Lagoon (1990)

Lagoon is pretty famous for being the game that was kind of like Zelda, but it sucks because the sword is extremely short... and that is actually a pretty accurate description of the game. This is an action RPG where you have to traverse a bunch of labyrinthian dungeons and stop the evil in the world.

The story here is about as bare bones as you can get and not very compelling at that. You are playing as a character named Nasir and have to figure out why the world's water supply is getting muddy and then fix it. The funny thing is that I actually own this game CIB, so I read the manual before starting the game and it essentially told me all of the plot points that were to come. I'm serious, all the big reveals and plot was written in the manual as the section to describe why you are going on your quest. Needless to say, I had the story ruined for me... not that it was that deep anyway.

The gameplay loop centers around killing monsters, gaining xp, and leveling up. After the first few dungeons you unlock magic, but it is essentially useless because killing monsters with spells doesn't give you xp and you can't use magic during boss fights for some reason. Pretty late into the game, you receive rings and these give you powerful buffs, but drain your MP in order to use. The biggest issue with this game is that it was clearly designed to be a bump-combat game. The similarities to the early Y's series are everywhere and the game just feels like it would have been better if it just stuck to a bump combat system. You essentially need to bump into enemies anyway if you want to hit them because your sword is so small.

The weird thing about Lagoon is that I was never truly pissed off at the game and the terrible storytelling and laughable dialogue/cutscenes were charming in a way. Lagoon perfectly nails the "it's so bad it's good" narrative. I don't think this game is actually good, but I had fun with it. The best part of the game is that you can save anywhere and I definitely think it saved Lagoon from becoming extremely tedious and boring.

Beat. I did not particularly enjoy this game and in fact it was lucky that I played it all the way through. Most of the game is mediocre at best, but the ridiculously difficult and cheap bosses ruin the experience. Erratic boss movements, contact damage, atrocious range on your attacks, not allowed to use magic vs bosses and no real way to avoid damage. Even extreme save state scumming did not really help. I found the best strategy to be to flail around madly and hope the boss dies before you do, otherwise load and try again.

4.5/10

Since this...gem of a...game...has come up more than a few times recently, I feel the need to share this: the least-fitting intro music for a lousy intro for a horrible game ever conceived that manages to be utterly awesome.

(The intro itself is incredibly vague, has someone who looks like an elf chick but is actually a dude (and the only way you'll realize this is because of his heterochromia), and its length doesn't sync up with the intro music in the slightest.)