FYI by "There's no run button," I meant running on the world map. The run option you see at 4:26 is to run away from battles. Every turn based RPG has that.
This comment should really be pinned. It was especially confusing because it was during the transition of "two or three battles within the span of four or five steps" and "there is an auto-battle button." I played this game and Arcana far more than I should have, and I have beaten both of them. They are both rather bland and generic, yet strangely intriguing.
@@wesleyoldham4222 arcana is not bland though, i mean the gameplay is but i never seen battle screen like Arcana , but I just can't beat the game , i remember finishing a dungeon and immediately send to another and i was like , Oh No ,my cards already ran out and going back just is pretty far and just go through and died XD
I rented this game multiple times as a kid. One time I rented it and that little note section at the end of the manual had writing in it. "Badbad is really strong be careful"
I rented this game once when I was kid and really liked it. Then I tried finding it again but never could. So my child mind started to idealize it in memory until I remembered it as the best game ever that I would never play again, like something from a dream.
Sometimes, it's just better not to challenge these fond buried memories and leave them at that. Being repaid with disappointment upon rediscovery is not a good trade off.
@@nozoto to be fair, I just loved any and all RPGs. And I think up to that point, I had only played Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy 2 (or 4, whatever). So this was still cool to me at the time.
@@nozoto That's how I feel about Another Code on DS. I loved it as a teen but am almost afraid to replay it all these years later, fearing I remember it more fondly than it actually was. There's also that feeling when you have been eyeing a game for ages, fantazising about how incredible it is, so when you finally get ahold of it you refrain from playing it out of concern that the game won't hold a candle to your expectations/fantasies.
Tecmo had killer composers, then, the Ninja Gaiden series being their crown masterpiece. Hell, the menu theme of Tecmo Super NBA Basketball has stuck in the back of my mind to these days, and I haven't picked the game up in years.
I love how after their famous Bowl Tecmo concluded that their name should go before _all_ their titles, even TECMO SECRET OF THE STARS ---- A FANTASY. What a name, what a box art, what a way to market a game
My wife was working in the background on her computer when I got to the good music part (5:30 ish), and she goes "it sounds like you're listening to ice cream truck music", while at the same time I was reading another comment stating that you were the closest thing to a father he ever had, and now I literally cannot stop laughing at the this sequence of events.
I decided to play this game again after seeing this review. Secret of the Stars really was a mixed bag of good and bad. It would have been an excellent game for the original Nintendo, but instead it was made many years later on the SNES. Things like item descriptions not being in the menu, and the fact that the X and Y buttons don't open menus or anything make it feel like it was designed for the original NES. It had some really cool concepts like combo magic, but it also had too many shortcomings to be anything more than a mediocre game. *LIST OF SOME MAJOR PROS AND CONS. PROBABLY NOT WORTH READING:* The game had two teams, but seriously underused one of them. And the one it underused was the team that could actually be customized (the Aqutallion were 5 exact members, and the Kustera could be 1 to 5 members from a roster of 11 characters). One of the first dungeons has two monsters that can merge together for the remainder of battle. It's a cool mechanic, but the animation for it is not good (the two monsters move offscreen and the fused one replaces them). Certain spells can fuse into combo magic. Certain weapons can also be part of combo magic. For example, you can have Ray cast Fire 1 and Cody attack with a FireSwrd equipped, and it will unleash Burn Blade. The problem is you have to figure them out or look them up, and only the Aqutallion party can do combo magic. There are two weapons in the game that let the equipped character hit twice. The ElfinBow for Kathy, and the DiscArmar for Leona. Even GameFAQs and the RPGClassics sites don't have these attributes listed, which is weird because they both actually have a lot of info about this game. EDIT: RoyalSwrd and BestClaw also hit twice. BestClaw is for Leona and Evelyn, and RoyalSwrd is for Ryu or Jubei (there is only one RoyalSwrd in the game. BestClaw is in a single treasure chest, but is also a drop item). There's a town that grows as the story progresses. It gets a warehouse, and a dance hall, and some other stuff. I don't think you can influence the town like you can in Breath of Fire 2, though. But, like Breath of Fire 2, the town can fly around at the end. You get a UFO that carries the town and can house your three ships (a sailing ship for each team and an airship). According to the manual "The Select, X, Y, L, and R buttons are not used." They actually made a SNES RPG that only uses A, B, Start, and the control pad. The story is probably the most generic I've ever seen. Something about time travel and a prophecy, and a destined team of kids with special powers who are helped by the Kustera. The in game descriptions are terrible. Shops will explain what their items and equipment do, and there is an NPC in at least one town who will examine any items you are carrying. But otherwise it's up to you to figure out things like Rat-Tail lets you escape a dungeon, and BrknMoon recovers MP but may break after use. The spells usually have three levels, but it's up to you to figure out how they differ. The level 1 and 2 versions of Power effect the user, but level 3 can be cast on a teammate. Land could debuff the opposing party, or it could do something random (like Chance from Dragon Quest 2), but I don't remember which levels of the spell had which effects. There's a great bug in the game. If you don't have enough MP to cast a spell, you could still cast a level 0 version out of battle. When cast, your MP would go below 0, but it would be displayed as over 500. This glitch meant you could fully heal your party outside of battle, and you could even cast Flee or Fly By to get back to town safely.
