but with SD Gundam flair. The combat graphics are just as nice as in the first game.
The encounter rate is pretty low, there is no real grinding required, and the difficulty is fairly easy (though not as braindead as something like Bikkuriman World).
Some interesting combat mechanics: being able to call for a character not currently in your party to help (though it will take a turn), some characters have special skills (though most of them weren't very useful), or being able to perform a group attack which is a nice way to finish off the last enemy in a fight. There is also auto battle.
However outside of a short segment there are only 2 spell users and only one with attacking spells, who isn't always available either.
The Cardass mini game is back and this time you won't lose your cards even if you win the battle, in fact you'll even win your opponent's cards!
Graphics and specifically dungeon graphics were more detailed and varied than in the first game.
In the first game it was possible to scout ahead on the world using a paper plane, without triggering random encounters. A similar mechanic is present here but it also works in dungeons!
Musics are okay overall but some of them are really short loops that will get on your nerves.
The game is laid out in 6 chapters though chapter 4 is the real meat of the game.
Overall this was a nice game but I think I enjoyed the first one more if only because it was a bit more challenging (there is a mechanic in this one which really breaks the game that I won't spoil) and also because IIRC it had better enemy variety (I don't think there is ever more than 2 different enemy types at once in this one).

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>SD Gundam Gaiden - Knight Gundam Monogatari 3 - Densetsu no Kishi Dan

Late 92 release, the story is completely seperate from the first two games and revolves around the knights of the round table, Knight Gundam style.
The mechanics are also different, there is no equipment shop and instead weapons and armors are to be upgraded using items found in dungeons. Battles are centered around 2 main commands: basic physical attacks, and special attacks which use up MP. Once a character runs out of MP he will be incapacitated (although items that restore MP can cure that) and some enemies also drain MP.
There are a total of 12 characters and starting from the mid game they are split into 2 teams and the story alternates between the two. The player gets to choose which character goes in which team (for the most part) at several points in the game.
There are also spells but out of the 12 characters there are only 2 spellcasters, plus the first one only appears half-way through the game. Spells are to be bought in shops and each mage can only carry 6. Spell usage is extremely limited, even the buffs spells lose their usefulness in the late game.
The game doesn't have items that can buff/debuff or attack either, so gameplay is extremely limited. With that said, the game still manages to be challenging, your characters will most likely die, and that kept things entertaining enough for me.
Dungeons have varied themeing and some of them even have traps or switches.
The game has great graphics and the enemies look just as good as in the first two games. Some really good musics too, much better than in 2. The Cardass mini-game is gone but they had perfected it in 2.
One annoying thing about the game is the lack of mean of transportation especially later on. [cont]

>>11391059
[cont]
There is very little to ease exploration or backtracking, no flying vehicle of any kind to control, and the only way to backtrack is by walking or chartering boats from town to town. Some items or spells can only be found in certain towns too.
Overall I enjoyed this one because it has great presentation and it is more challenging than 2, however gameplay is way too limited. At the very least spells should have had a bigger role, it is especially frustrating because magic shops are available from the start but you only get your first spellcaster at lvl25 or so. The game is rather long too, longer than 1 and 2.

>>11391057
It's so silly how it's just Dragon Quest but with Gundam. At least make the setting something more modern!

>>11391063
Well it is based on Knight Gundam, itself a spin-off of Gundam which was set in a medieval fantasy setting to begin with; so the source material lended itself well to make a DQ clone.
Knight Gundam started as trading cards, and there were all kinds of things and it got to the point that the spin-off became just as popular as the original Gundam

>>11391045
How do you use AI translation?

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>>11391068
With Retroarch, once set-up you press a button and pic related happens

I've had some good results with it for 5th gen games but admitedly it doesn't work very well with 8-bit games. The lower the resolution, the more the AI will crap itself (on top of issues related to the translating itself) but once you get used to it it works better than you'd expect. For instance in pic related, you can see the AI is trying to translate all the stats and shit on the right of the screen so you can ignore that crap; but the NPC text is understandable: giving the clue to the boss of this area can only be damaged with a single weapon and he doesn't know where the weapon is. The translation sucks, but the point is understandable.

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> Akuma-Kun - Makai no Wana

A Bandai-Tose game based on the Akuma-Kun manga/anime and released in Feb '90, a couple of weeks after DQ4.
As far as I can tell (I've only seen the 2023 show) the story and characters are faithful to the source material. The player controls Akuma-Kun, a wizard who uses spells and summons and orders demons to fight other demons. The setting is somewhat realistic, as it is based on the real world, and the player will (quickly) go from Japan, to China, India, Africa, Europe, America and even Australia.
I would rather not give spoilers but I was pleasantly surprised at the turns the story took at a couple of points in the game, they really tried to do something epic here. The story is divided into two parts, first the player starts with 6 demons and must go around the world to recruit 6 more, then he must take the fight to the big bad demon.
The mechanics are interesting as well, the player must summon demons who will aid in battle and who will either fight automatically or commands can be given to them, some of the moves that are automatic differ from the ones from the manual commands, some of the manual moves being the strongests and using up "CP". Your CPs are your demon points and any action such as summoning a demon will require some. By default the player only has 3 demons at his side at all times but during battle and by using CP he can call up any and all demons in a single turn (unlike in Ghost Lion or Megami Tensei in which you can only summon one ally per turn); though the ones called up during battle will be gone at the end of the battle.
Demons must be kept docile, as their happiness decreases with time or when they get hit (more or less fast depending on the demon's strength), the player must then enchant them with his flute one by one which can only be done in battle and which costs a turn. Unhappy demons may stop listening to their master or even leave the party.
[cont]

>>11391075
[cont]
The player can also use battle items and spells. Battle items are to be bought in shops and are quite expensive but can be used infinitely, they are a requirement considering how weak Akuma-Kun's main weapon is. Spells are cast using a unique system as well: the player must buy rune cards, and those are used to cast spells. You don't have to input the runes manually to cast spells (unlike in Dungeon Magic), and some spells are learnt automatically at lvl-ups; however it is also possible to try to guess rune order to learn new spells and some NPCs give clues to that extent.

