- Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure (GEN)
- The Revenge of Shinobi (GEN)
- Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi (GEN)
- Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (GEN)
- Go Go Ackman (SFC)
- Super Wagyan Land (SFC)
- Super Mario RPG (SFC)
- Shin Megami Tensei if... (SFC)
- Front Mission: Gun Hazard (SFC)
- Steep Slope Sliders (SAT)
- Valkyrie Profile (PS1)
- Sakura Taisen (SAT)
- Shenmue Chapter 1: Yokosuka (DC)
- Shinobi (PS2)
- Gungrave (PS2)
- Assault Suit Leynos 2 (SAT)
- Sakura Taisen 2: Kimi, Shinitamoukoto Nakare (SAT)
- Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World (PS2)
- Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Douchuu (FC)
- Ganbare Goemon 2 (FC)
- Sakura Taisen 3 ~Paris wa Moeteiru ka~ (DC)
- Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 (DC)
- Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro (DC)
- Capcom vs SNK 2: Millionaire Fighting 2001 (DC)
- Sakura Taisen 4 ~Koi-seyo Otome~ (DC)
- Street Fighter Zero 3: Saikyou-ryuu Doujou (DC)
- King of Fighters '99 Evolution (DC)
- Madou Monogatari I (MD)
- Twinkle Star Sprites (SAT)
- Madou Monogatari (SAT)
- Policenauts (SAT)
- Demon's Blazon: Makaimura Monshou-hen (SFC)
- Akumajou Special: Boku Dracula-kun (FC)
- Akumajou Special: Boku Dracula-kun (GB)
- Red Arimer: Makaimura Gaiden (GB)
- Getsu Fuumaden (FC)
- After Armageddon Gaiden: Majuu Toushouden Eclipse (Mega CD)
So how do you feel about monsters and demons? Okay, but how do you
really feel about them? Would it make you feel better if you knew that they were always getting stronger, and more grotesque, by feasting on the flesh of humans? No? Well that's unfortunate--.
After Armageddon Gaiden is a game that, on it's face, in simplest terms, is about a marauding group of mercenary monsters who continually deform themselves further by eating humans who are kept as livestock. There's a story draped over it, and almost everything else is filled in with grinding. This is a game from Pandora Box, and published by Sega (just like the Mega CD version of Burai). You may be familiar with some of their work on the SNES, if you've delved into the Japanese side of the RPG pool, with things like the Oni series, Magic Knight Rayearth, or Arabian Nights. After Armageddon is technically a successor to Last Armageddon, which saw release primarily on Japanese PCs, as well as the PC Engine and Famicom. There seem to be some similar themes and features between the two games, but I don't believe they are truly directly related.
As a JRPG, this game contains a party. Within that party, there are five characters: Radyun, the Wind Dragon; Jokus, the Ifrit; Dalzam, the Golem; Freya, the Succubus (water elemental, because why not); Ropels, the Slime (non-elemental). The five main characters never get swapped, and are always together. The introduction to the story in the scenes before the title screen paint a pretty grim picture. It tells of human history being cut off by nuclear war brought on by their great fear of death, and the dawn of the age of the monsters, built from the rubble. Eventually, after a period of 100 years of war, a monster general named Volzack seizes control over the planet, and domesticated the remaining humans, by turning them into livestock, as well as the monsters, by forcing them to dwell in towns/cities. The five main characters were in Volzack's employ, as mercenaries, during the warring period. They were well known for being especially ruthless, and this new era of 'peace,' simply doesn't sit well with them. There are some early quandaries about why they always travel together, even though, as monsters, they should be constantly trying to assert dominance over the others, but the game doesn't really begin until they decide to check out the ruins of an old human research facility that's 'beckons' them.
Deep in the bowels of the research facility, the party finds the ancient ruins of Mu, and they reawaken the destroyer, Ra Mu, along with the ancient demons Rafael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Michael. They find out that, prior to the human's civilization, the demons had dominated the planet once before. However, Ra Mu doesn't appreciate how weak and complacent the monsters have become, and suggests that the group join him in wiping the planet clean again. The party isn't really happy with monsters living like humans, but they also don't want to wipe everything out (if it sounds like the goal post is moving a bit, that's a pretty common theme). So Ra Mu does what many villains in this situation would do, and calls down molten rock from the heavens to scorch the earth, but leaves the party safely underground, because we're only, like, a quarter of the way into the game at this point. The party arises from beneath the earth to find what remains
after Armageddon (herp). They wobble back, as monsters do, to the city of Fatgoon, where Volzack had established his empire, only to find it demolished, as all the other (single) town
s were as well. Except, underneath Fatgoon lied a dark secret. Volzack had been keeping humans (humans that could talk!) in cages, and feeding them to the wild monsters roaming the lands in order to make the wild monsters grow stronger. He did this because he was in league with Ra Mu, and was secretly challenging his "weakling" citizens by throwing metaphorical wolves at them. Those who perished were making the world "better" by no longer existing. Why was he doing this? I'unno.