I emulated this game as a kid and played to the final fight. But, at least according to GameFAQs at the time, I soft-locked the game because I never learned this one necessary technique and had already saved before the final fight. Years later I picked up the cart (before retro game prices headed to the stars themselves), but have yet to play through and finally finish it. Maybe soon, though 🌠
Same lol,the one thing that surpised me when our party were wearing Bunny Outfit (it changed the appearance of our character) i was mildy surprised by it back then
Homncruse is a direct phonetic translation of the Japanese term for homunculus. Edit: After watching this I will assume the translators probably didn't translate the name properly since it looks like it's The Big Bad's name and went with the phonetic pronunciation. That or they just didn't know.
Localizers often don't have as much context afforded to them as you might think, it turns out, especially back then. Homncruse is kinda funny, but I'll always laugh at the Kraken monster translated as "The Clarken".
@@SwordfighterRed That reminds me that Claude from Star Ocean 2 was named Crawd at first. There was still a voice clip in the game with him saying "Crawd has advanced forward".
This was that RPG that you picked up at the rental store when the one you were playing through was rented out and you've played all the others already.
@@Belgand That's the way things went back in the day. Considering for a moment that games back then were technically more expensive due to inflation being a lot lower at the time, renting was the best path for that. It was wild back then!
Favorite part of the game: You get attacked by a cat in the second town. Worst part of the game: The Kustera have 11 members, meaning you can create a versatile team of 1 to 5 members. That team is only allowed to fight a few bosses in this game. They are also locked out of the final dungeon completely. Instead they have four shrines that are labyrinths with a bunch of random battles, a story progression treasure in each, and no boss. EDIT: Updated because you can fight a few bosses as Kustera, not just Sidon in the forest. However, the majority of bosses are exclusive to the Aqutallion.
Best part of the game is hearing for hours about what a badass this Badbad gang leader guy is then getting to his empty house and fighting him and he looks like a little bootleg clone of Kid Dracula.
@@jessespiers9699 You can quickly grind levels by going to Set in battle. Change Animate to off, and change MsgSpd to 0. Then use Auto battle against weak enemies. You can abuse the Swap option in the menu in dungeons if you get in over your head. I used to take a few steps, then save. Also, there's a glitch in the game where you can cast a level 0 spell outside of battle. If you don't have enough MP to cast the level 1 version of a spell, just press left before casting it. Your current MP will become less than 0, but you can use it to cast Repel, Flee, and Heal as many times as you want outside of battle. There are a couple of Kustera who can cast heal, and there's a few that are good for tanking enemies. I usually use the tanks to wipe out enemies and exploit the healing spell glitch between battles.
One thing you got wrong you can fight several bosses as kustera. You can fight badbad, I think catboo, Sidon, booth, godem, the ghost pirate, the clarken, even bio booth and godem.
