Final Fantasy II - Nintendo SNES - 1991

The fourth game in the series and the second to be translated into English, Final Fantasy II was released in North America for the SNES in late 1991.  In Japan it was known as  Final Fantasy IV, as were subsequent remakes after Square decided to sync the names for Final Fantasy VII.  As well as the name change, Square lowered the difficulty level as they were worried US gamers would find the game too hard having missed the previous two titles in the series.  Final Fantasy II also fell foul of Nintendo of America censorship policies - several death and religious references were changed or removed.

Like Secret of the Silver Blades, Final Fantasy II was a game I had high expectations for, but failed to deliver as I had hoped.  It was a title I wanted to finish as I had completed the previous three installments, but won't be counted as a full entry on my blog.

My main problem concerns the plot.  It starts off well enough with the protagonist, Cecil, questioning the Kings motives for forcibly taking the elemental crystals from peaceful towns.  It later became so convoluted I simply lost interest.  Much of the game had you travelling the world collecting the crystals before the bad guys got to them, only for them to be snatched from your grasp anyway.  You might as well have just gone straight for the big boss.  According to Wikipedia, the designer acknowledges that some parts of the story were "unclear" or were not "looked at in depth".

Part of the plot involves travelling to the moon.

Another issue I had is that, besides Cecil, there were eleven other characters you can have in your party.  As only five slots are available, the additional cast where swapped in and out at the whim of the plot making it hard to care for any of them.  I just looked on them as tools to advance the story.

Both of the above took the shine off Final Fantasy II for me.  Don't get me wrong, it is still a good game or I would not have completed it, just not one of my favourites.  Here are some of the good points...

The move to the 16-bit SNES allows for greatly improved graphics and sound.  The greater detail in the character sprites mean little things, like a nod or a turn of the head, gives them a personality that could not be created on the NES.  

The music is of a high standard and much more orchestral than the NES titles.  A track or two sounded out of place but overall the music is very good indeed.

The combat screen and combat options look pretty much the same as the earlier games, but Final Fantasy II introduces the Active Time Battle system.  Combat is now in real-time making it a bit more exciting than selecting all the moves at the beginning of a round.  When a character flashes it is their turn to attack, cast a spell etc.  They will only flash again when a cool-down period (depending on their speed) has passed.  Casting spells or using special moves takes longer than a normal melee attack.

Typical combat screen.  I have four members in my party at this time.

The programmers made use of some graphical trickery in Final Fantasy II.  Some areas have parallax scrolling and when flying an airship, the world map tilts slightly giving a 3D effect using Mode 7.

To summarise the plot, Golbez has mind control over King Baron (and later Cecil's best friend Kain) and is using his men to gather all the elemental crytsals.  Golbez makes a lot of enemies along the way with most of them joining the player.  Golbez is in turn controlled by Zemus, a Lunarian living on an artificial moon.  Zemus wants the crystals to destroy humans so the Lunarians can take over Earth.  After Zemus is defeated he turns into Zeromus, the final boss.  It also turns out Cecil's father was a Lunarian.  Oh, and Golbez is Cecil's brother. 

The 20 minute end sequence...

It should be noted that Final Fantasy II (or IV) was the earliest in the series to get a direct sequel.  Final Fantasy IV: The After Years was released in 2009 on WiiWare and is set 17 years after this game.  In 2011 Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection was released on the Sony PSP.  As well as Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, it also contained Final Fantasy IV: Interlude, which is set between the two.

Death Knights of Krynn - Commodore Amiga - 1991

It was with much trepidation that I approached Death Knights of Krynn, the fifth Gold Box game on my short list.  The series started well with the excellent Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds.  Next up was the predecessor to this game, Champions of Krynn, which while good, I criticised the linearity and a lack of varied opponents in combat.  Then came Secret of the Silver Blades.  Oh dear.  The designers were now capable of creating areas much larger than the 16x16 zones we had been accustomed to.  Sadly they didn't put anything interesting in them.  Rather than a decent RPG, SotSB was a boring, linear game where most of the time is spent in random combats.  I'm going to play through Death Knights of Krynn whatever, but will it be able to buck the trend?

Unlike previous Gold Box games, the PC and Amiga conversions were released in the same year.  Despite some PC games now coming with VGA graphics, Death Knights of Krynn was stuck with only 16 colours.  The graphics on the Amiga version were upgraded to 32 colours so this is my pick.  Things did not get off to an auspicious start when the game wouldn't read my Champions of Krynn disks so I was forced to recreate my party from scratch.

