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 quote:It has been 7 years since the powerful finale of "Demon Castle: Dracula". It is now time to once again return to the remote countryside of Transylvania... So what is this? What you read up there was the plot to Dracula 2: The Curse Seal for the Famicom Disk System, the 1987 FDS-exclusive sequel to "Demon Castle: Dracula". The original Dracula was released in 1986 for the FDS and MSX, though while the two shared a "plot" and some rough level designs, they played completely different - the FDS game was a straight-forward action platformer, while the MSX game was more of an adventure game, and required you to search out keys to progress through the castle. Oddly enough, Dracula 2 seems a lot closer to the MSX version, with a much heavier focus on gathering items and information to solve puzzles than on straight platforming. All three games were eventually released in English-speaking territories: The MSX version of Dracula 1 was released as "Vampire Killer" in Europe, while the two FDS games were converted to the NES and released as "Castlevania" and "Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest" in the US and Europe. But that's not what we're here to play. Why are you doing this? Why play the game in Japanese if there's an English translation out there? A couple reasons, mostly related to various myths surrounding the game. The game has a reputation for being "impossible to solve without a guide" and "so horribly translated the manual writers had to write that the townspeople sometimes lie to you in order to cover up the mistranslations in the game itself"... neither of which are true in the slightest. The translation is far from great, but if you're familiar with it, this playthrough should demonstrate that it's nowhere near as inaccurate as people like to claim. That said, this is not going to be a full retranslation of the game or anything. Instead, we'll simply be playing the game the way a Japanese kid in 1987 would've played it. We'll be talking to the characters in the game, collecting clues, solving puzzles using these clues, and referencing the manual whenever we encounter something new it might have further information on. In other words, we'll be playing the game the way it was meant to be played. We'll also occasionally cross-reference the English translation in places where it might be worth checking if they got an important clue right, but again, this is going to be a playthrough, not a retranslation or a translation comparison. Any spoiler policy? Well, there's no real plot in the game beyond the above quote from the manual, but considering the prevalence of certain myths and the fact that most people here haven't played the Japanese version and know what people say in it, it'd probably be better to avoid referencing specific puzzles and dialogue we haven't reached yet. Chapter 1: The Town of... somewhere Chapter 2: Yorba Woods and Surrounding Areas Chapter 3: Belos Woods and the Town of Belos Chapter 4: Berkeley Mansion Chapter 5: The Sacred Flame Adamant fucked around with this message at 16:51 on May 25, 2018 |
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May 15, 2018 05:57
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Chapter 1: The Town of... somewhere All right, let's do this. In addition the the story, the manual contains info on how to start the game, how the save function works, what the controls are, how to read the sub menu, an explanation of the day/night system, a map of Transylvania, a list of items, a list of enemies and a description of the different types of areas you'll find in the game. We'll primarily be referencing the map, the enemy list and the item list, but we'll take a quick look at the other stuff once we've started the game.  Since this is an FDS game, it needs to load from the disk every now and then, so the first thing we're met with is this loading screen. Followed by the title screen.  Waiting at the title screen for a bit gives us this block of text in full English. It's not so much the game's story as a short blurb explaining what it's about, but it's nice.  Actually pressing start will give us this file select screen. Like many FDS games, Dracula 2 lets us save directly to the disk, so there's no need for any clunky passwords or anything like that. While we'll be playing the game "as it's meant to be played", manual in hand and no outside help, there's no point in pretending we've never played video games before, so let's just register a file and get started. The manual informs us that, just like in the Zelda games, we can save the game after getting a Game Over, and that this will save the body parts and items we've collected, the number of in-game days we've used, the number of "times we've played" (ie how many game overs we've had), and more. It doesn't outright tell us, but the numbers next to our files are the number of days and game overs.  The game starts with no explanation as to where we are or what we should do, so let's run over what the manual tells us. The controls are basic Castlevania fare, and the same as in the first game. The control pad moves Simon around, A jumps, B attacks with the whip, down ducks, and up and B lets you fire a subweapon (or "attack item" as the manual calls them). New to this game is that B also lets you talk to people, up lets you enter doors, select pauses and start brings up what the game calls the "multi-screen display". Let's try that.  Here's the subscreen we can view in the multi-screen display. It's fairly empty for now, but the manual explains how it will eventually look.  I'll run down the numbers the way the manual does. 1) is the current in-game time. The manual explains that the game has a day/night system, and will switch between day and night as the game progresses. During the day, the game "plays like an adventure game", allowing you to enter houses in towns to gain information from the people inside. Enemies will be attacking you outside towns. During the night, the game "plays like an action game"; there won't be any people in the towns at all and the enemies will be tougher, but they will also give more experience points. 2) is our current experience points, which the manual doesn't go into any further details about. We obviously start with 0. 3) shows us what kind of whip we have. We start with a leather whip, which the item list in the manual helpfully tells us "is the whip Simon starts with". Thank you, that was useful. 4) is the window showing us the body parts we've collected thus far. It's obviously still empty. 5) is the window where our "attack items" will go. 6) will show us how many herbs we have left, but the icon won't appear until we find any. Oddly, there's no "herb" item on the item list. 7) shows our current player level. Interestingly, we start at level 0, not level 1. 8) shows how many hearts we have. The manual tells us this number will drop when we use attack items, and that hearts can also be used as money to purchase items. We start with 50. 