I Played Every RPG on the 3DO

[Music] foreign so there I was standing in the shower brainstorming coming up with ideas for my next video suddenly like a bolt of lightning it hit me this is the best idea I've ever had it was the worst idea I'd ever had but where did it come from in my previous video I talked about the value of obscure consoles well editing I came across footage of 3DO CEO Tripp Hawkins discussing the company's next move their recent entrance to the console industry with the 3DO interactive multiplayer hadn't gone as planned I grew up knowing 3DO as the publisher behind N64 games like battle tanks and army men it wasn't until the famous Angry Video Game Nerd episode Plumbers Don't Wear Ties that I discovered 3do's attempts to penetrate the hardware market like Jon's penetration attempts in Plumbers Don't Wear Ties it was largely unsuccessful hi I'm Jane I love everything about you I love you like I've never loved anyone in my life I love you like I've never loved anyone in my life the more research I did on the 3DO the more interesting the story became to me I don't know why but I find these dark corners of video game history appealing that said there's no shortage of 3DO Centric content on this platform form lots of good videos and documentaries so I'll just briefly explain the 3do's unfortunate history First Dimension is 3do's business model dreamed up by 3DO and Electronic Arts founder Tripp Hawkins it was quite different from what we typically expect in the console Market rather than proprietarily assembling the system the 3DO company would license the console's schematics to electronics manufacturers so you don't just buy a 3DO you buy an LG Panasonic or Sanyo 3DO after purchasing manufacturing rights these companies were entitled to all the profits of hardware sales well 3DO itself collected royalties on game sales there are problems with this most game companies sell consoles at a loss and rank up the profit in the software Market with royalties primarily being funneled back to 3DO itself this left the manufacturing Partners at the creek I'm speculating here but I imagine that's why the suggested retail price of this system was an outrageous 700 American dollar reduce that's about 1400 bucks today unless you bought a PS5 on eBay in 2021 this is probably unimaginable to you our system is capable of much more advanced and much more real looking images well there were small changes made between manufacturers the 3DO uniformly boasted some pretty impressive specs at launch including its cell engine it sounds like a buzzword but it allowed for accurately texture mapped polygons and advanced bitmap rendering meaning Sprites could be easily stretched rotated and lit made transparent it was a significant advantage over the competition that is until the PlayStation and Sega Saturn released about a year after the 3DO came out both at a fraction of the cost 2.99 [Music] the simple fact is that even if the 3DO had come out gangbusters and it didn't it wasn't built with polygons in mind like the PS1 Saturn and N64 some of its games were impressive for their time including the definitive Port of Wolfenstein 3D however like its most closely related contemporary the Philips CDI the majority of its software library was edutainment FMV [ __ ] and softcore pornography okay with all that out of the way I'm gonna be frank whatever expectations I had when I came up with this video have been blown away with a force so decisive it feels like I've Lost Innocence and not just because I played a 3DO game called sex although it certainly does get me excited in the downstairs region I wanted to look into specific topics relevant to my channel so I decided to play every RPG on the system every time I thought I found every single game that could be considered an RPG I dug a little deeper and found another one in the end I played 14 games although I'm playing very fast and loose with the definition of RPG I wanted to be thorough I wanted to minimize the inevitable comments telling me that I missed something so I even played Japanese only games like insofar as I could every time I believed I hit weirdness Bedrock the foundation gave way and I fell further into the 3DO Rabbit Hole so join me now as I take you on a journey so strange it makes strange Journey look like Quest 64 a quest so troubling it makes Quest 64 look like Xeno gears [Music] let's start with a game off hail there's a 3DO Classic this is immersenary you're introduced to its world with some cutscenes combining full motion video with comic book style framing you gotta pull him out yeah it's cheesy but there's a sense of style and identity a lot of FMV games lack and the acting well it could just be my standards at Rock Bottom after playing Plumbers Don't Wear Ties on stream but it's decent if you go back in there be extremely careful you saw what happened to number four local musical theater quality the game is set in the Grim future of 2004. a mercenary explores implications of the so-called internet most of humanity is trapped in a virtual reality construct called perfect unable to return to reality the core of perfect is an entity known only as perfect one and it must be destroyed in order to free Humanity the setup is pretty great it perfectly combines a legitimately Bleak scenario with this ridiculous vision of the World Wide Web Circa 1995. what you now know is virtual reality but in your future become a virtual Armageddon the team was apparently inspired by Snow Crash but I'm getting some serious Lawnmower Man Vibes here the question is how's the game to that I answer yes it wouldn't be accurate to call a mercenary and RPG more like a first person shooter with some light RPG mechanics I described the game to somebody as William Shatner's Tech war with roguelite elements and that sentence is just so insane I can't let it go okay Rossi won't be pushing his trash around here anymore but we're not done by a long shot you play as an agent who's sent into perfect in order to defeat perfect one and from the moment you're dropped in it's just unadulterated chaos perfect is populated with a variety of strange characters all of whom will do their best to kill you the moment you're within their line of sight in the beginning you'll die almost instantly but that's okay because you're given another chance to hop back in a definite Improvement in Target acquisition and kill ratio that's good as you kill enemies they'll drop a cloud of static depending on the enemy type moving over the static will increase defense offense or agility defense is akin to hit points offenses ammo capacity and Agility dictates how long you can move around without needing a rest rather than picking up ammo or health packs you'll have to locate terminals which recharge their color associated resource with blue terminals recharging all at once when you get started in perfect it's time to move standing still in this game is death so running out of agility is troublesome it's made worse by the movement controls which defy all rationality pressing up on the d-pad will increase your character's speed while pressing down lowers it left and right will turn your character in pressing the shoulder buttons will cause your character to take one step left or one step right yeah not really strafing literally it's one single step if you want to stray if you have to rapidly press the shoulder buttons and it's just about the most unintuitive thing I've seen in a console shooter even considering its age if you want to stop you have to press the d-pad down until your acceleration slows by which point you've probably cruised past your intended destination it's difficult to describe but it feels like playing a forklift simulator or something I think they were trying to do something different Hammer home that VR theme make it feel like you're gliding around the game world but it just feels like you're never in control after a difficulty spike in the opening hour or so your ability to survive increases exponentially initially you'll only be able to take on enemies called goners with low health and damage output but soon you'll be able to take on tougher enemies and stay within perfect for longer periods of time it's interesting that the little FMV interludes actually give you hints about the game world or what you did wrong helping you gain knowledge and survivability I we may be on to something here run through the static fields of the next few rhythms you crash so we can gather some more data you'll learn what the power-ups do and naturally become better at directing your forklift away from certain death just between you and me I never thought you could do this I mean yeah who else would it uh be between 3DO magazine I'm sorry it is legitimate publication 3DO magazine says this is a game which looks like nothing you've ever seen and well that is true the world is presented like the simulation of a city with each district having different architecture and rarely some explorable structures there are occasionally static fields which prevent you from using your abilities too this causes certain textures to flicker in and out of wireframe it's a pretty simple effect but it's cool for the time despite the mundanity of your surroundings the game does a good job of making you feel like you are in virtual reality the fact that the cutscenes outside of perfect are performed by real actors creates this contrast or the simplistic 3D Graphics actually serve the intended purpose music also changes depending on the environment you're in which is a nice touch even if the music itself isn't all that great the crowning Jewel of a mercenaries presentation is easily the Talking Heads it's everything and nothing computer program a universe a dream what is going on with that my eyes are down here there's a safe haven within perfect called the DOA CIS where the denizens of perfect aren't allowed to fight each other unlike other terminals the DOA sis is rendered on screen at all times so you always have a grip on where you are where you should be if you need to heal up here you can have conversations with a wide array of players a wide wide array depending on who you run into they might have some expository dialogue or even hints about where to find boss battles yeah there are specific inhabitants of perfect who can be fought in special Arenas there's usually some kind of gimmick to these fights that forces you to mix up your play style in order to defeat perfect one you have to climb the ranks from 255 all the way to the top and let me tell you that's gonna take a while so let's go over the good the environment is totally non-linear meaning you can take on bosses whenever you see fit whether or not you're ready for them the game incur urges exploration by not making death such a harsh punishment I know the term Rogue light is thrown around a lot these days but this constant cycle of dying improving and having enemy placement mixed up seems to me perhaps the first implementation of such a mechanic in an FPS there's even a hint of Battle Royale in here at a time when most developers were just trying to emulate Doom this was quite an ambitious concept for a console shooter there's really nothing like it to this day and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing that's good this will be more of an individual preference but I do love the game's presentation it's just such a perfect time capsule to that period of the 90s where a lot of people really were convinced that FMV was the future having been published by EA and mercenary had some surprising production value which helps it stand the test of time now for the bad the game controls like you're leading a pack of sled dogs If This Were