Thoughts on Tenshi no Uta

[SamIAm]

I just finished Tenshi no Uta, and like I did with Gulliver Boy, I'd like to share what I thought about it.

It was good. Very good, actually, especially for a 1991 RPG.

Before anything else, some quick facts:

- There's no timer, but I'm guessing it's around a 20 hour game.

- Fighting is done in a Dragon Quest-style turn-based battle engine, with random encounters.

-You learn magic as you level up. No skills are bought or taught.

- You buy equipment and find it in treasure chests in the usual way. You have five equipment slots: for your right hand, left hand, head, body, and for an extra thing.

- Item inventories are separated by character, and are very limited in capacity.

- Your party grows to five members, although you spend a lot of time with only four. Those five are the only five you play as in the game.

- You don't gain a whole lot of levels. You'll probably beat the game around level 40.

- There are maybe six or seven cutscenes total.

- The music is all redbook except for what you hear in battles and in shops.

- It's highly linear, and also generally easy.


So, why did I like this one? Tenshi no Uta has some flaws, and I'll tell you about them soon, but basically I enjoyed this game so much that not only would I recommend it, but I would also like to translate it someday.

Tenshi no Uta's first key asset is its pacing, which it owes in part to its linearity. Compared to other RPGs anyway, you're never going to be stuck in one place for long while playing this game, and you're almost never going to backtrack, either. It's simply a very pleasant, brisk adventure, with a healthy amount of variety and just the right amount of length given its scope. There will be no frustration from not knowing where to go or how to trigger the right conditions to make the story advance. There's also no despair from overly complex or difficult dungeons. Put in 20 minutes, and you are virtually guaranteed to accomplish a significant objective and go somewhere new.

Another great thing about Tenshi no Uta is the cohesiveness in its art style and layout design. What this accomplishes is to give you is a feeling for the world of the game itself. Although the story doesn't build up in a particularly grand way, you will feel like you've truly completed a journey right alongside the characters as you come to the end of the game.

The music and graphics are good, especially for 1991. There is certainly some asset recycling, yes, but this is spaced out sensibly, and the game is generally rich enough that you won't care much. One thing I really like is the water effects. There must be two dozen different styles of animating water tiles in this game, and they all look great.

The story is simple, and admittedly fairly typical. The characters could be described in the same way. However, I don't think that that's really what this game is about. The focus is much more on the dungeons, each of which is unique, and on hopping across the continents one after another. The story serves this, not the other way around, and in that regard, it's perfectly adequate.

So, let's hit the bad points:

- The character-specific, limited inventory system is a pain. You'll have to spend a few minutes shuffling things around every time you get a few new items. Also, shops don't tell you anything about the stats of the weapons and armor they sell, and the equip screen itself only tells you about changes to a couple of stats rather than all of them. It's hard to explain, but you basically need a table explaining all the items in order to deal with it in any kind of efficient way.

- There is some long, forced grinding at the end. The last major continent is packed with killer enemies, and the last boss is a bastard. You'll need both high levels and expensive equipment.

- Like many CD RPGs, this one could really use some more music. Again, they used and recycled what they had in a very sensible way, but more tracks would have been very welcome.

- The battles in the first 80% of the game are easy enough that you can often turn on auto-fire and space out/check your email/whatever.

- The art style in the cutscenes is honestly quite unattractive.

- The random encounter rate isn't really all that high, but lowering it slightly would have made thoroughly exploring the dungeons much more appealing. This is important, because some great equipment is hidden in dungeons.

- There are bugs. As a matter of fact, one bug freezes the game. It happens occasionally when you walk through doors that cause the tile layer to change without any fadeout. I had probably four or five freezes during my playthrough. Fortunately, they mostly happen in towns, where you can save your game.

- The NPC dialog gets better as the game goes on, but in the early parts especially there's a fairly high number of townspeople who seem to be repeating each others lines about whatever is that's bothering their specific town.

...So, yeah, far from perfect. Yet in spite of these things, Tenshi no Uta 1 is still a solid and downright charming RPG. The guide over on the Duomazov site does an excellent job of helping you through the story, and this Japanese guide can fill you in on the details for all of the items.

I am going to play part two next. I can already see that they fixed a couple of things I didn't like about part one, so I'm excited to see how it goes!