This game has some really well done mechanics, and those mechanics feel tied to the story and the source material. Yuji Horii said about DQ4 that he wanted the player to feel like a commander with his small army and failed to do that, ironically this game manages to do just that quite well.
Here is the catch: the game doesn't have nearly enough meat to make those mechanics shine. Most "dungeons" are so short it's hard to even call them that, plus most of them re-use the same boring cave graphics. This is especially frustrating at times, for instance at one point there is a Mayan temple, but it's only 3 extremely small floors, which is followed by a trip to the moon which is only 2 screens big...

Finally the game does have some good music tracks, and graphics are generally good as well but there is something off about them which I can only explain by saying they lack polish.
[cont]

>>11391078
[cont]

In conclusion this game has some really unique mechanics and could have been great, but the extreme lack of gameplay meat prevented that from happening. I can only guess that it suffered from the typical Bandai publishing lack of funding and short dev time. Just like with Armed Dragon Fantasy Villgust, Bandai just didn't seem to allow games to shine even when they had something special. I also failed to mention that the game has no battery save and uses passwords, which for 1990 is extremely lame. Bandai really cheaped out here, thankfully the passwords are strong as they retain all your stuff and considering how short the game is and the fact that you only use money when die, you won't have to input them much.
Another nitpick is how slow the battle text is, and the fact that it can't be sped up at all. However the game code for that is so simple I managed to make myself a romhack to remedy that: in Mesen, open up "Memory Tools" and access "PRG ROM". At #19334 should be value 0D and it corresponds to how long the blank text window lasts between 2 strings, and at #19CB9 should be value 3C and it correspond to how long a string stays on the screen. I replaced those by values 03 and 19 respectively for a "medium" speed setting which still gives time to read what's going on. Then you need to use the debugger if you want to save the ROM.

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>Hokuto no Ken 4 - Shichisei Hakenden Hokuto Shinken no Kanata

Released in 91, it is a sequel to Hokuto no Ken 4 and to the source material in the sense that the story takes place afterwards, but it revolves around new characters (Kenshiro is not playable) who go around from town to town punching bad guys until they explode because they do stuff like poison or unslave the townfolks.
It's even worse than 3. The game system is basically identical (enemies use special moves more often).
It retains the same brilliant kind of balancing such as a skill requring 10 skill points dealing 100 damage and another requiring 30 skill points dealing 120; or healing 50 HP requring 4 SP but healing 100 requiring 30 SP. There is also some pretty high mandatory grinding later on in the game.
The only major difference in the game system is that 4 has a real overworld to explore. Otherwise there are about 16 towns and more than 20 dungeons, most of which look the same and they even re-use floor layouts a lot, for instance the first and final floors of most dungeons are identical, and the boss of every dungeon uses the same overworld sprite. The dungeon graphics are also some of the ugliest most basic I've ever seen.
The encounter rate is very high and later on in the game it's basically impossible to reach the bosses of some dungeons with enough ressources unless you avoid at the very least 50% of the fights. There are also some pretty baffling glitches such as an NPC coming to block my path when exiting a building and not moving away no matter how long I waited, which forced me to reset, or exiting a store teleported me back into the wrong town (did anyone even test this shit?!)
At least the graphical design in 3 was pretty unique and depicted a post apocalyptic desolate world well, 4 doesn't even have that, and the characters are less likeable too. This game is abysmal, and it doesn't even have the courtesy of ending the misery quickly because it lasts fucking forever too. Avoid !

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>Famicom Jump 2 - Saikyou no 7 Nin

Sequel to Famicom Jump, the A-RPG by Bandai from early 89 based on the infamous magazine, and which was a big commercial (the original ranked 35th best selling Famicom game with more than 1 million copies).
This second entry was released in 91 and didn't perform as well, which can partially be explained by how many RPGs were released during that time. Bandai didn't get cheap for once and they got Chunsoft to develop it and it shows: a lot more work went into this game compared to the average licensed Bandai game.
The game deals with a whole new story: as an evil force wants to destroy Jump World seven heroes arise. That means less playable characters than in the first game however most characters in the first game played the same and some of them didn't have their story developed at all. In 2 most characters play differently and they all have their own story chapter.
The game is divided into 2 main phases, the first one deals with recruiting all 7 heroes. The player decides which character he wants to start with and this really affects games as this leads to the player starting out in different regions of the world and going through other regions and recruiting other characters in a different order, all depending on who he picked first. Gameplay adapts to that system for instance if the player starts with Goku he'll have basic enemies in Goku's region, but if starts with someone else Goku may be the last one to recruit and there will be tougher enemies in his region.
Once all 7 are recruited the game opens up a little, the player gets a boat and eventually a mean of flying, at which point there is a bit of non-linearility as well. In pure DQ tradition there is even another smaller overworld map for the end game. The player can only have a party of 3 at all times, the remaining 4 remaining at the base although they still earn almost as much exp as the main party because they are "training" at the base, which is a nice touch.

