Most Popular Role Playing Rpg Games - Page 223
Little Witch
Ablex' first game follows the titular Little Witch on her quest to become a full-blown witch. In a platformer/adventure hybrid she has to explore woods and caves, learn new spells and solve the problems of numerous people and magical creatures on her way. The game's mechanics and progression are similar to some of the Wonder Boy episodes, with slightly more emphasis on "RPG elements". It is also text heavy for this kind of game, and pages over pages on a special story book screen are no rarity. The game world is divided into seperate areas, but some of the dungeons are huge and map-drawing is almost obligatory. Most of the witch's spells are used to fight the many imaginative enemies, but "talk" is a spell too, which results in frequent inconvenient switching in the menu. Without some serious grinding, most enemies are capable to kill the witch fast, resulting in many frustrating game over screens, but at least it is possible to save the game at any time. Yet the function should be handled with care, because it isHong Gildong-jeon
A+'s development debut was at times hailed as the first Korean RPG, during the temporal collective amnesia regarding the 80s home computer generation. In more recent times, this claim had to be corrected to "first Korean colored RPG for MS-DOS PCs", which sounds much less impressive. However, it can also be labeled as the first to follow the JRPG route a la Dragon Quest, because previous games all either stemmed from Western influences or were action RPGs. As one of the many games based on the story of Hong Gildong and thanks to its screentexts kept completely in Han'geul (it even sacrificed the full VGA color palette for a higher resolution to make it more readable, though everything other than the text was just upscaled) in a time when even the wave of Taiwan-localizations had just started to catch some current, it caught a bit of attention. A+ sold 7,000 copies of the game3, which wasn't that bad for a Korean game in 1993, but even then most reviews weren't that favorable because of a number of flaws. FirsDiet GoGo
2000
Bultaneun Yeonghon
The sequel to Zinnia and one of the first Korean VGA freeware games. It rather openly brags with the feature by showing a bunch of digitized photographs in the intro. The plot actually tells a postapocalyptic scenario after the total pollution of the world, but the graphics don't do much to distinguish themselves from the average fantasy stuff. Of course there can't be expected too much from a freeware game, and there's not too much to it. One just walks around killing monsters to raise experience, before one is able to receive five special questions to solve the quest. Like Zinnia, Bultaneun Yeonghon is technically an action RPG, but its very heavy on the action and grinding.Zinnia
An early freeware action RPG very much inspired by Ys, Zinnia still only ran in monochrome mode, as most DOS games until 1992 did. Most interestingly, programmer Kim Jongsuk later formed a "multimedia band" with the same name as the game, which were active in the late 1990s and released two albums2. Their album covers featured fantasy RPG-esque photoshop jobs, but their music is impossible to find nowadays.Nostalgia of Magic
Developed by the unknown developer IKGN Soft and published by KOGA, Nostalgia of Magic certainly looks old for a 1997 game, even by Korean DOS game standard. Apparently emulating the visual style of the first Ys games, with tiny sprites and sparse coloring, it rather looks like a late 1980s home computer game. Even in cutscenes, which are zoomed in and show much more detail than the regular game graphics, the 8-bit style is preserved. Only during combat, which is not at all like Ys but held in typical JRPG fashion, the characters are replaced by much more realisticly pixeled sprites. Oddly, only one half of the unusually wide battlefield is displayed at any given time, with the camera scrolling abck and forth during attacks. The game design feels equally archaic. The different regions of the game world are accessed in fairly linear order, but it got the same kind of undocumented hidden passages, unspecific aims and inconspicious event triggers as the classics. Other than most 8-bit games, though, enemy encounterJeonsa Ryan
Console style RPG with turnbased combat and pre-rendered graphics, was the only game developed in-house at the Ssangyong conglomerate's software division.Protocoss
Protocoss came totally out of the left field. It was the only title developed in-house by publisher Games & Multimedia, although some of the graphic designers had worked on Twins before. Although the game gets off to a slow start (and a very slow initial walking speed for the main character), its production values and quality came as a big surprise. Of all Korean RPGs, Protocoss might be the one that most closely follows the Final Fantasy formula, with ATB combat in an enlarged quasi-sideview, numerous characters that join the party during the course of the adventure beyond the five that are active in combat at any given time, and a rather similar visual design to Square's 16-bit output.Forgotten Saga
1997
Forgotten Saga
1997
As kind of a side story, Forgotten Saga takes place in the same fictional universe as Astonishia Story, but the plots aren't interlinked and there aren't many shared characters save for Passman. While combat works similar as in Astonishia Story, there are a lot of surprising WRPG influences. In the beginning the main character's class is determined by a catalog of questions, just like in many Ultima games. Then three companions are picked from a variety of classes and typical fantasy races (Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits). Two more slots are available for more characters to join temporarily, or even replace some of the original companions for good. The game is much more nonlineal and open ended than most Far Eastern RPGs, every town holds a variety of sidequests, which often rely on character's classes or the party's reputation, which is raised by doing good deeds. On the other hand the game punishes what the writer deemed immoral behavious, taking inspiration once again from Ultima. For a good portion of the game the