[gbapalyer]

great review. i also like the game very much. what pissed me a little bit, is how the characters walk. it feels very slow, as if your characters react too slow to your input command in a direction they should walk. feels awkward. otherwise i enjoyed every bit of that RPG, part 2 is equally good.

you should try part 2 next. ;)

[ParanoiaDragon]

I wonder how the SFC version of Tenshi no Uta compares, maybe you'll get a chance to play that sometime.

[gbapalyer]

the SFC Version is part 3. i played through it. great game but it only lasted for around 10 hours...

[NightWolve]

Great review. I never noticed this in the RPG lineup of the system.

[SamIAm]

Great review. I never noticed this in the RPG lineup of the system.

Thanks. Actually, according to many Japanese reviews, part 2 in particular is one of the best RPGs on the system, and I can believe it. I know from the start the the cutscene art is much better (and the cutscenes themselves more frequent) and the inventory is shared. It looks like there could be more character development and a grander plot, too...which could be a good or bad thing, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

In addition, the battle music is freaking awesome, which always helps.

On the other hand, I shouldn't let myself get too hyped up for it lest it lead to disappointment. Right now, the only sad thing about part 2 is that they used Ys III parallax in places.

the SFC Version is part 3. i played through it. great game but it only lasted for around 10 hours...

Is it really part 3? One thing I read while looking for information in Japanese is that the staff that made the SFC game is totally different from the staff that made the two on the PCE.

[ParanoiaDragon]

the SFC Version is part 3. i played through it. great game but it only lasted for around 10 hours...

Part 3?  Well that's a bummer!  Gotta love it when they make a game or 2 on 1 system, then make the sequal on a different system!  It's like Splatterhouse on the Turbo, & Splatterhouse 2 & 3 on the Genny.  I'm sure there's others that I can't think of at the moment.  I know the Turbo got Burai 1 & 2, but the Sega CD only got the first Burai, but, that's different to me.  It still sucks for Sega CD owners, but it's not quite as bad as switching systems for a continuation of a series.

Well, we know what we need to do!  Translate the first 2, & then port the 3rd!

[Lochlan]

The bugs really hurt the experience.  I had the game freeze on me ~10 times through in my own play-through.  The worst one was when it froze immediately after killing the boss.  Ugh.  Had to make my way through the final dungeon again to see the ending.

[SamIAm]

That sucks. The worst I had it was a freeze in the middle of a dungeon.

To anyone who ever plays this game, do make a habit of saving frequently.

[NecroPhile]

Nice review.  I'll have to move this one further up the ever growing pile of games to play.

[TurboXray]

My thoughts on Tenshi no Uta: the text is uncompressed s-jis .

[SamIAm]

Wow.

I started playing Tenshi no Uta II again (I had gotten a few hours into it before, but got side-tracked and never came back to it) and right away it is an amazingly slicker experience. The inventory system, the speed and battle options...even the screen transitions are optimized. It's nice when a sequel really improves things, that's for sure.

[xcrement5x]

My thoughts on Tenshi no Uta: the text is uncompressed s-jis .

Is that good for a translation patch?

[reno5]

Thanks for this review. I just bought both for 16$.

[NightWolve]

My thoughts on Tenshi no Uta: the text is uncompressed s-jis .

Is that good for a translation patch?

Yeah, he's noting that it's a good candidate for a translation project since it doesn't use a text compression algorithm. The biggest obstacle to translating video games is text compression algorithms and this one doesn't have it. However, the second biggest obstacle is proper font support and you still would need somebody as skilled as Bonknuts to do a font hack for say a fixed width 8 x 12 English font (like Ys IV).

[SamIAm]

Thanks for this review. I just bought both for 16$.

Wait, the total you paid was $16? That's a very decent price!

[reno5]

Thanks for this review. I just bought both for 16$.

Wait, the total you paid was $16? That's a very decent price!

Yes games where 6$ for both (a guy on ebay had a 1+2 pack) and 10$ shipping. I had to pay conversion to Canadian $$ so a total of 19.50$ canadian.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/221653634107?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

[Kid Fenris]

Tenshi no Uta is notable for being one of Kenichi Nishi's first games. He went on to found the studio Love-de-Lic and make intriguingly weird games like Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, L.O.L.: Lack of Love, Captain Rainbow, and Chibi-Robo.