>>11391113
[cont]
Leveling up is slow, lvl 16 being the max, but each level makes for a noticeable difference in combat.
The combat system is rather unique and really fun. Like in the first game there is a top view of the battlefield in which you move your characters around, however this time it is turned based. The player must position himself on the field to be in range of enemies, some characters being melee only. There are a lot of subtleties to this system, for instance it is possible to hit several enemies at once if everyone is lined up properly, some enemies are shielded in the front, some enemies are weak when hit in the back, etc On top of the basic attacks, each character also has a special attack, for instance some characters have specials that can affect all enemies at once, melee users get a ranged attack, etc. However some enemies are immune or have strong defense against specials.
The special attacks also tie in to the HP system: each character and each enemy has 5 HP, and using a special attack costs 1 HP. At the end of a battle everyone is automatically healed back to full HP (for once, a Famicom RPG in which you don't have to spend 2 mins healing everyone after each battle!) and higher defense do mean that the HP decrease more slowly. This system makes combat engaging because it's easy to find yourself on the edge. On top of this the battlefields vary constantly, in relation to where the player is on the field. For instance if an encounter triggers while the player is in a corner, that corner will appear on the battlefield. Areas like mountains or forests may also lead to trees or rocks on the battlefield, etc Plus, enemy variety is decent and enemy placement is almost never the same. There are also battle items.
In short, there was a lot of effort to make battles feel dynamic and it really pays off: it is very rare to have 2 identical battles and the combat is really fun. Challenge was decent at first but it was lacking in the late game

>>11391115
[cont]
with that said I picked a strong team and some characters are definitely worse than others and using them would make the game more difficult.
Dungeons are also really well designed, they have varied themes all with their own graphics sets, they are detailed and some of them have their own traps and gimmicks too. A couple of dungeons like a factory or a sewer gave me some pretty big Metal Max vibes.
Graphics are good but not great, some NPCs or background tiles feel like they are straight out of DQ but I didn't mind.
In terms of faithfullness to the source material, a couple of NPCs from each series can be found and some characters have locations inspired by their source material as well. There are also 7 villains to match the 7 heroes but they are brand new, however they were designed by the 7 respective authors. There is also a bit of humour here and there in the story.
Musics were composed by Satoshi Kadokura who was the composer for Metal Max, and you can really tell his style in some tracks. Needless to say they are great, I loved them!

My only really negative point was that I stumbled on what seemed like a softlock in the late game (make sure you get the 4 video tapes before the world enters a "frozen" state, which happens in space)
Anyway in case it's not clear I really loved this game. Really fun gameplay system, lot's of replay value, great musics, fun world to explore... it has almost everything. I could go on too, I didn't even mention the Dragon Balls or some of the cool little details like how in pure DQ tradition NPC dialogues change once the threat in the region is dealt with, etc and the game is really long too and has some cool surprises I've tried not to spoil and there is very little to feels like a burden (only a couple of dungeons in the mid game were a bit bland but they were short). I'll definitely want to replay this game again one day, while maining different characters and making sure not to softlock myself this time.

>>11391045
>you'd be surprised how many of those games have guides on gamefaqs
Do zoomers really?

>>11391045
>I am using AI translation
Imagine ruining old games by turning them into AI slop. Kys.

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>Monster Maker

Released in 91 by Sofel, it is based on a board game and part of the series.
The plot is the usual "hero of light must defeat evil" fare however there are some interesting moments, like the way each race (Goblins, Kobolds, Dwarfs, even cat people etc) have their own town and subplot.
This game has tons of mechanics and it does a lot of things differently from the average JRPG. In order to build a party of 6, characters have to be recruited, usually at the inn and for a fee. The classes are: Priest, Wizard, Warrior, Thief, Elf, Dwarf, and even a pirate. Once the first dungeon has been cleared the player can change party members at any time at inns, and reaching new towns usually means better character to recruit in that town's inn. The player starts with a wizard who is actually not the hero, who joins after the first dungeon. Both these characters are forced on the player and can't be changed and half-way through the game a third character, a warrior princess, is also forced on the player. All 3 main characters are female, and this game sure likes cute girls, they are everywhere!
Finally, one slot is reserved for monsters. After finding tamers in dungeons, the heroine can buy monsters to be used in battles. They have to be called in each battle, only 1 per turn, but they do act on the turn they are called in. At the tamers monsters can also be fused, similar to Megami Tensei two monsters can be fused to create a stronger one. Despite the game's name, monster making is not a primary mechanic.
There are 3 different ways to cast spells, some characters have innate spells that use MP and also learn new ones when leveling up, but these are not numerous (usually 1-3 spells per character even by the end game). The main way to cast spells is to buy spell cards at stores, which cost MP, each card is to be used once. Finally there are also battle items that can be bought and used to cast spells. [cont]

>>11391208
[cont]
As the player progresses through the game, the heroine gets to have free spells that do not use MP, they are very strong but can only be used once until resting. When Wizards attack with staves, that counts as magic damage too and not physical attack.
Dungeons are tile based and each tile is an upside down card that has to be flipped. Dungeons are varied and filled with a tons of mechanics such as traps, one way doors, pits, forced mini-boss like encounters, teleporters, pits, locked doors etc etc Overall they are very well designed and fun to navigate. Even though the game uses a top down point of view, dungeons are more akin to that of first person dungeon crawlers and starting from at least the middle of the game you'll want to draw your own maps.
When the party is wiped out it's back to the last save, and any time the player resets most of the progress in a dungeon is also reset.
There is some unlinearility, some areas that can be completed in a different order. Early on it looks like there is a lot of choice on where to go next but the player has to find out the hard way that choice is more restricted than it seems. In some cases, an area can not be completed or even entered unless the player has the right character in his party, or even enters the area with an empty slot in his party (on top of the empty slot reserved for monsters).
There is no EXP, the party (your current one and not the characters left behind) lvl-ups at key points in the story, like clearing a dungeon. Random encounters only yield money and the occasional item; though you will need that money there are also some simple exploits to earn it. Fleeing from encounters is extremely easy: even if you fail to run away, monsters may not get a turn to attack. It's possible to flee even if characters are asleep or paralyzed. This results in random encounters not mattering so much, and especially in the end game. Though forced encounters make up for that. [cont]