The party defeats Volzack, and gains control of this dark monster factory, and what do they do with it? Make themselves stronger by eating humans, and mutating themselves, because they have to go defeat Ra Mu, obviously. (There is more than one paradox, afoot.) After doing so, they (optionally) stumble upon a human fallout shelter that was broken open by the apocalypse. Inside, they find an account of the president of hoo-mans (official title) that describes his descent into starting the nuclear holocaust, after being possessed by the will of Ra Mu.
Anyway, one thing leads to another, and bam! They meet the King of Atlantis, King Sol. The Will of Fire (Jokus' elemental) tells him he must kill the King of Atlantis, but Freya's elemental, the Will of Water, tells her that he is the only one who can tell them how to revive the planet. King Sol tells them that they must visit the other ten kings: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Their seals hold the key to unlocking the party members' pasts, and true strengths. Over the course of meeting with the ten kings, they learn many things. They learn that each one of them was once an Atlantian (in the parlance of this game, that basically means human): Radyun was a valiant soldier, Jokus was a scientist obsessed with the continent of Mu, Dalzam helped construct the pyramids, Freya was a mom--she learns this from Mercury, and he says something after that really threw me off, because it was all in hiragana, but he says "kareta eda wa oreyasui mono," or, 'a dead branch is easily broken'; He said it would be understood eventually, but I still don't really understand what he was getting at--, Ropels was a military doctor.
The big thing they learn, though, is that in the beginning there were two continents that were home to humans: Mu and Atlantis. The people of Mu were obsessed with obtaining immortality, and no one more so than Ra Mu. He eventually found a way, by using the same machine the party was using to evolve. The people of Mu began to devour each other in the hopes of becoming immortal. Eventually their avarice turned them into monsters from the inside out. King Sol attempted to keep the people of Mu away from Atlantis, but they eventually found their way in, and he was "forced" to send the surviving Atlantians to a shelter before unleashing hellfire upon the world. (If you're keeping score at home, that's, King Sol Armageddons the monsters, Ra Mu, indirectly, Armageddons the humans, then Ra Mu Armageddons the monsters.) So, basically, now King Sol's plan is to use Ra Mu's own methods against him (it's hard to tell which one is the master, and which one is the disciple between these two), and make these five Atlantians into the ultimate super beings to destroy the Will of the Planet. Why the Will of the Planet? I'unno. Apparently the Will of the Planet hates life because it often destroys other life, or some other such half baked philosophy.
Well, in my case, the five characters did obtain ultimate super being-hood, and felled Ra Mu, along with the Will of the Planet. That caused life to be reborn on the planet. (What--?) The ending sort of tries to summarize things, and says that now life on the planet will go on with only its own will to guide it, without rulers, and in unison with the planet. (-- lolWaht?) King Sol says that when monsters choose the wrong path again, a second and third Will of the Planet will arrive. (Hold on, though-- what?) Finally the party, back in their original forms--without really any explanation for it, despite Freya soliciting one from King Sol--decide to venture off into the wild beyond, after the 11 Kings slip off into the ether. Except, Jokus tells them he's not going with them, because he wants to test himself. The other four wish him well, and then--dun, dun, dun--Jokus pulls off his mask (?) to reveal some grotesque little hooded goblin face, and proclaims himself the new arbitrator of monsters! (Are you fucking kidding me!)
I "spoiled" all of this because you shouldn't play this game. If I made any of this sound interesting, it's merely a facade. I will say that it has moments. The story has moments of actually interesting ideas, but they are almost always gotten in the way of by the narrative trying to trick the audience. It tries to make you think one thing, and then it slaps you in the face for being gullible enough to believe any of its bullshit. It's ultimately a bit of a clusterfuck of narrative faux pas.
So, that's basically all of the story, "But what about the game?" I hear you say. (I definitely heard it.) Well, graphically it's kind of all right. Some of it, like a lot of the graphics in battle, is kind of bland. Other times, there's nice use of color, really large boss sprites, and some nice portraits. I actually kind of liked the transition into random encounters, where the game just scales the map, until the screen just becomes a handful of blown up pixels. The audio is also a mixed bag. A lot of the music is fairly good--not necessarily exceptional, but pretty good--but most of the sound effects are just atrocious. They are easily some of the worst sound effects I've ever heard in a game. I guess the saving grace is that they are pretty much so bad that they're good. Like, they're comically bad. Case in point: There's a magical spell that's basically called 'gravity,' which launches a character's sprite up above the screen, and brings them back down to the ground; The sound effect that's used for lifting them off the ground sounds like a slide whistle. It's almost like they just sampled a bunch of royalty free sound effects, and called it a day.
