Game 385: Minelvaton Saga: Ragon no Fukkatsu (1987)

 

This was not a good use of time.

         

Minelvaton Saga: Ragon no Fukkatsu
("Minelvaton Saga: Return of Ragon")

Japan

Random House (developer); Taito Corporation (publisher)
Released in 1987 for NES
Date Started: 18 October 2020
Date Ended: 22 October 2020
Total Hours: 12 (artificially low because of a cheat)
Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: 30
Ranking at Time of Posting: 229/392 (58%)

     

At least four times this year, though it seems like closer to a thousand, the following sequence of events has occurred:

 

1. I decide I need to take a "break" from the official game list.
2. I reach for the "reject" pile--the list of games that I originally rejected for being a) on a console, b) not an RPG, c) in a language I couldn't easily translate, or d) unavailable. If the original reason was d), I research to see if it's turned up since then. If it was c), I look to see if there's an English patch.
3. I start playing the game, intending to get a "quick entry" out of it, particularly since I don't mind cheating the rejects.
4. I soon realize that the game isn't going to be quick, even if I cheat. But I don't want to take the game as a loss, so I keep playing until the bitter end, which turns out to be a lot more time than I wanted to invest in this little diversion.

      

You'd think I'd learn my lesson after a few of these, but here we are again. Minelvaton Saga came up in a literal random roll. Both a) and c) originally applied, but some Googling showed me that c) was no longer true, as a translator going by the name Aishsha made a translation available in 2011. While my rules do not obligate me to play games with fan translations (nor console games at all), these "reject pile" moments are for making exceptions, and I decided to give it a shot. Why didn't I stop after playing long enough to offer a BRIEF? I have no idea. I suspect to answer that question would involve several sessions on a couch. But here are the results.

        

The main character name is the only "creation" in the game.

       

The Saga takes place "long ago, even before the Big Bang," in the world of Minelvaton. The world was created by gods who then warred over its dominance. These included Khan, the God of Light, and Ragon, the God of Darkness. Eventually, Khan was triumphant, and the land flourished in a time of peace, the people coalescing into various lands and kingdoms. But Ragon returned (hence the subtitle), and his armies soon conquered the kingdoms of Ishkhan and Palmeccia. The young prince of Palmeccia and his guardian, a priest, were tossed into a time gate as the invading armies entered the throne room. Years later, his guardian on his death bed, the young prince (the character) now vows to restore the lost kingdom. To stand against Ragon, he will have to seek the power of the gods.

        

The character learns his pedigree at his guardian's death bed.

        

1987 is early in the history of Japanese console RPGs. That, coupled with the fact that the game was long-untranslated, led me to hope that I was in for a relatively original, exotic experience. Instead, it soon became clear that Minelvaton provides an experience highly derivative of Dragon Quest (1986) of the previous year, perhaps also influenced by Miracle Warriors: Seal of the Dark Lord, which also had a 1986 NES release. Minelvaton offers the same limited character creation, the same goofy cartoonish little man scurrying across a large landscape and encountering at random timer intervals, the same weird selection of magic objects that you can use in combat. It has some original elements in combat and in the way it treats NPCs, which I will explore. 

      

The world of Minelvaton is, I'm going to guess, no more than 64 x 64--small even by 1987 standards. But it's full of rivers, mountain ranges, broken bridges, patches of deep water, and other obstacles. It also forces you into a random combat every few seconds of walking. So getting from one side to the other can take closer to half an hour than half a minute. Again, recall Dragon Quest, where the final castle was literally visible from the starting castle, but took 17 hours of grinding and exploration to find the exact series of items that would get you to that point. Minelvaton perfects that mode of gameplay. You have to visit the same castles and towns multiple times as you find new resources for opening locked doors, passing through solid walls, walking across lava, and solving other navigational puzzles. There are multiple times in the game in which I found some new artifact and had no idea what to do with it. I literally had to loop back through every previously-visited area, talking to every previously-encountered NPC, until one of them finally bore fruit.

          

The world of Minelvaton is small but seems large.

