Cartridge 4: Cyber Knight (サイバーナイト)

Name: Cyber Knight (サイバーナイト)
Type: Sci-Fi RPG
Available Languages: Japanese

I’ve been on a space kick recently, it seems, particularly after playing Alshark several weeks back. Between that and Gadyurin, this blog has seen a bit of interstellar travel, but there is room for more, in my opinion. A part of me wanted to dig out my copy of Phantasy Star: Sennenki No Owari Ni so that I could do homage to its greatness, but the truth of the matter is that that game is way too famous for this blog. So with my usual admonition of ‘go play that if you haven’t yet’, I’ll move on to something else. In keeping with my current mood, I’ve decided that that something else is going to be the Super Famicom JRPG Cyber Knight.

After starting the game, naming my character, and distributing six points as I will in his stats, the game itself begins. A spaceship, the Swordfish, is being attacked by pirates, and one of their lasers has hit the main engine. I may not be a futuristic spaceship mechanic, but even I know that that means trouble. Soon, pretty much everything is shutting down from massive damage, and the captain is out of commission. There is nothing left for the crew to do but to use the Jump Drive without a known destination, which is just about as dangerous as it sounds. It’s either that or die here for certain, though, so the commander (that’s you) chances it.



A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

After your wild space ride, the remaining crew lands on an unknown planet with their ship damaged, unable to use the Jump Drive to take them back to Earth. So, there is nothing to do but land your spaceship and, with the five other combat ready crew members available, take a look around the planet we’re on. After trotting through the various rooms on the spaceship to familiarize ourselves with them, it’s time to head to the hangar and find our Modules, which are giant fighting robots. This game just got way better, didn’t it? After choosing which three party members get to have all the combat glory, it’s time to move out. Unfortunately, they’re puny little level ones, so we have no recourse but to level grind.

Luckily, our ship has landed right next to a city populated by humans whose speech we can understand. What are the chances? Apparently this planet is called Far World by the people who inhabit it, which is a useful (and rather strange) bit of information. So after shrugging at the naming sense of the locals, our intrepid heroes learn that there is a college nearby which may be able to help us out of our predicament. There we meet Professor Sokolov, who says that the humans on Far World left Earth 250 years earlier on the immigration ship Europa. It appears that they ended up here as a result of a jump miss, much like us. It seems that whatever remains of the Europa is in the forest to the north, so we should probably go check that out for the Monopo-ru Coil, which is the part we need. After getting a bit more helpful information and a star map from the local scholar, we have to go talk to the President of Far World. It sounds like he’d be a good person to know.

After getting hassled by the President’s surly guards, we meet President Roland. After confirming that Far World is populated by Earthlings who made an emergency landing here 250 years ago, he apologizes to our party. It seems that we were mistaken for invader robots which have been hassling the locals as of late. It sounds like they need us to take care of this problem for them, even though there are only a handful of us. We do have giant robots of our own, after all. But what about our Monopo-ru Coil, you ask? We’re certainly not going anywhere without that, so we’ll take the path that makes the most sense at the moment. We’ll head to the Europa in the forest to the north, and hope that some of these local robots are stupid enough to try to get in between us and the shiny part that we need. Now that sounds like a plan!



A map of the Swordfish, your sweet, but currently useless, ride.

In battle, your screen will be split into three sections. The upper right section displays your stats and the bottom section gives you information about the battle as it is happening. The upper left section shows the battle itself, with your three Modules on the right and your enemies on the left. When it’s your turn, you get a list of options to choose from. You can attack, defend yourself or others, or use the option menu to use items like rocket launchers or missiles. In the equipment menu, you can change your weapons or use defensive field items. You have the option to continue battling or run if you press the B button.

The game really doesn’t look like much, I must admit, but I’m willing to give it a bit of a break given that it was released in 1992 and that its PC Engine counterpart dates back to 1990. The game’s best moment, appearance wise, is in battle, when the Modules and their enemies attack each other. While these little cut scenes can be quite tedious after a while if you’re trying to level grind, they look quite a bit nicer than the rest of the game. The music isn’t bad at all, given the game’s age. It’s rather generic, but certainly acceptable.

I must admit to getting quite bored with Cyber Knight after a while. I feel rather badly about it, given that I liked the premise. But the battle system lags so much that after a while you feel like you’ve been waiting for years to get from one place to another. While those cut scenes that I mentioned earlier are the nicest looking part of the game, they are also the most frustrating part. Every attack is played out that way, not just special attacks, and it takes every bit as long as you would think. If you are a fan of space based RPGs and have a lot of patience, Cyber Night is worth a look, but if you have another game on your docket you may want to weigh your options.

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