Game Review: Bahamut Lagoon (SNES Strategy RPG)
From the WIKI page:
Quote:
"The story takes place in the sky world called Orelus. It begins at the prologue, a world being consumed by war and the skies turning to the purple color of sadness following the downfall of the Kingdom of Kahna. The Kingdom of Kahna gets conquered by the Granbelos Empire, headed by Emperor Sauzer, taking Princess Yoyo captive and forcing the defenders of the kingdom to withdraw in defeat."
The story is good, but it seems to drag on a little painfully at times. Of course, I'm basing this on a fan translation... Though you can tell that there wouldn't be much difference otherwise.
Most of the back story is "optional". You get to hear more through cutscenes by talking to certain characters. This is good if you want to get straight to the action, but it leaves you a bit unsatisfied if you don't talk to everyone every chance you get.
Where the story shines is in the characters. They each have a distinct personality, which gives you a strong sense of attachment. Matelite and Taicho add some very welcome comic relief, Yoyo is a chick that actually grows on you and Rush really gets you into the action with his upbeat persona.
All and all, it's pretty solid and enjoyable.
The music, oh god the music. If you enjoy the music from Final Fantasy 6, Secret Of Mana etc... Then the music in Bahamut Lagoon is gonna grow on you.
The only problem is, that the same songs get played too often. For the most part you hear one song for the enemy phase and one for the player phase. It gets repetitive pretty quick... But it's enjoyable, so I don't really care.
The actual sound effects are top notch too. Sword attacks sound like sword attacks, fire spells sound like fire spells... And there's a great deal of them to go around.
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GRAPHICS
This is one of those games that make me which they would go back and do some more SNES games. It proves that with the right team, visuals can rival that of PSX games.
Did you think the enemies in Final Fantasy 6 looked awesome? What about the backgrounds? Well, take all of those graphics, add even more polish (doesn't seem possible, but they pulled it off) and animate nearly everything. Yes, I said animate. Probably 95% or so of all the enemies and characters are animated to some degree. You'll take one look at them standing still and say "Holy crap! That looks freakin' sweet!!!". Then once they attack and show off their fluid animation, you'll most likely crap your pants.
It also takes advantage of some awesome MODE7 effects for backdrops during the cutscenes. Probably some of the best I've seen.
The only reason I didn't give the graphics a perfect score, is because some of the animations are a little whacky. If you've fought a chimara, you'd agree that it's hard to tell what the hell is going on with it's legs. This reason, and the fact that Star Ocean/Tales Of Phantasia have it beaten are why it gets a 9.0.
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GAMEPLAY
This is gonna be a long one...
Gameplay is what makes this game so enjoyable. It's your standard strategy RPG affair (ala Final Fantasy Tactics), but with a few major twists.
First off, each troop consists of multiple characters. When it's your turn you can move, attack, heal, blah blah blah... The thing is, there's two different ways to do everything.
You can attack/heal on the field as in FFT mentioned above (this is mainly done with long range attacks/spells), or you can go straight up to the enemy and begin a turn based battle. Turn based battles net you more EXP, gold, items and are generally stronger... While field attacks get you fewer of said things, but can't be counter attacked.
Another big twist are the dragons. Each troop get's there own dragon, to which they can issue commands (Go!, Come!, Wait! etc...).
That's not the cool part though... In between each battle, you get the chance to feed your dragons items you've won. Each item has a different effect on it's stats. Fire Rods will give your dragon points in "Fire", "Attack" and "Wisdom". Ice Armor will give it points in "Ice", "Defence" and "HP". You get the picture.
The elements cap out at 100. After it gets one point in any element, it will learn an attack in said element... For each 10 points after that, the level of that attack will raise by one. Changing it's animation and strength.
For each elemental attack a dragon learns, it's troop will learn attacks based on that element as well... So if you have a troop with a wizard in it and the dragon is of the fire element, that troop will be able to use a fire base range attack on the field and fire based spells in battles. Also, if your dragons fire element is at level 6, the attacks your troop have will be as well.
This game has another thing I'll call "stacking". Say you have one wizard with a LVL 4 ice spell. Put that wizard in a troop with another that has a LVL 9 ice spell. This will give you the ability to use LVL 13 ice spells (only on the field, as allies take turns in battle). Put a healer with LVL 6 light element in with a LVL 5, a LVL 8 and a LVL 3... You'll be able to use LVL 22 healing spells.
The only reason I gave gameplay an 8.5 as opposed to 10, is the lack of controls over the dragons... This is SERIOUSLY going to piss you off. One dragon has 200 HP missing out of say 4,000. Does it need to be healed? NO!!! But the healing dragon doesn't seem to give a damn. He wants his friend to be in tip top shape. Another thing... Say your dragon has LVL 10 fire skills and LVL 1 poison skills. It'll go ahead and try poison more often then you'd think. Stupid bastards...
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CONCLUSION
This is seriously one of those gems that needs to be played. If you're not into strategy RPGs, at least check it out for the music or just to gawk at how great the enemies look. Sure the dragons will make you shake your head in sadness from time to time, but this is how it would be in reality (if dragons actually existed). Teaching a dog to use Fire Breath on ice enemies, and Thunder Blow on earth enemies isn't a sure thing... He's bound to mess it up sometimes.
Story 4.5/5
Sound 4.5/5
Graphics 4.5/5
Gameplay 4/5
Score:
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