by pierrot Sat Aug 04, 2018 6:20 pm
I couldn't really help myself, and just had to start on this. So, without further ado:
Captain's Log
Day 1, Game 1 - The Legend of Xanadu
When starting a game on the Prologue option, the Legend of Xanadu opens with a tale of a peaceful land of Ishtaria, from a century ago, that was beset by a great terror in the evil dragon Dardantis, that descended from the world of darkness. The evil dragon was in possession of the Stone of Clayne, a stone with an unlimited supply of magical energy, and used it to raze the beautiful lands of Ishtaria to the ground. The people lived without hope until a hero appeared wielding a holy sword. That hero's name was, Aineas. He did battle with the evil dragon until after nine days, he struck the dragon between the eyes with the holy sword.
The people of Ishtaria were overjoyed, and elevated their savior, Aineas, to the platform of their king, beginning 400 years of prosperity under the Astel reign. The Stone of Clayne was placed atop the castle, spreading it's light out over all of Ishtaria. Without any particular training, the people began to gain the power of magic. Agriculture, construction, travel, and everything in between was transformed through the proliferation of magic, and the burdens of life were eased tremendously.
A thousand years passed, and numerous dynasties fulfilled their cycles of rise and decline. The story of Aineas became buried in the sands of time, and relegated entirely to that of legend, if not for the bones of the evil dragon, holy sword struck into the skull, sitting out in the edge of the world at the peaks of the Salanda.
During most of this story there's a fairly nice remix of the main theme of the original Xanadu playing, even though this story is unrelated to that game.
The intro continues by showing the narrator reading from a book, in front of a warm fireplace, with the hero, Areios, sitting across the table with slightly watery eyes as the door behind him swings open. The manual reveals that Areios is secretly a descendant of Aineas, working as a knight of the royal army. He is known as the 100-knight Captain, and is the only captain in the royal knights who still fights in the outlands of Kuloros against the invading monsters. The person in the doorway tells Areios that the monsters have come, and preparations are underway for the decisive battle. My memory of this wasn't quite correct. The old man narrating is an elder of the descendants of Aineas, and tells Areios to go protect the vulnerable people of Makrea, and fight the invading monsters. Areios joins his trusted lieutenant, Daimos, at the cliffs of the outlands. The battle commences, and eventually Daimos, and Areios are surrounded, with great losses to their troops. Finally Daimos tells Areios to leave, and survive the battlefield in order to continue the operation, before he charges into the oncoming hoard. As he does, and Areios screams dramatically in the direction of Daimos, a mystery person knocks Areios unconscious with a shot to the gut. Areios comes to on a boat as it's reaching a small island that this mystery person--a purple haired man in knight's garb, that the manual refers to as Noys (seems to be pronounced like "nous")--is about to strand the hero on, after telling him that he has a much more grand role to play than to sit around in the outlands fighting monster hoards, and something about a "Wind of Legend."
All of that sounds pretty interesting, right? Well, put that on hold, cause it's time to investigate this wine country here on this little island. I've made a couple passes at this game before, and always got stuck at the point where this kid, Nicola, goes missing. For some reason I could never find him, even after going over the whole island several times--or so I thought, at least. Turns out he was right at the entrance to the first of the two feuding towns. I have no idea how it's possible that I could have missed this, two separate times, even. Leaving that aside, basically, what's happening in this intro chapter, on the small island, is there are two towns named after a pair of brothers from some arbitrarily long time ago. The two towns have a serious rivalry over booze: One town uses apples, the other uses grapes. They compete over who's alcohol will sell the best when the merchant ships come in, which they do very seldom, and the last one to show up was about half a year before Areios arrived. There's also some aristocrat kids vacationing on the island, but they kind of suck.
The apple town (I don't quite remember what the towns were called, so I'm just going to call them "apple town" and "grape town") "developed" a new drink that will knock people's socks clean off. In actuality, it was something that the young brewmasters of each town worked on together, in secret, but was found by the apple town, and brought the tension between the two towns to a fevered pitch--or something. I didn't really care about any of this, because it's just not important. Anyway, there's a bit of a Romeo and Juliet thing going on between Teo, and Marina. This grape town kid, Nicola, is locked up by the apple town for stealing some of their brew out of the barrels in the cave at the north end of the island. Areios works as a mediator, and gets Nicola released with a bit of help from Teo. When Nicola returns to the grape town, some other youths take it upon themselves to get revenge by smashing the barrels in the cave. This awakens some dormant master of the caves, sealed away by the two brothers long ago (each town basically perceives that it was just the work of their founder brother that sealed away the monster, though). Areios goes in, commandos the hell out of everything, and peace is restored. Ultimately Areios is helped off the island by the aristocrats' kids for saving them from the caves.