>>11391209
[cont]
Not being able to outgrind the game means strategy and preparation is key, and one thing I liked about the game is that it constantly demands of the player to come up with new strategies.
However there were balance issues I wasn't found of, for instance accuracy: each weapon has its own accuracy stat, and it matters a lot. At the start of the game attacks could very well deal no damage, or kill the enemy in one hit. As the game goes on and characters/weapons have better accuracy, damage output evens out. Also, the maximum damage that can be dealt is 99, which some of my characters were already often reaching at least 3 dungeons before the end of the game, rendering stronger weapons/spells less useful by the end game.
Finally as I mentionned, some scenarios force a character on the party, which means that on top of the 3 main girls, that only leaves 2 party slot to customize your party (+ the monster).

But the game's biggest issue was the very start of the game: in the first dungeon, the wizard you start with can not make it on her own. 3 characters can be recruited within the dungeon but for some arbritary reasons the player is only allowed two of those at once, and of course only 1 of the 3 is actually any useful and it's the one you're likely to stumble on after you've already met the other 2. If you don't realize this, the first dungeon is pure pain, which on top of having to figure out the mechanics, and of the highly random nature of damage output at the start of the game, leaves a really negative image of the game right from the start.
If you persevere past this though, you'll eventually find a great game. I had tons of fun in this game, it also has good graphics, good musics, cut anime girls, and rather lengthy. I think it might just make it in my top 20 favourite Famicom RPGs, which may not sound like much but which is actually a feat.

>>11391169
Imagine thinking playing them in the original language is better lol

>>11391063
Knight Gundam was its own thing in SD Gundam.

>>11391208
You can choose boy or girl for the hero/child of light (光の子)

>>11391426
Huh? When, how?

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>I am using AI translation
you didn't beat the games

>>11391057
I really like this one, I replay it a lot just because it's pretty relaxed and doesn't require anything tedious, the progression in it is very forgiving too as you get a full HP and MP recovery once you level up, so you always stand a good chance. It's almost too forgiving at times though, you can camp anywhere which is nice with the only drawback being potential random encounters while party members are asleep, you're also given an item early for your magic user which recovers MP with every step. On my most recent play I decided to completely limit the use of that item just to make it a bit harder. I can't complain too much though, it's nice to be able to play through a full RPG that doesn't take up absolute hours of time to do one thing. I think if there's one major improve I would have liked it would have been to have some enemies be a bit tougher to really necessitate the use of other spells and the back-up mechanic.

>>11391059
Also enjoyed this one a lot, but I think my perception of it on my first run was more positive. Initially I liked the change in party mechanics, how you upgrade weapons and how you have limited inventory space, re-organising your party is also necessary. When I went back to it recently, I think I got a little annoyed at how I had just gained my first magic user (near the halfway point no less) and he was instantly killed in the dungeon I found him in by the first group of enemies, and the only way to revive is to go back to town. There's no fast tracking in this one and having to leave dungeons due to potential party wipes is really risky; if your leader is defeated, the rest of the party goes to auto mode, it's a nice touch but you're basically hoping they can win battles on their own. The power scaling seems a bit borked too, enemies can go from dealing high damage to hitting you for one point in the space of one level-up. Similarly, you can have everyone upgraded and levelled up sufficiently, then enter the next dungeon and just get trashed. Maybe when I next play it I'll just accept the party wipe and depend on insurance to get me back to town, but I think right now I'm trying to see how quickly I can reach the end in the in-game calendar. That's another point, I like that there's a day-and-night feature, as well as a calendar and a prestige point system, but all three are a little undercooked (probably for the best given this is only a Famicom RPG).

The Boss theme is fucking great though, highlight of the soundtrack.

https://desuarchive.org/vr/thread/8438440/#q8439096
Was this your very first post?

>>11391465
>you're also given an item early for your magic user which recovers MP with every step

Yeah that's the broken mechanic I didn't want to mention. Technically it's possible to screw yourself over with this one: if you don't know what the ring does or accidentally equip it on somebody who isn't a healer, you won't be able to unequip for a long while because there is simply no way to take it out other than to equip another accessory and they're inexistant for a while

>>11391469
The reputation system was neat indeed but underused, outside of giving a better ranking in the ending. There is one thing though: a character who can join much earlier in the story than he normally does if your reputation is high enough, but mine just wasn't. At the start of the game you're supposed to bring a fruit to a lady in another town and if you take too long the fruit rots and you won't have your reputation points, I thought that was pretty clever and the game should have had more of that.

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>>11391429
Answering はい when ルフィーナ guesses they're a boy

>>11391494
>watching yukkuri shit
holy fucking kill yourself

>>11391494
>ルフィーナ
oops I mean ルフィーア

>>11391501
ゆっくりしていってね!!!

