Disk 10: Startling Odyssey 1 Blue Evolution (スタートリング・オデッセイ１ブルー・エヴォリューション)

Name: Startling Odyssey 1 Blue Evolution (スタートリング・オデッセイ１ブルー・エヴォリューション)
Type: Turn Based RPG
Available Languages: Japanese

This week we take a look at the RPG Startling Odyssey 1 Blue Evolution. This game has the distinction of being the only one of the three Startling Odyssey titles to be brought from the PC Engine to the PlayStation. It also has one of the more interesting titles that I’ve come across over the years. Let’s see just how startling this supposed odyssey actually turns out to be, shall we? Paging through the manual, I noted that things look like your generic RPG fare, save for the moment when I got to the characters section and saw that the main character was voiced by Midorikawa Hikaru. After the requisite fangirlish squeal had been unleashed at the presence of my favorite seiyuu ever, I saw nothing else of interest beyond the nice character designs (and, of course, made the usual fervent wish that the busty female characters would put something on before they caught a chill). I suppose it’s time to see what this game has to offer us!

The game opens with a rather decent anime sequence. While it was nothing to some of the masterpieces I’ve seen over the years, it was more than passable for its day and was a nice introduction to the characters. From what I gather from the introduction and the manual, there was a pretty massive battle between good and evil that went down long before the game began. We’ve heard this kind of stuff before. According to the infallible internet, the Startling Odyssey games actually go in reverse order, 2 being a prequel of 1, and 3 being a prequel of 2, so I suppose I’m allowed to be a fish out of water here. I’ll play them in the order intended, complete with the requisite confusion.

We awaken in the village of Arishia as the protagonist of the game and resident Midorikawa Hikaru character, Leon Solford. The pest who won’t let him get his shuteye is local boy Mark, accompanied by his dog. Belied by the cheerful music in the background, he actually has a good reason for waking Leon up. It appears that a monster has gotten into the village, and it is up to Leon to help drive it out.

During our trek around the village, we learn that monsters have only begun showing up in the area recently, which is never a good sign in a videogame. The other shoe should be dropping any time now. An earthquake rocks the village in the midst of Leon’s quest for information, after which Mark’s dog Ron senses something. It seems that Ron has found the infamous monster, which is quite demonic in appearance and can talk. Leon is then thrown into his first battle against the monster, Kureido, which he wins handily. With a typically villainous ominous statement being thrown at our hero, the monster dies. His passing is followed by yet another earthquake.

The next morning Leon’s fervent admirers Mark and Ron have shown up at his house again, and Mark asks if Leon is going to see the elder. Since it seems there is a conversation to be held with that gentleman, that is where we should head off to. Saria, Leon’s mother, arrives, and Mark tells us that Sophia is coming home. This is important to us because she is the next playable character that we’ll get and has healing spells. Enough said. Saria hustles Leon off to the elder’s, but another earthquake shakes the land. After listening to the billionth inane comment about how many earthquakes there have been lately, you gain control of Leon.

As Leon leaves, Saria stops him for apparently no reason, changing her mind at the last minute about telling him what she had to say. A poor choice, methinks. Outside the elder’s house, Mark tells Leon that he wants to be like him when he grows up. We never would have guessed that, given that the boy and his dog have literally been following us everywhere since the beginning of the game. Leon, however, seems surprised. Mark desires to become strong in order to protect the village from bad guys, which is an admirable, if rather childish, plan. He then runs off to play with his dog, leaving Leon happily laughing in his wake.

The elder is, naturally, pleased with Leon’s monster cleansing of the night before. Apparently things are a lot worse around here than they appear, though, as there have been rumors of Mazoku (literally ‘evil tribe’) destroying villages on the continent. The monster from the night before gave him a bad feeling, to which Leon replies that Kureido said that the end of the village was coming. The elder is not pleased to hear this news, and it leads into a discussion of the war between light and darkness 270 years previously. The elder cuts the discussion short and shoos Leon outside, where he teaches him the Shooting Star skill. Not bad, old man!

Unfortunately, we don’t have time to appreciate our shiny new powers, as there is a disruption in the village. Mark, of course, comes to get you, telling you that there are Mazoku in the village and that people are being killed. Gara-do and his band of mooks have appeared in this village under the name of his emperor to take the land for the Mazoku. It’s leave or die, but Leon isn’t too keen on that idea, and with Mark as his cheerleader, he clears through some of the rabble with his new technique. Leon then flings himself sword first at Gara-do, who proceeds to totally annihilate him.