@@b.k.2411 Thank you for pointing that out. The only boss I was able to fight as the Kustera was Sidon. I had no idea you could actually fight BadBad as David instead of Ray and Tina until I tried it just now. I don't really consider Catboo a boss. It gets the boss music, but it's also a monster in random battles 10 minutes later, and the Likado fight can be skipped entirely. I guess it's official status is boss, though. And Cat Boo is definitely iconic. I guess I'll have to play the whole game again now and try the other bosses you listed.
My brother in Christ, let me introduce you to the 1992 game called Contra III. Frankly this fails to compare with Dragon Warrior II & Crystalis from the NES.
Outside of the battles this has got to be the lowest effort graphics I've ever seen in an SNES JRPG. Final Fantasy IV was the same ROM size and came out two years earlier but (other than battle backgrounds) looks way better.
Plenty of RPGs released for snes that time looked much better. Secret of Mana was released in 1993 and looks great. Even some NES rpgs like Crystalis released sooner look much better.
I remember playing this game years ago, on a PSP SNES emulator, however, when I play the game years later, I still forgot what to do. This game is known as Aqutallion in Japan.
I kept reading that as Aquatallion and couldn't figure out why he was pronouncing it so weirdly, like Octallion. Not that I realize there's no middle 'a', I admire his dedication to English orthography in the face of such bizarre words lol
Tecmo actually made a pretty great rpg called Radia Senki for the nes. It was never released stateside, but there is a pretty good translation patch. If you haven't played it it's worth the play through. For the time the story was quite good and it had a squad base action battle system. It's shame the team from that game didn't work on this.
I feel like you're insulting RPG Maker 2000 games, but you're not wrong. It feels like someone was learning how to code and are doing the tutorials for each section to learn the basics. Even in 1995 this game felt like an NES game that got face lifted into a SNES game.
@@sjake8308 Back then? Yeah...they were good back then and I was really addicted to rpg maker, but over a decade later all rpg maker stuff aged very badly for me.
This is mind-blowing this was posted today. True story. I was 4 years old growing up and I remember my parents renting this game. I remember in particular the volcano part. It was so creepy to me at that age and it's something I remembered my whole life. This game I would randomly think about every few years, go on Google to try and find it but I didn't remember anything about it other than it being a RPG and the volcano. I could never find it and would just give up. The second I saw the game box on this RU-vid video pop I knew this was the game! Just so crazy to me. It's been almost 20 years now and I finally found the game
If I remember correctly, the Japanese version of this game was intended to be comedic, a parody of RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The North American version got rid of any parody elements and played it straight.
It absolutely was. There is a scan of the Japanese manual. On it there is a small comic strip where the character Dan brutally murders all his party members.
I just don't feel a proper retranslation of the game would fix anything, sadly. The generic, slow-paced unbalanced combat, high encounter rate, total lack of direction, and huge disconnect between the two parties made it feel like a game that tried real hard not to be any good. It succeeded in showing the world just what it was truly capable of. An effort that amounts to masterfully shooting in your team's net - an impressive display of totally going in the wrong direction.
I'm kind of surprised by how harsh you were on this game. It's not great by any means, but compared to a lot of the dreadful, poorly designed Europlatformers you've given a "just okay" rating over the years, it feels like you were a bit too harsh on this for not being the cream of the crop in terms of JRPGs.
Lol, I rented this as a kid and remembered kinda liking it. Those were different times though. Kinda like a Stockholm Syndrome effect, just kind of learn to like whatever trash you ended up being stuck with for the weekend. 🤣
Very true. Back then, Gaming was a niche hobby. The cartridges were expensive, so you made the best of your collection. You had to be satisfied with whatever Japanese game was localized and suffer through an awful amount of low effort crud the western developers threw at you. We're in the Internet age, and I can't stress enough about how spoiled we are! With even hackers going through the trouble of translating games which were never distributed out of Japan. I am grateful for the many things I look forward to pick up and play, like "Princess Maker: Legend of Another World", "Dungeon Master" or "Tokimeki Memorial"
I actually beat this game on a rental, back in the day. Only thing I remember about it is that you could sail around the world forever without hitting any land if you started in the right spot. So I used rubber bands and a turbo controller to sail forever, hitting random ocean encounters and turbo-mashing the A button to kill them. Grind on autopilot. And that's my most vivid memory of this game. Rigging it to play itself, while I went and did something else.