>>11391494
Damn either I totally blacked that part out or I missed what it was about with the AI shit

and here I thought the game was trying to make a point with having only female protags

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>The Bard's Tales II - The Destiny Knight

Released in early '92 on Famicom, a little over 1 year after the first game, this is of course a port of the CRPG by the same devs and publisher who ported the first game to FC. Unlike the first, this one was never released in the US.
I am a big fan of the FC version of the first game. I think it's a great middle ground between CRPGs and FC RPGs, it had really good balancing with just enough challenge and tension and a lot of nice small touches (the JPN version that is, the US NES port was butchered).
This sequel was a major disapointment for me. Right from the get go you can clearly see downgrades compared to the first game: in the first game the view window was 144*96 with an automap shown next to it, in this one the window is 114*114 with no map. In the first game in combat you could see up to three enemy groups at once, and each group could contain up to 9 enemies, in this one you only see one enemy at once (Wizardry style) and there is only a maximum or 8 or 9 enemies at once.
As I went through the game the disappointment only continued: in the first game there was a lot of flavour, like how you could visit various bartenders and talk to them, or how there were a lot of events accross the game complete with graphical pictures (like the wine cellar, or the coffins full of zombies etc), there is very little here. Dungeons are mostly just empty and bland.
More importantly, the balancing is completely off. The first 2 dungeons were okay, then in the third dungeon I was constantly either going back to town to heal status effects I couldn't otherwise heal or reload my save due to losing a character and not being able to afford the crazy expensive reviving cost... Then suddenly after that the difficulty just dropped, I was overpowered without specifically doing any grinding for it, and never stopped being overpowered.
[cont]

>>11391682
[cont]
But there are other issues too like how spellcasters are useless outside of buff/heal, or how the bard can't hold his own either, until they have their final class changes late in the game (mages and bards are the only ones who can class change), at which point they become overpowered and other classes become useless, especially my fighter who in the end game, was doing 50 damage compared to 1K for my Knight and 3-5K for my class changed Bard. My fighter just entirely stopped mattering at some point.
Also unlike in the first game chests are no longer trapped so there is no unlocking them, which I assumed would make a thief useless (especially when the hunter class exists) but they can't possibly be worse than my late game fighter.

It isn't all bad: there are new bosses (who didn't exist in the original BT2), some good music tracks, decent enemy art, but overall this game is just bland and without flavour. How did the same team go from doing such a good job with the first game to this?! Did they look at the butcher job they did when porting the first game to the US and thought "Wait, we can get away with not giving a fuck?!"

>>11391276
Literally anything is better than AI slop "translations".

play square's tom sawyer, the one where nigger jim is a party member and they gave him big croissant lips

>>11391083
>exiting a store teleported me back into the wrong town
Based

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>>11391045
untranslated mostly means they suck. Give us your ratio of good vs bad at the end of your shitty quest.

>>11391709
if you were replaced with a simple robot that responded to any audiovisual stimulus by uttering a random pre-recorded complaint, no one would notice the difference for at least a few weeks

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Based AI chad.
Living the golden age.

I like how if you mentioned "Machine Translation" like 4+ years ago it was completely normal but nowadays if you mention "AI Translation" you get hundreds of raging lunatics coming to kill you or defend you.

>>11392379
I just like that he played the games.

Good thread OP. I like learning about these games.

Sorry to make yet another post about AI translation, but I'm curious: Does the RetroArch translation feature let you retry your translation attempts to maybe get different interpretations? I've been playing a Japanese game on real hardware with the Google Translate on my phone, and I find that it's occasionally quite helpful to force the machine to make repeated attempts with the same text. Like, just kinda jiggle it and hope it does a better job next time. When using a phone, you can do the jiggling literally. You can shake the camera to make it think the text has changed (whereupon it'll try again), or change its angle so it'll perceive different brightness and contrast values (which can help it distinguish fonts from backgrounds in certain cases), or even pull it far away so that it sees the pixelated fonts with a bit of blur, which can sometimes help it read them as Japanese characters in cases where it absolutely refuses to do so with a fully clear image. Can you fuss about in any of those sorts of ways in RetroArch? Or maybe it does a bit of processing on its own, behind the scenes, to try to make text as easy to translate as possible. I doubt it'd do much of that though.

I wonder whether you could use a phone to get a second opinion and maybe play around with camera positions too, in order to correct obvious errors made by the RetroArch translation system. It probably wouldn't help a lot, but it might help a little.

>>11392468
>with the Google Translate on my phone,
the Google Translate app, is what I meant to say

>>11391212
>which means that on top of the 3 main girls, that only leaves 2 party slot to customize your party (+ the monster).

It seems strange for game developers to go out of their way to put in a whole character class system and party management system, only to make half or more of your party uncustomizable. Such are the quirks of old JRPGs, I guess.

>>11391513
I mean, you obviously ended up making the right choice, so no harm done

>>11392379
Because AI is slave labor

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>>11391763
All the ones I posted ITT are good except Hokuto no Ken 4 and Bard Tales II, and even then I'm sure some people would find enjoyment in BT2 it's mostly just the balancing that's bad. The quality of a game has nothing to do with whether it got a translation, if that was the case Famicom Jump 2 would have had a translation a long time ago but I don't even have to check the game's code to guess that it's probably in the same boat as DQ4 (compressed text and no empty space in the ROM to work with)

>>11392468
When the translator craps itself and doesn't understand what's on the screen or gives fucked up results sometimes I try again and sometimes I get better results, but the translation itself is rarely different when you try again. It's mostly just giving it a second chance if it goes "wtfamIreading.jpg" or picrel

>>11392487
I think they were going for a middle ground between "no customization=characters with a story" and "customization=blank slate characters" so there is both at the same time

>>11392468
It's OCR, so it may occasionally read it differently. However it is stationary, as in not like you are using your phone with your parkinsons hands, so it's not that likely.

