Kalin no Tsurugi (カリーンの剣), launched 10/2/1987, developed by Crystalsoft, printed by DOG
That is one other Famicom Disk System recreation; the peripheral was already beginning to present indicators of hassle, and there aren’t many disk video games left. Once you begin up the sport it looks like a ripoff of a well-known RPG:
However it really doesn’t resemble Dragon Quest a lot in any respect. As a substitute of turn-based random battles, you see enemies on the map, and once you encounter them, it goes right into a separate action-battle display screen the place you run into the enemies to trigger harm (like Ys).
The battles are fairly fast paced and harmful — one situation is that you could’t run from battles, and also you by no means know whether or not the battle will likely be with 1 enemy who begins throughout the map, or 8 enemies that begin already surrounding you, which regularly ends in a recreation over, as a result of at any time when you’re hit you may’t transfer for a short while, making it very straightforward to get locked in and killed. This can be a recreation that you’ll get fixed recreation overs in, until you spend quite a lot of time grinding straightforward monsters. However you may quicksave any time on the world map so even if you happen to die you may instantly come again.
The grinding can also be a bit irritating as a result of the way in which the XP is calculated is bizarre — there’s a base XP for every enemy, and 10% is added for every further monster (so if 1 monster provides 100 XP, beating 5 of these monsters in a battle will likely be 140 xp).
Along with the fundamental attacking, you should utilize your MP to solid varied spells by equipping sure gadgets. You begin with a hearth rod that may shoot a fireball, which is helpful. Later gadgets heal you, harm all monsters, or produce other such results. You may change your geared up merchandise through the battle though it’s a bit cumbersome.
You begin with some fundamental gear close to the beginning fort. You may get some hints from there and a few fundamental info, however there’s nobody to heal you. On this recreation there are solely 3 ways to heal your self:
- Healers in some cities that cost 10 gold x stage, which is a steep worth
- Potions, which value 30 gold and you’ll solely maintain 5, and in addition which don’t heal that a lot
- The White Idol, which may solid a heal spell. Since your MP naturally regenerate (even in cities), that is the most effective methodology of therapeutic. Happily you get it fairly early within the recreation, however till you do, you die much more and must spend some huge cash on therapeutic.
It’s typical of those early video games that they fall quick due to these selections that make the early recreation tough to play — this isn’t the worst instance of such a recreation, however you can save ready the place you will have nearly no HP and no cash, making it tough to proceed.
That is a type of early video games the place all of the story is within the guide and the sport itself has little or no plot development of any form. It’s the fundamental RPG story — evil has come to the land and solely the hero can put it aside.
The primary job in case you are enjoying with out a information could be to assemble hints and discover the world to see the place you may go. As you do you will discover quite a lot of gadgets; a very powerful factor to do first is heal the princess as a result of this will get you the White Idol. As soon as you may get better HP with MP you can begin build up gold for the gear. This recreation jogs my memory of Esper Dream in that the gear stops at a reasonably low stage and you actually can not construct your stats successfully through gear besides proper firstly. So later within the recreation it’s a must to do quite a lot of grinding.
The actual issue comes when it’s a must to go into the dungeons. There are two worlds within the recreation; the primary world has just one dungeon that you just don’t have to enter till you’ve executed most of what you are able to do. (Nevertheless, it has the actually necessary Angel Statue which raises your MP restoration fee and makes it a lot simpler to remain alive).
The large drawback with the dungeons is that you could now not save after each battle, which implies that until you’re keen to do quite a lot of grinding, it’s a must to depend on fairly a little bit of luck to hope that you just don’t get screwed by random battles you may’t win.
When you do all of the stuff on this dungeon you get the Amulet that allows you to warp to the opposite world, the place there are 5 dungeons it’s a must to cope with on the way in which to the ultimate confrontation. That is mainly the place I bought.
I’m somewhat stunned at how lengthy I performed the sport given its points. It’s positively extra playable than a few of these early video games. The hints and clues you get are principally adequate to determine what to do (mixed with simply exploring round to see what you will discover).
However I believe that the sport turns into extra irritating as it’s a must to cope with an increasing number of dungeons, and I’m undecided many gamers in 2025 could have the endurance to make it to the top.