         

(This mode of gameplay is also present in the Charles Dougherty series, starting with 1984's Questron. His games featured a lot of castles in which you could only progress so far until you found a key in another castle. You'd go back and forth between castles, each time exploring just a little bit further. Since the Dougherty titles also featured the same overland-and-town model as Dragon Quest, I wonder if there was any influence. Then again, I suppose we see that model all the way back in 1980, with the Atari 2600's Adventure.)

    

Also like Dragon Quest, this game would only take about 3 hours to win if you only had to run around assembling the artifacts and fight the boss battles. The rest of the time is spent fighting random encounters, which pop up every 2 to 8 seconds in every landscape except towns. Your enemies are defined by terrain (unlike Dragon Quest, they do not get harder as you progress from the starting area, except in dungeons), and you never meet more than three per combat. They have a variety of names, but they're really only differentiated in a) how hard they hit, b) whether they can shoot things at you, or c) whether they can poison you.

          

The game begins in the player's house in Roland.

        

Combat is where Minelvaton diverges from its sources. Instead of a turn-based system inspired by Wizardry or Phantasie, it uses a somewhat action-oriented system by which you (usually) run headlong into your enemy and bash him to death. This is a system featured in Hydlide (1984) and later in Ys (1987), though I'm not sure if Hydlide did it first. Most games that use this system have their enemies scurrying around on the main game map. This is the first game I've seen in which encounters are invisible until you trip them, but then you engage in Hydlide-style combat in a separate combat window. Also unlike other games that use the "run and bash" system, it doesn't seem to matter here whether you approach the enemy from the back, front, top, or bottom, nor whether you offset your position or attack him squarely. You do want to maneuver to avoid getting attacked by multiple enemies at once, but otherwise as long as you're touching an enemy, you're both hitting each other with equal fervor.

       

Fighting two monsters.

         

That said, the player does have some ranged options. There are special magic items called Adan's Seeds and Bird Claws that allow you to throw projectiles at enemies. There are others, Boa's Seeds and Smoke Balls, that do damage to all enemies on the screen. You can buy, find, and carry up to 99 of these items. Through 95% of the game, it makes a lot more sense just to spend your money on medicine, bash enemies in melee combat, and heal. But in the last 5%, you need all the resources you can muster, and I found myself regretting not having developed more experience with those ranged items.

    

Things also get different when you meet NPCs who will join the party. You can have one mage companion and one archer companion. Both sit at the sidelines and shoot spells or arrows at enemies. They can be attacked, but it's rare, and the main character is the one that suffers most of the damage. There are maybe three different NPCs throughout the game who will serve in either position, some manifestly better than the others, but a couple of them up and disappear once particular quest stages are passed. Fortunately, they pass their equipment on to the next NPC. You need the mage to get through the game, as the main character is incapable of casting any spells. According to the manual, NPCs can level up, but I never saw any sign of it.

      

My wizard and archer shoot at a "Death Master" while I bash it. I've just killed one; he left the treasure chest behind.

        

For the endgame, you have to replace any NPCs in your party with two particular ones, Luna the archer and Xena the mage, both designated "Warriors of Light" by prophecy.

         

Poor Terna and Gino learn that they're going to be replaced.

         

Finally, there's a mercenary system by which you can hire up to five "mercs" and have them fight in your stead. They apparently do level up as long as they survive. Early in the game, I wanted my character to get all the experience, so I didn't see the point of mercs. This also came back to bite me in the endgame, which you need all the resources you can muster. I'll bet five top-level mercs make a big difference against the endgame bosses.

       

Three mercs fight for me.

       

The game begins in a far western city called Roland, where the character's mentor dies. Cities in the game typically have a weapon and armor shop, an inn (where you can fully heal), an item shop, a fortune teller, and a magic guild where you can resurrect slain NPCs or save your own game. Towns are also crawling with NPCs, and talking with them really does help you figure out where you have to go, either now or in later stages of the game. You just have to take good notes, and I really didn't.

           

Fortune tellers often help you with the next step.

          

Roland's king gives you your first quest: to retrieve your family's crown from the ruins of the Sinus castle, not too far away. Only then will he believe that you're the prince. After this initial quest, the game opens up a bit. The king sends you to Malt (for unclear reasons), and you can recruit your first NPCs. It's best to stay close to cities in these early stages, grinding against monsters outside and sleeping at the inn when your hit points get too low. I was about Level 15 before I could make it to Sinus and back.