OCR will always be inferior to just straight up extracting text, but that requires the system to have fixed text in ROM/BIOS (and a working hook on the program/emulator), so you'll have to settle for this in case of the NES and you not learning Japanese.

>>11391113
damn, i HAVE to play this now. I didnt know there was a jump rpg with goku.

>>11391045
what's up, OP, this thread has been a good read. You're 3rd gen RPGs journey is really interesting

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I can't remember if I ever posted about those following 3 or not, worse case every post is a repost

>Bikkuriman World - Gekitou Sei Senshi
A DQ clone by Hudson released in July '90. It is based on a license that started as collecting stickers and that turned into various things.
Funnily enough, in 1988 there was apparently a poll which said this was one of the franchises Japanese players wanted to see the most on Famicom, but by 1990 its popularity seemed to have already faded, plus it was released right in the biggest RPG release period of the console which probably didn't help make it stand out.
There is no fan translation, only an old teaser which translated (most) items, some combat commands, and the first 2 towns, but it also crashes later in the game.
The story is about a war between heaven and hell, and supposedly it is rather quirky and humourus and has a lot of puns.
The game uses a Super Deformed art style and it looks pretty good, characters and enemies are quirky, and graphics are very varied. Musics sound good too although they're nothing extraordinary.
Overall gameplay is very simple: there is no equipment, very few items and they can only be used outside of combat, it all comes down to two things: physical attacks, or using skills which uses up skill points. Each character has up to 4 skills but for some of them it can take a while before they get anything, and some of those skills are solely used outside of combat too.
There is also a second type of skill: the team skills, which uses up a turn for everyone but which are very powerful and which ressources are more limited (and expensive to replenish).
On top of that there are also Helpers, extra characters that have limited number of uses on the field and which you can call for during each turn. Also, throughout the game the characters evolve through Cross Change with NPCs to become more powerful.
[cont]

>>11392950
[cont]
Even through its simplicity the game does bring interesting things to the table: there are a total of 10 characters (some of them come and go) and the player controls up to 8 of them at once, divided into 2 groups of 4, which the player must divide to his likings. The first group acts on the first turn of a combat, the second group on the second turn, and repeat.
Also, being a post DQ4 JRPG, there is an "AI" battle command, but all it does is spam physical attacks, although you can stop it at the end of any turn I recommend to only use it when you know the enemies are just fodder, it does make combat play out faster.
Balancing is a little weird, in the sense that it is easy to find yourself over-leveled, and that a single level often makes for a huge difference in stats. Except perhaps before the final boss, I recommend not to grind, just go for it and use items to heal between fights, or else all enemies will be nothing but fodder.
The world is divided into 5 world maps of middle size, filled with small dungeons and towns. Each world is accessed one after the other, and only once is there a reason to come back to a previous world. There are puzzles to solve, key items to find, and a lot of things within each world can be done in a non linear order.
Between the Helpers that you can find here and there, and some of the puzzles required for progression, the game actually plays on the "collecting" aspect of the source material.
Outside of the balancing issues, another negative is that enemy variety is often poor. Many areas only have 3 or even 2 types of enemies. Later on in the game, a lot of palette swaps appear too.

Overall this game is not bad, but it's just an okay, pleasant DQ clone. It's a little too repetitive and easy.

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>Dragon Ball 3 - Gokuu Den

Hybrid RPG/Adventure/Board/Card game, and the second of its series by Bandai. After this one, they would move to DBZ and make 4 more games in this style, although they would drop the adventure elements altogether (while keeping the rest).
It is very much identical to the previous game, but with a better presentation and a lot more content.
The game is divided into several alternating gameplay styles: first person adventure, with commands such as "Look", "Talk" and "Go"; world maps which are laid out like a board game, and RPG combat which uses cards.
There are 5 main types of cards (+2 or 3 which are either very rare, or redundant) which represent different types of attacks like Punch, Kick, Combo and the special attacks that uses up Ki. On top of this, each card is randomly given an attack and a defense number between 1 and 7.
If your card's attack number is greater than the opponent's, you attack. When you're defending, the defend stat of the card comes into play. You must pick a certain number of cards out of your deck of 5 cards before each turn, and on the next turn you're randomly attributed new cards.
There is experience gained from combat and the player chooses stat distribution on lvl-up. Some grinding is required (but bosses give out a lot of exp) and the player must go back and forth on the board to do so. On top of this there are a few card based mini games which can help level up, or make you win items that can replenish HP outside of combat, or special cards with various attributes that can be used during combat.
The adventure segments are generally very simple, but numerous, with a lot of story for a game of this kind. There are also a couple of first person mazes to go through but they're technically rather poor: the window is very small and the draw distance is only one step ahead.

I liked the previous game a lot and I also liked this game a lot. The combat can be fun when the cards play out nicely, the musics are good,

>>11392960
[cont]
and more importantly, just like in Dragon Quest, I think Toriyama's art translates really well to the Famicom, enemies are especially a marvel to look at, and the combat animations are a lot of fun.
On the negative side, balancing can be infuriating if luck isn't on your side: out of 5 or 6 main types of cards, 3 of them (Kick, Punch, Combo) only deal chip damage against a lot of enemies (this is especially true later on in the game; and if you didn't put a lot of points to the Strength stat); while the Ki special attacks deal an insane amount of damage, so it sometimes feel like you're only waiting for one type of card and hope its attack point will be good enough for it to hit. There is also the Bo weapon card which deals decent amount of damage, however it is gone in the final chapter.
I believe this balancing to be intentional: indeed, in the source material combat mostly consists of characters kicking, punching and teleporting around constantly with little to no effect, with the occassional devastating super attack. For once, a game probably is too close to its source material for its own good.

