Enter the world of Golvellius. Where demons rule the valley of water...and control the creatures of land, sea and air. Where almost everyone stands against you. There is only one way in...and no way out except victory or death! It's an adventure that will take you across deserts and mountains, oceans and forests...through eerie graveyards and caves filled with danger and surprise. Golvellius has a PASSWORD SAVE feature that lets you keep all your possessions. So you never have to start an adventure empty handed!
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Golvellius is a fascinating game from a period when genre conventions had not yet been firmly established and developers were still throwing all kinds of ideas at the wall to see what stuck. Taking clear cues from The Legend of Zelda, Golvellius takes several of the same ideas and goes in a completely different direction with most of them.
The quest is simple, even if accomplishing it is not: find seven magical orbs in seven different regions of the titular valley. Each orb is kept in secret by an old lady in a cave - there are lots and lots of old ladies in caves in this game - and you have to explore a large overworld in a top-down view, slay monsters with your sword, find and collect gear, and defeat the boss of each area before she'll give up.
If that sounds like a familiar structure, the actual gameplay loop in each zone is not. In nearly every screen of Golvellius, there is a hidden entrance, and every screen is a small puzzle of sorts as you must figure out how to reveal it. Some come from killing enemies, some from striking certain trees, rocks or other objects, and a few have other requirements. Most of these caves have helpful characters offering advice, items or healing. A lot of them have old ladies, and they want money. So much money.
You start out with tight limit on how much gold you can carry, and the first order of business in each zone is finding old women in caves who will sell you bibles to raise your gold carrying capacity. Yes, actual bibles. No, I have no idea why. The second order of business is to find still more old ladies in caves and buy life meter-extending potions to withstand the steadily increasing onslaught of strong monsters. Still other old women in other caves sell herbs that act as potions when your health meter runs out, or other items. Even when it comes time to fork over the magical orb, they want money. Lots of money. This is basically a game of exploring and getting extorted by old women.
The caves are where Golvellius further differentiates itself from Zelda. While that game featured mazes to explore, Golvellius features gauntlets to survive, in two flavors. One is top-down and auto-scrolling, where the challenge is not getting scraped to the bottom of the screen and kicked out. The other is a very fast, simplified side-scrolling action platformer with lots of enemies, platforms and mini bosses. After either type of cave, there's a boss fight, and they are all well designed.
One of my favorite details is how the overworld music changes: not when you enter a new region, nor when bosses are defeated. Instead, it's when you find a powerful new piece of gear. Finding a great new sword and emerging to find it was so powerful it changed the overworld theme felt great.
The gameplay has one major flaw, in that you can only attack up down, left and right, but the monsters are designed to attack from all angles. This makes many areas a gauntlet of difficult to hit enemies and some areas are pretty tough for it. The caves are not especially hard - the most difficult to took me four attempts, and and they are all only a few minutes long - but they are very simple and repetitive affairs.
Despite these issues, I had a great time with this. Tons of secrets to discover, a challenging and reasonably long quest, a superbly well designed overworld and a terrific soundtrack. The game structure and gameplay loops are quite unique and I found myself really wishing more games in the action-RPG genre had this kind of experimentation. So long as the extortive old women hanging out in caves stay here, in the valley.
The quest is simple, even if accomplishing it is not: find seven magical orbs in seven different regions of the titular valley. Each orb is kept in secret by an old lady in a cave - there are lots and lots of old ladies in caves in this game - and you have to explore a large overworld in a top-down view, slay monsters with your sword, find and collect gear, and defeat the boss of each area before she'll give up.
If that sounds like a familiar structure, the actual gameplay loop in each zone is not. In nearly every screen of Golvellius, there is a hidden entrance, and every screen is a small puzzle of sorts as you must figure out how to reveal it. Some come from killing enemies, some from striking certain trees, rocks or other objects, and a few have other requirements. Most of these caves have helpful characters offering advice, items or healing. A lot of them have old ladies, and they want money. So much money.
You start out with tight limit on how much gold you can carry, and the first order of business in each zone is finding old women in caves who will sell you bibles to raise your gold carrying capacity. Yes, actual bibles. No, I have no idea why. The second order of business is to find still more old ladies in caves and buy life meter-extending potions to withstand the steadily increasing onslaught of strong monsters. Still other old women in other caves sell herbs that act as potions when your health meter runs out, or other items. Even when it comes time to fork over the magical orb, they want money. Lots of money. This is basically a game of exploring and getting extorted by old women.
The caves are where Golvellius further differentiates itself from Zelda. While that game featured mazes to explore, Golvellius features gauntlets to survive, in two flavors. One is top-down and auto-scrolling, where the challenge is not getting scraped to the bottom of the screen and kicked out. The other is a very fast, simplified side-scrolling action platformer with lots of enemies, platforms and mini bosses. After either type of cave, there's a boss fight, and they are all well designed.