sled dog racer 96 that wouldn't be such a problem but it isn't that it's immersenary there's so much goddamn chaos occurring on screen at any given time you really need tight controls on your side to react but that's not the case a lot of the time your health will just melt and you'll be booted from perfect before you have a chance to turn around and see who your assassin is the boss fights are also pure tedium they're all just bullet sponges I'd say that speaks to the biggest overarching problem I have with a mercenary it's just repetitive after a few minutes of running around shooting goners you've really experienced the majority of what the game has on offer boss fights help to break up the monotony but they're few and far between most of the game is running around jamming your thumb on the shoot button until it's bloody and raw it's certainly unique but so is System Shock which predates this game by a year and unlike a mercenary System Shock is unique and fun at the same time your mileage may vary but I will say as a mid 90s curiosity trapped on the 3DO a mercenary is worth checking out the cutscenes are awesome and there's an appeal to exploring this small open world they've created you just have to survive long enough to do it [Music] next up on the chopping block we've got battle Blues a strategy RPG developed by Shin's entertainment and published by LG the electronics company yes like many of the proceeding games on this list there's an interesting story behind this one that's really hard to dig up information on Goldstar was a major manufacturer of 3DO systems and the exclusive manufacturer in Korea you know how LG stands for Life's good until 1995 it stood for Lucky Gold Star Battle Blues was produced by LG in order to run exclusively on its 3DO systems yes that's correct the 3DO a system whose Market was primarily American and even failed there has got a South Korean exclusive to its name and it's not the only one now I would have played it regardless but thereby the grace of God one man named Jeremy dicola released a full fan translation and a light rebalancing mod several years ago never in a million years could I have imagined somebody would put in the time and effort required to make this a reality but hey sometimes things just work out thanks for your hard work Jeremy the timeline of events in battle Blues is laid out in an introductory cut scene 1997 to 1999 over 5 000 local Wars are recorded World okay uh December 1999 as the United Nations fails to maintain world order the United for [ __ ] sake I told the second covered to Moscow following the abolishment of the U.N the A's establishing the global ah the gist is that societies the world over are highly unstable as policing becomes ever more tight-fisted criminal syndicates across brain City find increasing popularity your job is to shoot first to ask questions later and look like a stud doing it the cutscenes explaining the story are actually not bad unfortunately the 3do's internal resolution is a mere 320x240 which is increased to 640 by 480 via frame buffer interpolation this probably looked okay on a CRT but with modern digital displays it really does a number on the hand-drawn art anyway the cutscenes aren't that great but a sizable Cut Above what I expected for a country exclusive 3DO RPG the backstory is pretty generic but the depressing tone of the world is established quite well now I really dig the pre-mission briefings there's an awesome use of the 3do's color palette making the pixel art pop in ways that FMV couldn't that music is just awesome as well foreign like many srpgs you've got a squad comprised of several different character archetypes before a mission you're given limited credits to purchase their Gear with characters have various strengths or weaknesses that can be taken advantage of depending on the resources you send them into battle with apparently dicola's mod is more generous with pre-mission credits so you could say that I'm not getting the true battle Blues experience I'm sorry as for the gameplay itself it is basically what comes to mind when I say srpg in a modern setting isometric perspective characters taking turns depending on speed it's fine it's just fine frankly I'm stunned by the sheer competence of the whole thing if you're not acquainted with the 3DO you might not know what I mean by that but uh you will before the video is over the game isn't perfect by any means first of all the controls are wonky movement is basically reversed on a horizontal axis to what you'd expect so I always end up walking in the wrong direction you use the B and C buttons to cycle through your items or weapons and a to select a Target unfortunately the game will often decide to Target your own teammates before the enemy so you can't just Mash through the confirmation you're limited to 5 items which includes ammunition considering levels are actually multi-tiered and force you to beat a number of submissions before returning to base running out of ammo is a risk there's a few different ammo types and you won't know which one is suited for your character's gun without trial and error I guess this is probably where the instruction manual would have come in handy all of this stuff is minor on paper but it really goes to show how much quality of life change positively affects srpgs there's just a collection of minor issues that pile up and make the game feel unpleasant to play as for the gameplay presentation it's pretty solid I will say that the lightning speed walk Cycles are hilarious the Sprite based objects used to populate levels are actually quite nice and there's a large variety of assets used to differentiate sections then there's the music foreign [Music] yeah unironically though the music is pretty funky I don't know how fitting it is given the circumstances but I think they were going for an urban feel it's certainly unique to say the least and the four or so hours that I played there was a decent level of mission variety as well in one level the head honcho stays back and starts executing hostages if you take too long in another you have to protect some bomb squad agents as they move throughout the level defusing bombs while getting shot at it's no Jagged Alliance but it's decently engaging for what it is all in all it's hard to recommend battle Blues For The Casual srpg enjoyer not because it's a bad game per se but because it's a game and a genre whose advancements have made it obsolete outside of the presentation none of battle Blues individual characteristics really hold up to Modern scrutiny neither is it bad weird or interesting enough to command one's attention Allah something like a mercenary despite that I think video game preservation is important I'm more convinced of that having made this video than ever I'm very thankful for people like Jeremy dicola out there who put in the legwork to make these Oddities playable all right now we're getting into the thick of it ukoku no Grand Chef which I will henceforth be referring to as Grand Chef is an RPG developed by Salah International we will be returning to them for now what you need to know is that this game was only released in Japan as such finding information on the game is a Monumental pain on the ass and involved a lot of automated translations with that in mind here's the Lowdown from at wiki.jp latello note RPG traveling by cooking heartwarming scenarios and fresh systems are attractive hit the recipe that is actually used and challenge the food motivation to secretly open a slow life RPG game sex closer to a DV than RPG difficulty to get stuck in progress due to lack of kneading now I've had varying degrees of success in these japanese-only 3DO games grandchild at the very bottom of the barrel as such I can neither confirm nor deny that kneading represents a difficulty spike in the game I can say a few things with absolute certainty the first being that this introduction is both hideous and absolutely bonkers the butler turns into a leopard demon and it looks like this Chef condemns his son to some sort of cooking hell the CG is actually not the worst I've ever seen on the system so uh points for that the visual style of the game itself is a little jarring I would actually describe the look of several of these games to be Camelot at home for those who don't know Camelot is the game developer Behind The Shining games Golden Sun and also Mario Golf their games have a pretty distinctive visual identity sharing typefaces and often using digitized 3D renders as Sprites Grand Chef's Graphics aren't a complete failure in capturing this but it's just no contest in terms of charm also you have to stand here listening to characters flap their gums for like 15 minutes before you can start playing I mean just look at these Talking Heads I know part of the problems that I just don't speak Japanese but I'm reasonably confident when I say that even if I did I would still be bored all right lady put your [ __ ] eyebrows down and let me pass the combat in Grand Chef is as basic as an RPG gets you can attack you can summon which is just like magic or Escape so you head into town and I have to say the early 3D Vibes are very strong in this game there is something noticeably comfy about this town basic though it is aside from whatever's going on here this this just makes me nervous control wise the best comparison I could make would be like Bubsy 3D maybe in both cases when you turn the camera it feels like your character is actually remaining stationary while the entire Earth rotates around them as a pivot point so yeah I'm at a complete loss I've entered every house talked to every person I could find I'm just not really sure how to progress past the town or even if you're supposed to on top of healing items you can also buy ingredients and cooking utensils which piques my interest but not enough to learn Japanese in a week if I use my imagination I would say that grand Chef might be a slice of Life Harvest Moon type game where you cook or like run a restaurant or something it seems that there actually is a mini game involved and you level up over the course of the story well we're at it why don't we just read the site's evaluation of the game as a whole and I can just plagiarize their thoughts on the upside the game is a fresh experience not caught in RPG Common Sense on the downside the city is too wide and you can easily get lost to sum it all up even if you don't touch the food you might want to cook yourself after playing this game hmm [Music] yeah seeing in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game amidst the 3do's RPG library is like arriving at summer camp on day one and running into the guy you sort of know from school you're not really well acquainted and you don't necessarily think that you would get along but it's kind of a relief just to see a familiar face for those who don't know a D and D is just the moniker taken by Dungeons and Dragons throughout the 80s and 90s as tabletop RPGs became ubiquitous throughout nerd culture the a D and D brand expanded to Comics novels and video games I've got a bit of negative bias towards the series since my only experience with ad was with an NES game called Heroes of the Lance it's very bad Slayer was developed by an austin-based studio called lion entertainment as the game opens you'll watch some guy Shuffle over to a door foreign [Music] looks pretty cool you're allowed to create your own character and the options here are about what you'd expect for a full-fledged DND game you can choose your stats race and Alignment as far as I understand there's no penalty for just maximizing everything which is an odd design choice in the interest of fairness I went for the