Bahamut Lagoon (1996)

Bahamut Lagoon, for SNES

Rating: 7.8/10; Good

Recommended for all kinds of RPG fans, unless you really dislike strategy RPGs

Bahamut Lagoon is a strategy RPG which is similar to a mix between Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle. The game world is unusual in that it is an expanse of air with isolated floating islands of rock, and there is no reference made to any kind of planetary surface. The game does not feature generic characters, but rather a large caste of named characters with distinctive personalities and classes (similar to Fire Emblem), though there is no permadeath. These characters are one of the best aspects of the game because they all have well defined personalities, motivations, back stories and little story arcs. It is very amusing to see what new thing each character has to say or do after each new mission. The story itself is good, though the little character interactions certainly take the spotlight.

The game is divided into story sequences (where you can move around your base or town and talk to npcs) and battle missions. Each battle mission is separated by a story sequence. Battle missions take place on relatively large maps, which feature things like mountains, forests, rivers, lakes, and castles. Sometimes they are indoors or underground. A great aspect of the game is that you can use magic to affect terrain. Fire can burn down forests (causing damage to nearby units), ice can freeze water (allowing it to be crossed), thunder and earth can destroy some structures (such as walls), and healing/poison can purify or corrupt water.

In battle, units take turns moving around on a grid, though there is no advantage to attacking from the flank. Each of your units consists of a dragon + 4 humanoids, though the dragon is a separate unit on the map. On its turn a unit can freely change equipment and use restorative items, and can do either a move + action, or just an action. Attacking will start a side screen battle similar to any JRPG, where each character selects an action from a list, and each character gets only a single action before the combat ends. Sometimes the dragon will help out during battle. The other possible action is casting a spell. Spells can be used both in battles and from the field, however in the field all characters in the unit who can use that spell will contribute to it to make it more powerful. Some classes have passive abilities that work in the same way, so the game does slightly encourage putting the same classes in one group.

Also on its turn, the unit can give an order to the dragon, which will use its turn immediately after the unit. Dragons are AI controlled, and the possible commands are very limited. Dragons will make better choices with a higher mind stat, but are generally dumb. I found that they would often do the following bad things: move far away to attack something you did not want to and getting themselves surrounded, fail to target area attacks to hit multiple enemies, blow mana unnecessarily when basic attacks could finish the enemy, use attacks that heal or do no damage to certain enemies (even repeatedly), and trigger hazards that could have been avoided. Enemy AI is even worse, completely failing to use area attacks on multiple units and simply attacking the closest target most of the time.

By far the best part of the game is raising the dragons. Outside of battles, dragons can be fed items to raise stats. This is a very simple system where each item raises specific stats a specific amount (or decreases). For example, feeding weapons increases physical attack, while feeding fire items improves fire breath. The dragon’s stats affect the abilities of the humanoids in its unit; both power level and unlocking new abilities. For example, the dragon’s fire stat affects the power of a wizards fire spell. This is a very interesting system which allows you to raise your dragons to complement and specialize your other characters. Each dragon has its own unique graphics, and it will change form depending on its stats. There are many different forms, with each dragon having its own unique graphics and sprite for each form; that is a significant amount of detail! It is also great that you cannot screw up the dragons. There is no incorrect way to build them, and you can use items that subtract stats to change something that you do not like (though you cannot decrease most stats, like elemental and physical power). It does get a bit annoying when a dragon uses a low ranking attack instead of its high abilities, though I believe this might be due to the dragon having a low mind stat. The one problem with this is that 2 special types of dragons disable all other abilities and replace them with one single attack. So this means your priests lose their white magic, and your wizards can no longer affect terrain.

Overall Bahamut Lagoon is a game consisting of multiple great parts that combine to be a little less than the sum of the parts. Particularly, I found the battles to be somewhat boring and tedious, though it is still a very good game.

Pro

• Good story
• Excellent characters, development, dialogue etc
• Elemental magic affects terrain in interesting tactical ways
• Variety of interesting terrain, such as bridges over air (which can lead to instant death), turrets, traps, and treasure
• Xp is gained per action, and granted from winning story missions. Non combat units (such as priests) will not have trouble leveling up
• Interesting tactical mechanic between feeding dragons items vs equipping them on people, keeping them in reserve, and selling for money
• Entire dragon feeding/raising mechanic is by far the best feature of the game
• Huge number of different graphics and sprites for each dragon as they change their form based on specific combinations of stats
• Newgame+
• Good variety of enemies that introduce new mechanics throughout the entire game
• Large variety of unit combinations, all of which have their own tactical advantages and disadvantages

Con

• In towns you can only access the equip menu from a shopkeeper
• At one point you breed a seventh dragon, though are only ever able to have 6 units in battle despite having enough people to make that unit
• Uni and unknown dragons replace all of a character’s spells with a single type (so priests lose healing)
• Uni abilities can randomly fail
• Items do not display what stats they will change when fed to a dragon
• Some of the dragon stats are not explained very well
• One dragon can get infinite hp, which is nearly game breaking (if you abuse it)
• Enemies drop loot based on how they were killed. This is nonsensical because the loot can be equipment that the enemy could not possibly use, and it can make it hard to improve specific elements if that element is already underpowered
• Poor enemy AI, which most often mindlessly attacks the closest target
• Friendly dragon AI is not much better than the enemy. The limited commands you can give do not give enough control