I rebuilt my party with the same names, classes and stats as before.  In Death Knights of Krynn you can now create a character as a paladin - this class was missing in Champions.  Starting equipment was plate mail or Solamnic plate mail and either +1 swords or +1 maces depending on class.  These had to last some distance into the game as it turned out better magic items were not found until a fair way into the game.

The game starts a year after the events in Champions of Krynn.  You are invited to celebrate the anniversary of the demise of Myrtani (which is just as well as we defeated him practically single handedly) and to attend a memorial for Sir Karl Gaardsen.  The memorial is disrupted when an undead Sir Karl flies in on the back of a Death Dragon.

The general plot involves thwarting the evil Lord Soth who is bringing fallen heroes back from the grave as Death Knights in order to take over the world (what else?).  His ultimate goal is to resurrect the legendary warrior Sturm Brightblade whose body has been laid to rest in the Clerist's Tower.  Soth can only be defeated using the Rod of Omniscience which was stolen from him by his former cleric Sebas Astmoor. It is up to your party to retrieve the rod before facing Lord Soth himself.

I will note my thoughts below.....

• For Death Knights of Krynn the Gold Box engine has been improved in several respects: 

i) Character names have been colour coded so you know when they are ready to level up without consulting the tables in the manual.
ii) The game now remembers the spells your characters had previously memorised so you can (K)eep your favourite spells without having to choose them every time you rest.
iii) Combat now ends when all the enemies are defeated - it is no longer necessary to complete all of your characters turns.
iv) Some of the magic spells have better animations - a fireball now looks like a fireball. 

• The engine has also taken a couple of steps back in my opinion:

i) The main annoyance is that, instead of just using the cursor keys to move, you have to press the M(ove) key first.  This is particularly annoying during combat when you have to do this each turn for every party member.
ii) Not a major point but the static graphics are more scarce and of a lesser quality that the ones I praised in Champions of Krynn.

Compared to Champions of Krynn the cut-scene graphics look rather crude.

• Yes! This game marks the return of an overworld map similar to the one in Pool of Radiance.  Exploring the map leads to one non-optional and several optional side quests that break up the main plot.  Each is in a self contained area and provides treasure and XP.  Only some of the quest locations are marked on the map - others need so be discovered...

...or you can find hints to them on the road.

• At the beginning of the game there were some odd role-playing choices and several more throughout the game.  The following screen resulted in nothing happening whatever option I took.  They seemed pretty pointless to me and a waste of code.

• I don't know if the game was written by a different team but it had a different 'feel'.  There were several scripted events that I can't recall being in the series before.  For example, when I disturbed Sir Karl's grave I was attacked by worms.  My party took damage but it was all done in the text; there was no battle screen or chance to defend myself.

• The game featured one thing I absolutely hate and that is maps that don't make sense.  The town of Vingaard has several 'exits' at the edges of the map that wrap around to the opposite side.  Step through one of these at the north end of town and you end up at the south end - they act like the tunnel in PacMan.

• Exploring the overworld map offers up a number of side quests.  One of these involves liberating the slaves from a Kuo-Toa slave ship which you are compelled to complete whether you are ready or not.  I came across it early on, roundly got my arse kicked and had to reload.  I returned to it a couple of levels later and with a Solamnic Knight, Sir Durfey, in tow.  I managed to complete the quest, but still had to reload several times as Kuo-Toa are immune to most magic and their clerics can cast the poison spell which instantly kills any character.

• As with all the Gold Box games, the economy is broken.  Money is only really needed to identify magic items and can be mostly ignored after combat.  Shops don't sell anything better than your starting equipment and useful magic items are only found on quests.

• Draconians appear in this game as they did in Champions of Krynn but have been toned down.  They each have 27 hit points and none of the special traits they had in the previous title. 

The End* (spoilers)

The end game where you face Soth takes place in Dargaard Keep.  After some epic battles at the climax of previous games, Death Knights of Krynn was a tad disappointing.  Soth appeared flanked by four Death Knights with a handful of Iron Golems off to one side.  All are immune to magic.  My buffed, hasted and invisible (not that it made any difference) party managed to weather a volley of fireballs cast by the Death Knights.  Grout and Carraway were both affected by 'fear' - I cast dispel magic on Grout in the same round and Carraway in the next after he decided to hang around and cast a hold person spell instead of fleeing.  After that it was just a case of going to toe to toe to finish the fight.  My only mistake was that Lumley's sole weapon was a Mace of Disruption which was fine against the undead but useless against the Golems.  After the battle, using the Rod of Omniscience opens a vortex to another dimension.

