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.