Mechanically, the game is pretty broken. This is one of the most poorly planned/programmed RPGs I've ever played. The manual is almost detrimental in how incomplete the information in it is, as well. I still don't know what the vitality stat actually does. I know it can be used sometimes to cast spells, if a character is out of MP, but otherwise it just seems to almost randomly deplete at times. According to the manual, if it's full, you can't be one shot by an enemy, but I don't think I ever saw that actually be the case. Speaking of being one shot by enemies, it happens constantly. There are two states for damage in this game: massive and minuscule. Jokus and Freya forever have poor defense, and live in the back row. They're supposed to get attacked less in the back row, but generally if anything actually attacks them physically (which happens pretty often), they're usually going to die. Similarly, Ropels has basically no magic defense. He can tank physical attacks all day, but if he even gets a whiff of magic, he's probably dead. Radyun and Dalzam are similar, but slightly more balanced. This arises from the fact that damage calculations are fuuuuuuuuuu--uuuuucked, and that being even mildly deficient in a stat means that that form of damage is either going to be ineffective for you, or very effective for the enemy. There's a number of instances where it seems like the programmers just forgot to keep programming, as well. The most obvious example is this Miracle Restore item, which says it has the effect of reanimating, and healing all status effects. Except, you can't actually target a fallen character with it in battle. You can only use it on one of the characters that are alive. Dead characters revive with 1 HP after battle anyway. Another example is these re-"element"-roll (eg. re-fire-roll) items, that protect against attacks or magic of a certain element, which don't show up in any of the item menus during combat. Yet another example is this one special attack (I think it was called 'self knuckle') which I have never seen do more than 0 damage. The animation has the character move back a little bit, and then hurl itself at the target (a number of enemies have this ability as well), but it never does anything. No damage, no status effect, nothing. What does it even do?
The main hook for the gameplay is the evolutions. After defeating Volzack, you can eat a human to evolve one of the five characters. Each human increases certain qualities (love, cruelty, hope, despair, courage, cowardice, etc), and something about them gives innate protection to certain status ailments, but I don't know what specifically affects that. After eating a human, you're presented with a huge list of possible new forms for the character. They are specific to the character, and some new ones show up after repeating the process, but I'm not sure what it's based on. The leveling in the game is sort of funky. Each character has eight stats, and a level attributed to each one. The overall character level is an average of the stat levels. Each character seems to gain levels in certain stats at different rates, but each stat displays an amount of experience to the next level, which is almost meaningless to the player, because no experience is ever shown after battle. The game only tells you when a character has gained a level in a specific stat. At the beginning of the game, each stat has a level cap of 20. By evolving the characters, these level caps increase. In their ultimate forms, these level caps become 99. The funny thing is that there's almost no reason for it. At attack level 32-ish, with the final weapon, which is just given to you for free, Radyun had 999 attack, which would appear to be the actual stat cap. So any further levels in AP for him would have been meaningless. That's 67 levels of no actual gains. Granted, stats like Freya's HP would probably never get to the stat cap, even if she were level capped.
I've seen the encounter system for this game described as 'convenient,' but it's really not. You can pick a character to scout for the party, and that character's level of alertness would, theoretically, affect how often the party is attacked. There are also options for the search type. You can choose to actually look for enemies, avoid all the 'weaklings,' or go about things more normally. The only thing that really seems to matter is which of those three settings you're on. Avoiding things will basically mean that you avoid getting into battles 95% of the time. The normal setting is going to put you into battle on probably 70 to 80% of your steps, and actually looking for enemies will make it a murder-christmas, on parade. This could be a really good system, but there's not enough control. There's no in between. You'll either spend all of your time fighting things, or all of your time walking around unmolested. You kind of need to get molested by enemies, though, because most of the game is really just grinding to survive the boss fights. Later on, a lot of the regular enemies become really dangerous too.
I could probably go on, but that's more than enough. All that really needs to be said at this point is that there are no credits at the end of the game. After Jokus spends a whole sentence on revealing his ambitions, the game just boots you out into the Sega CD's multiplayer menu. I feel like that's just one big "Alan Smithee" by the whole team. Remarkably, I didn't necessarily dislike this game. In some ways, I kind of enjoyed it. I would not even begin to think of recommending it to others though. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I want to actively tell people that they absolutely
should not play this game. Don't do it. It's not worth it.
I suppose the happy by product of beating this game is that now I not only own all of the games released under the Mega Roleplay Project, but I have also beaten all of them but one: Shining Force CD. I keep thinking about playing it, but never do. Hmmmm.