pre-made characters and jumped in like many games in the ad tradition Slayer is a Dungeon Crawler through and through you Traverse each floor collecting Loot and facing enemies before finding the exit and moving on in order to create dungeons the game uses seed-based procedural generation a pretty novel feature in console games at the time you could theoretically play through Slayer a million times and have different dungeons to explore on each playthrough I don't think you'd want to since procedurally generated dungeons come with their own foibles but you could the combat is pretty basic you equip a melee weapon bow or magic spell point in the direction of the enemy and slap the [ __ ] out of that hit button while hoping for the best this is problematic for reasons too first of all combat is based on dice rolls this is expected and wouldn't be as big an issue if not for the second problem the hit detection sucks I'm never sure if I'm just a whiffing because I'm not passing a dice check or because I'm positioned one lousy pixel away from the right spot I mean how could you possibly expect me to defeat zantar the gelatinous Q under these conditions zanto is a gelatinous cube that eats Warriors in a medieval village on top of that the field of view is presented in glorious 4x3 glaucoma Vision I can tolerate field of view on the low side but this is pretty brutal the controls are iffy as well just tapping that d-pad sends your view flying to the left or to the right to compensate you can actually hold down the left shoulder button to lower the rate of acceleration the right shoulder button is held as strafe so if you want complete control of your care character you're basically going to be [ __ ] around with every single button on the controller it probably goes without saying that sometimes you're gonna get some bad dungeon seeds there's rooms and rooms without enemies floors where the exit is right next to the entrance 15 items sitting on top of each other that kind of thing well I prefer handmade dungeons I can understand that for people who went into catastrophic debt to purchase a 3DO if you can only afford one game you might as well make it one that much like payments on your second mortgage can be enjoyed in perpetuity the game's got problems no doubt but the upshot of the deal is that you can play a pretty feature dense Dungeon Crawler on the 3DO while much more impressive and influential games like Ultima underworld and the Elder Scrolls Arena had already been released Slayer wouldn't feel out of place as a computer game in fact having Mouse control and improved performance would alleviate some of the frustration the inventory system despite an overabundance of worthless loot is intuitive and the Auto map works well with a few adjustments I don't think it's outlandish to imagine this game having a cult following a la dungeon Hack That is unless you ask electronic gaming monthly who saw ugly bad guys as the game's greatest weakness they are ugly that does make the game worse is a D and D Slayer a 10 out of 10 certainly not can I picture myself as a child sitting cross-legged in a wood paneled basement on a rainy Friday night losing myself in its labyrinths unequivocally after the release of Slayer rumors began circulating on message boards it seemed that Slayer was just a prototype and lion entertainment was hard at work developing a sequel that would blow everyone away wait will you see death keep I was blown away by the demo at E3 and I can't understand why it's not getting more attention the wall textures were beautifully detailed and I was able to climb steps Etc foreign 3D dwarves running towards the camera alright def keep you had my curiosity now you have my attention indeed the long-awaited follow-ups why did I write that was I trying to be ironic the follow-up to Slayer was advanced Dungeons and Dragons death keep right off the Hop you'll find they streamlined the character creation instead of being able to choose everything for yourself you can pick from one of three pre-made characters dwarf fighter elf Mage or for the radical Centrist half elf fighter Mage everything about this introduction just tickles me like this weird face on the difficulty select screen what emotion is being conveyed here that's my face when the pizza man shows up that's me opening the box and finding that they accidentally put salami on my vegetarian girlfriend's pizza oh no and then that's me realizing that I've got two entire pizzas to myself I mean wouldn't it be a shame to let this go to waste they've traded out the more traditional 2D cutscenes with pre-rendered 3D and uh it's not the worst but it's also not the best foreign you you possessed the amulet meet the mysterious skeleton loner with a body of bones and an arm for a boner starting the game up it's immediately evident that death keep shares many of slayer's issues the problems are mostly intrinsic since the game's share an engine although it seems like there have been some tweaks to death keep I'm not really sure what's going on here control wise let's open the menu and see what's going on ha I don't know if the exclusive pause screen jingle dethrones Legend of Dragoon but it does give it a run for its money the controls are pretty whack but there are two decisions in particular that are so baffling that whoever made them needs to publicly apologize 28 years later first of all the jump button is start I'm playing on a Russian emulator called Phoenix so I can remap it causes some additional weirdness but I'll cope what I can't deal with is that the first level takes place in an ice cave you just slip and slide all over the damn place it's infuriating weirdly enough it kind of brings the controls up to parody with a mercenary but in a very horrible unintentional way something I didn't mention is that in both of these a d and d games you can't see your weapon functionally it makes no difference either way but it just makes the already floaty combat feel even less tactile the only visual indication that you're swinging a weapon at all is this little cool down crosshatch over the weapon icon you can dual wield so and by pressing B in combination with either hand button you can cycle through items located in your pockets fundamentally the biggest difference between death keep and Slayer is the level design it's chewing the randomly generated dungeons of its predecessor death keeps levels are hand crafted The increased number of enemy types weapon options and linearity give the game more of an action focus it definitely feels closer to Doom than say Ultima underworld given the limitations of the engine I actually prefer this quite a bit credit where it's due some of the level design in this game is actually very good each stage is thematically distinct from the others giving the game a level of variety that Slayer lacked there's a lot going on outside the Bland flat terrain generated in the previous game winding corridors slopes stairs and tons of hidden secrets make each environment feel more natural and exciting to explore you lose a little bit of that dreary atmosphere that characterized Slayer but in exchange what you get is a game that is dangerously close times to being enjoyable one thing I absolutely could have done without is these platforming sections it's bad enough that someone looked at this game and thought yeah we can use some more platforming there's so many of them each level has some [ __ ] that you've got to trudge through cross your fingers and hope that your jump input is recognized in one of the blistering nine frames per second you perform it in though the game moves through levels in a linear fashion you're allowed to keep all previously gained experience levels and equipment from the previous ones the combat can still be pretty rough but it feels like it's been slightly rebalanced to accommodate the action Focus I think it's just clear that lion entertainment had a better handle on 3DO Hardware at this point there's a lot of great visual details the Sprite work is by and large big Improvement and the texture work really feels like it's playing to the system's strengths using bold colors and simple designs I've just gotta shout out the music every level I played had a solid original track some of which are still in my head oh [Music] [Applause] the sound design is just good across the board the only problem is that the game presumably uses red book audio so there's no looping it just sort of abruptly cuts out and starts again which becomes noticeable when you're lost in gigantic hour-long maze levels also the noise that these soldiers make when you hit them is never not hilarious oh oh oh [Music] oh as mentioned the levels themselves are a big step up in terms of creativity my favorite being the town I love how they take a conventionally designed FPS level and turned it into a familiar environment it feels natural to Traverse like an actual RPG town but there's an ebb and flow to the design that lets you explore without feeling hopelessly lost a lot of items need to be identified with a magnifying glass and most will grant you some great bonuses like being able to travel through Lava without getting hurt or granting you damage type resistances some of the levels are pretty huge and I absolutely don't understand why they threw out the Auto map from Slayer it is sorely needed here as despite the improvements you just can't escape some samey looking rooms I had to create landmarks for myself or leave breadcrumb trails with items to know where I've already been it can be a headache no doubt about it despite the problems death keep is a decent 3DO game again it's tough to know where objectivity and dramatically lowered standards start and stop but hopping back in to collect some more footage I wasn't put off by the gang there was a Windows Port of the game A year later and you'd think it'd be an open and shut case in terms of playability but it's really not the PC version runs and looks worse if you can get it running at all that's right the 3DO houses the definitive version of a multi-platform game it doesn't undo the absolute travesty that is Doom 3DO but it eases the pain a little bit [Music] full disclosure I don't have much to say about blue forest's story that's mostly because the game is entirely in Japanese but also because the game is so generic that I just don't really know what to add when the game opens up you choose between one of two characters let's try a translation app see if I can make heads or tails of the plot well it finally happened at least not to learn from Susana yes okay I've got to have to do it before from here to the shrine the god of the forest deliver the offerings and ride oh that one almost makes sense as a reminder don't steal and eat things let's see what the merchant has to sell here blade wheel small swords Fang extraction weak drugs and easy unbelievable pay Walling difficulty modes that's low blue Forest story so yeah I don't think the translation app is going to be a particularly reliable companion throughout my Adventures here visually though I can just see that the game has one of the most generic of jrpg openings while playing the game I wrote down a prediction based purely on what I could see you play as a young person who has to make a pilgrimage to the Shrine in the woods in some kind of a coming-of-age or like you're an adult now type ceremony on the way there goblins attack I assume that goblins are an ongoing problem for the locals the character uses latent superpower hours to become a demon and defeats the Goblins but passes out and doesn't remember what happened there's a Time skip our main character is stronger and cooler the Goblins are back this time with