I actually just played this game for the second time in 20+ years a couple months ago. I remember the game being frustrating as a kid, but this time around I played it with a shockingly difficult to find ROM patch that fixed the translation and rebalanced the combat/encounter rate. This time around I was able to beat the game and actually understand what was going on, but it still wasn't good. It was clearly meant to be on the original NES. Funny thing is that the only reason I even remembered this game was because the soundtrack totally slaps. Funny how powerful a good soundtrack can elevate something in your memories like that. The 7th Saga was another one like that. Hate the game, but that soundtrack is fantastic.
@@ianbraun271 Unfortunately, I don't have a link. It's been a while. I found it posted in a forum concerning the game. If I recall, the patch was something of a personal passion project someone was doing and he got quite a ways into it. The patch I have is 'mostly' complete, which was good enough in my opinion. The guy also seemed to stop working on it back in 2015 or something, so it was buried deep in the forum I found it in. I eventually got to it through a bunch of google searching, so it is possible to find again, I just can't remember the forum name. It was a very generic looking forum. White background, grey text, nothing fancy. Hopefully that helps narrow it down a bit if you go looking for it.
Someone thought "Tecmo Secret of the Stars. :< -> :>?" on that romhacking site, and decided to make a patch to fix some of the problems. Whether or not it's turd polish is up to everyone else to decide. I haven't played any part of Aqutallion in years; I only played it when my sister wasn't looking since she had the SNES. I might not be the best judge of good games to begin with, since I didn't hate Quest 64.
I remember playing this game as a rental back in the day. I know it's bad, but it's become a guilty pleasure for me. Also, the music is definitely on point even if nothing else about the game is all that good.
Agreed. Same with me. I still like the game, even if it's garbage. The music was always great for me and I've even remastered some of it. I love it that much!
I remember some guy complained about this game because it had you playing as children instead of adults. I responded, "Hey, what about Grandia? That had you playing as kids, too!" And he shot back, "Yeah, but that's Grandia. This is more like the anti-Grandia."
I recently replayed this. Not a great game but it still was a fun replay. The challenge is pretty decent. The translation is hilarious. The music is really good though. And "DR. GARY BLOWS GAS" is an all-time hilarious video game quote.
don't forget bread and plum-plums. I think plum-plums have a chance to heal fully but the rng is a bit low on that. Though it did happen on a boss fight once and kept me alive.
I really liked this game back in the 90's. There was a rental store nearby that had this and Breath of Fire 1 for RPG rentals, so I alternated between the two. I still really like this game to this day. It does look like an NES game and the translation is wack, but I disagree that it's "bad, bad", it's genuinely funny in how bad it can be. One thing you didn't touch on is how this game has a town building, recruitment mechanic that was nearly perfected in games like Skies of Arcadia, but this aspect was totally ahead of its time. I'd highly recommend this game for people that like really old school RPGs and are forgiving of bad translations, dated graphics, and simple mechanics. I genuinely believe that there is a lot of good in this game.
I unironically love this game, even have it on display as one of only a handful of SNES-era CIBs I own. (And it's not an easy one to find!) The music really does hit you in the nostalgia. Sure, it's not the best RPG, but it's infinitely more playable than most of the WRPG/Ultima/First Person dungeon crawlers from that era, it's got that pick-up-and-play JRPG feel to it, grinding and saving your game is satisfying, etc. Remember, jRPGs were a new concept and many of us were experiencing these things for the first time. But I think something you missed here is that this game has a great sense of humor. There are some hilarious scenarios and ridiculous boss fights that are supposed to be funny (this game doesn't take itself seriously, so neither should you). I'd compare it to Great Greed for Game Boy, which is celebrated as one of the best original Game Boy games for its sense of humor and quirky dungeon settings. Secret of the Stars pays off IMO when you first reach the airship. Really love the musical theme when you're flying over the second overworld. This game is underrated, and is a TOTAL hidden gem. If you could've played it in the 90s before you knew the entire breadth of the SNES library and had lots of spare time as a teen to chill out, pick up from your last save and enjoy the music and the grind, I bet you'd have enjoyed it too.
