Nippon: The Age of Sail

My discoveries in the top half of the game world.

           

I'm not ready to say that it works particularly well as an RPG, but Nippon is turning out to be an interesting game that puts an emphasis on open-world exploration. It has an Ultima III-V quality of needing to find cities, people, and clues, but with less guidance as to your overall mission and goals. 

Combat plays such an incidental role that I suspect you could win the game without it. I don't know for sure. It's possible that later stages will have some necessary combats, and I'll be grateful for whatever time I spent in weapons training and character development. So far, however, I think I could have avoided every fight by just ignoring enemies and running past them. They don't really pursue you. In fact, your icons can run right over each other, so they're not even capable of standing in your way. Moreover--and again I could be wrong about this, but I don't think so--the game doesn't seem to have any dungeons. Most of your time is spent in cities and towns where combat isn't even an option.

              

 I still fight a lot between cities in case experience points become important.

         

After the last session, I decided to get more serious about my approach to the game. I brought the world map into ArcGIS as a raster and created a layer on top of it to record the locations of cities, castles, and other physical features. I spent a long, snowy day exploring all of the landmasses in the top half of the map, recording as many locations as I could find. I'm sure there are some others hidden behind impassable mountains, but I have to find some manner of flight before I can record them. There were more than a dozen cities in this area, and almost 150 NPCs. 

          

Unsurprisingly, ArcGIS can't figure out the projection and coordinate system for Nippon.

                          

I ended up re-visiting some of the cities I'd already visited, because I discovered something new (and somewhat annoying) about the NPC "stance" system. Not only do NPCs refuse to speak with you if you pick the wrong stance, but some of them don't offer all of their dialogue keywords unless you choose a particular stance. All this time, I thought I'd chosen the "right" stance because I picked something like "normal" or "friendly" and the NPC continued to talk with me. But it turns out that I needed to pick a different one to get the full story. Expecting players to get it right, or to go outside and return several times for every NPC, was terribly unfair of the developers. There are a few places in which NPCs give you hints about the right stance to take, but they're certainly not ubiquitous.

             

Finding the in-game maps of cities continues to be vital, but so far I haven't been crazy enough to bring them into my GIS system to pinpoint NPCs.

         

Also, based on the fact that a few NPCs in early cities had more to say after I visited other cities, I suspect that some keywords don't unlock until you've spoken to other NPCs. Fortunately, such cases are usually determinable through the context of the conversation. For instance, if Yoshimoto tells me that he heard a rumor from Takagi in Yugure, I know I have to revisit the latter NPC.

I won't give you a blow-by-blow of my visits, but here are the summary highlights.

Gold turns out to be a non-issue if you're willing to spend some time. Since cities re-set every time you leave and return, so do the hoards of gold. In Ubamachi, I could pick up almost 600 gold pieces per visit for the cost of two keys. In Takedo, it was double that amount. This revelation had the effect of making combats particularly pointless. Picking up gold, leaving the city, swapping disks, re-entering, and walking back to the gold is somewhat boring, but if you're binging Jessica Jones at the same time, it's not hard to get into the tens of thousands of gold pieces.

           

Your riches are limited only by your patience.

        

Weapons and armor upgrades, and the associate weapons training, cost a bundle--far more than I could have made from killing enemies at 30 gold pieces a pop. I thought weapons were cheap because they started out at 80, 100, 120 gold pieces in the first few towns. But for good weapons, you need to spend many thousands. Every time I thought I'd seen the most expensive weapons, I found a shop that sold even more expensive ones. And the more expensive the weapon, the more expensive the training. You need three training sessions to get at 100% with the weapon. I wanted to keep a ranged weapon for its obvious benefits, so I finally settled on a kind of bow called a dai-kyu, which I think cost 4,000 gold pieces plus another 7,500 in training.

         

That was a lot of trips to the treasure rooms.

         

It was a long time before I found a shop selling good armor. They're not nearly as plentiful as weapon shops. I bought a set of samurai armor for 2,000, and it looks pretty elaborate on my character portrait.

Character development came from visiting the various Buddhas and solving their riddles. I eventually found my way to both of the Buddhas described last time: the "invisible maze" had a solution by walking through a false pillar, and to solve the other one, I had to purchase a yari for 4,000 gold pieces and give it to a statue.

Each of the Buddhas poses a multiple-choice question about the game's lore, and I'm honestly confused about the whole thing even though I got some of them right. For instance, the Buddha in Samusa-Toshi asks: "Once there were war magicians. They fought in a warlike time. What are these wars called?" The answers were "Battles of the Shugenjas"; "Wars of Power"; "Wars of Shatun"; and "Battle of Yugure." I found the answer--Wars of Shatun--in the "story" labeled "version 3" on the Nippon Museum site. But several of the later questions had answers found in version 2 or version 4, so I'm more confused than ever about which versions were presented to the original players, and in what format.

           

Buddha poses a test of knowledge.

        

Another puzzle, having to do with the city in which the "first tree" is found, doesn't appear in any of the backstories and can only be answered by visiting that city. 

        

It was pretty clear when I got there.

         

The Buddhas I answered correctly all provided increases to my attributes--I guess. If you look at my attribute bars, you'll see that the lower portions are shaded and the upper portions are lighter. Generally, only the upper portions increased. What's the difference? At first, I thought the shaded portions represented my actual attributes as opposed to my maximums, but when I fight in combat, the unshaded portion of my health seems to disappear first, suggesting that it is real health, not theoretical health. Then I thought that the shaded portions simply represented my starting attributes, so I could easily see how far I'd come, except that the shaded portion of "agility" increased at some point. So in the end, I really have no idea what's happening.