some help from dark Wizards the main character becomes a demon again this time conscious of it showing his power level the Wizards scare the locals into believing that the main character is a monster so he's imprisoned by the villagers the cute childhood best friend frees the main character but then his father or adoptive father is killed by angry villagers for supporting his own son I'd love to tell you how I did but I don't really know if anybody can make heads or tails of this plot or maybe if you've played blue Forest Story before let me know the game's Graphics look pretty mediocre there's a combination of pixel art as well as pre-rendered 3D Sprites used on the Overworld and it just looks like two conflicting art styles the entire time I was playing I kept thinking of Zelda's Adventure on the CDI I don't know who's on the raw end of that comparison I will say that the character portraits look pretty good it seemed like they had some kind of an art style in mind that didn't really translate to the top-down perspective a PlayStation Port would come out shortly after the 3DO and most of the 2D assets appear to be of higher quality in addition the music in both versions is pretty good too it has a similar problem to death keep in that the tracks are too short and don't Loop properly but the quality is there according to the few resources I dug up online the game is very short they try to make up for this by having two separate campaigns where you can get a look at either side of some conflict the girls opening seems like it could have been interesting she's a prisoner somewhere a love interest is killed after a Time skip she's a member of some resistance group I also like how vastly different the opening is whereas the boy starts off on the generic RPG Village here it's more of a depressing industrial city what really worked as a roadblock for me was the combat it's a turn-based system that seems to have an emphasis on stances there's an aggressive stance a defensive stance a counter stance and you unlock more as the game goes on without knowing precisely what they do or what they're for even the starting area is very very difficult to get through regardless blue Forest story doesn't seem to have such a sterling reputation among even those who did play it it just screams average from the area designed to the animation work it seems like an RPG Maker project of a mediocre quality if you were a 3DO owner in Japan Circa 1996 and hard up for a traditional RPG this probably would have gotten the job done man is that a sad image all the other kids getting ps1s with Final Fantasy seven sweep it in you're stuck at home with your 3DO playing blue Forest Story oh I'm depressed now by this point in my 3DO Journey standards have been rearranged considerably if a game I'm playing is featured in a YouTube video with over 2 000 views I consider it popular if it has a Wikipedia article it's AAA with that in mind Robinson's Requiem was a summer blockbuster although I don't know if the game was released in summer because I can't find the release date anywhere the 3D animation buttery smooth the acting you're about to experience thrilling and Unforgettable moment stunning desired level of expansion thick yup I'm thinking it's Robinson time Robinson's Requiem is a first person survival game the RPG elements are certainly on the lighter side but hey I'm trying to be thorough here the user interface allows you to switch between character movement and cursor control letting you interact with the world or rummage through your inventory you'll start off with nothing and must accumulate resources and increase survivability by getting to know your small open world you'll encounter other Robinsons shake their hand and then promptly kill them for their stuff welcome to my holiday cap a knife can be used to cut leaves off trees collect resin scrape saltpeter off rocks that kind of thing as a game in current year Robinson's Requiem is pretty difficult to play as a product of its time this game is downright Visionary I think it was the first Survival game set in a 3D space and the level of complexity on display here is both frustrating and damn impressive here are some notes about the world interactions I jotted down while playing your carry weight affects fatigue levels you can develop sunstroke or other area-specific medical problems you can craft a hat out of leaves to prevent sunstroke there's a wide variety of first aid to be used situationally including painkillers and aesthetic and antibiotics in order to inject liquid medicine you'll have to fill an empty syringe first open wounds will become infected to varying degrees forcing you to constantly scan yourself in the medical window injuries to eyes will affect Vision you can develop the flu if you sleep in a damp cave for too long if your character is agitated or anxious he won't be able to sleep some food is inedible and you'll only know by trying your heart rate will increase with physical activity such as running and you can hear it in game good these are just some of the things I noticed in my time with the game I'm sure there's a laundry list of relationships between aspects of the game World this game has been slept on and unfortunately it's a bit too late to catch on at this point Robinson's Requiem again isn't particularly enjoyable to play but the vision the developers had for this world was so ahead of its time I'm left wondering how it didn't receive the credit it deserves it can't strictly be related to the 3do's popularity either since it was also available on home computers survival games did exist prior to Requiem games like Oregon Trail or wilderness's survival Adventure but those focused on delivering a high level overview of the survival experience Robinson's Requiem forces you to contend with nature from the perspective of the Survivor themselves it really is a precursor to the experience we've come to expect from our survival games I have massive respect for it that said it's not all fun and games in fact it's not fun at all interacting with the UI using a d-pad powered cursor feels like a battle all its own you gotta drag that thing by the shirt collar over to the menu you want to use since the 3do's controller has so few buttons you'll have to rely on this on-screen interface for just about everything the sound design is also highly minimal but not in a good way you'll get some generic ambient nature sounds but a lot of things that should make noise remain completely silent this is an unforgiving game you'll often be taking a stroll before suddenly dying with no real understanding of what just killed you inventory management is also hell on Earth you don't have any real control over quantity until items are already in your backpack since it's real easy to become over-encumbered you'll be spending a lot of time slowly dividing or destroying individual items there's also the FMV sequences I guess it's a matter of opinion but for me these only Elevate the experience brother replicures like chatty dinosaur because he much talk but not much do ah yes primitive woman just like I remember her with a polyester leopard skin topped from Sears and a permanent I picked up the Dos version from Gog just for the sake of comparison and there are some notable differences first of all the game is basically unplayable this is a high resolution mode by the way in the PC version level geometry is drawn using voxels while the 3DO version uses texture mapped polygons voxels may have been more impressive and allowed for more natural looking environments but because of the low resolution in either version the 3DO actually comes out on top here the game isn't the looker at the best of times but if you're using a Modern Display there's just much less visual noise also the PC version uses the numpad along with assorted other Keys located on the opposite end of the keyboard of course it's pretty nice having cursor control with the mouse but I don't know if the trade-off is worth it I think Robinson's Requiem overall is worth a look it'll take a special dedicated type of person to make it all the way through the game if I was making a video on Robinson's Requiem I could become that person but I'm not I'm making a video about 3DO RPGs and I just don't have the time to invest to see this thing through to the end I don't know what became of designer Andre Rook but for what little it's worth I hope he's proud of his work I feel like if it came out at the right place at the right time it could have made a splash in the industry but as it stands Robinson's Requiem is an ambitious little footnote in the annals of video game history however the development Studio silmarils would release a follow-up two years later for Windows computers called Deus it came with Robinson's Requiem in a double pack from Gog so I figured I'd check it out just for the hell of it but man the previous game was tough to play Deus is like getting kicked in the dick while reciting the names of all 195 countries you might believe you can do it but you realize it's actually pretty tough while it's happening unlike Requiem which primarily used billboarded 2D Sprites for its environmental clutter Deus is rendered in glorious 3D there's like a creepy pasta Vibe or something about this game that makes me feel uneasy it's just a Barren environment the game box has a picture of this Mech with flamethrowers and [ __ ] or something which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be misleading but I guess it's possible that you get to Pilot a Mech before the game's over hey hold up rewind the tapes is that the same font that Elder Scrolls battle Spire uses in game the controls are absolutely atrocious borderline unusable you have to swing your weapon with right control while pressing specific keys on the numpad or else your character just throws the weapon like a [ __ ] idiot your opponents prattle on doing these wild acrobatic moves foreign it's a successful assertion of dominance as I quit the game and never look back while playing seal of the Pharaoh there were multiple times where my jaw unhinged and I jumped up from my desk in shock there are games on this list that are weirder but this game does not have license to be weird and that's what makes it jarring it's a bare basic Dungeon Crawler on the short list for most visually boring game of the bunch and with the least interesting gameplay in spite of that it kept finding ways to surprise me I will try to convey as best I can the unadulterated awe I experienced while playing this game first of all Six Degrees of Separation I know it's becoming redundant to say so but there is precious little information on seal of the Pharaoh available what I can tell you is that the game was developed by System saycom well mostly known as an electronics company there was a period of time where system Secom developed a handful of console games one of which was a Sega Saturn game called Deep fear deep fear was directed by rieko Kodama who of course produced Skies of Arcadia and who career I covered in my previous video small world moreover seal of the Pharaoh was published by Panasonic at least in North America this marks the second example in the video of an electronics company dipping their toes into the video game software industry anyway as mentioned seal of the Pharaoh is a Dungeon Crawler this story has something to do with your character's father getting lost in a pyramid or something I don't know it's kind of hard to tell with this audio mixing [Music] fight the evil spirits to find him ladies and gentlemen take notes this is how title screens are done so you're dropped into the pyramid and the madness begins first of all many 3DO games have