@@JMFSpike Glad I'm not alone! It's sad to see so many comments dunking on the game without having ever tried it. They might be surprised. There's so many fun things, like the ability to recruit a Tecmo Football game character to your party and the fact that any character can wear the Bunnysuits!
I never beat it but got maybe half-way through it. Not in the top tier of games on the system, but there's something charming about it. There's someone who does speedruns of it (and has for RPG Limit Break iirc) and it's really fun to watch.
I wouldn’t go quite as far as calling the game bad, but I’d be lying if I said it was any better than okay. The one interesting gameplay mechanic it has is switching between the two parties, but that is fairly under-utilized. I think a game that used this mechanic for some interesting puzzles, and has a more compelling story-related reason for why I’m switching between the two parties, could have the potential to be great.
I've really enjoyed the game at the time, just after finishing Chrono Trigger. The graphics are bland, but the music is nice and there are a lot of neat ideas.
Despite how much you dislike this game, I think I want to play it. Graphically it reminds me of Mystic Quest. Which I have, and have played thorugh and enjoyed, even though it was a bit dull. Sometimes these games are great to pass some time.
This was way more playable when we were kids and there weren't a dozen JRPGs coming out every month and we actually had time and patience to play things! Back in the day there might be a couple Grade-A games a year in the genre (if that). This was the kind of game you rented from the video store until you beat it.
That's absolutely still the case. The number of games released annually may have increased since the mid-90s, but the percentage that are actually worth playing has stayed exactly the same and possibly lowered slightly.
@@bigduke5902 I would say it's drastically lowered, due to the prominence of lengthy tutorial levels, overcomplicated controls, excessive amounts of "story" (even in games that don't need it), and the general trend of the industry to remake or sequelize instead of creating new IP.
@@rars0n To think there was a time when I was excited that video games were becoming more cinematic. Instead of appreciating games as the uniquely interactive medium they once were, I wanted them to imitate a non-interactive one hoping that would earn some sort of mainstream legitimacy. Well I got my wish! Games finally "made it" and I barely recognize em!
Of course you have to defeat Homncruse, or do you want to live in a world where he will be able to create an unlimited amount of Fission Pimmosible movies?!
I played this game a lot back in the day and actually beat it, and it also has the dubious distinction of being the game I was playing when I found out my folks split up 25 years ago. My parents won't admit it but I have to assume that in retrospect that me playing Secret of the Stars was the reason for the split...
Ok, this game get's a lot of flak. Allow me a minute to at least point a few things out that are often overlooked: The item descriptions, yeah could have been more accessible but they were there. I think also you're overlooking the fact that this game came with a paper manual just like every other SNES game. Rabbits tail description was right there as well. This game did dual/tripple/multi-techs way before Chrono Trigger. Each of the characters commands their own element as well. You get to build a town, and recruit residents. Watch your town evolve and it's built, destroyed by the villain, your town coming together to rebuild again. Recruit more people. Not something that still quite common yet either in 1993. And two world maps, neither of which was underground. How many games did we get where the 2nd world map was in the sky? Yet, no thought went into this game? The auto-attack system in this game way way ahead of its time. Yeah it's grindy, but at least they gave you some options like turning off the animations and turning up the speed. You could literally be done with your grinding in like 5 or 10 minutes and be ready to overcome the challenge you were underleveled for. Breath of Fire, great series, didn't offer you that luxery despite also having an awful encounter rate. Glad you acknowledged the music though. I just don't see how you can say "all around bad" with a straight face. Feels like you maybe rushed this review, or just honestly missed or dismissed a lot of thought that went into this game. Everyone's got their own sensibilities though. This game featured mechanics and ideas that Chrono Trigger and Breath of Fire 2 are known for, but this game came out before them. Yet, no thought went into this game? All around bad? With all due respect, I just can't get on board with that. There's too much charm and innovation in this 1993 game for me to call it "all around bad". I also think there should always be a cozy place for games that are so simple. I try to appreciate the simple graphics and story. Maybe it's just me, but if I'm coming from some hyper-complex game with political intrigue and micro-management systems, a game like this is great for resetting your palette. I know, not for everyone. But I personally think there's value in that kind of thing. :p