This game has a pretty bad reputation, but I feel that it is unwarranted and exagerated. No, combat isn't only luck, no the level isn't the only thing that matters, and no it's not THAT grindy.
If you don't like the source material, this game is not for you. Me, I liked it, but I was never a huge fan; still I enjoy these games very much, I enjoy hybrid games and I think the different mechanics make for a nice "all". The graphics alone make these games worth it to me. Fans of the show will appreciate some of the scenes in the adventure segments too.
This series was very popular in Japan, and had it released in my country back then (it could have, we've had DB/Z since the late 80's and we did get the first Saint Seya game on Famicom, another Bandai hybrid RPG) they would have sold like hot bread.

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> Dungeon Kid

A simple first person dungeon crawler released in mid '90 and made by literally-who.
The game consists of 5 32*32 floors and one town. The player creates a party of 3 out of 12 classes, although all classes can equip the same equipment and all magic users learn the same spells at the same level. The difference between classes are the stats and how fast they lvl-up.
Mechanics are simple: Equipment only consists of one weapon and one armor, and battle options are Attack, Run, Magic and Items. No Guarding, no crits; but a lot of misses especially in the first half of the game. I didn't mind trading missed blows in Deep Dungeon because the pacing was fast, but in Dungeon Kid each attacker has to walk up to the one he is attacking on his turn, slowing down gameplay.
Graphics are okay, all characters (outside of bosses) are small, some nice animations.
All 5 floors share the same graphics and there are 2 different background musics, but they are good. Past the first couple of lvls, difficulty is on the easy side, I never got a game over.

However, the game's main attrait is its edit mode: it is possible to edit the campaign or even create an entirely new campaign from scratch, and then save that to either the cartridge save or the ASCII Turbo Save external device to share it with other copies of the game.
It is possible to switch from medieval to sci-fi setting, everything you can think of can be edited: floor layouts, the look of the characters, enemies, items, msgs etc it is possible to change the strength or price of a weapon or whether it is even available in the shop, or if there is a shop at all.
Since it is possible to edit the main campaign, even in the middle of a playthrough, I recommend to see if you want the sci-fi setting before starting and to change the look of your characters to suit their classes.
This game is only okay but I imagine players could have had a lot of fun making their own campaigns and sharing them back in the early 90s.

>>11392950
>There is also a second type of skill: the team skills, which uses up a turn for everyone but which are very powerful and which ressources are more limited (and expensive to replenish).

I've never enjoyed this type of mechanic. It's a cool idea, but when a playable character loses a turn, the game generally becomes a bit less interesting. I'd rather see assist moves of some sort that involve multiple characters but don't eat up the helpers' turns.

>>11392950
>I can't remember if I ever posted about those following 3 or not, worse case every post is a repost
I think I've read most (maybe all?) of your previous threads, and these three are all new to me

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>Swords and Serpents

It is one of the very few NES/FC RPGs with an EU release, and the only NES RPG alongside the first Saint Seya with an official French translation.
It's a pretty basic turned based dungeon crawler, there are 16 16*16 floors in total and the goal is to find 7 key items scattered over the first 13 floors to allow to access the final 3 floors and the final boss. In the final floor a puzzle must be solved and clues for it are scattered through the entire game.
There are 4 characters that the player must pick from 3 classes: Warrior, Thief and Mage. Stats must be rolled at character creation and considering how little gain you get from lvl-ups, those initial stats are extremely important. I am genuinely not sure what's the advantage of thieves, since they don't do any actual thieving and don't disarm traps or anything, they just seemed like a worse warrior to me. Mages are important though, the game recommends playing with 2 and you're going to need them considering they're the only mean of healing short of backtracking to one of the only two temples in the game. Besides you need at least one to complete the game.
There is equipment but no consumable items, there are a couple of equipment shops but the majority of the equipment is either found across floors or dropped from enemies. What sets the gameplay apart is its combat system: for physical attacks the player is given the choice between hitting the enemy's head, torso, or legs and each enemy has his own weakness, which isn't always evident to find. This choice of attack is performed by d-pad input so combat is fast paced; however, due to the sheer number of enemies there can be at once and the amount of health they can have, some fights still take a long time especially later on in the game.
There is only one type of enemy per fight, but graphically they look pretty awesome and gruesome, although there are a lot of pal-swaps, but at least new enemies keep getting introduced to the very end.

