If you are a veteran of the ashes-level wargame game, you must have come into contact with a game called "The Story of King Aris". This game is a set of wargames developed by the Japanese game company GUST on PC-9801 in 1996, as a PC game that became a terrible PC game in the company's first attempt (later only PS games were developed, represented as the "Alchemy Workshop" series) "The Story of King Arris" is not excellent in wargame gameplay, but for a game from more than twenty years ago, I think it is already good.
This game is one of my childhood memories, the reason why I am impressed, in addition to the excellent character graphics are still frightened by the game's difficult setting, each level has to take a lot of time, so I never passed this game in my childhood, in order to commemorate it, I decided to take a moment to introduce this hardcore game.
Cheesy plot
The stage of "The Story of King Aris" is a traditional sword and magic medieval background, the protagonist Aris was originally the prince of the "Kingdom of Vespaña", one day the country was attacked by the "Kingdom of Gordania" and the king was killed, the prince was rescued by the king's friends, and Let Aris hide his name in the small village. When the prince reached the age of 16, his adoptive father left a letter to inform Aris of his origins and asked him to defeat the "Kingdom of Gortania" to avenge the country, so Aris embarked on a journey to restore the country with his friends "Cassis" and "Thomson" from the same village. According to conscience, the beginning of the plot is not bad, but from the beginning of the middle and late stages, the plot begins to hit the wall, constantly repeating the cycle of "helping the army characters who defeated the Kingdom of Gortania somewhere to join", and the later stage is basically to start fighting after a few words, even the enemies are similar, there is a feeling of a tiger's tail. In addition, the game itself has no side quests, and there is no special design in the plot, which is a pity.
Appeared in numerous characters
The setting of this game is the same as that of Fire Emblem, the game's characters will leave the team permanently if they die (a small number of "Resurrection Dew" can be revived from the middle stage), and the battlefield can not be instantly saved, coupled with the large number of enemies, making the game more difficult.
In contrast, there are many characters in this game, with a total of 60 characters to join (even the game promotion is sold on a large number of battlefields), but unfortunately most of the characters only have a few lines, and even the reasons for joining are far-fetched. For example, some people just happen to pass by and rescue him to join the team, or after passing through the town, someone sees a relative/friend in the party and chooses to join. Due to the large number of people, it takes a lot of time to move characters or change equipment, and it is very strange that the final battle of the game only allows up to 25 people to play, and most of the characters do not need to practice at all. Although you can choose to let the character die to reduce the number of troops, the life and death of the character will affect the joining of some characters. Instead of using this chicken rib design, it is better to reduce some unimportant characters and let the plot focus on important characters.
Transfer and balance
This game contains 15 classes, the character can be transferred at will in the temple, but each character can transfer the class has restrictions (for example, Aris only "noble" and "royal" can choose) and the plot will be open to a certain extent (unfortunately, the battle picture of the same class is the same, playing like a bunch of replicants in the later stages) Although it is a strengthened strategic design, but because of the bad setting (BUG?) the strength and weakness are not equal because the character's class level is calculated separately, but the ability value will not change in the case of "Aris", If he has a 20-level noble and royal level, it is equivalent to having a 40-level ability value, not to mention that "Chernu" can transfer 6 classes, as long as each level 10 is equivalent to a level 60 ability value, the result is that the early characters are open to transfer earlier, easier to cultivate, and the later characters can only be rotten.
Beautiful character design
The characters of this game are designed by the manga artist Ye Jingzuo, and our 60 characters, whether male or female, are portrayed very distinctively, and some plots will be interspersed with special CG diagrams, which should be quite good at the level of the time. In contrast, the image of the enemy character is almost all copied or changed color of our same profession, and even the character walking action is exactly the same, often clicking the mouse to know who it is, which is also a pity.
Interesting setting
This game can return to previous locations from the large map, and the local lord will fund you some funds or equipment, and may also encounter new characters to join the party. The game's weapons, armor, props shop can be played in a lottery, similar to the way of eating slot tigers, press a few numbers is a few prizes, the jackpot will get the middle and late stages can only buy powerful equipment, for example, the first town weapon shop jackpot is the medium-term began to sell the weapon "Assassin's Knife", if it can be obtained in the early stage, it can be said to be invincible. This kind of overnight god play is quite attractive, although it often takes a lot of time to win the jackpot, but the moment you draw the jackpot, the sense of achievement immediately explodes. Although it is a bit of a balanced design, it has to be said that it is still quite interesting?
Missing settings
There are not many bugs or strange settings in the game, the first point is that the character does not have MP or SP, the release of magic must consume HP, and it is first deducted HP before the magic can be released, and then deducted once after the release (range magic will be deducted once for each pair of targets), which leads to the problem that putting a magic HP once or twice will be deducted. This should be the case, but the game has a big bug, if the HP is lower than the value required to put magic, it will overflow back to 65535 (the screen will also become full red due to errors, but it will be restored after the battle, don't worry) The result is that the magician puts an AOE magic, HP will instead explode, and if you use it well, you can use the mage's AOE magic as a recovery magic.
The second point is the attack range of the game, the character walks in a normal diamond shape, but the attack range is square. The result is that archers can attack diagonally at great distances, which makes archers and magicians supermodels of strength. However, in the middle and late stages, the enemy forwards are mostly archers, strong archers, and bow knights, and if we do not send a super high-defense warrior as a tank, the character will be easily besieged and killed.
The third point is the unit battle method, the game adopts the design of both sides constantly attacking, which lasts for five rounds or one side is killed, the advantage is that it will not make the damage float too large because of a MISS, and the disadvantage is that it is quite delayed.
The fourth point is the game's equipment, the equipment to enhance mana and anti-magic are in the form of props, and the magician must put these equipment into the personal prop slot to improve the mana, otherwise the spell is completely painless. The mage's staff is primarily an attack power rather than a magic one.
There are also many problems on the battlefield, such as not canceling after moving, props can not be used against others, characters can not see the status once the action is over, archers can attack through the wall, etc., and there are no common drops and battlefield events in wargames, perhaps because this is the first game designed by THE GUARD company, so it is inexperienced.
Overall, "The Tale of King Aris" is actually not good in terms of gameplay, and even "Dragon Knights 2" released a year earlier is much better than it in terms of gameplay. The reason why I am so impressed with it, in addition to the difficulty of completing the level, may be because this is the first wargame game that I have touched. Of course, I will take the time to recall this work, not to hope that someone will play it, but I hope that these childhood memories will not be erased from my mind because of the changes of the times.