I’ve always been clear on my dislike of the “main character 0 hp = game over” system, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t mind it in this game. I think I know why. In most of these games, the main character is not that much more powerful (sometimes not at all) than the other characters, so the “0 hp = game over” just puts a huge disadvantage on him for no benefit. In the worst examples I’ve seen of this the main character is hard to use at all because of the danger of the game over.

However, in this game the main character has a very important advantage over the others: he can call in a reinforcement character if one of your initial characters dies. The character you call in is placed at the head of the turn order and can act immediately. So protecting the main character has some purpose beyond just avoiding the game over. I still think maybe it would have been better if you just lose the reinforcement ability if the MC dies, but I didn’t really mind it the way it is; it also adds strategic weight because you are only ever allowed 5-6 characters at most on the field at once, so it can be an important decision whether to use the MC’s reinforcement ability or heal himself.

To say more about the abilities, there are four types of weapon and four types of magic. The spear has long range and also a number of attacks that hit multiple people. All the other ones have various kinds of status effect abilities in addition to the basic damage. Sword has probably the best raw attack, the multi-hit moves. I found that my favorite weapons were the sword and bow.

The magic has healing, one that has buff/damage moves, and one that focuses on manipulating the terrain. The terrain manipulation is a big part of the game; many attacks will also cause terrain sinking in addition to their damage, and there are a lot of moves that can raise or lower the area. Some maps require you to do this to reach enemies who are up in towers, but other times it just makes it easier to move around or to get height on the enemies.

You can use the peach items to give anyone any skill you want, although you would not get enough peach items to customize every character. I didn’t really bother with this and just used the peaches to raise the skill caps for the skills the characters already had.

I found the progression through the game fairly smooth. You want to keep your guys relatively equal in levels because of the reinforcement system, but also there are a couple of places in the game where you have to split your team into multiple groups or use specific characters. Make sure you always have a save in a place where you can access the Daoist caves, that lets you buy items and train levels.

I apparently didn’t get any pictures, but my least favorite levels are the ones that involve these stones you have to defeat to pass. They can hit strong range attacks, and often the terrain is quite annoying. The worst part of the game is this stretch of 13 maps where you have to use one character at a time (if one dies you can bring out the next one) to progress. It’s not excessively difficult, just a bit tedious.

The storyline is relatively basic — once you get to Zhou and get them to join up in your attempt to fight Shang, the rest of the game is just travelling back to Shang and fighting various demons and enemies along the way. Once you reach Shang you defeat all of Daji’s underlings and then face Daji herself.

First she appears with the king, but once you beat the king she retreats and then you have to fight her true Youma form.

She’s pretty easy, but then you have to move to the true final battle, against one of those chaos demons that will destroy the world figures. The rough part about this is that once you get into the final chaos battle you can no longer bring in reinforcements so you’re stuck with whatever party you had when you beat Korisei.

He is fast, and uses attacks that hit everyone on the board and cause status effects. He killed most of my party but I managed to defeat him with only 2 characters left, both near death. I may have had more success if I stopped trying to level everyone earlier than I did, but in the end I was able to finish it.

Zhou then takes power and Taikobo goes off to train by himself (pursued by some potential love interests).

Overall this was an enjoyable game. The characters are varied and interesting to use, and it’s fun to play around with all the potential abilities. The large team is usable because of the reinforcement system, but would offer replayability as well because you can try to emphasize different people or different types of abilities. It’s not perfect — I wish there weren’t so much emphasis on the hidden items on the map, and there are maybe a few too many filler maps. But on the whole this is one of the stronger games of 1998.