  

Over the next few hours, you slowly gain the tools needed to fully explore the towns and dungeons in the western half of the map. These include regular door keys, purchasable in most item stores but not in Roland, and a special "Seal Tome" to open special doors. You find a magic pearl that proves to the king of Dorf that you're worthy of a magic ship. This allows you to take off automatically from any dock and return to land at any dock, but docks aren't so plentiful that the world opens up as much as you might think.

        

Sailing down a river near a dock.

     

You buy your first weapon and armor upgrades. You also start to hear tales of a previous hero from Orlaine named Leon; his tale is told with such detail and repetitiveness that I was sure I had overlooked some previous game in the series called Leon's Saga or something, but I can find no trace of it. 

        

Again with Leon.

        

The first half of the game ends when you liberate your parents' old capital, Arkasas, from the demon who killed them, Zairas. Shops and NPCs return to the ghost town. Arkasas is in the center of the map, and I found it was a good place to save the game so that I could return to it with a Wind Flute or "Fly" spell, both of which whisk you to the last place you saved.

           

That's awfully unpleasant.

       

The second half of the game sees you assembling the items you need to challenge the gods. This includes a full set of Leon's old equipment--armor, shield, and sword--which get upgraded later. You find a "Thru" spell to get through some dungeon walls, and an Ice Doll, which for some reasons mends broken bridges. A wizard NPC named Zen joins you long enough to smash a rock blocking a key pass, then disappears. There are a lot of castles, dungeons, and NPCs that you have to visit during this phase, and I'm afraid I was using a walkthrough by this point, so I often lost track of exactly why I was doing certain things. 

          

This was important for some reason.

       

You restore a razed wizard town using a Spell Tome, raise an island from the sea, and restore power to the "Minelva Road" teleporters. This later quest allows you to teleport to the final island, where you learn that to win, you will have to assail four towers.

          

An NPC lays it out.

          

One thing that amused me--it has probably already amused you--is the use of proper names, starting with the title. "Minelvaton" means nothing in any western language. At best, it suggests a town named after someone named "Minelva." That root is present in the game; it describes a series of teleporters that the character has to activate at some point to take him to the final area. But in any event, including a letter l and lacking a final vowel, "Minelvaton" must have been a bit odd to Japanese mouths and ears. 

        

The "Minelva" part is explained in-game.

        

Some of the other names are equally risible. "Arkasas" suggests "Arkansas," for instance. It's hard not to laugh at the character's early-game invasion of the "Sinus Ruins." The town of "Ish" sounds like the people are probably wishy-washy about everything. You could see it in a Terry Pratchett novel. The towns of "Malt" and "Dorf" just sound a bit goofy. That says nothing of the personal names. Two great heroes of the past are "Leon" and "Jim" (an homage to Hydlide?). I'm not criticizing any of this, just noting with some amusement that what probably sounds exotic to eastern ears often sounds silly or banal to western ears. Of course, the reverse is also true. If I made an RPG and named its towns Shinjuku, Arakawa, and Setagaya, you'd think those were fine names, and Japanese people would be laughing that they were just suburbs of Tokyo.

    

I would be lying if I said I made it to the endgame honestly. I played the first half of the game straight, save for occasional use of a save state, but it was hardly necessary. The first half of the game is relatively easy, and I was gearing up for an "easy" difficulty rating. But I got sick of all the backtracking and running around trying to figure out what I needed to do next, and thus I looked at a walkthrough to get a sense of the major steps. In consulting the walkthrough, I saw that there's a cheat code that turns off random encounters. That was too good to pass up. If I hadn't enabled it, I suspect the game would have taken me over 30 hours. Of course, that meant missing out on experience, so I figured out the typical amount of experience I was earning per hour from random combats and hex-edited accordingly. Yes, it's indefensible. I just wanted to see the end at this point.

           

Approaching one of the endgame towers.

