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Post subject: HG101's feature: Paladin's Quest / Lennus
PostPosted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:34 pm 
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Hey, everybody, HG101 has done a feature on the Paladin's Quest/Lennus series, which they uploaded very recently on Jun 29, 2016. For the second game they've also shown some screenshots with English dialogues and some with the original Japanese language. A preview caption before opening the article:
Quote:
A duo of grindy SNES JRPGs by Copya System, with some bizarre art design that's unlike anything the genre has seen before, and a characteristically strange translation.


A warning: They've got heavy criticisms for the gameplay of both games so you may want to take your eyes away, though they did say that the artistic style of the second instalment was technically much better than the predecessor. Even the guy from RVGFanatic agreed with his own 2013 reviews (Wonder where he is these days?) saying that both Lennus I & Lennus II weren't so exceptional either. Also that RVGFanatic review for the sequel even shows numerous screenshots showing your quality translation!
  • Quote:
    Copya System's Lennus series falls somewhere between bad and weird. They're a duo of grindy and time-consuming turn-based JRPGs, but their bizarre art design is unlike anything the genre has seen before, or ever again.

    PQ's conclusion:
    Quote:
    Exploring the extraordinary world of Paladin's Quest provided me with an entire summer of fun twenty years ago, but nowadays it's a very hard game to return to. It's long, grindy and the enemies have endless amounts of HP. Eventually you gain access to a wonderfully designed airship that resembles a temari ball if it took to the skies, but by that point there's literally nothing left to do but tackle the final boss. But, despite its shortcomings, the wholly unique — and occasionally nightmarish — world of Planet Lennus stands in stark contrast to the multitude of JRPGs that settled for a more uniform fantasy setting. Paladin's Quest still deserves to be seen, but perhaps not from start to finish.

  • Lennus II: Apostles of the Seals:
    Quote:
    As a result, Lennus II would never see an English release in any official capacity. Eventually it found itself fan-translated by Dynamic Designs in 2008, with a script that largely stuck to the mood and feel of its prequel, with the exception of a little bit of racy humor here and there.

    Quote:
    Right out of the gate it's apparent just how much more visually attractive Lennus II is compared to its Paladin's Quest. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous and easily on par with the work Squaresoft was producing at the same time, while the consistent and color palettes are far less eye-stinging and much more appropriate to the game's mood. The world is just as visually striking as it ever was, but now looks much closer in line to the works of Katō and Gotō...

    That said, the tone feels slightly muted this time around. All of the caves you'll traverse — and you'll traverse many — are fairly rote caverns. ... That's not to say the game is completely devoid of charming weirdness...

    Quote:
    For all of the improvements the visual presentation has seen, it's unfortunate that the same can't be said for the gameplay. Lennus II is functionally little more than a re-skinned Paladin's Quest. The random encounter rate is high and battles are identical to its predecessor, replete with foes that boast endless amounts of HP. You're still able to attack with any part of your body, but there's far fewer pieces of equipment that produce unique effects when used, so you've got little reason to venture outside of the usual weapon/bottle belt formula.

    Quote:
    While they've added some handy new elements, like a dedicated auto-heal button and a save-anywhere option, menu navigation is clunkier than ever thanks to the fact that many options lead to separate sub-menu screens with limited options. ... and what should be a simple task ends up slowing the pace of the game tremendously.

    Furthermore, Lennus II also happens to be a much longer game than Paladin's Quest. Farus will traverse four entire overworlds... Each map is more dense and complex than the last, but this isn't exactly a good thing, as the game is just as grindy as its predecessor and even lighter on plot. ... Once you collect the four artifacts, it's on to the eight seals, and after you collect the eight seals, you're whisked to another world and, insultingly, tasked with collecting the seals all over again!

    The dungeons, where you'll be spending most of your time, tend to be a complete nightmare. ..

    On some occasions the game is startlingly poor at signposting what you need to do to advance the story... and it's surprising to see just how little the team learned from the prequel's numerous pitfalls.

    Once in a great while, the town-dungeon-town formula finds itself broken up by mini-games. They tend to be pretty vile, as they attempt to adapt speedy action gameplay to the game's core engine, which really isn't built for it. The majority of these are thankfully optional, but the worst, a terribly-controlled and poorly-explained jockey race, is not only mandatory but requires you to come in first place to continue the story. It's difficult but doable, but it'll likely take a few tries to get the hang of its awkward controls.

    Lennus II came out in a post-Chrono Trigger world, which makes its numerous foibles all the more intolerable. Few SNES JRPGs are as exhausting to play as Lennus II, which is tragic because even fewer boast such a distinctive setting. In the end, the more things change, the more they stay the same: Lennus II is just as difficult to recommend as its predecessor, but it's hard not to be enthralled by its exotic world.
Read on just below the conclusion to see what several designers of the Lennus games did next in a post-SNES world and a couple related works.
Brutal, yeah I know. But if it's some consolation, SylarDean did like those games. AND the HG101 team perhaps WOULDN'T have written such a detailed review for Lennus II if it hadn't been for your team's fan-translation long ago! They also linked the romhacking page of your fan-translation as well as a Gamasutra article on a comparison of the graphic design between the first & second games on the second page, where the writer surprisingly prefers the entire theme of PQ much better to its sequel!


* Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori (May 30, 2016).
    This cute, unique adventure game was released on Nintendo's Power downloadable service in the late 1990's. Let's hope that some team can translate this game one day...
    Quote:
    Long after the Super Nintendo faded from relevance in America and Europe, the Nintendo Power service ensured its survival in Japan into the 21st century. Part of its success comes from offering a cheaper method of buying games (you'd download them onto a flash cartridge at a special kiosk), but just as much of it comes from the quality of the games it offered. Small though its library might have been, it still contained some of the system's best titles, whether they were updated rereleases like Famicom Tantei Club: Part II and Metal Slader Glory, or original titles like Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, Power Lode Runner, and Sutte Hakkun.

    Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori definitely belongs to the latter category.

* Pharaoh Rebirth (July 3, 2016)
    Reading this new retrospective has convinced me to want to get this nice-looking Japanese-made Indy Jones-like platformer mixed with Metroidvania and exploration elements inspired by Castlevania at Steam. It's got lush visuals, fluid animations and sharp physics. Sure, the graphics are modern but that's not the point - it's all about the spirit of the gameplay which goes back to these 90's platformers, hehe :P! Also the gameplay isn't necessarily too hard like La-Mulana which is a bonus!


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Post subject: Re: HG101's feature: Paladin's Quest / Lennus
PostPosted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 11:17 pm 
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Excellent article.

I've always loved the Lennus games.

Some of the best SNES rpgs IMO.


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Post subject: Re: HG101's feature: Paladin's Quest / Lennus
PostPosted: Thu Jul 07, 2016 2:56 pm 
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Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2016 11:19 pm
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Great article and commentary here - I'm at odds with some of their overall conclusions about the series' quality though nonetheless I appreciate the amount of effort put into this analysis.

I'm recently having a blast attempting to tackle Lennus II without any mercenaries - it's grindy and game-over prone but really exciting due to how the game's large variance in mob abilities brings totally different synergies into play, unlike when combat is dealt with a faster pace normally.


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