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| (Source: Tomorrow's Heroes) |
1) 3 - Character Advancement: practice/experience based advancement, stat or level increases,
2) 2 - Combat: character stats used for combat,
3) 0 - Items and Equipment:
4) 1 - Story: main story at the forefront;
5) 1 - Exploration:
6) 0 - Quests and Puzzles:
Flying Warriors is another Culture Brain game--the company that's doing its best to blend genre lines by mixing in RPG elements before anyone else--which has brought us The Magic of Scheherazade and the up coming Little Ninja Brothers. I'm not sure any of the Culture Brain games did exceptionally well, but we really don't see them hit a series until Little Ninja Brothers (also known as Super Chinese).
This title doesn't quite make the cut though, as it has a lack of NPC interaction, town/stores to buy and sell items or equipment to, and puzzles to solve. It does offer some innovative leveling and character combat stats for a beat'em-up / platformer. We won't quite make the transition into RPG-beat'em-up yet. Once again, I'm sure we'll get there, but it just hasn't happened yet.
For those looking to play this game, it's one of many games available for free on Virtual NES, online Java based NES emulation. No need to download anything, just have Java installed and play.
"by mixing in RPG elements before the anyone else"
ReplyDeleteI had to reread that one a couple times before I realized there was an extra word in it.
Just checking to see if you're still reading. ;)
DeleteThanks, edited.
I never played this, but I do remember Gamepro running a comic based on this (and another based on Little Ninja Brothers) back in its first year or thereabouts.
ReplyDeleteThere's a total of two turn-based battles in Flying Warriors, which give you (primitive) multiple combat options and let you switch between all of the Flying Warriors mid-battle. Of course ,since one is halfway through the game and the other is the final boss, I can certainly understand if you don't consider that substantial enough to give it points in that category; even being generous it would just barely get 10RPP.
ReplyDeleteGood to know this scale and scoring still holds up. During these early cut games I didn't always try them out myself, and just watched videos of the game to get an idea of what it was like.
DeleteBlogger doesn't seem to want to let me use the reply button today. Anyway, it's kind of like the game threw in those RPG elements to have another bullet point on the box. The turn-based battles are genuinely fun, and feel really epic, but there just... aren't enough of them; I'd go so far as to say they really should have been at least as common as in Little Ninja Brothers. (This is from a country that advertised Zunou Senkan Galg, a crappy shump involving branching paths and collecting a few items, but no other RPG elements as a "SCROLL RPG".)
ReplyDeleteCulture Brain was known for crossing their games with the RPG genre, but I don't think they ever did turn based battles well. Little Ninja Brothers was definitely better than Magic of Scheherazade, but I can't really say how this one turned out. Maybe I'll check this game out if I have some down time.
DeleteMaybe part of the reason I thought they worked decently here was that they didn't wear out their welcome, and that they get by on just being a change of pace. (Then again, I thought they worked better in Scheherazade, just because of the variety of characters...)
DeleteWhile I enjoyed the variety of characters in Scheherazade, it was actually the battles themselves that I felt didn't work because the rewards for completing them were so minimal. They didn't balance well with the time and risk involved.
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