man, ok I'm a huge RPG fan and it kinda hurt to see someone tear this game apart like that, I actually liked this one a lot as a kid. I mean sure, it's no breath of fire 1 or 2, and it's a far cry from Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger but at least to me, it wasn't all that bad. I actually remember a time back about... 30years ago..? yeah, maybe more, when my local game/movie rental store "Family Video" had this game, and one of the workers there knew me cause I was in there every to every other weekend, and I rented this game out a lot. They would actually ask me about tips and tricks when I'd rent it (cause they wanted to beat it too) and I'd help them out best I could, I mean... I was a kid lol, and hey, I earned a free rental out of it too! so to a kid it was a pretty sweet deal. Anyway, I'm one of the few folks who'll actually bring this game up and honestly, I actually do find it to be a hidden gem, although maybe I should replay it to refresh my memory. All the same while its definitely rough around the edges, I enjoyed it a lot. The graphics didn't bother me, they reminded me of Soul Blazer, another classic game on the SNES. Sure, not as graphically impressive as the sequel to Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, but still not terribad either then again-again, graphics've never really been all THAT important to me anyway. Honestly, what I remember the most about this game is some of the spell combos you could do, I think there was one called "Big Bang" that required all 4 or 5 of your main party to pull off and it was devestating to say the least. Actually, maybe it was called "Devestat" XD I honestly can't remember. Course, the one boss that really stood out to me, and I'll never forget is "Bad Bad" I mean... what kind of name is Bad Bad!? XD and... ironically enough, that's the boss the one employee was struggling with too lol All in all, YMMV but its a good game, not great, not bad, but good at least in my opinion
Looks like the awful sleeve cover art of one of these direct-to-VHS fantasy adventures for kids. At a time when many customers still chose to buy according to cover, it doesn't forgive as this one screamed "I am a cheapskate of some sort!"
This is one of those SNES games that I've always been aware of but never played. Always sitting there on the shelf, with a box that stood out among the crowd. I considered getting it more than once.
"The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly were critical of the graphics, but felt that the highly involving story more than made up for them. They scored the game a 7.25 out of 10.[3] GamePro praised the game's monster designs, calling it "X-Files with a sense of humor." However, they considered the game's winning feature to be its combination of accessible gameplay mechanics with heavy challenge, summarizing that "kiddie characters and an easy-to-use RPG design will appeal to young beginners, but the epic-length adventure and multitude of monsters will challenge wily RPG vets."
It's a couple years old now, but if you really want to experience Secret of the Stars I recommend checking out the 2018 RPG Limit Break Aweful Games Block run of it by Pa-sama. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nPHu4GUoZNk.html Homncruse is a mistranslation. It's Homunculus, as in an artifical human created through alchemy.
I enjoyed this game. Definitely didn’t suck back in the day. We are just programmed now to not appreciate the ugly games. It has some fun parts. The dual parties were way ahead of it’s time. Same with recruitment. This game does NOT suck if you judge it on its own merit and not compare it to the classics.
Ah... no. - Many other games were out when this one was released and did a far more stunning job. They're remembered to this day as being good; it's not a matter of how we're "programmer now" any more than it was back then. - The dual parties added next to nothing to the game and mostly felt like playing two seperate RPGs taking place in the same world and with the same game assets. Many games had multiple concurrent parties prior to this - those parties just meet up eventually and became a single group so all sides can continue having a point. - Yeah, it does suck if you judge it by its own merits. Nobody gave it rave reviews even back then. I know. I was around. I even have the Nintendo Power issue that talked about it (they called it "mediocre"... in a magazine that's largely just there to sell these games to kids!) There's such a thing as personally enjoying a game, which you clearly did, and a game being good or not based on basic, agreed-upon standards. And this game, while possibly enjoyable, was not good. Of course, if you want to evaluate free of any standard or basis for comparison, I'm sure you can prove me wrong. But you could also make a care for dog poop being the best thing in the world by those criteria. If the "classics" became classics in the first place, it's because they did something right - the fact this game is not one of those "classics" alone [...no, seriously, it's like over half of SNES RPGs...] should be enough to tell you it just couldn't hack it!