          

I came to the endgame around Level 125 out of a maximum of 138, and wow was it hard. You have to fight four gods at the ends of four towers, then fight Ragon in his temple. Each tower alone took all 99 of my healing potions, so I had to keep flying back to the closest town to replenish them, then go through each completed tower to the next uncompleted one. That's not as easy as it sounds. Although the gods disappear after you kill them, there are numerous fixed encounters that reset every time you leave a level and return. That meant I was getting to each "new" tower with fewer than my full complement of medicines.

         

About to encounter Edda, goddess of the dead.

Agora, the god of something or other. He made my NPCs go away for a while.

        

I had to fight the final battle with Ragon about ten times, trying a variety of different tactics. It doesn't help that his initial hit point total of 3,200 is a lie; once you get him down to 0, he morphs into a demonic creature with 4,000 new hit points. When you fight him in melee combat, your hit points go so fast that you have to pause every couple of seconds to swallow 4-5 medicines. Thus, you want to exhaust all of your ranged options first (although he can mass-attack at range, too), then probably your mercenaries, before resorting to melee combat. My problem is that I had forgotten about mercenaries.

          

I thought you were the prince of darkness.

 

He's down to his final few hit points, but so am I.

           

Ragon's death doesn't trigger the endgame. Instead, you have to make a long trek back to Arkasas, where the people proclaim you their king, you marry Luna, and everyone lives happily ever after.

        

I was going to do that whether you asked or not.

 

Wait. What?

Xena and Luna hardly did anything!

       

I thought Minelvaton was a bit better than Dragon Quest, having built on it with some additional features. In a GIMLET, I give it:

     

• 3 points for the game world. As with most JRPGs I've played so far, the backstory and its world are a little too cute, aloof, and abstracted (some day, I'll try to explain what I mean by this in more detail) for me to really care about it, but I do like that the character's actions have measurable impacts on the world.

• 2 points for character creation and development. Creation is only a name, and while leveling is rapid, aside from extra hit points, you don't really notice it.

      

There's not much to character development except level and gold.

        

• 5 points for NPCs. I like that what they say changes depending on where you are in the plot, that so much of the game's lore comes from them, and that a few of them can join the party.

• 2 points for encounters. There are some fixed and lots of random encounters, but none really offer any choices or role-playing.

• 3 points for magic and combat. There are more options than the "run and bash" method would suggest, but not a lot more.

• 3 points for equipment. A few upgrades throughout the game, for all characters.

         

Selections in the "Items" shop.

        

• 4 points for the economy. With so much to buy, it remains relevant throughout the game.

• 3 points for quests. In addition to the main quest, there are a few side dungeons.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. Nothing wrong with any, nothing particularly notable, either.

         

The menu/submenu system works. I didn't love it, but it works.

       

• 2 points for gameplay. Minelvaton is very linear and thus not replayable. If I hadn't cheated, it would have been far too long with too many random combats. (I thought it was both even with cheating.) The difficulty averages about right, but it's too variable--too easy at the beginning, too hard at the end.

    

That gives us a final score of 30, one point higher than I rated Dragon Quest--less than I thought, but it basically works.

     

Video game music fans will want me to mention that the score was composed by Yō Ōyama, the leader of a rock band called ASTURIAS, and Haruhiko Tsuda, the guitarist for a band called Shingestu. In Japan, the game is remembered so fondly for its music that a tribute CD with new arrangements of the soundtrack was published in 2009. I agree that the songs are well-composed. They're full of complex counterpoints and polyphonic textures, and some of the rhythms are so syncopated that I'd almost call them ragtime. 

         

I hope that some day, I get to work on a game and am credited among "the others."

       

I didn't see a lot in Minelvaton Saga that demanded a sequel, but it got a couple anyway: Silva Saga (1992) and Silva Saga II: The Legend of Light and Darkness (1993). From what I can tell, the games take place on other continents in the Minelvaton world, and they feature the same type of gameplay but with improved graphics.

    

At the end of this four-day period, I feel the same way I feel after playing a lot of games that score around 30: full without being satisfied, as if I'd just eaten a sleeve of club crackers. I'm not sure I've accomplished anything except to get a sense of an "average" JRPG during this period, which turns out not to be much different from the ones deemed significant enough to be worthy of English translation and western release.