Out of nowhere, more of the enemies are blown to bits, the source of firepower being none other than Leon’s mother. After an impressive showing of power by Saria, Gara-do shifts the balance in his favor by capturing Mark and killing his dog. He knows that Saria won’t act because of Mark, and proceeds to turn her partially to stone. He then hurts Mark anyway. Saria’s transformation into a statue is then completed, and Gara-do sends her off to become a part of his collection. Tossing Mark’s body to the ground, he teleports off with the magically petrified form of Leon’s mother. Mark reaches out to Leon shakily, telling him that he wants to become stronger, like Leon, and then dies. I believe that we’ve just found the startling part of the game, because I’m genuinely startled by my sudden rage. Leon is left to bury his grief, discover his family’s past, and find a way to save his mother from the magic that binds her.

The battle system in Startling Odyssey 1 is turn-based, with your characters appearing on the right side of the screen and the enemies on the left. The character’s HP and SP appears attached to them by a blue line. When it is your character’s turn, their name and face will pop up on the screen and a set of option buttons will appear. The central button will allow you to attack, the left will let you use skills, the right defend, the top use items, and the bottom will take you to another page of buttons. This page has four buttons, the center of which returns you to the previous page, the left allows you to run, the right sends you into auto battle, and the top allows you to change weapons. It’s very basic and couldn’t be easier to learn, given that the buttons come with accompanying illustrations for beginning learners of Japanese. All that being said, the in battle sprites are truly hideous. There is absolutely nothing good that I have to say about them. I hate to be so negative, but there it is.

I rather like some of the music in Startling Odyssey, although I know that it won’t be to some peoples’ taste. It reminds me very much of the background music of some of the anime I watched as a teenager, and I can’t help feeling nostalgic about it. Other than those few tracks, though, the rest of the music is average. The game’s appearance is also average, with nothing really speaking to me of any extra effort being put into making something memorable. The cut scenes are decent, with the anime style stills making for a nice illustration of the scene in progress, but as I said earlier, I’ve seen it done better.

Overall, Startling Odyssey 1 is a decent way to kill a few hours, or even a few days. It’s not great in any sense, but it certainly isn’t bad either. However, having played through this truly generic RPG for quite a while now, I can say that the only truly startling thing that I’ve come across in it is its title.

If you feel like hearing more of my gaming prattle, feel free to follow me on Twitter. You can find me at @bejiita_buruma

Disk 4: The Mystic Dragoons (ミスティックドラグーン), Part 2

It is every woman’s prerogative to change her mind, and apparently I am going to be doing a lot of that when it comes to the game The Mystic Dragoons. As my longtime readers probably recall, when I first posted for that game, I intended to write several weeks’ worth of my experiences with it for general internet consumption. Thinking that the first post wasn’t going over well, I trashed the idea. That post has since become the most popular one on this blog. So, to thank the readers who enjoyed that bit of whimsy on my part, and to felicitate myself for being wrong yet again, here is part two of my The Mystic Dragoons adventure!

When last we left our ragtag band of heroes, they were recovering from a vicious and unprovoked attack on their hometown that left everyone they knew and loved dead. Needless to say, our little party of five is feeling a tad bit vengeful. It’s time to head into Dorasshu and prepare to track down those Tactical Dragoons. They’re clearly a compassionate lot, after all, leaving a bunch of teenagers to fend for themselves in a burning village. And like I said earlier, they have dragons.

Before we move out, I want to discuss the cover art for this game, which I mentioned in passing before. Now that I know a bit about the characters, I’ve discovered that it depicts Cliff and Elmys, dancing. Yes, he’s dancing with the Gureizeru prophecy princess who, accidentally or otherwise, condemned Collet and everyone in it to death. Strangely, he’s dancing with a drawn sword in hand, so either this is the most bizarre assassination attempt since the time travelling dragon, or we’re about to see Cliff embark on a very awkward relationship. Just thought that I should throw this strange little nugget out there. As before, I’m using the anglicized names that were given in the art booklet where applicable, so if you’re playing along with this post, sorry for any confusion. Well, onward to glory!

We arrive in Dorasshu, where Bud, one of our party members, begins to immediately admire one of the nearby ladies. This irritates Roxy, another party member, greatly. But hey, we all deal with intense, crushing grief in our own way, right? Some of us just do it by ogling strange women and irritating our jealous childhood friend. Romantic subplot, incoming! 

Bud opens up a whole new can of worms by admiring the local 'scenery'.