surprisingly decent soundtracks thanks to the system's Superior Sound Hardware seal of the Pharaoh is not one of those games [Music] ah yes ancient Egypt and all of its Sonic Glory this three-second Loop never stops that is unless you press the C button on the controller which mutes the music this might be the first game I've played where the developers were so confident that their music would drive people insane that one of the three accessible face buttons is a dedicated shut the [ __ ] up command let me let me just throw in some kind of appropriate background music [Music] really there that should be good like many early Dungeon Crawlers seal of the Pharaoh takes place from a first person perspective movement is grid-based meaning your character will Shuffle from Square to Square and can only face four cardinal points the reason for this being the game's pre-rendered visuals which creates sort of a mock 3D look you're basically looking at multiple screen sized GIFs that play in sequence depending on which direction you move in sarcastically the game would be fun enough if it were just maze navigation but being a hardcore RPG there's combat as well easy to pick up but difficult to master there's a little something for everyone the combat has you mashing the attack buttons or your character can lob their weapon at whatever enemy you're facing the battle system is real time which sounds more impressive than it is in reality it seems that both the player and the enemy's moves are set to a flat timer when a countdown has ended you can attack with your weapon use a healing potion or toss a holy water that's about the size of it you stumble across these invisible consumables while exploring it's not just a matter of walking to the right Square you also have to be facing the right direction while holding up on the d-pad to discover items it's horribly annoying but you start developing like a sixth sense for where items might be usually these big Square rooms have stuff in them listen to what I have to say I hope if nothing else you can now understand why I needed to make this video as you progress to lower floors the dungeons become increasingly complex to navigate if you're lucky you can find a map but for the most part it just shows you a layout of the floor not where you are try taking out the map you'll know where you are a lot of secret doors and hidden switches you need to activate and it's never clear where they are I've connected the path you're fine [Music] the frequency with which these strange 3D creatures arrive with these valueless interjections also increases you don't have the tier of to a point where I was just playing the game for hours to see what would happen next you will find the treasures in the rooms ahead of you I was going there anyway but thank you oh no do you have the flask of kef Newt I don't know what that means I'll let you go through shut the hell up the combat becomes increasingly grating as the game goes on there are many reasons for this not the least of which being that it's just boring you get better weapons but a lot of the enemies stay the same level it's just a guaranteed one-hit kill unless you're asleep at the wheel the monotony is exacerbated by the visual design of the game it's it's horrid I just I don't also describe it it's stupefyingly bland but don't take it from me let's listen to some reviews from The Game's release if Graphics made a game seal of the Pharaoh would score in the 90s wait what unfortunately however there's this little thing called fun that you're supposed to have when you play a game in Pharaoh you simply find the stuff to beat a boss and move along one step at a time bring the no dose on this ride 69 out of 100. Music gets a seven This reviewer gave every aspect of the game a 10 before calling the game frustrating and boring and then also gives it a final score of 69 out of 100 this one says the game screams quality on the surface okay let's try a different magazine maybe game pro knows what they're talking about fun factor three out of five Graphics 4 out of five was Panasonic greasing their palms seal of the Pharaoh came out the same year as System Shock Arena and Doom 2 so please don't run defense for this game even the reviewers know it's lousy this guy basically said it sucks and it looks bad and gave it a 7 out of 10. I don't know what else could be said about seal of the Pharaoh it's slow and plotting yet because it doesn't adhere to any kind of convention it hides absurdity around every corner that reason and that reason alone is why I kept playing I just had to see what kind of enemy would show up next oh a cricket with a cannon from an ass what kind of cryptic unsolicited advice will a decapitated head show up to bless me with if you use the golden ax in the Next Room you will break my spell what did he mean by this just when I thought the game had shown me everything something so zany happened that I had to keep going this is why despite the fact that seal of the Pharaoh is the worst game on today's list by most metrics I consider it to be essential 3DO it has all the right ingredients extremely obscure baffling design atrocious presentation and unintentionally hilarious it rides the line between boring and enthralling but the latter just wins out for me it's often stated that so bad it's good is easier to come by in movies than games but if such a thing does exist in gaming I believe seal of the Pharaoh is exhibit a [Music] coming at us from Japanese developer micro cabin is Guardian War a tactical RPG published by the matsushida electric corporation you know that sounds familiar foreign I know there's been a lot of confusion so I just want to State unequivocally that the Musashi Kato who designed Guardian war is not the Olympic swimmer please stop emailing me about this an ancient evil has taken over the world so the player takes control of a guardian awakened by a goddess with the goal of defeating said evil you might remember my description of ukoku no Grand Chef is Camelot at home and I think that extends to Guardian War as well the characters in most environmental objects are digitized 3D renders the former of which are presented in a chibi style unfortunately the 3do's resolution doubling wreaks havoc on 2D assets in this game warping otherwise clean lines and making characters look like they were resized in Microsoft Paint I would have to say in general that Guardian war is a very unpleasant looking game the renders don't mesh well with all these blurry photo textures it definitely looks more like a prototype than a final product that said looks can be deceiving as mentioned Guardian war is a tactical RPG much in the spirit of Shining Force or Fire Emblem you're dropped into a map which can be explored freely until an enemy is encountered at that point your party members disperse and the game enters a turn-based battle mode here you can move a number of spaces depending on your stats attack the enemy use items or attempt to run it'll sound pretty standard to anyone familiar with tactical RPGs and well yeah standard is right on the money if I were to describe Guardian war in one phrase at this point that it'd be refreshingly competent there's a pretty large number of classes most of which can be switched to at will providing you have the necessary class body to do so your characters have overall levels as well as individual class levels the latter of which will gradually unlock new skills when raised so you actually have some control over your unit skills you can have an Archer that can use some basic healing magic or a warrior that can fire a bow and arrow each class branches in into a light and dark version of the same class on advancement with different advantages and disadvantages to each I actually found it pretty satisfying to level my squad up checking out different classes and seeing what worked best it doesn't require 190 IQ strategy but the challenge is well balanced enough to give you a run for your money while making room for experimentation there are issues that prevent me from pushing the game firmly into the realm of good the camera controls have that same unwieldy World spinning quality that combined with the environmental Graphics make it very easy to lose direction the game also presents each map as explorable but you're really Limited in what you can do or where you can go there are treasure chests to collect but they're hard to miss usually they'll contain weapons or accessories that you can swap out on the Overworld raising or lowering various stats you're given some freedom in which enemy groups you want to take on first but in the end you'll have to fight them all anyway so it's not really necessary enemy designs and strategies are also pretty straightforward they all act in predictable ways which is understandable considering this was undoubtedly a low budget game the game can also feel very slow to play I didn't particularly mind because in that regard it's Stella's step up from some other 3DO games I've played but everything about it feels a little delayed and clunky menu Selections in various animations take too long and disrupt the rhythm of fights a few adjustments in the game would have been a lot more playable the drab HUD and fonts don't do the game any favors either there's also a matter of the voice acting it's the powers of Darkness take over the world mostly okay [Music] see this is what I love about 3DO games they could have just had text that says you win and moved on but no we need some Pitch down voice acting to commemorate the occasion completing missions will gradually unlock new teammates I had a Black Swordsman named pumpkin a ninja named iron a messiah named clay I like that one in particular just just your everyday Blue Collar Messiah and a shaman named material no I didn't name them these names were hand curated by the developers and will henceforth be inscribed into the guardian War Cannon this has become a terrible world to live in but business is business hey that reminds me I have a patreon you can check out for as low as the price of a coffee a month you get some neat bonuses including the 3DO leftovers bonus video featuring a look at some non-rpg games including hell sex and Shelley Duvall's it's a bird's life sorry just had to get the Shilling out of the way while I still remembered I can honestly say that of all Guardian Wars surprises the music has got to be the most Pleasant I really really did not expect Steve Vai to start playing on the world map [Music] one of the game's two composers yasufumi fukuda went on to work on the Phoenix Wright games Super Smash Bros and some other high profile stuff he's one of precious few 3DO developers that actually continue to work in the industry after the 90s and it's easy to see why he found work take a listen to some of the game's Tunes [Music] there's some pretty mood enhancing background music also the Prague metal track that plays when You Face a boss is like as good as any Dream Theater song released in the last 10 years [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] that's really all I have to say about Guardian War it's a pretty easy game to summarize because you've likely played or at least seen one like it it's a very by the book take on tactical combat for its time and that conformism ironically helps it Stand Out Among the other Nut Job games on this list back when it first came out in 94 prior to the release of the N64 or PS1 mind you this game would have been pretty solid don't take my word for it let's look at game pro magazine issue 66 where Leonardo davideo describes Guardian War as having impressive Graphics a fantastic soundtrack and incredible visual effects before awarding the