9) will display items that have an automatic effect that will be activated once we obtain it. 10) is where our oak stake item will go. We don't have one. The item list tells us the oak stake "is required to obtain Dracula's remains from mansions", so we should probably get some. Finally, 11) will show us how much garlic we have left. Like the herb counter, it won't appear until we find any. The items list tells us that if we place garlic on the ground, enemies that pass it will take damage. We start the game in a town of some kind. The map isn't of any use since we don't know which town, but we can check the list of areas to learn how towns work. This list has descriptions of both "towns at day" and "towns at night". When it's light out, the townspeople will be walking around, and you should ask them for information. However, you need to be aware of the fact that some townspeople will be lying to Simon in order to mislead him. At night, however, the towns will be swarming with monsters, which the manual recommends fighting for experience points. Well, it's not night now, so no need to worry about any monsters, but we should probably be wary of those liars the manual mentioned and not blindly trust everything we're told. Let's start by collecting information, though.  This very insistent guy we start next to practically orders us to buy a white crystal, telling us that this is how it will all begin. It's not the clearest message in the world, and the manual isn't much more helpful - the white crystal is mentioned on the item list, but all we're told is that it's an item that possesses magic power, albeit not much. Still, it wouldn't hurt to be on the lookout for one. This guy sounds like he's on the level.  A bit further to the right, we find a guy that tells us that the towns have traders doing business in secret. That's probably something to keep an eye open for.   Here's a church, which the manual informs us that we can enter these during the day to recover our stamina. We haven't taken any damage yet, but the priest will make it clear we can talk to him to recover.  A bit further to the right and down a staircase we find an open door, as well as this merchant asking us if we want to buy a white crystal. Well, that guy from earlier was pretty insistent, so might as well. It's only 50 hearts, so we can afford it. The merchants are mentioned in the manual, but it just gives a basic description of how to buy things.  Bringing up the subscreen lets us see that the crystal is now located in the "body parts" window. The controls section of the manual explains that we can select items with the control pad, and sure enough, pressing brings up an arrow we can place on the white crystal if we want. We can also make the arrow flash, indicating that we haven't selected anything. Selecting the crystal doesn't appear to have any immediate effect, though.  Entering the door brings us to another merchant. This guy offers to sell us Holy Water, which the manual tells us "breaks floors and walls that hide items". That sounds fairly useful. We don't have any hearts left, but we should come back for it.  To the left of the crystal merchant is this guy, who tells us that the sacred flame is in the top of the 6th tree in "Dennis Woods". Dennis Woods is on the map in the manual, but it doesn't help much since we don't know where we are. As for the sacred flame, the item list has a "Flame" item and tells us it's an effective item since "demons fear fire". Quite a vague description, but it sounds like a weapon. As for the name "Dennis Woods"... All the various areas in the game appear to be named after something related to Dracula, vampires or the occult in general. Unfortunately, I have no clue what "Dennis" is supposed to refer to. It's the name of Dracula's son in the Hotel Transylvania series, and while the name is definitely not referring to that, it makes it very hard to Google the name and find anything relevant. The best I can get is that it's a reference to Dennis McIntyre, director of the Bram Stoker Centre and world famous Stoker expert. I have no idea if he was known and active back in 1987, but he was mentioned in a 1997 book on Dracula, so he might've been. It's the best I have. The English translation spells the name "Denis Woods", which is also potentially correct. If anyone has any ideas what this might be referring to, I'd love to hear them.  A bit further to the left we find this guy, who has heard that the boatman at Dead River's favorite food is garlic. Dead River is not mentioned on the map, but the boatman is listed in the list of locations, which tells us that he will take us to different places depending on which of Dracula's remains we've obtained. Interesting, let's make a note of that.  Next to that guy, we find another door, which leads us to a third merchant. This guy sells a thorn whip for 100 hearts. The manual tells us the thorn whip is "stronger than the leather whip", which wasn't too difficult to deduce. Let's grab one of these once we get the hearts.  This fellow to the left of the door tells us we'll be able to solve "the riddles" once we've read the 13 hidden books. Sounds like another thing to be on the lookout for. The English translation renders this as "13 clues will solve Dracula's riddle", which, while not exactly wrong, doesn't exactly make it clear it's referring to hidden books.  At the bottom left of this weird 2D town, a guy tells us that we have a friend in the town of Aludra we should go meet. I'm not entirely sure where this name comes from either, but there IS a Yu-gi-oh monster by the same name that's supposedly the son of Dracula, and whose name comes from combining the first syllables of "Alucard" and "Dracula". The town is obviously not named after the Yu-gi-oh monster, but it could definitely have the same origin. The English translation called it "Aldra", but I doubt they got that from anywhere.  To the right we find a road sign that finally lets us know where we are. The sign tells us that "Yorba Woods" lies to the right and that "Belasco Marsh" lies to the left. If we crossreference this with the map...  We can see that we're in the town of Yorba. This place I know what's named after, at least - it comes from Yorba Cemetery in California, known for the legend of the Pink Lady. The English version misses the ball and calls it "Jova", a rather bizarre choice. The Belasco Marsh is named after Emeric Belasco and the Belasco House from the 1973 movie The Legend of Hell House. Whether by coincidence or not, the English translation does get this one right.  To the right of the sign we find this guy, who tells us that the holy water makes demons suffer and breaks down evil walls. It's another confusingly-worded message, but since the manual told us the holy water can break floors and walls, this guy seems to just vaguely suggest the same, as well as tell us it can also be used as a weapon, like in the first game. Thanks, I guess.  Even further to the right, this guy tells us that one of the books that will help us solve Dracula's riddles is located in the town of Belos. This should be one of the 13 books the other guy mentioned. Belos is the name of a vampire from the Necroscope novels, the first of which came out in 1986, so it could potentially be a reference to him. I have no idea if these things were known in Japan, or if the character even appears in the first book, but it's my best guess. The English translation calls the town Veros, but that doesn't seem to relate to anything relevant. Once again the English translation just uses the word clues, translating this as "Clues to Dracula's riddle are in the Town of Veros." Considering the townspeople give you clues as well, it's a rather unfortunate translation that's hard to interpret as telling you there's a hidden book in that town. Well, so far we've figured out where we are, purchased one item, and located a number of clues. Next time we'll start our adventure for real and see where it will take us. Adamant fucked around with this message at 06:33 on May 15, 2018 |
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May 15, 2018 05:58
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Huh, I thought you might be playing the retranslation hack, but you're actually translating it yourself? Nice.
