Tengai Makyou

[chipperkwah]

Seems like a cool series so I picked up a copy of Kabuki-den for cheap. Been using the walkthrough on gamefaqs with no issues, but cannot figure out how to save my game. I'm sure it's incredibly simple, can anyone help me out? Feel free to ridicule me for my inability to figure this out.

[Tolvatar]

Cant confirm but i suppose it´s at the "inns" where you can rest and save.
But i don´t know, please wait till someone else can confirm

[chipperkwah]

I've stayed at the inns but this didn't seem to save. Maybe I'm missing something.

[Tolvatar]

Perhaps it´s at shrines. Hope you and me got the answer soon.

[CrackTiger]

I'll look for a link to my near complete walkthrough and Englsh manual after I get home from work today. You normally save at an Inn and in Jipang they usually have the same sign on the building. After doing it once it should be no problem for the rest of the game.

[chipperkwah]

I'll look for a link to my near complete walkthrough and Englsh manual after I get home from work today. You normally save at an Inn and in Jipang they usually have the same sign on the building. After doing it once it should be no problem for the rest of the game.

Justin, I believe I am already using your guide from gamefaqs. It is very helpful, and to be honest I read through the walkthrough again just now and I see that you do mention saving at various points in the guide. Good to know that saving is done at the inn. The menus have been a little bit tricky but I figured them out after some trial and error. If you were to amend your walkthrough with a small section at the beginning explaining the various menus in the game as well as a small aside regarding saving, I'm sure that would be helpful for others starting the game for the first time. No worries if you don't have time though.

edit: I see that the guide was last updated in 2004, sorry if this is like ancient history for you man.

[CrackTiger]

The first version I put online was in 1997. I've finished mapping out the rest of the game in the latest version, it just needs to be cleaned up. It says that it was last updated in 2010-

https://www.superpcenginegrafx.net/misc/kabukiden.txt


Here is the English manual that I made in 1994-

https://www.superpcenginegrafx.net/misc/kabukidenmanual.zip


I have a website guide in the works with maps made from emulated screenshots, but who knows when I'll have the time to finish it off.

Feel free to post any questions here or PM me.

[seieienbu]

I picked up Manji Maru and Kabuki Den off ebay recently.  I haven't had much time to play either but they seem fun so far.

[SignOfZeta]

Make sure you actually have space to save. Sometimes something that simple will shut down people who can't read any Japanese at all.

The Tengai series has a lot if Japanese in it, even for a Japanese game.

[CrackTiger]

Make sure you actually have space to save. Sometimes something that simple will shut down people who can't read any Japanese at all.

The Tengai series has a lot if Japanese in it, even for a Japanese game.

The only potentially tricky part of TMII is the save/load screen. Otherwise, Manjimaru and Kabukiden are very straightforward (menus, mechanics, etc) and English friendly compared to games like Neo Metal Fantasy, Anearth Fantasy Stories, Cosmic Fantasy 4, etc. The large font also makes menu memorization much easier than games like Tengai Makyou Zero. 3/4's of Kabukiden takes place in London, where stats are in English and shops are labeled with symbols, so it's all the more English friendly. Getting to position your spells in the menus helps gaijins narrow down the ones they want to use. These two games also take up little space for save files, which helps avoid saving issues.

The toughest spots would be specific tasks, which the walkthroughs cover. So these games are good starters for new Japanese-language-RPG players. They're also top quality, so it makes the effort worthwhile. If it becomes too difficult, at least you'll figure out that import RPGs aren't for you.

[SignOfZeta]

Hm...that's a strange thing to say. Its been a while since I played a Tengai game, but IIRC there is almost zero English or katakana loan words in the PCE games aside from the London parts. I'd say they have less English than any RPG I've ever played, certainly more kanji.

Compare this to games from Telnet and Rayforce where almost every item, weapon, plot point, and stat is in English or written as loan words in kana.

I guess if you read *zero* Japanese than the difference between 斧 and アクス is meaningless, but for me when I started getting into import RPGs it was night and day.

[SamIAm]

The equipment/item/shop/menu side can be brutal if you don't know any Japanese. There are no icons or markers to tell you what variety of thing any particular item is. You just have to know that the item is a kind of traditional footwear, or whatever. Not to mention, it doesn't tell you whether a piece of equipment is better than what you already have. You basically need an equipment chart, or tremendous patience.

[SignOfZeta]

I think the game comes with a chart, doesn't it?

[SamIAm]

TMII comes with a technique chart, but no equipment chart. I don't know about the others.

[CrackTiger]

The equipment/item/shop/menu side can be brutal if you don't know any Japanese. There are no icons or markers to tell you what variety of thing any particular item is. You just have to know that the item is a kind of traditional footwear, or whatever. Not to mention, it doesn't tell you whether a piece of equipment is better than what you already have. You basically need an equipment chart, or tremendous patience.

That was normal for RPGs bitd, whether or not they are in English or Japanese. All you really needed was to spend a minute or two every couple hours or so, when you'd find a shop with new gear. After saving you just walk next door, buy the gear that you're curious about and after figuring out what's worth buying or not, you just reload your game.

But Kabukiden isn't like that. When you place the cursor on a piece of equipment in a shop, it shows you whether it is an item (with description), weapon, armor or shoes, the ATK/DEF/SPD points they provide... and who can equip it. The only potential mystery is which of the two new pieces or armor is for your primary or secondary slot. But it's always clear: the more expensive one is the primary and the cheap one is secondary. The rate at which you can acquire new gear and perfectly paced, so it's always easy to figure out. I haven't fired up TMII in a while, but I believe that it's the same deal. And I believe that both games show alternate Romanji titles for every item when you highlight them.

But even if they didn't tell you any of that, the RPGs that don't (most 16-bit RPGs) still require less patience that some of the more popular/well known English language games that do show the +/- over your current gear. You'll lose many hours in games like FFIII/FFVI just navigating menus, micro-managing gear across 14 characters, juggling magicite between current party members, so that player level ups (and basically the whole "SYSTEM") aren't wasted, all the while tracking each of the 14 characters' individual current leveling progress for each of the 27 magicites, as you are thrown into different closed pockets of gameplay with random assortments of available characters and limited shop access.

Manjimaru and Kabukiden are much more straightforward, while still giving you lots of abilities to utilize and more importantly, a greater variety of people/places to encounter (Kabukiden uses unique zone, dungeon, enemy and battle bg art for every section of the game) and reward your progress with in-game and cut scene cinematics.

I guess if you read *zero* Japanese than the difference between 斧 and アクス is meaningless, but for me when I started getting into import RPGs it was night and day.

When I started playing Japanese games with no resources, the difference was priceless. Katakana was very easy to recognize and memorize and "P-7-7'with a kickstand" was easy to read and quickly write down compared to Kanji characters depicted with a handful of pixels.

[Ninja Spirit]

http://www.marfisa.net/games/tengai/index.html. This is what I used.

Tengai Makyo: Fu'un Kabuki Den made me much braver at playing RPG's in Japanese. When I first played, I was totally lost myself, then I had a friend who knew Japanese translate the menus (which were all kanji) and it all snowballed after that.

That site got me to the final dungeon on Fu'un Kabuki Den (never did finish it because I accidently reformatted my Duo-R's memory storage and erased my save data. I was soooooo devastated. I had my plays on YouTube too.

Another thing I'd like to add is that when dealing with or buying equipment, the description of the item is basically the hiragana equivalent to the kanji in the actual shop menu.

Here's several of my plays I did a few years ago.