Emerald Dragon is a Role-Playing game, developed by Alfa System and published by Media Works, which was released in Japan in 1995.
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This battle system is so dumb but it also makes more sense than most.
Game Review - originally written by Gideon Zhi (founder of AGTP)
Okay, this is a different sort of RPG. It kinda falls into the same category as Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia, or perhaps Radia - at least from what I can see - with a top-down, action-oriented system for fighting random battles. The graphics and cinematics are pretty, but I can’t say much for the story due to my rather profound lack of Japanese knowledge, heh.
Okay, this is a different sort of RPG. It kinda falls into the same category as Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia, or perhaps Radia - at least from what I can see - with a top-down, action-oriented system for fighting random battles. The graphics and cinematics are pretty, but I can’t say much for the story due to my rather profound lack of Japanese knowledge, heh.
So... I have a lot to say about this game.
For those who don't know Emerald Dragon was originally released in 1989 for the PC-88 and then it was ported to other Japanese computers of the time, in the 90s it got versions for the Super Famicom (this one I played) and for the PC-Engine, which is considered the definitive version because it has voice acted animated cutscenes, unfortunately that version is in Japanese only.
Well, as a 1989 RPG released on computers it has some quirks that I noticed other games born out of the Japanese computer scene around this time also have. For one you can save anywhere, you interact with people and chests just by... walking at them. This game doesn't have an interact button, and just the general feel of it that I can't describe it's very noticeable that it was made in that whole scene.
So for the story, you're a young dragon named Atrushan living in the land of the dragons and one day an orphan girl, standed in the sea, is rascued by your tribe. You're assigned to take care of her. Later when you're both older she disappears and goes to the land of the humans which is cursed for dragons, this means you can't keep your dragon form there, you go look for her and that starts your big adventure. The story actually had a lot of twists and turns that I didn't expect and has a lot of well written parts, characters are charming and fun and the party has a good dynamic through the story. Characters come and go but each new character is mostly good. Good thing is the game has party chat, so it serves a double purpose: one, to remind the player of the current objective and two, to make the party feel more alive. Characters will also talk to each other when you rest at inns at certain points of the adventure and they will comment on the current story events.
My major issue with the story is how underdeveloped a lot of it is. It's full of interesting concepts, ideas, mythology and worldbuilding but most of it is not really explored. I will mostly put the blame on this being an RPG from 1989 but still... I wish this version could've expanded things. I think it also doesn't help that the game has the fastest pacing of any RPG I've played in recent memory, events happen quick and the characters barely have time to reflect on them, and as such, I feel like there's not a moment to think about what's going on, there's barely any downtime. That said there's still some moments during the story that made me feel things, I didn't cry but at the end I kinda felt attached to the characters and what they went through and that's enough for me.
So about the gameplay. The combat system is... strange. And janky. And also kinda bad. Battles take place in an arena where your party and the enemies can move when it's their turn so positioning is very important, this doesn't sound bad at all, other games like Live A Live much later used this system, but this one feels extremely rudimentary in every way. You only really control the main character, and only him and Tamryn (you could say the second main character) can actually level up, every party memeber that isn't the main character is AI controlled. But fear not! This game is piss easy and your party members are smart as hell. Probably too smart, battles are a cakewalk and honestly the only time I felt threatened was in the final boss. The key of battle is to keep yourself out of harm and healed, and your party will heal you anyway, they heal and protect you constantly, also since you can save anywhere dying is really not much of an issue, and I mean anywhere, even in the middle of dungeons.
But yeah, this game is interesting, all and all. It's a very interesting but flawed game. It does a lot of really forwardthinking things for the time it was made. I admire and I'm glad I played it but I can't say I love it.
To end this I'll just quickly mention the audio, because this game has small audio samples of characters speaking, sometimes in an intense story scene a character will say another character's name and they will actually say it out loud. They also grunt and scream in battle. It's not much, but for the Super Famicom it's pretty cool, I think.
P.S. I will replay this game if someone ever translates the PC-Engine version.
For those who don't know Emerald Dragon was originally released in 1989 for the PC-88 and then it was ported to other Japanese computers of the time, in the 90s it got versions for the Super Famicom (this one I played) and for the PC-Engine, which is considered the definitive version because it has voice acted animated cutscenes, unfortunately that version is in Japanese only.
Well, as a 1989 RPG released on computers it has some quirks that I noticed other games born out of the Japanese computer scene around this time also have. For one you can save anywhere, you interact with people and chests just by... walking at them. This game doesn't have an interact button, and just the general feel of it that I can't describe it's very noticeable that it was made in that whole scene.
So for the story, you're a young dragon named Atrushan living in the land of the dragons and one day an orphan girl, standed in the sea, is rascued by your tribe. You're assigned to take care of her. Later when you're both older she disappears and goes to the land of the humans which is cursed for dragons, this means you can't keep your dragon form there, you go look for her and that starts your big adventure. The story actually had a lot of twists and turns that I didn't expect and has a lot of well written parts, characters are charming and fun and the party has a good dynamic through the story. Characters come and go but each new character is mostly good. Good thing is the game has party chat, so it serves a double purpose: one, to remind the player of the current objective and two, to make the party feel more alive. Characters will also talk to each other when you rest at inns at certain points of the adventure and they will comment on the current story events.
My major issue with the story is how underdeveloped a lot of it is. It's full of interesting concepts, ideas, mythology and worldbuilding but most of it is not really explored. I will mostly put the blame on this being an RPG from 1989 but still... I wish this version could've expanded things. I think it also doesn't help that the game has the fastest pacing of any RPG I've played in recent memory, events happen quick and the characters barely have time to reflect on them, and as such, I feel like there's not a moment to think about what's going on, there's barely any downtime. That said there's still some moments during the story that made me feel things, I didn't cry but at the end I kinda felt attached to the characters and what they went through and that's enough for me.
So about the gameplay. The combat system is... strange. And janky. And also kinda bad. Battles take place in an arena where your party and the enemies can move when it's their turn so positioning is very important, this doesn't sound bad at all, other games like Live A Live much later used this system, but this one feels extremely rudimentary in every way. You only really control the main character, and only him and Tamryn (you could say the second main character) can actually level up, every party memeber that isn't the main character is AI controlled. But fear not! This game is piss easy and your party members are smart as hell. Probably too smart, battles are a cakewalk and honestly the only time I felt threatened was in the final boss. The key of battle is to keep yourself out of harm and healed, and your party will heal you anyway, they heal and protect you constantly, also since you can save anywhere dying is really not much of an issue, and I mean anywhere, even in the middle of dungeons.
But yeah, this game is interesting, all and all. It's a very interesting but flawed game. It does a lot of really forwardthinking things for the time it was made. I admire and I'm glad I played it but I can't say I love it.
To end this I'll just quickly mention the audio, because this game has small audio samples of characters speaking, sometimes in an intense story scene a character will say another character's name and they will actually say it out loud. They also grunt and scream in battle. It's not much, but for the Super Famicom it's pretty cool, I think.
P.S. I will replay this game if someone ever translates the PC-Engine version.