game a solid 4.5 out of 5. according to Game Pro that makes Guardian war and seal of the Pharaoh better than Xeno gears which is boring aimless and features goofy looking characters represented by awkward Sprites do you have the flask of tefnote Dragon lore the legend begins is a big one a grand point-and-click Adventure game set in a medieval World Dragon lore was originally released on dos before getting a 3DO Port just a year later it was developed by cryo-interactive a French studio with a somewhat dubious reputation Arthur's knights chapter 2 The Secret of Merlin the new adventures of the time machine From Dusk Till Dawn Hellboy dogs of the nights it seemed like cryos games could largely be judged on a scale from horrendous to playable yet there was a kind of charm that characterized their Productions in an article written for rock paper shotgun John Walker recounts his experiences playing and reviewing many cryo-interactive games while working for PC Gamer I kept the magazine propped up with a two-page budget section and reviews of terrible terrible adventure games and most terrible of them all were the always awful but ever so since Seer Productions of French publisher and developer cryo interactive I couldn't have said it better myself mind you my experience with cryo is limited to Dragon lore but based on my research I think this game acts as a perfect microcosm of the developers work you may know them as the Publishers of ring which definitely checks out the premise of the game is as follows after Dio joined Black Sabbath the band stopped writing music about Satan and started focusing more on Knights and Dragons Geezer Butler facing a crisis of identity sends his son to live with Carrie King in order to escape the vengeful odorous urungus urungus furious at this turn of event starts t-posing in order to assert himself as alpha male or top G which itself spawns two sons who accompany their father I have to admit I made it all up we made this one up it's a made-up tale it's a total fabrication the intro isn't very forthcoming about information but hopefully you can get the gist here some guys Castle is invaded by evil said guy makes sure his son survives and we get a Time skip to Sun's 18th birthday where he's working on an isolated Farm somewhere we have to talk about this menu cursor it's the main character rotating while waiting for a high five to be reciprocated it looks like something that'd be on Homer Simpson's website so you gain control at this point as mentioned Dragon lore is a point-and-click adventure game somewhat in the tradition of mist it takes place in a pre-rendered 3D World and allows you to control movement across the different environments like seal of the Pharaoh movement is grid-based but dragonlord lets you Face in any of eight directions so I guess it's like an octagonal grid there are a few things about the game that have it approaching RPG territory some of these I'll talk about later but for now know that you can equip different weapons on this stunning inventory screen let's talk about the character design people in Dragon lore have been plucked straight from my fever-induced night terrors many a grotesque countenance to haunt you long after the console has been powered off this sort of 3D worked a little better in CL of the Pharaoh because the enemy designs border on abstract there in Dragon lore they strive for realism but uh the the technology it just wasn't there interacting with objects or moving around the world often results in an FMV sequence a little more detail than the movement animations from pharaoh combined with the surprisingly high quality sound effects other than that crackling pretty sure the deal is there and you've got a two CD game for the 3DO all of these animated cutscenes are totally unnecessary but if nothing else I find the dedication impressive it looks a lot better than most 3DO games attempting the same thing so there's something to say for that I like this part where you bring the cow back to its pasture you just wield it like a gun from Doom there's technically music in this game but it's very inconsistent it starts and stops often making it sound like a bunch of traveling minstrels are behind you continually screwing up and being forced to restart the song [Music] eventually your caretaker gives you the lowdown on your past there's something I've got to tell you now I never told you before because I had to wait till your 18th birthday well that's today so listen carefully now take this boy it's yours by right and you will be needing it what that didn't explain anything you're informed that the main character Werner Von vollenrod whose high five is starting to look like a sieg heil in light of introductions was orphaned as a child his father was a dragon knight in order to claim his lineage and become a dragon knight like his father Werner must travel through the land and win the favor of the current dragon Knights if more than half vote him in then he will become a dragon knight like his father like many point-and-click games the story mostly takes a back seat and serves as a platform for exploration and puzzle solving you travel throughout the land searching far and wide meeting existing Dragon Knights and currying their favor along the way you'll meet some interesting new characters such as Albert and George proof that 511 and 6 foot folks can get along you must get them soup before you can move on thank you thank you you're welcome David Lynch It's a such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on your [ __ ] telephone did you see that guy accidentally hit that moose with his car the game tries to mix the point and click formula up in various ways the first of which is combat yeah the game has combat I'd place it somewhere between Harvester and Daggerfall if that means anything to you basically if there's enemies on screen you can swing your sword and hit them you have to face the right direction and be close enough in proximity which is actually kind of impressive that means there's a sort of mock 3D space being created or a calculation of depth which I wouldn't have expected in this game there's also a magic system in order to solve certain puzzles or later teleport throughout the game you'll need to find a spell book as well as the appropriate spells you have to memorize the correct sequence of runes and recite it while holding your Spellbook it's pretty simple and frankly underutilized but it's a Nifty little inclusion really makes you feel like you're uh you know casting spells I guess what's more you can actually kill anybody the game aims for a 2-0 and Adventure Style again again you only need to have more than 50 percent of the Dragon Knight vote so you can actually help her screw over Dragon Knights in different ways some of them value Mercy others value power so by playing any one particular way you're inevitably pissing some of them off you can see your current alignment in the menu to be honest I like that it adds an element of choice and consequences well as replayability both of which are pretty uncommon to point and click adventure games I'll also say in the game's favor despite the limited presentation this is an atmospheric game the Landscapes are somewhat Barren displeasing to the eye and feel lonely for much of the game whether that's the result of technical limitations or intentional Choice it creates a very distinctive Vibe resulting in a game that feels closer to Eastern European than anything else a lot of the ambient audio and lighting goes a long way in making these dungeons feel forsaken even the more Whimsical areas like the mushroom Villages don't feel Pleasant or welcoming at all I really like it speaking of unpleasant and unwelcoming there is a serious discordance between some of these characters faces first of all you got people like the pixie woman aren't you that was asthma emphysema bronchitis and I used the inhalers that were full of steroids in stark contrast you've got people like the Dragon Knight tanathia looks like she just popped a dragon-sized dose of Ambien again it feels like some kind of budgetary limitation or good old-fashioned incompetence but it sort of adds to the game in a weird way all of dragon lore's idiosyncrasies make it a worthwhile experience most of the puzzles are even well designed not all of them you'll almost inevitably need to look up a guide but most of them that to say the game is never boring just when you're wondering when the next thing will happen your character looks at a cliff with this Dopey grin and ascends while you're just sitting there flabbergasted while the first disc takes place across the countryside the second is localized within the Yvonne volunrod Castle the feeling of the game goes from generally unsettling to downright creepy here there's a lot of rooms to navigate areas to Circle back on and keys defined as you solve the various puzzles within the castle unfortunately just as I was making my way to the game's ending I encountered a bug that stopped progression I reloaded a few times and it was the same deal so I had to look up the ending online all of the faithful stalwart and Noble Dragon Knights cast their vote the bad guy gets his comeuppance and Werner rides his Dragon which looks like a weasel with a hang glider duct tape to its back off into the Sunset Dragon lore as adventure games go isn't too bad the puzzles are decent the inclusion of some story altering choices is interesting and there's always enough happening to prevent my boredom however what really makes it worth recommending is everything else about it the story and dialogue are ridiculous and that creepy liminal Spacey type feeling a lot of old pre-rendered games give me is on Full display here now if you do plan on playing the game the Dos version is probably going to be a better choice in this case unlike death keep the 3DO does not house the superior version it's worse in most ways that matter aside from the fact that you can say to people I've played Dragon lore on the 3DO them some bragging rights [Music] neo-organic bio form or knob for short or Nob I guess is a game that is not easily classified by genre published in 1995 by Sanyo the third electronics company turned publisher to be featured in this video the game was developed by octagon entertainment another Japan only release nobe would have doubtless been confusing even if it were released in my native language the premise is supposedly that the main character is captive in a laboratory having been tested on and turned into a mutant you must make your Escape fighting other mutants along the way it's sort of a Dungeon Crawler sort of a fighting game and sort of an RPG but actually none of those things even a little bit in the beginning you're prompted to choose a mutant to play as the first time around I went with the lizard because he looked ready to kill the FMV sequences in general animation have a claymation quality combined with the UI the game has a pretty unique look that actually holds up in some ways nob's menus are actually all in English which you think would help communicate information to an English-speaking man such as myself but no no it it might actually make it worse for example should you fix or should you escape Choose Wisely neither choice will do what you think they will you can select different muscle groups to invest experience in and again with no explanation you're just Flying Blind here that is really the extent of the RPG elements in this game it's worth noting that despite my initial assumptions this is not the only game in this video which features the main character's naked ass on screen at all times stay tuned nothing at all nothing at all so you