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May 15, 2018 14:05
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This is quite an interesting approach, and I'm a big fan of playing "the way it's meant to be played", so I'm on board. Also it's funny that we're starting LPs of two games named Castlevania 2 (or II) in the West just 2 (II?) days apart. One note: did you want to say that this game plays closer to the MSX game (Vampire Killer) instead of the FDS game (Castlevania 1)? It's worded the other way around at the moment.
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May 15, 2018 15:38
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Iunnrais posted:Huh, I thought you might be playing the retranslation hack, but you're actually translating it yourself? Nice. Not "translating" as much as just going over what people say and what what clues you're actually given, but yeah. As I said, my goal is primarily to show off how the game would've been originally experienced and dispel various myths about how impossible it is to figure out and how bad the original translation supposedly is. If you're going to do that, you need to work with the actual original. I realize this first update was mostly just boring text boxes, things will get a bit more interesting soon. Simply Simon posted:One note: did you want to say that this game plays closer to the MSX game (Vampire Killer) instead of the FDS game (Castlevania 1)? It's worded the other way around at the moment. ...yes, I did. I have no idea how I managed that typo. Thanks, fixed.
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May 15, 2018 16:26
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i can tell you right now that most of the names and stuff you run into in this game will not be in particular reference to anything. the scope of this game was only really matched in its time by final fantasy, and they had bigger fish to fry than clever names that they knew wouldn't translate anyway. i'll be very impressed if you actually manage to dispel any ideas about how difficult this game is to work with - the game was explicitly cut back quite a lot (per the game's code, simon can ostensibly gain another few levels of experience that are impossible in either version - there's textboxes for it and statistic upgrades and everything), and some of the villagers' "lying" can be attributed to cut events where there's still text relating to it in the game. most of the "lies" you get told are therefore suspect since it's impossible to tell if they're actually lies or relating to something that got cut and the text never changed. don't get me wrong, i love this game to pieces for its quirkiness and daring, but the complaints about it actively hating being played are real. it's generous to say that even 85% of this game makes sense in hindsight, and it really only takes one instance for people to get the message to not trust.
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May 15, 2018 22:38
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Simon's Quest definitely had issues and the designers/developers definitely missed the mark in some ways. (Not the least of which is: why is this a Castlevania game? Drastically changing the entire formula for the sequel to a smash hit game would be unheard of today.) But it's amazing how ambitious the game was for its time.
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May 15, 2018 23:14
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Eric the Mauve posted:Simon's Quest definitely had issues and the designers/developers definitely missed the mark in some ways. (Not the least of which is: why is this a Castlevania game? Drastically changing the entire formula for the sequel to a smash hit game would be unheard of today.) But it's amazing how ambitious the game was for its time.
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May 15, 2018 23:22
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Coolguye posted:i can tell you right now that most of the names and stuff you run into in this game will not be in particular reference to anything. the scope of this game was only really matched in its time by final fantasy, and they had bigger fish to fry than clever names that they knew wouldn't translate anyway. On the contrary, with the possible exception of the mansions, all the names seem to reference something or other. We'll review the names as we encounter them. And seriously now, Famicom era developers didn't consider, know or care how anything would be translated into other languages. They were making Japanese games for Japanese systems for Japanese players. "Will the English translators understand what this is referencing" was never on their mind, much like American computer game developers at the time never thought about how the Japanese translation of their games might turn out.
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May 15, 2018 23:48
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Adamant posted:On the contrary, with the possible exception of the mansions, all the names seem to reference something or other. We'll review the names as we encounter them.
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May 16, 2018 00:03
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Simply Simon posted:But enough about Zelda 2 Yeah, SMB2 (adapted Doki Doki Panic) too. I think back then developers' attitudes were more "We already made this game and don't want to make it over again, let's try something new this time," whereas in the 21st century Marketing has more of the decision making power and their attitude is "we made millions off this game last time so you drat well are going to make the same thing again just with new levels and better graphics."
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May 16, 2018 00:46
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Commander Keene posted:You could say that even now, Japanese game developers, especially those who don't have their own localization houses, still develop primarily for the Japanese audience and maybe give a poo poo about the localization process afterwards. A lot of stuff we take for granted in English video games, like automatic text wrapping or variable-width fonts, most Japanese games simply don't have. Hasn't that been biting Japanese developers the pat ten years?
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May 16, 2018 00:54
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Adamant posted:On the contrary, with the possible exception of the mansions, all the names seem to reference something or other. afterthought: the wiki agrees that there is no particular trivia associated with these locations, which is something it doesn't do for the obvious brahm's mansion.
