Anyone here play this series? Apparently they're short and also easy if you play the UnWorked versions. Is it anything like Ys?
>>11987520What is an unworked version? Why not just play it the way it is?
>>11987520Style and presentation is 100% Ys, meaning that they wanted their own Ys clones. But the combat is side scrolling, and a bit awkward (think Actraiser). They fall into decent games.
>>11987520The Japanese and Renovation versions are easy, the Working Designs tweaks are fine for Exile and retardedly frustrating for Wicked Phenomenon.It is like Ys 3 in that you have sidescrolling sections, the overhead sections are just for town exploration. Story and design for both games is 100% throwing cool shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, but that's what makes the first game memorable. You have Muslim assassins, Christian crusaders, Japanese sex monks, Jewish masonic conspiracies, Greek orgies, hard drugs... both translations are fine and thinly censored in the same spots, with the Genesis one being more faithful to the Japanese, but bear in mind there is no "Holimax" item in either version. Whenever someone talks about finding the "Holimax," it says they're trying to find the one true God in Japanese. I also found the ending to be incredibly simple and poignant in a good way.The second game is just meh all around. Meh design, meh story, meh plot twists, and worst all, meh gameplay in that you have five playable characters but the janky engine doesn't let the game do anything interesting with them. It's either boringly easy in its original form or awful and near impossible on the butchered Working Designs form. Either way, it's just uninspired and I can see why the series ended after it.
>>11987614UnWorked refers to a series of patches that fix the difficulty tweaking that Working Designs would do for their localizations. UnWorked actually is technically playing it the way it is because they restore the original balancing.
>>11987638>You have Muslim assassins, Christian crusaders, Japanese sex monks, Jewish masonic conspiracies, Greek orgies, hard drugs... Yep, I am definitely gonna play this game
>>11987520Had Exile for Genesis. It had a really cool world and unique as well compared to other games. I still play it every few years. Anyone interested should give it a go.
Picked it up on a whim as a kid and remember it being crazy gory at the time. It was interesting though I was lost.Found out later that it's steep in masonic imagery (my family is involved with the masons). Dumb question how accurate is the translation? Is there a jap to English translation that keeps the story intact? Im assuming it got a hack job done to it and would like to play the original
>>11989748Both translations alter the story. Both censor the historical names, replace "the one God" with "Holimax," and change the final boss, Hiram Abiff: WD turns him into a demon called Shimbatha, Renovation calls him the "Holy Emperor, a lunatic who believes himself an incarnation of God."But even though Renovation removes a brief sequence that has people burned at the stake, their translation remains the closest to the original, because most times they just change specific words, whereas WD tends to change entire lines to fit them into their censored storyline. Here's a comparison:Japanese:"Hiram is the only human who can save this world. The only human who can create Arcadia. Solomon's Temple was a ceremonial site for this purpose. I even went through the trouble of giving him the Heramusso, which possessed hidden powers... ah, this will no longer save humanity.""Does the Heramusso happen to have anything to do with the three-dimensionalization of mandalas?""Mandalas!? Ah, that sounds nostalgic. It's an eastern term for Heramusso, that's true."Renovation/Genesis:"Roget was the only human who could save this world. The only human who could create Arcadia. Homis Shrine would have served as a place for the ceremony. I gave him the Heramusso which has hidden powers as a special favor. Oh, mankind will not be saved.""Does the Heramusso have anything to do with dimensionalization of the mandalas by any chance?""Mandalas? Oh, that sounds nostalgic. 'Heramusso' is the same word as 'mandala' in an oriental language."WD/PC Engine:"Hyram was the only human who knew how to turn the Heramusso into the active Holimax! Without the Holimax, installed and working, there can be no peace! He was building Homis shrine in an attempt to harmonize the mandalas and activate the Holimax!""Then the Heramusso IS necessary to get the Holimax? I don't get it...""Yes! The Heramusso is simply the inactive Holimax! To make it active, you must have harmonized the mandalas!"
>>11987520I don't play rpgs with noisy text.
Enter first dungeon.Get absolutely destroyed by ants
>>11991656If you grind up to lv5 the next few dungeons are a joke
>>11987614Because retarded localizers like to make games super bullshit to Americans for some reason, sometimes to get NES era review scorers to not call it piss easy.This also just makes people not play it immediately or drop it, unlike having already playing it and want to try a harder version of it.See: 7th Saga
>>119921507th Saga is at least playable, and the first Exile had a few changes you don't notice that much, but Wicked Phenomenon is a complete mess that I'm amazed got shipped at all. Vic Ireland continues to lie about how it was "on accident" but you can tell he really thought he knew better than the actual developers.
>>11991656The ants die in one hit even if you are at level 1...?
Transition from field to battle in 7th Saga was great, did any other games do this?
>>11993669Mystic Ark, which uses the same engine.
>>11993569Mostly the flying bugs come at you fast. Walk a step and BAM, bug in your face.I'm playing it currently. I just got to the India section, walking around the tower. The story is pretty scattered, I wonder if its because they were expecting the player to fill it in by knowing history of the crusades but since they changed the names its a bit more obtuse as to whats happening.
>>11993693Thanks, I have never played these and apparently they are one long series.
>>11992150The reason they jacked up the difficulty is actually because they were trying to combat lost sales due to rentals (i.e. rent a game from BB for a few days, beat it, no incentive to buy it now)
>>11994068You're right, but there is an ample difference between jacking up the difficulty and rendering a game unplayable, and that is what Working Designs did for Exile 2.>>11993840If you're playing the Working Designs translation, the story is easier to understand but also simplifies and diverges from the original. If you're playing the Genesis version, it is obtuse at times and requires knowledge of terminology to make full sense (like the names of the mandalas). Japanese is like that also.
are these the games where you play some arabic dude who smokes hash or am i mixing it up with some other old jrpg series
>>11994310I don't know about hash but the healing items are named after narcotics.
