Monsters have appeared in the once peaceful land of Alitania, and the people have fallen into terror. The king's orders have fallen upon you, the bravest knight of Alitania. "The fate of the country hangs by a thread. It may be possible to save the country with Gladrif's magic, but he is nowhere to be found. Therefore, I want you to search for him! Find Gladrif, defeat the monsters, and restore peace to this land once again!"
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An adequate early RPG by Xtalsoft. It features a big world map, another big underworld map, and visible on-screen enemies rather than sudden random battles. When you touch one of them, the view switches to a real-time battle screen.
The battle system is bump combat with a few different magic spells. The combat is not as tactical as Dragon Quest, but also not as quick and responsive as Ys, so it's kind of meh. When combat starts you could be facing a single enemy or a dozen, and there's not enough time to react before they start ganging up and stunlocking you, leading to many cheap deaths.
There's a good variety of little enemy sprites, but you only face one type of enemy at a time, and combat is exactly the same throughout, the only difference being enemy strength and the occasional projectile-throwing varieties.
The ending is surprisingly great for a Famicom game—there's a slideshow of images recapping your journey and victory over the evil sorcerer Gradliff.
My favorite part is a little sequence in the beginning. In one town you talk to a priest who says he lost his ring of truth in a forest. In another town, a guy says he found some ring in a forest and gave it to the blacksmith's daughter. So you put 2 and 2 together and realize that the blacksmith's daughter has the ring of truth. Then you find out from another dude that she really likes necklaces more than rings, and eventually—much later—you meet a shifty character in yet another town who will sell you a necklace to give to the girl to get the ring.
I love this breadcrumb style of questing in early RPGs, where talking to NPCs reveals important hints in seemingly trivial dialogue, and it's up to you to piece things together.
The battle system is bump combat with a few different magic spells. The combat is not as tactical as Dragon Quest, but also not as quick and responsive as Ys, so it's kind of meh. When combat starts you could be facing a single enemy or a dozen, and there's not enough time to react before they start ganging up and stunlocking you, leading to many cheap deaths.
There's a good variety of little enemy sprites, but you only face one type of enemy at a time, and combat is exactly the same throughout, the only difference being enemy strength and the occasional projectile-throwing varieties.
The ending is surprisingly great for a Famicom game—there's a slideshow of images recapping your journey and victory over the evil sorcerer Gradliff.
My favorite part is a little sequence in the beginning. In one town you talk to a priest who says he lost his ring of truth in a forest. In another town, a guy says he found some ring in a forest and gave it to the blacksmith's daughter. So you put 2 and 2 together and realize that the blacksmith's daughter has the ring of truth. Then you find out from another dude that she really likes necklaces more than rings, and eventually—much later—you meet a shifty character in yet another town who will sell you a necklace to give to the girl to get the ring.
I love this breadcrumb style of questing in early RPGs, where talking to NPCs reveals important hints in seemingly trivial dialogue, and it's up to you to piece things together.