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May 16, 2018 01:33
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Eric the Mauve posted:Yeah, SMB2 (adapted Doki Doki Panic) too. I think back then developers' attitudes were more "We already made this game and don't want to make it over again, let's try something new this time," whereas in the 21st century Marketing has more of the decision making power and their attitude is "we made millions off this game last time so you drat well are going to make the same thing again just with new levels and better graphics." Also Final Fantasy 2 and Fire Emblem Gaiden. Sequels were weird back then.
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May 16, 2018 03:20
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Games were way cheaper to make, and there were fewer expectations of specific gameplay mechanics. So, things got experimental in the '80s.
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May 16, 2018 03:48
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Chapter 2: Yorba Woods and Surrounding Areas All right, let's look at what we've done and learned so far: *We've learned that we're in the town of Yorba, which should make the map in the manual relatively useful. *We've purchased a white crystal. We have no idea what it could potentially be used for, but someone in Yorba heavily implied that it's important. *We've learned that the sacred flame, which is presumably a weapon, can be found in Dennis Woods. *We've learned of a place called Dead River, and that the boatman there likes garlic. *We've learned that there's someone we should meet in the town of Aludra. *We've learned of 13 hidden books we should find, and that at least one of them is in the town of Belos. *We know that in addition to the white crystal, we can also purchase holy water and a thorn whip in Yorba. Our first order of business should probably be getting those two items, which means we need to get some hearts. We know that we can exit the town in two different directions: left will take us to Belasco Marsh and right will take us to Yorba Woods. We have no reason to favor either, so let's flip a coin. Heads for left, tails for right. Tails it is, so let's go right.  ...after the game finishes loading   Welcome to Yorba Woods. The manual describes woods as areas where "enemy monsters will be waiting for Simon" and advises you to fight them to earn money and experience points. Sounds like a plan. We're greeted by two enemies right off the bat. Let's check the manual.  This first guy is a wolfman. According to the manual, he is a creature that's neither human nor wolf, but something inbetween, and will attack Simon. He'll walk towards Simon, and jump when he gets close. It takes two hits with the leather whip to kill him, and the whip has enough range to hit him before he gets close enough to jump, so he's not much of a threat, but the jump will probably catch you by surprise at first.  The second guy is a "skeleton (1)", which the manual tells us will "plunge towards Simon". It dies in 1 hit and doesn't do anything particularly interesting.  The enemies may drop hearts when defeated. The manual tells us that the hearts appear when enemies are defeated and that they will "increase money and experience" when collected, which is an interesting way to put it. Collecting a small heart will give us one experience point and two hearts, and as we've already learned, hearts are used both to purchase items and to use attack items. We need 50 for the holy water and 100 for the thorn whip, so this can take a while.  A bit further into the forest we find this hill, which nicely shows off how the wolfman and the skeletons move. Both of them will simply walk straight forward until they hit a wall or the edge of a platform, then turn around and walk the other way. Neither of them will give the slightest gently caress about where Simon is located while walking, though wolfmen will turn around for their jump when Simon gets close. After a few minutes, though, when the ingame clock hits 18...  The dreadful night has arrived.  As the explanation of the day/night system in the manual told us, the monsters that come out during the night are stronger. They're still the same monster types, but the skeleton (1)s now take two hits to kill, and the wolfmen take four. We could use that thorn whip.  Enemies will now drop halves of big hearts instead of small hearts, however. These are worth 3 experience points and 4 hearts a piece, and makes collecting the required hearts a lot easier.  That didn't take very long. Let's return to the city and get that holy water.  Oh. As mentioned in the manual, when night falls, there will be no people in the towns, and they'll instead be swarming with monsters.  This guy here is a zombie. The manual tells us it was brought back to life from a graveyard, and that it will attack while hopping around. That's not a particularly accurate description - what they actually do is just walk back and forth like the skeletons. Like the skeletons at night, they'll also take two hits to kill, won't do anything particularly threatening, and may drop a half-sized full heart when they die.  I couldn't find any particularly good places to fight them, so I just went back to the woods. And once the in-game clock hit 6... the demonic night disappears and it's daylight again. Time to get that holy water.  There we go. Just like the crystal, it will be deposited into our subscreen, and we can go there to see in in the attack items window. Pressing the control pad will bring up the arrow symbol, and we can see that the blinking arrow just represents which window we're currently controlling the arrow symbol in, so there's no way to actually deselect anything.  We bring the holy water into the woods to test it out. It's been downgraded considerably since the first game, only dealing as much damage as the leather whip and no longer bursting into fire when it hits the ground. It'll still be useful for hitting enemies below us, but it's a fairly unimpressive weapon in general. It no longer consumes hearts when used, though, and the fact that it can apparently break floors and walls that hide items is interesting...  Now to get the thorn whip. We already checked out the woods last time, so let's take a look at the marsh while we grind hearts.  Welcome to Belasco Marsh. We're immediately assaulted by these two guys.  The manual tells us they are "2-Heads", and that they'll breathe fire from their two heads. Uh-oh.  They're quite fast, take more than one hit, and before I get time to attack them a second time, they walk into me and knock me back into the town. By the way, there's a 10 second loading screen every time you switch areas. Just thought you'd like to know.  Guess the game made it quite clear which way it wants us to go. Back to the woods.  The woods are fairly short, ending just after the hill area, so we might as well see what's on the other side.  A bridge, apparently.  