make your way around a maze there's nothing much of value to Discovery you're essentially running out the clock until an enemy approaches you at this point it's go time [Applause] [Music] I did not edit the music in that's the battle theme I've played nope nearly to completion and I'm still struggling to communicate how the battle system works because I don't know there are a few people who've streamed this game so I was hoping to get a rundown on how everything works but uh maybe you have to have a higher number like maybe I'm doing it too fast Oh Come the [ __ ] how is that possible sadly others seem just as confused as I when you get into fights the game will zoom in on a specific muscle group targeting lines will show up horizontally and vertically and you've got to hit the button over top of the muscle group you want to use this number seems to correspond at how long you're taking but whether it's high or low doesn't really seem to make a difference I used save states on my legitimate legally purchased 3DO and it really seems like nothing you do makes a difference I figured maybe you have to choose the right muscle depending on which one your opponent picks that might be a factor but apparently so is RNG you can do the same thing several times and eventually it'll just work for some reason other times you get your ass kicked and don't know why so I just perpetually have no clue what's happening like what in God's name is going on in these windows are they trying to intimidate each other if by sheer luck you can defeat an enemy you'll be awarded with a worm box and more points to invest in your character from there you just have to get go to each floor fighting enemies and moving on once the shock of the visuals wears off you're left with a game that's just dreadfully boring it's the same thing over and over again there's nothing to do in these dungeon segments so exploration is not a factor I was doing pretty good felt a bit cocky about my chances then I hit the final boss and had that shit-eating grin wiped right off my face my clock was thoroughly cleaned and I decided I had enough of nope to make a proper judgment it's infinitely worse in quality than it is funny if anyone knows how it's played I would love an explanation please enlighten me and maybe I can go back and finish what I started all right kudokishi no common or mask of Black Death is a horror RPG puzzle game developed by hummingbirdsoft in 1994. they developed a few higher profile games in Japan including the PC 98 adaptation of record of lodos war kurokishi no common was the second of hummingbird soft's Ghost Hunter dungeon crawling series the first of which LaPlace no Ma has actually found a cult audience kurokishi remained in relative obscurity then which should be a surprise at this point in the video the game was published by none other than Panasonic which shouldn't be a surprise at this point in the video it's a first person FMV Dungeon Crawler which shouldn't be a surprise at this point in the video taking place entirely within a spooky haunted mansion it's your job to navigate the premises finding out what tragedies took place contending with ghosts and exercising their Spirits at least I'm assuming that's what's going on [Music] the game is in Japanese so I can't understand what's happening unlike previous games you could classify kurokishi as a blobber that is to say it's a Dungeon Crawler where you've actually got multiple party members at any given time the RPG elements are sparse indeed with encounters occasionally taking place in pre-scripted spots these usually don't require more than a few turns in which your character shoots ghost in the face with guns or uses healing items despite the HP and MP meters there are no level UPS in the game and MP misled me into thinking there would be skills or spells to unlock rather MP seems to be more like a measurement of your character's sanity levels dropping when they see something shocking this just spoofed my guts off throughout the game there are very few combat encounters and unfortunately even fewer cheesy FMV horror sequences laughs foreign [Music] I suspect he wasn't actually stabbed by the pirate ghosts you may be asking magellar you don't speak Japanese how did you beat the game and to that I say thank you Pete Dorr for your playthrough you helped me out of many a conundrum and your name will be henceforth spoken in a tone of reverence godspeed You 3DO playing madman the way movement works is again similar to seal of the Pharaoh grid-based short animations depicting movement the difference here is that the world space is localized to about 25 percent of the screen gotta have that interface available at all times you might think the reduced size would improve the quality of the video but no not really it looks about the same as any other full screen 3DO game walking into the foyer I couldn't help but feel some similarities between Resident Evil I mean you've got spooky zombie Mansion solving puzzles hidden underground area at the end of the game Vibe wise they actually do feel very similar although gameplay wise kurokishi no com and shares more in common with sweet home the game that inspired Resident Evil that's probably what hurts most about the game there was a real opportunity to make a game like sweet home in a pre-rendered environment if they'd done that this would have been a much more enjoyable experience in Sweet Home there's multiple endings your characters have different aptitudes you can find items to contend with environmental hazards it feels like you have some agency as a player in comparison kurokishi is largely linear slow and boring oh so very very boring you have to talk to the same ghosts over and over again sometimes their dialogue will go on for five minutes uninterrupted examining objects results in long-winded explanations you have to trigger events by going to specific rooms at specific times as much potential as an FMV horror Dungeon Crawler has for this video the game ultimately feels more like a visual novel than anything else pretty bland and I can't recommend it [Music] I think it's about time for a palette cleanser a standard console RPG that people in this world have actually heard of it's time for lucian's Quest if you look at lists of the best 3DO games you'll often encounter lucian's Quest now that doesn't mean much so don't get your hopes Sky High but it does speak to the possibility of a competently made RPG all the more when you see that it was developed by micro cabin the folks behind Guardian War given a Japanese release in 95 under the name sword and sorcery lucian's Quest was localized for North America about a year later it's a highly traditional game with a very basic story a young sorceress named Lucien is approached by a man Afflicted with lycanthropy bored and searching for adventure she joins him on a journey to find a magical cure the game is played from a top-down perspective with 2D Sprites right representing characters and the surrounding environment rendered in Real Time 3D I actually think the graphics of the game hold up quite well the pixel art hasn't been mangled like Guardian war and thanks to the lack of texture filtering the simple geometry of the world has a lasting appeal I could easily see a modern indie game having an aesthetic like this little effects like these semi-transparent clouds that cast Shadows or the warbling water are also pretty rad you can move the camera a little bit for a more dramatic effect if you choose which probably would have been niftier in 1995. in any case the camera does move around during cutscenes adding a little cinematic Flair to the otherwise Bland plot when I say Bland I mean it there's next to no characterization offered for the cast and the motivation provided for the adventure is minimal at best grammatically the localization isn't too bad better than some well-known PS1 games to be honest but the writing itself is lousy lucianne is just written to be obnoxious at one point she tries to make a mole man horny so he'll do her bidding there's elegant Simplicity in writing and others Elementary Simplicity and lucian's Quest Falls firmly into the latter cap gameplay wise everything functions more or less as expected with a few points of interest the game utilizes random battles on the Overworld while in dungeons battles take place at predetermined points on the Overworld battlefields are generated depending on your terrain the player and enemy teams are placed on opposite sides of the field usually with a variety of obstacles in the way in order to attack the enemy you need to be able to draw a line between your active character and the target enemy if there's obstacles in the way those will be automatically targeted instead there's a stronger focus on Magic than most RPGs of the time Lucian has quite a few Spells at her disposal which all have a power level that can be adjusted higher MP costs result in Greater destruction levels but MP restoring items are quite expensive so a balance has to be struck the upside is that by using magic you can often circumvent obstacles in and Target multiple enemies at once when in dungeons rather than transitioning to a separate screen enemies will appear in the current environment the camera will swoop around for a different angle and you'll fight right then and there it's like a combination of traditional random battles with something like Chrono Trigger where the environment becomes a battlefield this is the only comparison to Chrono Trigger that lucian's Quest will be receiving this I promise you as for the obstacles they exist outside of battles 2. the majority of objects in the environment can be destroyed depending on the current level of your weapons all weapons have both a damage level and a destruction level the latter of which corresponds to which objects you can break I grabbed a better weapon and went back to the intro area to find treasure behind objects that were previously indestructible I like the way your destruction level facilitates exploration some weapons will have high attack damage but low destruction and vice versa it's a neat little system that the game never really uses to its full potential sometimes the dungeons will have secret areas to uncover but it's not really used for puzzle solving or anything like that still it's novel to wander around Villages just destroying everything you see the music in the game is decent I guess they didn't get Guardian Wars composers back but still totahiro Nita does a respectable job of translating classic RPG motifs into CD quality music I'm not really sure what's going on with this town theme though foreign [Music] I guess the ass trombone Orchestra wandered out from the Mansion basement also the game was later ported to Sega Saturn in Japan and apparently that version got voice acting [Music] the mind can't help but conjure a reality in which the English 3DO version was given to VA how amazing would that have been all in all lucian's Quest is a competent if extremely generic RPG the story doesn't have much to offer and the characters are mostly unlikable while the game has a few interesting ideas it doesn't do enough with them to separate the game from the Bevy of RPGs out around this time in a meaningful way if this were on any other best of the console lists I'd seriously raise an eyebrow but for 3DO okay it makes sense as far as traditional jrpgs go this is one of them it was clearly made by people who knew what they were doing and I could see myself enjoying it as a youngster my most objective metrics lucian's Quest might be in the running for best game in this video it's straightforward it looks good the music is fine and the combat system is