Firstly and because I'm in bad mood. 'Urrrggg!'. A bad mood with a Kzatar-death-humper so large I may die. What is a Kzatar-death-humper you ask? Imagine a hang-over so large. So life threatening. So absolutely enormous that the term 'hang-over' fails to convey the misery, the suffering and the self-loathing that I am currently afflicted with.
"Kzatar-death-humper". Noun. A name given to the results of having consumed more alcohol than all of France during the traditional annual French festival in which they celebrate being French by drinking gallons of French wine until they are sick.
In my opinion hang-over is a stupid term anyway. Hang-over from what? 'Throw-over' now that expresses things more clearly...
Where was I? Oh yes... Powers Kingdom. Off to kill Lord Azrael. I better tell you what type of game it is first. A 'Tactical RPG'. Think Final Fantasy tactics on the Gameboy or Fire Emblem on the NES or Segas' Shining Force. Power Kingdoms was, using my amazing powers of deduction, the first Tactical RPG on a 32bit platform.
In essence a tactical RPG is no different to any other RPG game other than the emphasis is much more strongly placed on combat.
Which is a good thing because the Powers Kingdoms story is at best weak. Essentially you are trampling around the Powers Kingdom liberating varying areas from evil and freeing other characters that can join your team. The final objective is to ultimately kill the nasty Lord Azrael.
The game starts off with the lead character 'Pumpkin Knight' and a priest called 'Clay'. Both have been recently resurrected by the Goddess to do her dirty work. You start off by being gently eased into what eventually becomes fairly engrossing sequence of battles. The more you trample around, the more you kill, the more stuff you buy in the shops, the more things you learn about the game.
The combat used in the battles seems well thought out and the intelligence used by your foes is varied and balanced. Each monster, of which there approximately 40 different types, do seem to adopt a different strategy.
This is a good thing because the lack of plot or engaging characters could have made this game a chore. You see in my opinion the combat system and its artificial intelligence, the wide selection of weapons, tactics, spells, characters and settings valiantly rescue an otherwise very below mediocre game. The combat is without any doubt excellent and intuitive - Intuitive is especially important because the manual stinks. Its wording stinks. Its use of English stinks
Each 'golem', this is the games terminology for the characters in your team, can be equipped with a 'body' - the games terminology for a set of attributes. You see what I mean? It gets worse.
I'll explain: Clay, the priest, is by definition more attuned to using spells and magic - so associating him with Wizard and Shaman 'bodies' makes sense. Once associated 'Clay' has access to additional skills, spells and special items you'll find along the way. This again works well. It certainly adds to the strategy. As each attack or healing power has a range and a strength.
Planning how you intend to attribute say a magical body to a none magical golem, which sometimes maybe necessary, is major part of the overall depth.
Another example to explain: Some monsters go straight for attacking the priest. Physical attacks have no bearing on this particular monster - so the knight must be equipped with magic so he can heal the priest, so the priest can concentrate on killing the monster using his spells - if you follow me.
Combat is good. Translation is bad. Use of English is bad.
The manual is a good example. There are approximately 1,000,000,000 English speakers world-wide. I would emplor anyone looking to convert a game from Japanese to English to have one of these native English speakers to give the game the quick once over before you release it.
Yes, I know - people in glass houses should not throw stones and here I sit in my glass palace with a big pile of spiky rocks but let me give you an example. One I have copied perfectly from the manual:
"You were chosen as a combatant golem of the Goddess to restore this particular world from Azrael, Evil Lord. You are in quest of peace. Fight against all the enemies to the total destruction, and finally beat Azrael for the complete peace of the world. It is also important to revive your comrades."
It certainly makes me feel better about my written English. Matsushita Electric Industrial wrote that. With a $30 billion turnover, you might have thought they could have affored to have toddled off into downtown Tokyo or Osaka and found someone to give it a quick read before it went to the printers. Apparently not.
Having said all that Micro Cabin did employ some English speakers. English speakers to do the voice overs. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. It's difficult to convey just quite how bad they are. Just how stilted. Dis-jointed and generally appalling the voice overs are.
...But I'll give it a go.
"Sa-ve, u-s, fro-m, Looord AzREAL." Time taken to say this is about 20 seconds. It made my ears bleed and I wept.
What else is bad? Not the graphics and the audio. They are amazing. The early desert levels look impressive with the scaling and rotating cacti and rocks but it is the later forest areas that are most impressive. The character animations are a little jerky and similar in some ways to those used in Final Fantasy 7 on the PlayStation but for the era, the console and everything that had gone before it - they were damned good. A special mention for the graphics used when employing spells - best described as ahead of their time. Not until Final Fantasy 7 were we to see such impressive magical imagery again.
The music, like I said, is good. A combination of rock and classical piano. Reminded me, bazaarly, of the tunes found in Ace Combat.
If you can ignore the English written and spoken bits and the lack of engaging characters and plot - Powers Kingdom is actually very very good.
I have two copies. Be warned this game is, unlike most other games, region locked. The U.S. version, known as Guardian Wars, didn't work on my PAL system but would work on my emulated NTSC system and vice verse.
Not rare - definitely worth having.
3DO Kid.
looks kinda interesting. Thanks for posting the american name so us yanks know what your talking about..lol