If we crossreference with the map, this seems to be the South Bridge, which will take us to east Transylvania. The mountain to the north is Vlad Mountain, which blocks us off from Castle Dracula. The name obviously comes from Vlad Tepes, but the place doesn't seem to have a name in English. There doesn't seem to be any way to get to either the mountain or the castle as of now. The list of locations in the manual tells us that we can cross bridges to get to the other side of the rivers, but that they have enemies on them, so we'll have to defeat them as we cross. All right, then.  The guy that suddenly jumped out of the water is a merman, and the manual tells us that it... will suddenly jump out of the water. Thank you, manual. Like in the original game, the merman will land on solid platforms if it jumps up underneath one, then walk a bit back and forth and shoot fireballs. It dies from one hit with the leather whip and drops small hearts. Once night falls, it will take two hits to kill and drop halves of big hearts, like pretty much everything else.  Further to the right you need to start jumping between platforms. Mermen are positioned under them to potentially block your jumps, and after falling into the river twice after misjudging a jump, I decided this was a bad place to grind for hearts and went back to the woods.  The skeletons are nice to grind on, and I gained my first level shortly before getting the 100 hearts I needed for the thorn whip. Level 1 requires 100 experience points and gave me a full energy bar when I reached it, but it didn't seem to affect anything else. Skeletons still take 2 hits to kill and wolfmen still take 4. The manual says absolutely nothing about how levels work.  Oddly enough, now that I'm level 1, the monsters here don't seem to give any experience anymore either. But I got my 100 hearts, and it's almost dawn, so let's get that thorn whip.  And here's our shiny new thorn whip, replacing our leather whip.  I tested it out a bit in the forest, and it seems a bit longer than the leather whip, and is also capable of killing wolfmen in a single hit. Maybe we can take on Belasco Marsh now? That'll be next time, however - the way the save system works is that it will save your level and your items, but not your experience points and hearts. It will also save what day you're on, but not the time of day, instead you'll always start at noon. Since it's currently a bit past 7 on day 2, we can kill ourselves and save the game. When we start the game again, it'll be 12am on day 2. And then we can finally start exploring properly. Adamant fucked around with this message at 13:32 on May 20, 2018 |
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May 16, 2018 05:52
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And yes, I realize I may have overdone the explanations of basic gameplay elements. We should be done with that now, though.
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May 16, 2018 06:18
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is the manual referring to the opening town as Yorba? the kana i see is "yooba" in this image, which has no 'r' sound. the english translation they settled on was "jova" which is a bit of a liberty in its own right (japanese has perfectly functional j-sounds and v-sounds, and they are not used), but in a blended r/b sound is very unusual and the r-syllable seems to be absent entirely.
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May 16, 2018 08:14
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Coolguye posted:is the manual referring to the opening town as Yorba? the kana i see is "yooba" in this image, which has no 'r' sound. the english translation they settled on was "jova" which is a bit of a liberty in its own right (japanese has perfectly functional j-sounds and v-sounds, and they are not used), but in a blended r/b sound is very unusual and the r-syllable seems to be absent entirely. It's called ヨーバ, and is, as I mentioned, seemingly named after Yorba Cemetery, which name is spelled the same way. The English r is usually not very pronounced when it follows a vowel sound, and is often represented with an elongated vowel sound in Japanese. Same reason you see the name of Dead River written as デッドリバー in the screenshot mentioning it by name, rather than デッドリベル or whatever.
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May 16, 2018 08:49
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Coolguye posted:is the manual referring to the opening town as Yorba? the kana i see is "yooba" in this image, which has no 'r' sound. the english translation they settled on was "jova" which is a bit of a liberty in its own right (japanese has perfectly functional j-sounds and v-sounds, and they are not used), but in a blended r/b sound is very unusual and the r-syllable seems to be absent entirely. Minor correction, Japanese does NOT have a perfectly functional "v" sound. They do have a symbol they SOMETIMES use for it when transliterating foreign words (although as often as not, they just substitute "b" instead), but the vast majority of Japanese people have no loving clue how to make the sound. Source: I'm an English teacher in Japan right now. A significant portion of my time with every class is teaching how to make a "v" sound.
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May 16, 2018 10:27
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chiasaur11 posted:Also Final Fantasy 2 and Fire Emblem Gaiden. What's the story with FF2?
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May 16, 2018 11:45
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Randaconda posted:What's the story with FF2?
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May 16, 2018 13:06
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FF2 was also directed by the guy who later went on to make the SaGa games, which use the same system of "taking actions makes you better at them" but add a whole universe of other arcane nonsense, mostly based on RNG, like using a skill giving you a chance to "spark" (spontaneously learn) another skill, but only if the opposing monster is of a high enough level, which is hidden, and based on your level, which is also hidden. It's an interesting example of a "weird offshoot" early sequel in a series being actually the first of another series. One could argue that the Metroidvania formula starting with Symphony of the Night is kind of an evolution of this very game as well, splitting Castlevania games into two separate series of "adventure and exploration" and "just platforming action".
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May 16, 2018 13:18
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That explains a lot. Isn't that the guy who really likes deliberately obtuse and arcane systems in his games?
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May 16, 2018 13:25
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Commander Keene posted:That explains a lot. Isn't that the guy who really likes deliberately obtuse and arcane systems in his games?