functional I would even go so far as to say there is fun to be had here that said is it worth your time outside of a morbid 3DO related curiosity no there are so many games with lucian's Quest qualities that just do everything better as a 90s RPG it meets the bare minimum as a 3DO RPG it stands alone [Music] I've been putting this one off out of every game I played for this video Dragon Tycoon Edge is the one that's instilled the most dread into my very Soul not because I don't think there's a lot to say about the game but because it's the only game where I'm not sure I can find the words they say the ancient Greeks had six distinct words for love I'd need access to six different words for everything in order to accurately convey the dragon Tycoon Edge experience the Saving Grace is that this is a visual medium I'm working with so I can't make you understand but hopefully seeing it will be believing it Dragon Tycoon Edge was released in 95 developed by Salah International who we know from ukoku no Grand Chef do you remember when I said that nobe wasn't the only game where your character's naked ass was always visible on screen this is not the only game well let's tie a little bow on that loose end to be fair it's more like a Ken doll appendage not what one would refer to as cake per se you're trapped on this planet a pre-rendered jumble of colors materials and stars the game controls like a standard Dungeon Crawler the main difference is just being able to see your current character current being the operative word here as you wander around you'll get into turn-based battles with alien creatures upon defeating them you'll shape-shift into them by technicality you can still see your character's ass it's it's just alien ass there are actually a lot of gameplay implications here most of which just make the game very annoying but all of which make the game interesting to behold the battles range from pitifully easy to literally impossible depending on which alien body you've got currently and there is a level of strategy to employ when choosing your spells or items you have a very limited supply of consumables including save crystals meaning you have to choose carefully when you want to save unlike most RPGs you quote unquote level up every time you defeat an enemy taking their form will replenish your HP and MP I feel like this is one instance where not speaking Japanese is as much a boon as it is a curse occurs because Kate Sith keeps showing up to give me tips and I have no idea what's being said a boon because this bizarre game becomes even more so when you don't know what's going on through sheer force of will and repeatedly dying I began to understand what kind of game dragon Tycoon Edge is and no it's not a strategy same where you run your own dragon stable you explore this planet come across roadblocks and find ways to circumvent them oftentimes this involves finding a key item other times you might need to shape-shift into a more powerful alien or learn better spells to take on a tough enemy the problem with shape-shifting is this when you defeat an alien and take their form they're gone forever and you can't shape-shift back if you defeat extremely powerful alien and then beat a weak alien right after you'll automatically take the form of the weak alien the game involves trial and error as you navigate all the maze-like paths and find the optimal route to avoid being made weak sometimes it's just unavoidable you'll have to become a weak alien to progress if that's the case hopefully you've spared the lives of some weaker aliens to go back and fight slowly rebuilding your power so you can move on again because the game operates on a pre-rendered grid-based structure it's not that you can walk around aliens if you enter their Zone you fight them simple as the demands made of you are ridiculous and the game design is terribly flawed as well you're forced to die in order to understand where not to go and even then there's an element of Randomness as aliens might just whip out some nuclear one-hit kill ability sometimes you'll save without knowing you screwed up long ago and then you're just forced to start the game from the beginning I'm not writing off the possibility that some of the creatures are telling you where to go and what to do but even people who speak Japanese have complained about this aspect of the game so it's clearly not Universal in spite of this I played Dragon Tycoon Edge for a long time the tone of the game was enough motivation for me to move forward and see what I could find next the scenes when you take an enemy's body for instance foreign [Music] or this room with these machines that play music when you move towards them [Music] I don't know maybe I'm alone here but this whole game feels like a strange dream I had as a child I've spoken multiple times in this video about how little information there is on various games and I have to say if there's one game I'd love to know more about it's Dragon Tycoon Edge I did a deep dive scouring the web for anything staff involved with the game what they're doing now seems like they're either keeping a low profile or moved on from the industry long ago that's a common link between most of these developers the vast majority of them worked in the 90s and then just never continued call it the 3DO curse I found an animator for the game who speaks English I tried to establish contact to see if I could make an interview happen or something but no response unfortunately the developer of dragon Tycoon Edge was Salah International the same company behind ukoku no Grand Chef it wasn't until I was looking over a Japanese review for that game that I found any information on the dev of it all according to at wiki.jp what happened to Salah International is a mystery Japan's business registry confirms salah's existence as a company but nothing outside of that my curiosity towards this game remains unsatiated I guess sometimes that's for the best not everyone is going to understand why I care so much about keeping tabs on this [ __ ] and to be honest with you I'm not really sure I can explain to myself but just think for a period of time a group of writers animators and programmers clocked into work every day working closely with each other with this product as their single-minded focus maybe it was just a paycheck maybe some of them had hopes and dreams of this game launching their careers in any case like most games on this list Dragon Tycoon Edge is Just A Step Above forgotten as a product of the information age I guess I'm just a bit indignant when I can't know exactly what I want to know when I Want To Know It Anyway Dragon Tycoon Edge is a bad game but it's a curious one too the bits and pieces from RPGs and puzzle games ultimately results in something wholly unique and terribly frustrating nonetheless I can't help but recommend giving it a try it's truly one of a kind I mentioned on stream that I was playing some of the weirdest 3DO games on offer and somebody asked if they were weirder than toilet in Wonderland this is a RPG Maker game that I reviewed and it is indeed very weird to answer that question though I'd say unequivocally yes not because the content itself is more offbeat or uncanny but because these games weren't made just to be weird they were weird by circumstance that would be weird enough but the fact that they're on the 3DO increases said weirdness a hundred-fold as the word weird lost all meaning for you yet every game on this list was funded by Publishers which suggests a belief in their profitability although it's hard to imagine EA funding something like a mercenary nowadays the developers in charge clearly had some guidelines they likely weren't aiming to create something avant-garde uncomfortable or eccentric but such is the power of the 3DO that they turned out this way I mean really what are the odds that there'd be 14 games on the list and I'd find something interesting or noteworthy about every single one of them oh okay almost every one of them sometimes that's a point in the game's favor sometimes adhering to Convention probably would have been the right move and some games are certainly more or less Orthodox than others here but that unpredictability is what kept me coming back for more the truth is that working my way through these has been some of the most fun I've had playing games in a while I felt like an Explorer heading into territory that scant few have cared enough to do themselves well except for Pete Dorr the Indiana Jones to my bellock it takes a certain kind of person to sit there and play these games and even if you're not that person I hope you found some value in this video be it comedic or historical interests the more I dug around for info on these games the more I realize that I'm only scratching the surface there's a world of Forgotten technology out there kept alive only by the antediluvian digital wardens who spend their days making fan translations and creating Russian Philips CDI emulators to those Guardians I say thank you keep the Torches lit in your ancient temples so that I may someday find new Treasures to unearth and appreciate a big round of applause for my patrons as I answer some patreon questions I think the obvious answer is pizza but I could probably kill a sandwich made with ham and smoked gouda until the day I die manual labor in a retail setting this also included forklift drive just gotta get it in there magular is forklift certified baby Someday my friend someday I'll do a Chrono Trigger video I feel like all the Plato's and aristotles of the world would run circles around me so I choose Chris Farley in light of this video advanced Dungeons and Dragons death keep probably Xeno gears in terms of leaving things out but Skies of Arcadia's script went through the most editing I would say yes Joey wheeler is my favorite Yu-gi-oh character thank you again to those patrons and a special thanks to those in my persons of lordly caliber tear Adam safranco Matthew Sean dick banana turnip sleevee Advil and Hime takamura true manalist scatmoth Spencer Kennelly I'm Emil castanes number one fan Captain BB squirrel Shane Shack Mr schiffy Buster Drew Francois fenar fenrir Liv silvar Xeno gears oloshado guko Jordan Laughlin Alden Rosen Jordan Miller Hayden Hudson Rocket Man J hewan Azure Midsummer brick dick Rick King disaster Dracula destrega Trevor Reese tepid Tag Tournament and F I took a tiny breath in there so I cheated a little bit I appreciate you all dearly the support is a game changer if you're interested in helping out the Channel please consider checking out my patreon linked below like I mentioned there's a 3DO bonus video if you want to see some more weirdness in any case thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed the video and until I see you next time stay healthy wealthy and wise

Channel: Majuular

Views: 522,362

Keywords:

Id: P-_whoCcYR0

Length: 99min 27sec (5967 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/gadorp]

I played nearly every one of these back when they came out. I was a bit of a fanboy for the system for years. Worked at a used games store and after it sat in the demo area for so long with zero interest, it became mine.

After all these years I still have fond, but realistic memories of Powers Kingdom/The Guardian War, and both AD&D games.

[u/Bleusilences]

Yes! You played NOB! The fighting system is kind of hard to control because it is so laggy,

I know that the the lower number = better.

Also the "color" of the muscle you targeted = the better

there is also a rock paper scissor that is going on.

The more you attack, the higher the number will get next time, so you have to block or use an item to go down.