Reader Roundtable Vol. 17

[108 Stars]

Did you play the game before or after the release of FF7 and the standard, generic crap it induced?

I´ve played it when it was first released, and it´s much worse than Landstalker, Story of Thor, Soleil, Secret of Mana, Terranigma, Zelda III...
About atmosphere: the colouring is awefull, the soundtrack not worth remembering and there are fucking wild west-passages in the game. That´s not what I call a great atmosphere.

[Genesis Knight]

It was fun, I thought, and the graphics were impressive. (Music was catchy at times, too.) But Beyond Oasis is still the best Action RPG of the era.

[Demonic Weasel]

I´ve played it when it was first released, and it´s much worse than Landstalker, Story of Thor, Soleil, Secret of Mana, Terranigma, Zelda III...
About atmosphere: the colouring is awefull, the soundtrack not worth remembering and there are fucking wild west-passages in the game. That´s not what I call a great atmosphere.

Except for SoM you're right, all of those games are superior to Light Crusader. The music isn't that bad, it's pretty good. I don't like the use of color especially myself, but the grainy quality sets itself up with the slightly sinister approach that the game was trying for. Rather well if you ask me.

[capi1010]

Where could one acquire Panic? I can't find it on ebay.

[InternalPrimate]

It was fun, I thought, and the graphics were impressive. (Music was catchy at times, too.) But Beyond Oasis is still the best Action RPG of the era.

Besides Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past, I ABSOLUTELY agree.

[Demonic Weasel]

Heh. If nothing else, this month has generated more conversation than usual.

[Mendicant]

Um... Zebbe, Popful Mail has an option of turning the voices off. If I remember correctly, once you turned the voices off, you could skip through the dialogs by pressing a button. (This was necessary for finishing the game quickly to unlock some outtakes & stuff...)

[David J.]

Good games all around, except Cliffhanger.

[kevinski]

Honestly, I thought that the visuals (aside from the human character sprites) were absolutely amazing in Light Crusader. I mean, some of the bosses are just incredible! I'll agree that Beyond Oasis is generally a better game, although I don't feel that Beyond Oasis has nearly as much replay value as Light Crusader.

[Zebbe]

Um... Zebbe, Popful Mail has an option of turning the voices off. If I remember correctly, once you turned the voices off, you could skip through the dialogs by pressing a button. (This was necessary for finishing the game quickly to unlock some outtakes & stuff...)

I see now that you are completely right about that. Thanks! . But I still think you should be able to skip the voices by pressing buttons (like in Toonstruck), so that you don't have to switch on and off the voices in the options.

[Genesis Knight]

Besides Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past, I ABSOLUTELY agree.

Well, you're on your way to enlightenment. Just ditch that last reservation.

I don't feel that Beyond Oasis has nearly as much replay value as Light Crusader.

Now there's an interesting remark. Beyond Oasis is a fighting-oriented game with a lot of mini-arenas, gazillions of secrets, and tons of enemies to slaughter with a variety of weapons and combat moves. Light Crusader is a standard dungeon crawler that moves you through endless puzzle rooms while engaging in very non-dynamic fights. So while the experience with Oasis is different every time you play, all Light Crusader runthroughs are identical. So how can you say Crusader is more replayable? I played Beyond Oasis nonstop for two years, and beat it about thirty times. It never bored me.

[kevinski]

Beyond Oasis doesn't really require much strategy, though, and the combat is every bit as repetitive as the combat in Light Crusader once you realize that certain moves are so much more effective than others. I just feel that there's more to discover in Light Crusader. Both games have some serious similarities, namely the fact that you never feel as though you're really getting any stronger. Your character is just as capable as he is at the beginning as he is at the end in both games.

Anyway, I love the magic system in Light Crusader. The summon system in Beyond Oasis is cool, but I can't really say that I felt much of a need to utilize anyone other than Dytto most of the time.

[David J.]

Panic kicks ass. The Japanese version of Super Fantasy Zone is also in English... at least when played on a Genesis. All the cool kids own the Japanese version (I did a survey among cool kids). Popful Mail is also great except the bitch runs too damn close to the edge of the screen. Great music generated from the Genesis in that game.

Super Fantasy Zone PAL and Japanese have different scripts... they are in english, but if you watch the attract mode, you'll see the script is different.

[Joe Redifer]

Ah. I wonder why they did that? They probably just had to change "color" to "colour" and the such. I can see no other reason to translate English to English.

[David J.]

I can't really be assed to take screenshots, but if you play 'em via emulation, just watch the attract screens.