That's about as far as I went. I went around part of the town I was dropped off into for the start of this first real chapter, but not really anything else. It seems Diamos is off in a cave somewhere, fighting of monsters still. So, I'm still looking for someone who will take Areios back to Kuloros.
I have a couple concerns at the moment. I'm probably going to end up making a lot of comparisons between this game, and Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes, just because they feel very similar, even though the gameplay is quite different. The default text font is also the exact same as the one in the Mega Drive versions of Legend of Heroes I and II, so that also contributes. I really liked Legend of Heroes, and at the moment I'm a little worried about how The Legend of Xanadu will stack up. I did like that it seems like The Legend of Xanadu will have the same kind of humor, poking fun at a bunch of genre conventions. Specifically, in the grape town, going up to the town chief's dressers, during the day, and trying to investigate them will get Areios reprimanded by the chief about his choice of passtimes. Come back at night, when everyone is a sleep to examine the dressers, and Areios polishes them up, saying that it was really bothering him earlier. I really like this for how much it fits Areios' character to this point, as well. Another funny moment was in talking with the servant of the aristocrats' kids, when he's bed ridden. One of the girls said she lost a really important earring while they were picnicking up in the caves. Going to talk with the servant, he complains about having "nervous ulcers," and says that the doctor he met with told him he had two holes that opened up: One at the end of his throat, and one at the end of his intestinal tract--. Yep. Anyway, he still complains about the pain, so Areios offers to go get the earring in his stead. Inevitably it turned out that the girl had just forgotten that she left the earring in her jewelry box.
That last bit really has a lot to do with my main concern about the game right now: the pacing. Oh my god was it slow and tedious going back and forth between people, trying to figure out where the next person to talk to to advance the events is, or who even it is. On three separate occasions the game lead me to believe that I needed to do something in the cave, only for me to find out that whatever it was wasn't there, or that I just had to go back out and talk with someone. What's worse is that the events on the island just felt so detached from the setup of the game, and I was really just disinterested. I'm hoping this is solved a bit over the course of the game, but I'm also a little concerned about the fold out poster included with the game. Most games of this vintage would have a bunch of equipment/item/spell information on something like that, but this game has a map of the 51 screen dungeon in the final chapter on it. That feels a little ominous to me.
I'm also a little confused by the music. It's not that it's bad, or anything; It's generally fine, but it's not redbook audio. It seems like there's a bit of voice dialogue, but it sounds fairly low quality. It's just that, while on the island, there's basically only two music tracks: one while on most of the island, and one that plays when inside the cave. That's it, until the master of the caves wakes up, and then those two tracks change to two more with a bit more of a feeling of tension. That one background track that plays on the island just gets really repetitive after a while. I just really hope there isn't both a lack of variety in the BGM, and only wavetable synth, because that will probably affect my enjoyment a bit.
My last concern is the side-scrolling segments. They look fantastic, and I would think they would just be great, on their face, but actually playing them gives me some less flattering impressions. It's really zoomed in, and it makes visibility feel rather poor. It's not an issue for stationary enemies, but for stuff that comes in off screen, I found it really difficult to time sword swings to actually hit them before they were right on top of me. There's a bit of range, with a short, semi-projectile on sword swings, but it's still difficult to time it, for me. The other issue is enemies that fire from off screen, though. Those just have to be dodged, which can be pretty difficult when there are waterfalls that keep Areios from jumping. It's still early, though, and I'm hoping these get a little better. (I actually just remembered that there may have been more tools that I could have used in that section, and took another look at the manual. There are a number of things I didn't uses: Pretty much everything that wasn't jump, and slash, which includes things like slide, guard, downward thrust, charge slash, etc. Those could help.)
I'm also not a huge fan of bump combat, but it's serviceable. I kind of like the equipment system, at least. Essentially each piece of equipment will have a base proficiency when it's purchased or acquired for the first time, which provides a base attack or defense rating. As the equipment is used in combat, the proficiency increases, which increases the attack or defense up to some maximum value at 100% proficiency. It's pretty easy to abuse, though. For swords, anything that takes more than one hit to kill will increase the weapon's proficiency. Armor just requires being hit by enemies that can actually do damage, and shields require the same, but I think just frontal attacks. Once the enemies stop doing damage, they make this 'tink' sound when they attack, and immediately try to flee. The slimes that inhabit the island will run off somewhere, and basically kills themselves, making a sort of popping noise as they perish. It's a little funny. In a similarly FF II way, taking damage, and healing appears to increase HP, as well. That's really all there are for stats.
End log.