Eugo, the fifth member of our party, speaks to the aforementioned pretty lady and tells her that we want to go to Harvey and then on to the country of Pura-ma. Unfortunately, it appears that the cave to Harvey was blocked by an earthquake three years ago. Of course it was. What else would one expect in an RPG, after all? Then we tell the pretty lady, Amugine, all about our plans and don’t try to hide Alf, because her well swathed appearance isn’t suspicious at all and there haven’t been any ne’er do wells lurking around recently. Apparently Alf can travel through time and Amugine can tell that just by looking at him. She then books it, leaving Roxy to remark on her oddness. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find her suspicious or sinister at all.

Well, that was weird. Anyway, we’re off to get us some shuteye, and then we need to track down an elf for some healing magic. That is the best idea that this game has thrown at us yet. I like not dying. After strolling around and looting the town, hero style, we manage to track down the aforementioned elf, who is sitting in a room that is hidden behind a giant curtain. Subtle. Tall, blonde, waiflike, pointy ears, check. That’s an elf. She teaches us Prayer of Healing, and therefore greatly lessens our chances of dying. Apparently the elves are our allies and we should talk to them all. Duly noted. As amusing as this has all been, it’s time to move on and see exactly what is going on in this cave to the west. I can’t envision the Tactical Dragoons having a sudden attack of conscience and coming back to check on the bunch of orphans that they so unceremoniously ditched, after all. Us having to do this the hard way is what makes this an RPG, right?

We reach the cave that leads to Harvey and find it every bit as blocked as Amugine and the townspeople said it was. I suppose that it was too much to ask for them to all be a bunch of malicious liars. Alf squawks and, as though the universe is mocking us, it starts to rain. But then the screen warps in an odd way and a truly obnoxious alarm sounds. Didn’t the time travelling dragon in the opening sequence use water, and didn’t Amugine say that Alf was one? But our party is oblivious to the oddity going on around them, and goes to wait out the storm in a nearby hut. When the storm clears, our little troop returns outside to find that the massive cave-in has completely disappeared. After reacting with incredibly mild surprise to this, the party decides to move on, not bothering to question how this strange event has occurred at all. I suppose that in a world where time travelling assassination-assistant dragons exist, this kind of stuff is normal.

This dungeon is so incredibly linear and generic that there is no point in going into what I went through while traversing it, beyond saying that I fought a bunch of enemies, collected a few treasures, and didn’t die. Outside, it starts to rain again. Bud, being the genius that he clearly is, suggests that we return to the cave to wait it out. The obnoxious screen warp alarm thing happens again, and our band of heroes, equally oblivious to the obvious, books it back into the cave. Inside we meet a fellow with truly epic hair who is picking away at the magically returned cave-in and tells us what I’m sure you lovely, intelligent people have already figured out. Eugo, ignoring the evidence that is right in front of him, tells him that we just came from Dorasshu. The guy tells him off, which he totally deserved for being an idiot, even though what he said is true. So let’s move on, and hope that our characters can pick up some sense along the way.

This guy's hair is a thing of beauty. It's even more amazing in profile.

We return to the field map and, according to my handy little booklet, Harvey should be to our northwest. After checking the forests for the local elf and smacking around any mooks that dare to cross our path, we finally make our way into Harvey. It’s a slightly more colorful place than previous towns, and includes and inn with the two Ns on the sign reversed. Nice to see that they put so much effort into their advertising. I headed straight to the port, and there our party is confronted by a ship that sticks out like a sore thumb. But as our little band of misfits has no business boarding said ship, it looks like we’ll have to get ourselves clearance.


Lovely sign they have there. I wonder if that's anything like an inn.

Time to check out the large building with the incomprehensible writing on it in the middle of town. It seems that we’ve located the local bar, in which we find another elf and a hippie who runs the black market. A man in the bar mistakes you for hunters, which would be my first guess too when I see a bunch of angry teenagers and a ten year old girl just wandering around. Clearly they are people who go out and hunt things down in order to sell them. Sounds lucrative, though, so I’ll remember it. This is the most logical game that I have ever played, by the way. Its understanding of human nature blows my mind. Well, now that that interesting experience is over with, it’s time to check out the bar’s basement. What awaits us there is our only way forward.

I hope that that slice of Cliff’s continued escapades lived up to the previous post and was as fun for you to revisit as it was for me. Perhaps someday I’ll post another part of this, depending on the reception of part two. Either way, this was a fun revisit. We all know that I love dragons.

If you feel like hearing more of my gaming prattle, feel free to follow me on Twitter. You can find me at @bejiita_buruma