This game was decent. F the haters. It's a generic RPG if you liked RPGs when it was released then you would have liked it. Obviously going back to play old games is always going to give the impression the game was bad.
I played it back then despite not knowing English. I got stuck because of the missing 'goldnail' item for the ship. I learned more than 20 years later that it is behind a single tile in one of the many generic towns.
4:47 - I know that's honestly just another episode in "Fun With Abusing The Name Entry Screen", but I like to believe that your hero is taking that particular line as a question about their sobriety status and is responding with a slurred "Hellllllll YEAH~" before crashing to the floor.
Got a soft spot for this game because I used to rent it when all the good RPGs were rented out on a Friday night. Drunk pretty much got it down in this video: its a pretty bad game. And BRUTALLY hard. I got stuck on the Giant boss in that one town for the longest time. You could spend hours (and i mean HOURS) grinding and it would still be pretty dam hard. Grinding is pretty much all you will be doing because even when you get a new party member, they start at *GASP* lvl 1. There are also a few areas in the game where they literally don't tell you where to go and you literally just wander around until you end up wherever it is you're supposed to be at. Still, got a soft spot for it though. Don't really recommend the game unless you're a masochist. And yes, I actually beat the game back in the days. Good times.
I would like to say that compared to the vast majority of other channels, SNES Drunk gives Breath of Fire 2 it's due credit. (BoF2 is my favorite game)
I _somehow_ managed to beat this as a kid renting it every other weekend. Yeah, gets brutal at the end. Only reason I managed to beat HOMNCRUSE was by the one girl praying about 20 times in a row until I got lucky and hit the full party revive and heal, since she was the last girl standing. Honestly, I think you're a little overly harsh here. It has its charms, and as janky and difficult as it is I'd recommend it for the challenge. The team-up spells and attacks have some depth to it and besides, the poor translation gave my brother and I plenty of laughs back then.
Is it rough? Yes. Is it simple? Yes. Is the translation hard to follow? Yes. But it's charming as hell. I disagree with it being a pass, and i proudly own a cartridge.
Yes it's a terrible game. Heavy grinding really sucks, and second party is practically useless. Now if you look at tecmo older rpg from the nes chronicles of radia war is way better game. It was to be localized but got canceled...but it is awesome. Even has ninja Gaiden cutscene style and the combat is Zelda like, but sorta slow. You definitely should play that and not this. Also Japanese script for secret of stars is also boring btw.
I read about this in the Epic Center column of Nintendo Power. As a lover of RPGs, I really wanted to play it, but it never showed up in a rental store, in the small town I lived in.
Lol DIRECT opposite here! I too saw it in Nintendo Power, but thought it looked absolutely terrible, it DID show up at my rental store, and it became a punchline with my brother and I.
Not going to lie, when it said "Fight Drunk!" with that music in that moment I forgot how abysmal this game is and thought "Hell yeah! Fight Drunk!" but as soon as that music ended I was like "Oh, right, this game sucks."
I remember playing this game when I was in elementary. I rented it from what eventually became known as Hollywood Video. I got pretty far considering; at least I thought I had at that age. I rented the game again a few weeks later and was shocked by the progress other people who rented the game had done; and kinda gave up at that point realizing the game was way too huge for me to finish correctly just by renting it for a few days every week.
The challenge has been made, SNES Drunk fans. Someone must do a god tier mod of the game to improve it to the point where Snes Drunk will say that it is worth playing and fun.
I remember there was a section in this game where you had to walk behind a town's wall and talk to someone. I had to read an FAQ to figure that out o.O
Legit only remember this game from it's Nintendo Power coverage, in roughly the same series of issues that had Chrono Trigger. It always struck me as one of those games you pick up because it was in the clearance bin, nothing spectacular. But as a RPG starved kid at the time it did look moderately appealing despite knowing it probably wasn't anything worth seeking out.