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May 16, 2018 13:30
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Commander Keene posted:In FF1, you gained experience towards leveling up by defeating enemies, and all your stats increased at the same time whenever you did so. FF2 tried for a more "organic" system, where every action you took contributed experience towards raising the stats that affect that action. So if you have a guy who spends all of his time fighting with a weapon, his weapon skill levels (allowing more "hits" per attack action) and Strength stat would increase. If you had a mage casting Fire spells the whole time, his magic levels (increasing power and MP cost of spells) MP and Intelligence/Spirit would increase. Taking damage raised HP. And so on. Unfortunately, not only was the system broken in the original Famicom release (you gained exp by assigning the action, not by completing it, so you could just keep backing out in order to guarantee a stat increase), it just wasn't very fun to sit around and keep getting smacked by enemies to raise your HP. FF2 sold like garbage even over in Japan, and JRPGs were still at the "cult following" stage in the USA at that point, so nobody outside Japan got FF2 until the Final Fantasy Origins compilation for PSX. I still hold that the balance in FF2 is generally reasonable, it's the lack of transparency that kills it. Critical game mechanics are undocumented, the game does stuff it doesn't bother telling you about, and (because it's Square) plenty of poo poo is just plain broken. Trying to play the game based on the information it presents to you is definitely a recipe for a bad time.
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May 16, 2018 17:44
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This LP of FF2 is pretty good reading.GabrielPope, The LPer posted:I am basically a lazy person. While it's possible to powerlevel the hell out of your characters and have a party of walking gods armed with shiny magic weapons and armor and high-end spells before setting foot in the first dungeon, this takes time and effort. I like to exploit mechanics so that I have to do less work, not more--a lot of the most popularized exploits in this game are inefficient, unnecessary, or even counterproductive. I'll still be pointing them all out and using them if necessary, but for the most part when it comes to actually playing I'll mostly just be goofing around, slacking off, and using the mechanics to coast along rather than spending time over-leveling my party for what is really a fairly easy game.
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May 16, 2018 18:02
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Straight White Shark posted:I still hold that the balance in FF2 is generally reasonable, it's the lack of transparency that kills it. Critical game mechanics are undocumented, the game does stuff it doesn't bother telling you about, and (because it's Square) plenty of poo poo is just plain broken. Trying to play the game based on the information it presents to you is definitely a recipe for a bad time.
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May 16, 2018 18:36
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Adamant posted:It's called ヨーバ, and is, as I mentioned, seemingly named after Yorba Cemetery, which name is spelled the same way. The English r is usually not very pronounced when it follows a vowel sound, and is often represented with an elongated vowel sound in Japanese. Same reason you see the name of Dead River written as デッドリバー in the screenshot mentioning it by name, rather than デッドリベル or whatever. unless i'm confusing the yorba cemetery involved that seems like one hell of a stretch to look for a reference. isn't that a historic cemetery in California? i'm familiar with the hacienda from the jobs i took out in LA, but the only way that's even remotely relevant is that there's some vague ghost stories surrounding the site - no cultures are in common here. is there another yorba site I'm not familiar with? Iunnrais posted:Minor correction, Japanese does NOT have a perfectly functional "v" sound. They do have a symbol they SOMETIMES use for it when transliterating foreign words (although as often as not, they just substitute "b" instead), but the vast majority of Japanese people have no loving clue how to make the sound. yeah in hindsight calling it perfectly functional is stretching it, when i lived there it was always using the voiced version of the base vowel syllables and that magically became a v consonant because...gently caress you, that's why. all of the other voiced or partial-voiced syllables made a lot of sense, but that one was randomly irregular. it would have been more accurate to say that it exists, unlike an l sound.
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May 16, 2018 20:05
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Commander Keene posted:In FF1, you gained experience towards leveling up by defeating enemies, and all your stats increased at the same time whenever you did so. FF2 tried for a more "organic" system, where every action you took contributed experience towards raising the stats that affect that action. So if you have a guy who spends all of his time fighting with a weapon, his weapon skill levels (allowing more "hits" per attack action) and Strength stat would increase. If you had a mage casting Fire spells the whole time, his magic levels (increasing power and MP cost of spells) MP and Intelligence/Spirit would increase. Taking damage raised HP. And so on. Unfortunately, not only was the system broken in the original Famicom release (you gained exp by assigning the action, not by completing it, so you could just keep backing out in order to guarantee a stat increase), it just wasn't very fun to sit around and keep getting smacked by enemies to raise your HP. FF2 sold like garbage even over in Japan, and JRPGs were still at the "cult following" stage in the USA at that point, so nobody outside Japan got FF2 until the Final Fantasy Origins compilation for PSX. It also has an adventure game style thing where talking to people gives you keywords that you need to use in conversation to progress, the last spot in your party regularly rotating out (often as not by dying), a glitch where the ultimate ancient magic you do a big quest to get is a useless piece of crap, and there's some weird dependencies where raising one stat lowers another. It's an odd game.
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May 17, 2018 04:48
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chiasaur11 posted:a glitch where the ultimate ancient magic you do a big quest to get is a useless piece of crap, I read somewhere that this isn't a bug but was some weird office rivalry that got into the final product.
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May 17, 2018 05:50
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chiasaur11 posted:It also has an adventure game style thing where talking to people gives you keywords that you need to use in conversation to progress, That's much more likely to be an attempt to copy Ultima IV+ than it is an attempt to imitate adventure games. dis astranagant posted:I read somewhere that this isn't a bug but was some weird office rivalry that got into the final product. According to the story, Sakaguchi encountered the bug and ordered the programmer (usually unnamed, but Nasir Gebelli is often claimed to be the person in question) to fix it. The programmer claimed that this was deliberate artistry, and that any old forgotten magic would obviously be worse than modern spells. Sakaguchi tried to fix it himself, but obfuscated code prevented him from doing so. So far as I can tell, Sakaguchi started telling this around 25 years after the original Famicom release of FF2. Niether Gebelli or any other programmer has never confirmed it, which somebody who saw it as an artistic statement probably would have done. The official stance is that it was always a bug, and the most likely explanation (apart from Sakaguchi completely misremembering, which can happen with old memories) is that the programmer didn't know how to fix the bug on short notice, so he spun a tale to cover it up.
