Beaten games 25-29 Sfc x5

I’m on a roll!

It has been a while since I actually played something from the SFC shelf,
it was time to fix that with five short ones!

-25 Monstania-

This has been on my to play list for ages ever since I tested the fan translation,
it turned out to be really short and my old save was actually half way trough…
anyway, a nice little Action/strategy/RPG. Very easy thanks to the dumb AI and
the fact that you can revive yourself with items. Interesting game overall,
you only have two party members that you switch between,
while one is attacking, the other can build up AP to use special moves.
Not a fantastic game but nice, I especially like that a few of the stages
are puzzles instead of combat, a rare sight in these games.

-26 Neugier-

Wolfteam! I have tested this before but now with a fan translation
it was time to beat it. I was quite surprised to see this was one of
the VERY few 2D games to try to simulate height and objects you can both
be under and over! Alundra is probably the only one to succeed at this but I
should have known that Wolfteam at least made an attempt. A really short
Action/RPG probably best to compare with Lagoon, this is a bit less confusing
but the majority takes place in a labyrinth castle.

-27 Madou Monogatari-

Yay, finally got this and the translation working on emulator.
I suppose the best comparison would be to link to the past thanks to the
graphics and the fact that it has a semi open world. You get the map and
objective to find 8 stones immediately and can get some of them in which
order you like.

The tempo is very low and I did use the turbo button for this,
every time you get a random encounter you have to see a small conversation
with every enemy, it is fun the first time but not if you meet the same
enemy 30 times in a row… It is cute and you really learn to navigate
the world but the environments are far too empty and there is a lot of
minor issues, I would say that it is halfway to a great game and
I am thankful that translations for these old games keep popping up!

Puyopuyo!

-28 The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang-

This actually got released in english, Another Action/RPG. It somehow
reminds me more of games like Goof Troop than a RPG but oh well.
You have a spin attack, you can throw your hat and use items,
that is more or less everything, luckily another short game otherwise it
would have gotten dull fast. It is of out most importance to keep up your
levels or a single enemy will take ages, we are talking 50-100 hits (!)
otherwise simple enough. For some reason the main character also reminds
me a bit of Laharl from Disgaea, haha.

-29 Hiouden-

Oh yes, another one from Wolfteam, this time with Motoi Sakuraba
and Yoshiharu Gotanda, I knew this would be good after seeing
their names in the intro.

Apparently a port from NEC’s PC98, and it shows, once again Wolfteam
shows their skills by managing to get this running on the SNES,
the only SNES game I have ever beaten with a mouse!
There is a lot of icons, sub menus and things in general to click on
and it is a pain with the SNES controller. A lot of jumping between
different views of the map and scrolling back and forth.
The mouse is a must!

This should probably be called an RTS since you can control all of
your troops in real-time etc. RTS is a genre that I have spent very
little time with but most of them seem to be relatives to RPGs anyway,
it will keep its place in the shelf!

I would probably not have made it to the end without save states
(almost didn’t with them either) and it is a hard game, it starts of easy
but as soon as you get a full party of 24 characters it’s hard to keep
them all alive and there is just not enough revive items…
half of the team were dead for the second half of the game.

Despite the troubles I really did enjoy the game, the story was quite
nice too even though I have lost count on how many times a prince need
to reclaim his kingdom etc.