One of my favorite details is how the overworld music changes: not when you enter a new region, nor when bosses are defeated. Instead, it's when you find a powerful new piece of gear. Finding a great new sword and emerging to find it was so powerful it changed the overworld theme felt great.
The gameplay has one major flaw, in that you can only attack up down, left and right, but the monsters are designed to attack from all angles. This makes many areas a gauntlet of difficult to hit enemies and some areas are pretty tough for it. The caves are not especially hard - the most difficult to took me four attempts, and and they are all only a few minutes long - but they are very simple and repetitive affairs.
Despite these issues, I had a great time with this. Tons of secrets to discover, a challenging and reasonably long quest, a superbly well designed overworld and a terrific soundtrack. The game structure and gameplay loops are quite unique and I found myself really wishing more games in the action-RPG genre had this kind of experimentation. So long as the extortive old women hanging out in caves stay here, in the valley.
It would be hard to believe that this wasn't inspired by Zelda at least in some ways. The game is more linear than Zelda, and features a few different perspectives. The cave levels, which I would equate to Zelda's dungeons, aren't very interesting and neither are the bosses. Overall I think it's a solid action RPG that tried a few of its own things with varying success which I think you would see carry over into Compile's The Guardian Legend a year later.
The SMS version is the definitive Golvellius experience. It's basically a totally different game from the MSX1 version - with completely new maps, new dungeons, etc. However, a lot of the rough edges of the mechanics are gone. This is for better and for worse. The boots that grant you iframes are gone - you get iframes by default in the SMS version. Probably better 'game design' (by today's normative fun-centric standards), but less interesting. Still, the world is more fun to traverse, the dungeons are tighter, etc.
I do wonder what is lost along the way... Although I think the SMS is the definitive version, I mourn the creativity and experimentation of the MSX1 version. I yearn for those rough edges from time to time. We don't see enough of them these days.
I do wonder what is lost along the way... Although I think the SMS is the definitive version, I mourn the creativity and experimentation of the MSX1 version. I yearn for those rough edges from time to time. We don't see enough of them these days.
For the raw Golvellius fans, the MSX1 version of the game is really quite fun. It has that early gamedev mess that I think can be appreciated by everyone with enough game play/dev experience on their belts. I mean, having your iframes be granted to you by an item? And before you get that item you simply don't have them and all enemies stunlock you to death? That's just too wonderful for words.
It's a clever game though. I love how each screen has a guaranteed secret and I love the hint system. It has like one or two bad dungeons (one of them being a bonus dungeon anyway), but besides that it's just a good time. Surpassed by the much more polished SMS version though (which is also a totally different map with completely different dungeons).
It's a clever game though. I love how each screen has a guaranteed secret and I love the hint system. It has like one or two bad dungeons (one of them being a bonus dungeon anyway), but besides that it's just a good time. Surpassed by the much more polished SMS version though (which is also a totally different map with completely different dungeons).
An interesting twist on the Zelda formula but you can easily get swarmed by enemies on the overworld and you don't have iframes to save you. I actually had more fun with the original MSX1 game funnily enough
Even with all the quirks and the bad design choices of this game, I have a hard time hating it.
Honestly, while this game is way more linear than The Legend of Zelda, it still gives us a lot of huge areas to explore, items and upgrades to get and enemies to defeat. The fact that the game is not really that hard also adds a lot to the experience, making it a very chill and comfy experience.
The dungeons are hit or miss, obviously, after all instantly leaving dungeons and have to start again if you hit the edge of the screen is honestly not very fun (specially since most dungeons will try to trick you into getting in situations where you get stuck and all you can do is leave), but it's really not that bad. The combat is... not that good. But it doesn't matter that much because the game gives you tons of health upgrades throughout the game, and death is not really all that punishing.
Also the visuals are amazing, I just like the 8-bit anime style that a lot of Master System games have.
Overall, I'm probably not recommending this game to everyone, but if you can look past it's flaws, it can be a very fun experience.
Honestly, while this game is way more linear than The Legend of Zelda, it still gives us a lot of huge areas to explore, items and upgrades to get and enemies to defeat. The fact that the game is not really that hard also adds a lot to the experience, making it a very chill and comfy experience.
The dungeons are hit or miss, obviously, after all instantly leaving dungeons and have to start again if you hit the edge of the screen is honestly not very fun (specially since most dungeons will try to trick you into getting in situations where you get stuck and all you can do is leave), but it's really not that bad. The combat is... not that good. But it doesn't matter that much because the game gives you tons of health upgrades throughout the game, and death is not really all that punishing.
Also the visuals are amazing, I just like the 8-bit anime style that a lot of Master System games have.
Overall, I'm probably not recommending this game to everyone, but if you can look past it's flaws, it can be a very fun experience.