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May 17, 2018 06:28
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This LP of FF2 is pretty good reading. And this LP is a nice follow-up that shows in just how many ways the game is imbalanced and broken, turning even a severely restricted challenge run into a breeze towards the end. I'd recommend reading the other one first, though.
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May 17, 2018 07:44
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Chapter 3: Belos Woods and the Town of Belos All right, we've gained a level, we've purchased every item available at this point... let's start our journey for real. Now that we have a more powerful whip, our first course of action should be to see if we can check out that marsh now.  Bring it on!  No luck. I managed to kill the first one in two hits with the thorn whip, but a fireball from the other knocked me back into the loading screen again. It's clear the game doesn't want us going this way yet. Time to cross that bridge beyond the woods.  The bridge itself isn't terribly interesting, mostly consisting of platforms like these. The merman jumping out of the water here may look like he'll land on the top platform, but he's actually positioned just right so that he'll miss it and land on the lower one, where you won't be able to hit him with the whip. You either need to jump towards him and hit him in mid-air, or toss holy water from the top platform. The latter will only work during the day, though - during the night the mermen take two hits with holy water to kill, and you won't have time to throw a second bottle before the merman will hit you with a fireball, knocking you backwards and most likely into the river. It's actually a surprisingly deadly area for so early in the game.  The added length of the thorn whip actually helps a lot. Being able to kill the mermen in one hit at night is very handy too; their fireballs can be dangerous, so you really want to kill them before they can fire one.  A couple platforms later we reach the end of the bridge and east Transylvania.  This looks like a cozy place. Let's check the map and see where we are.  Looks like we're in the Belos Woods. The Town of Belos, which a guy in Yorba told us one of the 13 hidden books could be found in, appears be be located on the other side, so let's see if we can't make our way there. Also, those blocks preventing us from taking the lower route look mighty suspicious...  Bingo. As the manual said, the holy water can be used to break floors and walls that contain items. There weren't any items in these, but breaking them gave us access to a new area, at least.  Well, not entirely new... looks like there was a staircase leading down here a bit further right. These small marsh pits deal damage if you fall into them, and the low ceiling makes them harder to jump across than they look, so it'd have been a better idea to take the top route here.  The end of this rather small area is just past the stairs, so the lower route is actually completely pointless beyond demonstrating that suspicious blocks can indeed be destroyed. Let's continue on.  This second area of the woods has a staircase leading down to a separate area.  Since the standard route continues towards the right, the logical assumption would be that this is the standard route through the woods, while the staircase probably leads to an optional area that might contain some useful items or clues, so let's check that out first.  The stairs lead into this featureless cave that continues a bit further to the right from this screenshot and into a new area. Let's see what's waiting for us on the other side.  Surprisingly, the cave led us to what we can assume is the town of Belos. It's nighttime, so monsters are out, and we're immediately attacked by a new one.  This is a raven, and the manual just tells us it's an eerie creature that acts as an envoy from the dead, with no mention of how it moves or attacks. It will sweep down towards us from the top of the screen, then turn around and return to the top if we walk under it before it reaches our level. If we don't walk under it, it will instead speed towards us. It dies in two hits from the thorn whip and is fairly easy to deal with since you can just walk under it, then turn around and whip a couple times.  This road sign confirms that what we walked through to get here is indeed the Belos Woods, and informs us that going to right of the town will take us to... the Davi Tunnel? David Tunnel (this is how you write the Spanish name David)? Dabi Tunnel? Dabi is Japanese for cremation, which is one of the supposed ways to get rid of a vampire, but that seems like a stretch. It's the best I have, though, I can't find any trace of anyone named Davi or David connected to anything relevant.  It's another area not located on the map, though the map tells us the town is located west of the Borgia Mountain Range, so it can be assumed it's a tunnel going below it. The Borgia Range is named after Cesare Borgia and the House of Borgia, a real life house of nobles that, like Vlad Tepes, have become fictionalized as vampires.  There's nothing else of particular interest in the town at nighttime, but some zombies are hanging out towards the right end of it, and these actually take two hits with the thorn whip to kill. The hearts dropped by the ravens and these souped-up zombies give us experience points again, teaching us that as you gain levels, you need to kill stronger and stronger enemies in order to continue gaining experience, you can't just grind on weaklings.  Since I can actually get experience here, grinding here until sunrise paid off pretty well. Now let's see what this town has to offer.  A guy in Yorba told us we had a friend in Aludra we should go see, and this guy likewise tells us we have a similar friend in the town of... "Orujiba"? This "name" literally doesn't seem to exist outside this game at all, and I have no idea what's up with it. The English translation calls it "Aljiba", which is definitely not right, looks like someone misread the o as an a. Either way, we now have another goal.  The house near the guy is completely empty. Odd, and quite suspicious.  Aha! Knew it!  This hole takes us into the basement, where we find a merchant.  The merchant offers to sell us a chain whip, which the manual tells us will allow us to "deal considerable damage to enemies". These sure are helpful descriptions. It costs 150 hearts, though, so we'll have to come back for it later.  To the left of this house we find this guy, who tells us the location of another hidden book - the... Barkley mansion? Berkley? Barclay? I'm not sure if any of the mansion names are meant to be references at all, to be honest. The English translation uses "Berkeley", which is as good a guess as any.  If we check the map, we can see the mansion is located just north of the city, so we should look around a bit more before going into that tunnel under the mountains.  A woman next to the other guy gives us another book location right away - apparently there's one in Orujiba too. We'll keep an eye out for it.  A bit further to the left we find the local church. A concerned guy in front of it remarks that we look pale and should take a quick rest there, which sounds like a very good idea. As mentioned, talking to the priest in a church refills our life completely.  