About the game:
I recently bought a game called Alshark, which is a Japanese Sega Mega-CD Role Playing Game, or RPG for short. Alshark was released on several consoles and PCs around 1993, including FM Towns/Marty, X68000, DOS, possibly the pc engine, and maybe a few other versions.
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Starting the game:
In this game, you start out as a guy named Scion (pronounced similarly to Shawn or Sean.) You start out as many RPGs do, awakening from bed, by your cyborg protector named Calu. Scion has to find his girlfriend, Seyco, before setting out on an adventure.
After finding Seyco, you have to go outside of town and level up.
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Part of the storyline:
Seyco's father (Memon) has been infected with a virus that has made him kill Scion's father. Soon after, Scion and Seyco join forces with Scion's cyborg Calu, and then they set off to meet a space pilot named ?Roy?.
Calu helps heal and cure Scion's party but is soon killed off.
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The Game Itself:
This is an RPG that mixes traditional rpg elements (Think dragon warrior) with space exploration. Scion gathers party members, goes through dungeons, does quests, buys and sells weapons, armor, and other items, and also pilots a space ship, jumping around from planet to planet.
The problem with traditional dragon-warrior type games that many people have is random battles. While some games make the transition between one battle to the next longer than others, this game has very frequent battles (think destiny of the emperor on the nes, albert odyssey on the saturn, beyond the beyond on the ps1.)
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Weapon and Armor System:
This game, while it does have melee weapons, actually emphasizes long-range shooting weapons in battle. So, there have been references of this game to a shooter RPG.
The only drawback to the weapon and armor system I see is that there are no stats on any of the items, not in English or Japanese that I can find. So, the only thing you really have to go by, as far as weapons and armor are concerned, is how much they cost. More expensive = better.
When I first started playing this game, my strategy was to level up a bit before setting out on a journey, which is pretty good, because some of the flying bird-like creatures at even the beginning can do some heavy damage.
One thing that was weird is, as the party leveled up (Scion and Seyco) they didn't appear to get much more powerful, defense mainly. After completing the first part of the game (after Scion's father is killed and Calu joins the party) it was time to go to another town and upgrade weapons and armor. That did the trick.
Our shooting weapons started doing double shots, and the defense was better too. Enemies we previously could only kill a few of before having to be healed, the party could kill them in one or two shots and stay out in the dungeons longer, leveling up.
Levels vs Items in the game.... instead of being a balance between the stats you gain from leveling, items seem to be better than stat points.
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Currency:
In Alshark, there are two types of currency: Credits and Scrap. Credits are town currency, while scrap is space currency. In reality, it's kind of like silver pieces vs gold pieces in other RPGs. 5 credits = 1 scrap.
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Graphics:
When I first saw the graphics on Alshark, I thought they weren't as good as they could have been for the Sega CD system, especially when you compare Final Fight and Lunar and others to it.
The graphics aren't terrible though. I remember not being impressed by Vay's graphics either. Alshark seems to be a better game than Vay, however.
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Conclusion:
Not having played this game long, I am impressed with it. There have been several transition periods in the brief time I've played, and faster than most transitional periods would happen on your Average Joe RPG. These aren't story-altering transitions but rather significant changes in the game that add to the story, as opposed to changing it.
For example:
#1: You get 1 party member about as fast as you start the game
#2: Level up a little bit, go to the canyon, and you see Scion's father is killed.
#3: Go back to town, and you pick up calu (your cyborg protector)
#4: After getting weapons and armor in the next town, you fight your way through a dungeon and find another person for your party
#5: Go to the end of the northern dungeon and find the space craft
#6: End up on space station, get permission to leave station, and then on to the next mission...
All of this stuff above happens in a couple hours or less. So, it makes the game more interesting and less boring, like so many games where you just level up for hours at a time.
My first impressions of Alshark are that it's a great game. If we would have seen more games like this in North America, maybe the sega cd system would have had a chance.
Well, I forgot to do a follow up on the weapon and armor system. In the first towns, the weapons and armor definitely don't seem to have stats, but in the space ship, where you buy or trade with the pilot, weapons and armor actually have stat points.
Now, will the rest of the towns, after you go through all of this, have stats on them, in other towns, etc? My guess is probably, but I haven't played the game much since reviewing it, as I've been busy doing other stuff. We'll have to see.
This is good news..