With Soth out of the way, Lenore who pretended to be a defenceless widow and followed our party for protection, grabbed hold of the rod.

You reappear in the Clerist's Tower and are escorted to the Knight's Council.

Overall I really enjoyed Death Knights of Krynn.  My one main criticism, which also applied to Champions of Krynn, was a lack of variety in encounters.  As well as seemingly hundreds of Skeleton Warriors, there was an over abundance of groups of Black Wizards and Evil Warriors.  The Skeleton Warriors are immune to turning and spells and can only be harmed by magic weapons, so any straight magic users would potentially be left twiddling their thumbs in combat.  I'm glad I multi-classed.

It is good to see SSI getting back on form.  I have another two Gold Box games to play in 1991 so let's hope they can keep it up. 


* On completion of the main game a short quest called Dave's Challenge becomes available.  I only found this out when consulting a walkthrough after finishing the game.  I didn't attempt it as it didn't look very interesting and I would never have been aware of it anyway.

Coryoon: Child of Dragon - NEC PC Engine - 1991

Coryoon: Child of Dragon is a horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up for the PC Engine released only in Japan in 1991.  More specifically, it belongs to (and I hate this phrase) the 'cute 'em up' genre.

Without a manual it's hard to be precise on the exact plot.  The intro shows a princess and Coryoon, her pet dragon.  In a flash of lightning an evil ne'er do well appears and, for some unexplained reason, transforms the princess into a little girl.  You are then thrown into the game as Coryoon, presumably to catch up with the evil doer and ask him to change the princess back if he would be so kind.

As with most games like this, it's the graphics that first catch your attention.  The flicker-free sprites are fast, well drawn and colourful.  The background is bright and colourful with multiple levels of parallax scrolling.  The music is ultimately forgettable but quite jolly and matches the graphics well.  Underneath all the pretty bells and whistles is a solid shoot 'em up.

The game is played over several stages made up of different environments.  Each stage has a mid and end-of-level boss.  The enemies are mostly made up of various types of birds and animals.  When killed they drop fruit which can be picked up for bonus points.  The enemies come in thick and fast without any slowdown and the screen can get very busy.

One of the easier bosses.

With Coryoon being a dragon his main weapon will be his breath.  This starts out as the usual rapid fire pea shooter.  Not pressing the fire button charges up a shot similar to the beam weapon in R-Type.  When Coryoon puffs out his cheek the weapon is charged and releases a powerful ball of flame when you next press fire.

The main weapon can be powered up by collecting orbs dropped by a stork.  The orb alternates between red, yellow and blue so you can choose your upgrade.  The red orb gives you a powerful, but short range fire weapon.  The blue orb gives you a longer, but thinner laser type weapon.  The yellow orb gives you a multi-way shot.  Each type of shot can be powered up a further two times by picking up orbs of the same colour.  If you are hit while carrying an upgrade, you lose the upgrade.  Get shot again and you lose a life.  If you do lose a life you carry on from where you died.

Making good use of the fire weapon.

As well as dropping fruit the enemies occasionally drop Diamonds, Hearts, Spades and Clubs.  The Diamond changes Coryoon into a miniature version of himself.  It means he is harder to hit, but he loses the charge shot.  The Heart gives you two fairies that circle Coryoon and act as a shield.  They can alternatively be locked above and below your dragon.  The Spade is a single use smart bomb that clears the screen when detonated. The Club acts as a fruit magnet and draws fruit to Coryoon when holding down button I.  Only one of these power-ups can be active at once.

Carrying the diamond makes Coryoon harder to hit

The final power up can be obtained by killing a chicken that occasionally appears.  The chicken provides a small dragon option that darts around the screen taking pot shots.  It disappears, however, when you encounter a boss

The games biggest draw is also its biggest drawback.  The screen can get very busy which, combined with the games speed and bright graphics, sometimes makes hard to figure out what's going on or why you lost a life.  You start the game with 5 lives and plenty more can be gained as your score goes up, but there are no continues. The bundles of extra lives make the game quite easy, which suits me fine and I can see myself coming back to it a lot.

Example gameplay...