Chester Discipline (チェスター・フィールド ～暗黒神への挑戦～), launched 7/30/1987, developed and printed by Vic Tokai
That is one other early motion/RPG hybrid for the Famicom, and it just about continues the sample of involving extra frustration than enjoyable, regardless of having a variety of potential.
The primary thriller is that if you flip the sport on, it labels it as “Episode II: Problem to the Darkish God.” So far as I can inform, there by no means was an Episode I, however perhaps there was a fad on the time for doing issues like Star Wars Episode IV. Right here’s a narrative abstract copied from Moby Video games: “The Kingdom of Guldred has been invaded by Normal Guemon and his darkish forces, who’ve killed their king. A courageous knight named Gazem fled for a paradise of solar and pleasure named Chesterfield Island with the deposed queen and their daughter Karen. However Guemon’s forces had been proper there and sunk their ship, killed the queen, kidnapped Karen and left Gazem for useless. Happily for Guldred, Gazem barely managed to breathe the dominion’s sorry plight to a courageous knight named Kein earlier than he died. Now the destiny of Guldred rests on Kein’s broad shoulders…”
The sport performs out over eight phases, though you may journey between them (in a considerably cumbersome approach). The hero Kein can leap, duck, and assault. He begins with 100 HP and might stand up to 200 by therapeutic with objects, resting at an inn, and so forth. You get XP for beating the monsters, and every stage you may stage up twice (so by the top of the sport you may be stage 16). You additionally earn cash that you need to use to purchase weapons, armor, and shields.
Every stage has some type of dungeon you must undergo. On every stage you must discover an merchandise in addition to defeat the boss on the finish of the realm. The outer areas of the phases have homes which you can go to to get hints, or purchase issues.
The sport performs decently, though the motion Kein is a bit stiff, particularly if you attempt to flip him round. You may get passwords from the inn, and should you die you lose half your cash and return to the start of no matter space you might be in, however you retain any XP or objects that you just obtained.
There are two large issues with the sport that make it probably not price taking part in, for my part. The primary one is that there are a variety of pits that trigger on the spot demise (together with ones that require you to leap on small transferring platforms). That is widespread from the motion RPGs of this period — Zelda II, Castlevania II, Getsu Fuumaden, and different video games all have them, I suppose as a result of just about all facet scrolling motion video games of any sort had them. However it’s annoying to have 200 HP however then have to return to the start of the realm since you couldn’t hit a leap on a tiny platform.
A second drawback is that the dungeons are extraordinarily troublesome to navigate. That is the map of the second stage. You have got hidden pits (and the outer areas and different locations usually have hidden areas within the ceiling or hidden partitions you need to discover). There are additionally loops on the facet, and a variety of one-way passages. This makes the map exhausting to navigate as a result of all of the screens mainly look the identical, and it turns into actually troublesome to inform whether or not you might be in a brand new space or whether or not you looped round.
As with the pits, that is typical of video games of this period. I’d like to learn any sort of historical past or interviews with designers of this era to know what they had been considering after they made the video games. Opinions usually criticized these video games for being too troublesome so it’s not simply that it was a special time and no person knew any higher. Possibly they had been simply too restricted within the methods they may make a recreation difficult or take longer for the participant? (Or as I’ve mentioned earlier than, they only needed to promote technique guides)
One other grievance I noticed from Japanese gamers is that for some motive the opening and ending textual content is in English. There’s a video of the sport on Youtube titled “Chester Discipline: You Want an English Dictionary to Play.” The feedback are all saying “That is nostalgic” however then “This was not possible to clear with out a technique information” and “I began up the sport and had no concept what I used to be doing.”
Anyway, I don’t assume that is actually price taking part in now.
