1. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)(Adventure)2. Final Fight [Japanese Version] (Switch)(Beat 'Em Up)3. Ziggurat (PC)(FPS)
4. Magrunner: Dark Pulse (PC)(FPS)
5. The King of Dragons [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)6. Captain Commando [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)7. Knights of the Round [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
8. The Witcher (PC)(RPG)9. Tenchi wo Kurau II(Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
10. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (PC)(RPG)Tenchi wo Kurau IITenchi wo Kurau II is better known in the US as the heavily bastardized arcade game Warriors of Fate. While I realize storylines in beat 'em ups aren't exactly high art, the original game is based entirely on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms classic of Chinese literature. But hey, American's couldn't possibly understand, right? So the story was ripped out entirely, including numerous scenes between levels or even during levels and an ending that is entirely changed, to be replaced by some pseudo Mongolian fantasy land in which dudes get names like Portor.
I could have been a god of war, but no, I'm named Portor. Damn.
While the core gameplay wasn't changed between regions, this gutting away of a classic to make crap is why I vastly prefer the Japanese original to the US release. I'm a fan of spin off material based on the RotTC, so this appeals to my senses. You know what else appeals to my senses here? That I can take down a freaking army barehanded. Yeah, TwK2 is now a favored gem of the Capcom beat 'em up line, because I have a ton of special moves, including special commands to input for some, I can go totally throw happy, I have a variety of weaponry to find, and it feels legit that I'm taking on ten foes at once and stomping the everlasting crap out of them. Why's that? Because I'm freaking GUAN YU, bitches! The characters you get to play at are so bad ass, later dynasties declared some of them to be dieties. Their enemies calculated they could kill thousands in a fight, and they were known to do things like compose verse during battle.
Yeah, that's right. I'm killing dudes AND writing poetry. At the same time. Come on.
On top of this, I get some smooth controls that feel nice, a variety of enemy types that pull from Capcom's history but now feel more varied and interesting, and level designs that are varied and reminiscent of historical battles such as Red Cliff and anecdotes like Zhang Fei holding off a thousand soldiers on a bridge to protect his fleeing master. If there is one area where things don't quite hold up, it's that the horses in this game were basically lifted from Knights of the Round and don't really improve anything; enemy AI is smart enough to go around, and the horse controls feel sluggish compared to what you can do on your own feet.
But that's my one complaint. Dudes, Tenchi wo Kurau II is where it is AT.
Dark Sun: Shattered LandsOk, by the time this game came out, SSI was still making Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games but weren't putting them in gold boxes. No matter, the Dark Sun duo still gets lumped into the set of classics, even if it's not as fondly remembered as titles like Pool of Radiance or Eye of the Beholder. This might at least partly be because the entire dungeon crawler approach was dropped for a top-down third person overview with more tactical elements, sort of like Pool of Radiance's combat system but amped up considerably.
The world of Dark Sun is a desert that has been sucked dry by magic under the heat of a red giant sun. You begin the game as slaves and gladiators forced to face monsters in the arena for the amusement of a sorcerer king, his templars, and his subjects. You quickly say "Screw this", get your gear, and get out, only to discover you're being prophesied about by some halfling mad man who has gotten way too much sun. Now you have to take the nearby slave villages and build yourself a ragtag army to face off against the sorcerer king's legions as they try to wipe out the poor schmucks just trying to get by outside the gates. To do this, you travel to other villages or meet with folks and do quests to help them out. They don't all offer to fight, but they try to help however they can.
Unfortunately, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands has some problems of the technical variety. I only had a hard crash once, but it has a lot of problems with visual artifacts staying on screen. You can accidentally drop items behind other items and lose them for good. You will sometimes be unable to cast spells for some reason that was never explained to me. You will even get stuck or have triggers that do not work or work when they aren't supposed to, causing dialogue to trigger repeatedly that you've already seen, to the point you may have to reboot.
Also the final battle sucks, but that's because it's stupid difficult even with a fully kitted out party at max level, because the enemies are a higher level than you AND there are way more of them, but hold up a second, let me get to that.
I'm not gonna lie, I was pleasantly surprised by most of this game. When it got things right, it got them really right. I enjoyed watching my possible coalition come together, and often times there were numerous ways to get through different situations. Some outcomes were definitely better than others, but if I had wanted to do something different, I easily could have. It just doesn't come through in the end, partly because the level cap is too low (I had three times the amount of experience necessary to hit max level when I beat the game), and partly because it appears there are some key choices in the last minutes leading up to the final battles that will directly impact what happens. As a result, it makes the rest of the experience feel a little cheaper.
When it did come to the final battle, I abused a trick to pop into my inventory immediately after casting a spell so that I could bombard my defenseless foes with magic and cut down their numbers. While this strategy was highly successful, I only learned I could do this on accident after spending a couple of evenings trying to win the "right" way. Even worse, the game had given me false information on what the win condition was, so I spent much of it launching headfirst to kill the enemy commander, not realizing that I was going to be forced to kill off all enemies too. Even when I did manage to assassinate him, I'd get creamed due to the risk. This soured what was otherwise a generally enjoyable experience.
That finale aside, and barring the glitches, there is a lot hidden in the work of Dark Sun: Shattered Lands that I loved uncovering. If you want to check out the Dungeons & Dragons games of the early 1990s and appreciate some tactical combat, this isn't a bad choice at all. I recommend checking it out, and I'm looking forward to whenever I finally get around to the sequel.