>>11994310Same series. Form my understanding that was the first game in the series. >>11994292Genesis version.It is a bit refreshing how there isn't any meandering about, its pretty quick point A then goto point B with the characters moving at a bit pace. But this also sacrifices some of the story since it just throws kingdom terms at you like you are suppose to know what is happening
>>11987520the top down section looked great, should have been an rpg imo
>>11994292What's the difference. The Genesis version isn't the working designs one?
>>11994751Genesis version was translated by Renovation (basically in house). Working Designs only translated, or rather localized, the PC engine version. See >>11990083 for differences.
OP here. I just played through Exile 1 start to finish.It's REALLY easy and REALLY short. Perfect for what I was looking for, but I can see people back in the day being understandably pissed off for paying full price. There's really not a lot here at all, maybe a 3 hour leisurely playthrough and no replay value. Fun way to spend labor day weekend. I will probably give Exile II a play as well.
>>11995486>There's really not a lot here at all, maybe a 3 hour leisurely playthrough and no replay value. Fun way to spend labor day weekend.Japanese Wicked Phenomenon is just like that. Working Designs' Wicked Phenomenon is a different beast altogether. I'm glad you enjoyed the first Exile (which is actually the second, the real first game was never ported to consoles). It's short, but remains very unique. Did you like the ending?
>>11992150Question for those "developer intended" guys:Would you prefer to play the original difficulty (Japanese version) or the harder difficulty (English version)?
>>11995937>Did you like the ending?It was fine, the tree with the rotting heads on it was cool as fuck, I really loved all the cutscenes actually. The story was a little hard to follow because everything happened super fast. I don't think I've ever played a story based game with pacing as quick as this. The way the story was told reminded me of Jojo 2 and 3 a lot, weirdly.>>11996250Personally, I always go with the original difficulty in videogames, doesn't matter if it's harder or easier. In this case I played the "UnWorked" version of Exile (og Japanese difficulty) and it was extremely easy, I didn't mind though, I enjoy short easy games nowadays with the limited time I have.
>>11996906>The story was a little hard to followIf you have a couple hours to spare, you can play the Genesis version. No cutscenes, but the story makes more sense without Working Design's deviations. Difficulty's about the same.In the original story, everyone thinks the mandalas can summon the presence of the Judeo-Christian God at Solomon's Temple, which should unite mankind. However, the spirit of Hiram Abiff, who has been possessing Hugues de Payns all along, aims to take in the mandala's power to become a god himself. Such a simple plot got obscured stuff like the Holimax or Shimbatha/the Holy Emperor. I understand wanting to censor the Judeo-Christian God, but the aversion to presenting Hiram Abiff as the final boss remains baffling to me.It's interesting that the Genesis version was translared by Telenet's Takami Kinoshita, who also worked on the very first, Japanese-exclusive Exile. Yet he also had the final boss be the Holy Emperor instead of plain old Hiram. Maybe it was censorship, maybe it was an actual choice made to give the story bigger stakes... every version of XZR II/Exile changes something big near the end anyway. At least the Holy Emperor is still a human seeking transcendence for himself and all mankind; Shimbatha being just some evil demon kind of undermines the plot a bit, I think.
>>11998137Interesting that HG101 and thus Wikipedia only list the Working Designs version of the plot because HG101 has a huge hardon for Vic Ireland. Their XZR article is so shoddy.
>>11987520According to the Wiki page for this series:>There's XZR, which is the first half of the story>There's XZR II, which is the second half of the story>There's Exile, which is a remake of XZR that also supposedly rewrites the entire story>Then finally there's Exile II, which continues from the rewritten XZR II(?)So should I just learn nip and play the first two XZR games on PC98, or do Exile and Exile II continue it from the original XZR in any meaningful way?
Has anyone played the Cosmic Fantasy games?
>>11998819>According to the Wiki pageThat's inaccurate.XZR: Idols of Apostate: Sadler is taskes with assassinating the leader of the oppressive Seljuk dynasty, who turns out to be his father (not that this matters in the other games). Japanese only.XZR II: The Final Chapter/Exile: Into the Gap of Time: Sadler joins Hughes de Payns in a quest to find the Mandalas of the Two Realms so they can summon the one God that can unite mankind and stop all wars. Translated by Working Designs for the TurboGrafx CD and Renovation/Telenet for the Genesis.Exile II: Wicked Phenomenon: Sadler goes on a mission to find out why there are waves of supernatural monsters and evil spreading across the land, assisted by his friends and a mysterious knight. Translated by Working Designs for the TurboGrafx CD.>There's Exile, which is a remake of XZR that also supposedly rewrites the entire storyThe Wikipedia claim is based on Hardcore Gaming 101's shitty article which presumes that Working Designs did a faithful translation. In reality, Exile is an enhanced and simplified remake of XZR. It changes some details and removes some stages, but it follows the same structure about Sadler and Hughes trying to summon the one God.>do Exile and Exile II continue it from the original XZR in any meaningful way?Not really. XZR introduces the main Exile cast, but Exile works fine without that introduction. Both versions of Exile recap all you need to know about XZR in the intro, TurboGrafx CD via an animation and Genesis via text ("one day, the superpower was destroyed in a revolt led by Sadler, the wandering desert warrior"). And Telenet themselves rebranded XZR II as simply Exile, so they didn't expect players to have played the first XZR either.
>>11998958Thanks for the heads up. Assuming you knew Japanese and localization wasn't a factor, do you prefer the Mega Drive or PCE CD version of Exile?
>>11999068PCE for the animated and voiced cutscenes (with few exceptions, they tend to be still images with text on the MD/Genesis version).
