Dungeon Trawler

Phantasy Star, Sega 1987, Sega Mk. III / Sega Master System I played this game because it was an early and popular DRPG, but I'm not sure it makes sense to evaluate it as one. It's more like a Dragon Quest II clone with first-person dungeons: much of one's time is spent on the overworlds or in (2D, fully explorable) towns; the dungeons are many and small, not few and labyrinthine; and so on. You could almost call it a spiritual successor to  Ultima 1  given the science-fantasy setting, 3D dungeons paired with a 2D overworld, multiple land vehicles, and corridor-based dungeons, but the turn-based combat makes the comparison feel a bit inapt: it's a JRPG through and through. Combat pits the party of 1-4, initially Alis alone but growing to include Myau, Odin, and Noah, against a group of enemies. Unusually, there's never more than one type  of monster in the group, or even stat variance between monsters of the same type. Battles, therefore, are as simple and unstrateg

Deep Dungeon Madou Senki /  ディープダンジョン 魔洞戦記,  HummingBirdSoft 1986, Famicom Disk System I first came across Deep Dungeon  as an article in OLD GAMERS HISTORY Vol. 3 , a chronological treatment of early RPGs. It wasn't a particularly glowing review, and it was more focused on the period than on the game itself, but something struck me: as far as I could tell, it was the second turn-based RPG on console, after Dragon Quest , and the first DRPG on console, period. I decided to give it a shot—and, as its ultra-simple combat and lack of gimmicks turned out to hide a surprisingly enjoyable mapping experience, I finished it. The dungeon is about the same size and depth as Wizardry's; its floors are 30x30 to the classic 20x20, but the thick walls really eat into that space. Unfortunately, all that empty space eats into my paper. C'est la vie ; the more important thing is that the floors are, for the most part, open and geometrically interesting, unlike the disguised straight lines o

I beat the game! I'm not going to continue with the plot summary because it goes some unexpected places; suffice to say that it stays interesting until the end. Instead, I'm going to talk about something else: the surprising extent to which this game is a spiritual predecessor to One Way Heroics . Firstly, consider the Force system. Despite the change in genres, it works essentially the same way: each Force power, in addition to a FORCE/SP cost, requires one or more stacks of Concentration, which are gained by spending an action ( Gensoutan ) or turn ( One Way Heroics ) Concentrating. Stronger powers require more stacks of Concentration. Many, perhaps even most, of Gensoutan 's Force powers made the transition; it's hard to be entirely sure when I played one game in Japanese and the other in English, but I recognized Force Flame, Force Lightning, Force Heal, and the attack buff from OWH. Itemization, too, is more or less identical. The player character has a maximum car