Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes (1989)

This game is mad cute and the voice acting is amazing. I can actually hear all the liquid in the Evil Emperors mouth as waxes on, so immersive! Also, he's trying to become my step-dad. Evil Emperor, please don't become my step-dad....

Funny little sayings like this pop up in earnest. Everyone is aware of levels in this one-- "Buddy, we gotta be level 8 before we fight that guy!" and such. You can see these adorable set pieces going on, character acting bringing charm where it's needed and storytelling being employed to add some personality. Nice to see that even back in the day, the Legend of Heroes games had commitment to story. But right now I'm just grinding OTL

Extra side note: I think...The priests in this game were all localized to be Beatles references. I met a Priest (or Father) Mackenzie, he said "Anytime you want to talk, I'll be there." Now the song is stuck in my head.

I overall enjoyed DS:LoH. As of this time I've only played the Dragon Slayer I via Falcom Classics (saturn), which is a remake of the MSX era original and a bit of Popful Mail. This game however has a similiar feel, being that it's also CD based system in roughly (somewhat) the same era as both of those. There are some things worth mentioning. First, the game is a bit like Final Fantasy (NES) or Dragon Warrior. It's kept very simple and the only complexity is assembling a party, delegating magical spells, and turning off the automatic STR, INT,SPD, LCK assignment for one of your choosing. Unlike FF, you do not have that excellent wizardry-styled lurid enemy art, but you do have an overworld that is similiar feeling (and managable) to both those games. Finally, you have voice acting (but its awful...ly funny) and a CD audio rock soundtrack that you can toggle to 16 bit mode. This game on it surface is the FF 3 I always wanted for but never found.

Back to Dragon Slayer 1 and Falcom. aesthetic similiarities. First of all is the strange UI and menu quirks. The game really has a rustic charm that I came to find myself appreciating. It would seem that a lot of japanese games, A-RPGs, SHMUPS in this era, feature a very strange kind of UI 'furniture.' This is essnetially a kind of border around life, score or other stats that tends to persist at times. It tends to be a bit garish and weird but I found I got used to it.

Falcom also seems to like to 'bump' into things. This goes well with the minimal approach. In fact, your buttons are kept to battle commands mostly. Perhaps its to feel more platformer-friendly (again think about the japanese RPGS of the old era) But walking around isnt confined toa grid really and while some enemies are random overworld spawns some in dungeons will start TBT battle when you bump into them.

This 'map' spell also looks very familiar to me. XD

The menus are a bit weird and reminded me of the other game. I found some things (like snaping back to manual mode after auto-assigning combat) tricky but they are fine. You can pull up that menu and pause/save at any time (when not in battle)

The final thing to mention is the animations are very much like the saturn remake of DS1 in how you will have typical standard fare of the animation of sprites and then there are strange rapid flashing spirtes race across the screen. Could be a falcom thing and/or a CD era of the rpg. It's kinda cool though.

All in all this feels like a minimal JRPG due to simple party stat + mostly a D-pad and select button. But it has great msuic, some visual elements, some of the worst voice acting ever in a VG maybe. It also has a rather broken stat system that favors STR by the end of the game and fails to really offer a bread and butter magic system.... In no way is this a good game but the humorous dialogue and NPC text is in a similiar tone to Cthulhu saves the world or Charles Barkley. This alone combined with some of the frills of the turbo cd make it feel somewhat unique. I gave it a go because I read it wasn't long (and it wasnt but it was a bit longer than I had expected) and i also have been liking some of these old falcom games.

worth looking at if you like old stuff and enjoyed cthulhu saves the world. it feels aged and it does take longer than those games though. as a JRPG it doesnt stand up but as a Joke-RPG its good fun.