[cont]
The dungeon graphics are very subpar however as, outside of palette swaps, every floor looks the same. The draw distance is only 1 tile ahead which is extremely lame. The game provides an auto-map but it only keeps the equivalent of 2 floors in memory, after that it gets wiped out, one will still need to draw his own maps.
Some of the floor layouts were clever, (though some of the competition set the bar pretty low). However later on some motifs start to repeat. I was enjoying the game up until floor 10 or so, which is when the game started throwing teleporters around like candy and I was either being sent many floors down, or back to the start of the game. Funnily enough the scanned manual I was looking at had drawn maps by the owner up till floor 10, which is when he seems to have given up on the game.... Yes this game overstays its welcome and the last few floors felt like too much, especially considering I had already reached the lvl cap by floor 12 or 13.
Another fun aspect is the Passwall spell which can be used to take shortcuts almost everywhere or find secret places.
Musics are okay but are lacking in diversity, there is basically only 2 tracks (fights, and crawling).
Finally I must mention this game's most unique aspect: it has a co-op feature for 2 or 4 players (with the Four Score), and while only one player navigates the dungeons, each player gets to play his own character during combat and manages his own equipment. It's pretty unique but I can't imagine bringing 3 friends to crawl to the end of this game due to how long and repetitive it is at the end; though at least a second player could do the mapping!
In conclusion it's a simple and standard dungeon crawler with a couple of unique mechanics, but which lacks some needed polish and overstays its welcome. In the end, as far as the "Wizardry but dubbed way down" genre is concerned, I think I had more fun with Deep Dungeon I and II. This game gets point for having an European and French release!

>>11395317
>>11395323
And I didn't have enough space to write this but the point is this one is on the other side of the spectrum: instead of an untranslated Famicom RPG, and it's an NES RPG unreleased on Famicom (might be the only one)

>>11391083
The only thing I like about HnK 3 and 4 is the music, surprisingly catchy. Otherwise I remember being so disappointed when I found these ROMs in the early 2000s because I was at the peak of my HnK obsession and got so excited at first. Unbelievably boring and tedious games. At least HnK 5 for SFC looks kinda cool although I can't tell if the gameplay is decent.

>>11391057
>>11391059
that geek that's always translating sd gundam games missed these, how

Do you have an updated tier list?

>>11395737
HnK might have the worst track record for tie-in videogames, at least during that period. The first HnK FC game was terrible, the sequel at least improved things slightly, but rather than build upon any type of scrolling action game they reset it entirely by making very low quality Dragon Quest clones, which continued until the SFC. Even the fighting games that followed were bad.

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>>11396514
Nothing new at the top except Bard Tales and Famicom Jump 2 in High Tier but I might just be completely biased towards them and anyone would think I'm crazy to put them above FF3. I also updated Destiny of An Emperor from bad to okay because it didn't feel right to see it next to those 4

What I still need to play or haven't completed: Satomi Hakkenden, Heracles no Eiko (1), Columbus: Ougon no Yoake, Tao The Way, Toms & Treasure (Adventure/RPG), Ultima 3/4/5, Mahjong Taisen (Board/RPG), AD&D Pool of Radiance, Dragon Wars, Super Black Onyx, Square no Tom Sawyer and then more than a dozen really obscure mostly untranslated games that all have a bad reputation that I might just never play. The only one I have really high hopes for in this list is Dragon Wars.

>>11396931
>The only one I have really high hopes for in this list is Dragon Wars.

oh and Ultima 3 and 4 of course. Don't ask me why I still haven't played them, I don't know either.

>>11396931
>The only one I have really high hopes for in this list is Dragon Wars.

I'm curious about that one. I played some version, probably the DOS one, a long while ago and enjoyed it. But I know nothing about the Famicom version.

I agree that Destiny of an Emperor deserves a little bit of credit. Its soundtrack, if nothing else, should keep it out of the lowest tiers.

>>11396936
> But I know nothing about the Famicom version.

It actually seems really faithful to the original version. There is a guide and maps for the FC version on gamefaqs If you compare that to the apple 2 version it looks very close

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/570582-dragon-wars/map/155-dilmun-map

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/570582-dragon-wars/map/10777-dilmun-map

Interestingly that game was planned for an US NES release but was scrapped and there is supposed to be a prototype translated ROM out there (which crashes at several points supposedly due to faulty pointers)

>>11396931
You are far more generous than me to these games, because of the games I've played, you're God and High Tier (Like Mother 1, MT 2, and FF1 and 2) are some of my favorite games, but anything you have in Good+ or below (Like MT1 and FF3) I just don't like at all. Sweet Home is alright though.

Definitely going to check out Might & Magic and Bard's Tales after seeing this, and hope for a FJII translation some day.

>>11396968
If you like Sweet Home, check out Namco's Dream Master, it's another adventure-RPG hybrid with many similarities. It only worked in FCEUX for me, you'll know if something is wrong early on if item names don't show up in your inventory.

as for Might & Magic, it's very faithful to other versions of the game so the differences are mostly aesthetics but if you play the NES version you should consider these patches
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5412/
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2282/
Most notably it fixes the Locust Plague having an insane speed stat which leads to it and any other enemy alongside it (that's how the speed stat works, it helps the entire party) leading to it getting a dozen turns in a row (=certain death) until you can match their speed

Bard Tale's is different from the original and definitely has less content but I just really like it, you need to make sure to play the translated FC version and not the US version which took out a lot of content

>>11396931
>Square no Tom Sawyer

>>11397152
I would like to see Koei's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

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>>11398979

Ultimate roleplaying https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OHGqa3WKj0

>>11399797
Oh yeah I had forgotten about this one, thanks for the reminder

>>11396931
Are you not including Action RPGs like Radia Senki and Zelda 2?

>>11400538
or Gumshoe

Personally, I would include The Magic of Scheherazade, even though real-time, directly simulated combat is one of the main things you do in it. The turn-based battles and weird little puzzles in it feel like they're closer to the heart of the game.

Maybe part of it is that in the Zelda games, real-time combat is actually fun.

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>>11391075
>>11391057
>>11391059
>>11391045
>>11391083
>>11391208
>>11392950
>>11392960
>>11392965
Question, which color palette did you use? is it the same as this one, i kinda need to know.