After refilling our life at the church, we continue left and find a guy with some throwaway dialogue about how adding laurels to a stew adds to its aroma. This is actually the first bit of completely throwaway dialogue we've encountered, so it comes as a bit of a surprise after all these non-stop clues.  The doorway to his left is the final house in town, and this one's empty too. Seemingly.  This time you need to break the right wall to find a secret entrance.  In the hidden room we find another merchant, this one offering to sell us a dagger for 50 hearts. The manual informs us that the dagger lets us defeat faraway enemies, which sounds rather handy, our whip isn't that long.  To nobody's surprise, it shows up in the attack item window, and we can switch between it and the holy water by pushing left and right after selecting this window. So are these merchants in the hidden rooms what the guy in Yorba meant with "traders doing business in secret"? It's possible... but if that's the case, it's hardly the most useful hint in the world, since you're going to discover these guys after seeing if you can break any of the blocks in the suspiciously empty rooms, not because you're specifically looking for hidden merchants. The Yorba guy got mistranslated pretty badly in the English version, but the "hint" he gave was so useless it hardly matters. The Yorba guy could also just as well be referencing the merchants in general, since you can't exactly tell they're merchants until you've played for a while and realized they all share the same sprite, so who knows.  Finally, this guy at the left edge of the town tells us that "the demon lord's bone becomes a shield protecting against the powers of evil". It sounds like a clue, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense yet. We'll make a note of it. Speaking of clues, someone in Yorba said one of the hidden books could be found in this town, didn't he? We didn't find any books, so we should probably comb the place with holy water and see if it's not hidden in a block somewhere.  Bingo. There's another couple blocks in the chain whip merchant's house that can be broken, revealing the book inside. These blocks aren't very conspicuous, so this book is actually fairly difficult to stumble across if you're not actively searching for it after getting the Yorba guy's hint, meaning the English version just saying this town has "clues" in it is an actual issue. At least one townsperson gave us what can definitely be called a clue. Anyway, let's see what the book says.  "The path will open up when you hold the white crystal aloft in Berkeley Mansion". That's vague, but potentially very useful to know. We'll have to wait until we get there to see exactly what this hint means. A lot of the clues in this town seems to tell us to go to Berkeley Mansion. The description of the mansions in the manual tells us that Dracula's remains are enshrined in them, and that we have to collect them all and then go to Castle Dracula... so yeah, we should definitely try going there.  Since the mansion is located on this side of the Borgia Range, the most logical course of action is to return to Belos Woods and take the normal route through it instead of going into the cave. We'll test out the dagger while we're at it.  Its range has been drastically reduced since the first game, but it still travels about twice as far as the thorn whip's reach. Like the similarly downgraded holy water, it doesn't consume any hearts any more either, so it's definitely the attack item of choice. It's hard to tell how powerful it is, though - it kills these skeletons in one hit, but so did the leather whip and holy water.  The regular route ends just after this little swamp, and the dagger is actually really handy for getting rid of the skeletons on the platforms here. Let's see what lies beyond the woods...  Not the mansion, but more woods. This screen looks a bit dangerous at first glance, but the skeleton can be killed with holy water and the merman will probably jump back down into the water before you get near him, so it's nothing to worry about.  To the right of the lake we find a small hill with some more skeletons and the exit to the next area.  And there we go. This can't be anything but Berkeley Mansion. Next time we'll check out what awaits us inside. Adamant fucked around with this message at 16:27 on May 25, 2018 |
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May 19, 2018 09:45
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Adamant posted:To the left of this house we find this guy, who tells us the location of another hidden book - the... Barkley mansion? 
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May 19, 2018 20:15
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Been ages since I last played Castlevania 2. Translation stuff always interests me, as does playing a game "normally". And looking at games that are generally considered bad because of misunderstandings, like said FF2 LP. So this LP will be a nice one to follow. So far I can say I didn't know there were so many references packed into the location names in this game. Though that's only natural since a lot aren't that obvious, and most got twisted in English anyway.
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May 19, 2018 20:59
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This is a game I would have liked to see remade. It's not realistic since it's not a popular game, but I think a remake easily could have fixed all problems in Castlevania 2.
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May 19, 2018 21:02
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In spirit it has been remade several times, at least, and people generally agree that the games that ape 2 rather than 1 are The Good Ones.
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May 19, 2018 22:03
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As a kid, I had this game. My brothers and I would play it till all hours in the evening. We would wake up an hour early before school to play it. With that said, we never got too far. We never made it past the mansion. It wasn't until a visit from one of my cousins, who happened to have a password for the end of the game, that we even started to figure out what we were supposed to do next. Years and years later, when I decided to play it again on an emulator, I learned about the leveling system. I had no idea what the "L" stat was or how it changed. We never read the manual very carefully.
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May 20, 2018 02:33
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| # ? May 6, 2024 00:46 |
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mastersord posted:I had no idea what the "L" stat was or how it changed. We never read the manual very carefully. As I said, though, the manual just vaguely mentions it in passing (literally just "the L indicates your current level") and offers absolutely no explanation about what it influences - or hell, even that you raise it by getting experience points. It just kinda assumes you're familiar with these concepts from other games and need no further explanation.
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May 20, 2018 02:47
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