Experience points also continue to be a mystery. I gain them with every battle, but what do they do? Why can't I see how many I have? Do they affect the attribute increases conferred by the Buddhas? Do they do anything? Seriously, I'll take explicit spoilers at this point.

The game apparently has a few skills for you to learn. In a dense forest in Kokuso-Do, I met a man who taught me the "Hide" skill, which will supposedly make it even easier to elude enemies. Learning the skill added yet another menu icon. There's also apparently a "Swim" skill to learn in the city of Mizu-Do (which I have not yet found). I need it to visit the Buddha in Hayashi-Tori, among other locations. I might have missed another potential skill in Hayagake-Do, where a monk said I could learn to stay awake for a long time, but then didn't give me any way to do that. There was also a Buddha in the city that wouldn't respond to me no matter where I burned incense in front of him.

Part of my time was spent tracking down special items. I can't remember exactly where I first got a lead on a magic ring. It had been stolen and re-stolen from so many NPCs that I lost track, but I ultimately traced it to Bakamana in Namazaki. When I spoke to her--she had been cursed to stand still by witches--she told me that she hid it on a "rocky island north of here." That island is unfortunately fully enclosed by mountains, as well as surrounded by water, so I'll need some flight mechanism.

In Hayashi-Tori, I learned of the Stone of Toshi, hidden in the far corner of the forest. It wasn't too hard to find the spot. When used, the stone reveals the entire surrounding area, even if the tiles would have been obscured by trees or mountains. 

      

Most of this area would normally be dark because of the trees. (My character has no clothes because I had to give up my outfit to a statue.)

        

A common theme is for little bluish statues to demand an object to allow passage to otherwise-inaccessible areas. Most statues, when you stand on them and search, are unremarkable. But a few demand something. I lost my suit of clothes in Hayashi-Tori to reach the center island, for instance. There was the one that wanted a yari to show the way to the Buddha. Others have wanted specific food items. I have a "to do" item to return to Kokuso-Do when I have a honeycomb.

         

"Thank you. Go freely," a statue says, opening the way southward, after I give it a fish.

         

Only late in the game did I make any kind of progress with a potential magic system. I gather you have to find the game's half dozen spells on individual scrolls. In Hayagake-Do, an NPC named Fuji-San said he made a counterspell to work against witches, and I could find it on an island west of the city. I did find the location, but when I searched, the game just said I found something but couldn't use it now.

Some time later, in the town of Teijnashi, I met a sensei named En-No-Gyoja who taught me zaubern, which translates either as "conjuration" specifically or "magic" generically.

            

"All wizards start" with this sensei, so perhaps I needed to learn from him before I could learn any other magic?

         

I got a new icon, but nothing shows up when I try to use it. I wonder if I need to go back to the island and search for the scroll again, or whether there are different types of magic, and I need the right types before the associated scrolls will work.

         

Learning zaubern.

         

As for the plot, despite all the discussions with NPCs, I still only have threads. I'm sure the endgame is going to have something to do with the Wheel of Time I found on one of the northern islands. It allows you to set a year, month, and day. I fooled around with it but kept dying "in the course of time," so I assume something is necessary to protect the player from the ravages of time travel before you can fiddle with it.

        

Setting things randomly turned out to be a bad idea.

       

In Tsusho-Jo, I met King O-sama Siramoto and his court. He was depressed after losing his daughter, Princess Kikoro, to Emperor Subarashii. This is the story related in the game's backstories, and I suspect I'm going to have to go back in time to prevent the marriage.

There was something going on with the entire northeast island, containing the cities of Fuko-Mura and Yugure, as well as a pool of lava on a western peninsula. I learned in Fuko-Mura that the volcano had recently erupted because a careless wizard messed around with it. The eruption destroyed the other two cities on the island, including Yugure. Yugure, in turn, was populated by floating heads who proudly announced that they served a demon and were planning to conquer the world.

Miscellaneous notes:

• The world has an edge, like Ultima VI, and if you sail too close, the currents pull your ship over it. 

        

My character spends forever in the void.

        

• I kept meeting "horse doctors" who offered grooming services. I have yet to find a place that sells a horse.

• My slave, who just sits in my inventory, apparently allows me to carry an extra weapon and armor set. I also bought a guard dog who watches over me while I sleep and prevents me from getting attacked in the night. 

• I found two mountains that appear to have some kind of force field across their tops.

         

Preventing the volcano from blowing?

        

• I'm not going to test everyone's patience by repeatedly complaining about it, but I also don't want my silence to be taken as a sign that I've come to terms with the joystick-only interface. It is a constant and unnecessary pain.

• In some cities, I've found masses of what look like teleporters, as in the image below, but they don't seem to do anything.

          

This is where a (L)ook command would come in handy.

          

In probably the most interesting and yet useless adventure, I discovered a "town" called Ulti-Tori on one of the western islands. The interior of the town was shaped like Sosaria in Ultima III, and NPCs stood at the locations of cities, dungeons, and special encounters in that game, relating information about those locations and the roles they played in Ultima. I didn't find anything actually useful in the city (although I was unable to speak to Exodus; I suspect I need to "Swim" skill), but it was a fun homage.

       

An NPC represents the castle of Lord British and explains what happened there.

           

I started this series of entries wondering if the developers really did base their approach on Ultima. This city at least makes it clear that they played it.

          

Though they were incapable of actually depicting the silver snake.

         

That's about all I learned in 16 hours of exploration and note-taking, and in some ways I remain more confused than ever. But I'm committed to exploring the second half of the world and seeing if things become any clearer. I am somewhat curious to see how it all plays out.

Time so far: 16 hours