Also, Tenshi's ending is such a delightful downer.

[SamIAm]

At last, after a few years of wanting to try Tenshi no Uta 2, I have finally beaten it. Having completed the first one as well, I can now say that I have a pretty good idea of what the Tenshi no Uta games on the PCE are all about.

If you want to know the basics of Tenshi no Uta's system, take a look at the OP, because I don't think I need to go over it again. All I'll say here is that the sequel is built just like the first game. The view is a little zoomed in and there are more playable characters, but otherwise the game engine and the gameplay alike are unchanged.

To cut to the chase, my verdict on this one is that it's also very good, but I'm actually very torn about whether I should say it's better than the first. That's what I want to focus on here: comparing the two games.

What's amazing to me about Tenshi no Uta 2 is that nearly everything I bitched about in the first game is fixed. The item inventory is now shared instead of being character-specific, so you'll be spending way less time futzing about in the menu. The enemy encounter rate is lowered a little, to just the point that it never causes irritation or discourages exploration. The major freeze bugs are now fixed, thank god. Also, the cutscene art now looks much better, and the soundtrack doesn't feel quite as repetitive. Even the NPCs in towns are saying a bigger variety of things. There's also no longer any forced grinding toward the end, because the last enemies are easier and the last equipment is cheaper.

Heck, about the only problem left is that you can still kind of space out during ordinary battles, but that's not really such a bad thing. Being easy and fast paced is one of the main appeals of the series. Unlike the first one, there's really nothing in Tenshi no Uta 2 that's going to irk you while you play.

But for all the little flaws that the first game had, Tenshi no Uta 1 somehow managed to have a bit more charm. Part of this is context; I think Tenshi no Uta 1 was a cooler game in 1991 than Tenshi no Uta 2 was in 1993. But another part of this has to do with continuity and payoff in the two games.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

You see, in Tenshi no Uta 2, you look at a world map, you hop from place to place, you open everything up, you finally get an airship to travel anywhere like the awesome adventurer that you are...and then you leave it all behind. Two-thirds of the way through the game, you go to a new world, and you never return to the first one. You literally just warp to an utterly different dimension and start a new map all over again, and not for a particularly great narrative reason, either. That's where the game ends, too. What happens, then, is a big disconnect: you kind of forget about the first world, and you never grow too attached to the second world. Tenshi no Uta 1 didn't do this. In that game, there is this sense of accomplishing a grand journey and being intimately familiar with this one big world as you come to the end of the game. However, that feeling is essentially gone in Tenshi no Uta 2.

Another issue is that they steered the focus slightly away from world and dungeon exploration and put a little more time toward character and story development. In concrete terms, there's simply a bunch more characters and dialogue. This isn't necessarily a bad idea, but aside from the speedbump I mentioned above, the characters themselves still don't develop much. I'm not a fan of drawn-out broody character backstories or anything, but when you're spending time on dialogue, it's nice to tell us more about a character than his job description, you know?

Here's the most obvious example of what I mean. Watch Tenshi no Uta 2's opening cutscene. What do you expect to see in this game? A love story, right? You expect to see some drama between the characters, with themes like developing trust, overcoming misunderstandings, revealing feelings, dealing with jealousy, and stuff like that, right? Well, sorry, but that's just not what happens. There are whiffs of this kind of drama here and there, but nothing worth mentioning really materializes. The main characters mostly just deal with bad guys and make chit-chat.

The first game was like this too, don't get me wrong. But the story in the first game also had a lean efficiency to it, like it was there to give you an excuse to explore the world. When they invested in more dialogue in the sequel, I don't they made a good trade.

One more personal gripe: see that heavenly floating island in the title screen? It's there in both games. In the first game, you visit that place toward the very end, for maybe only 15 minutes or so, and it's a very memorable moment. You really want to spend more time there. In fact, I bet you that anyone starting the second game is ready to be there for upwards of a few hours. Well, guess what? You never see it. It's not even in a cutscene. I have to say, that was a big let down.

At least the final boss music was pretty damn catchy. It's a remix of the main battle music, which is also quite good.

That's really about all I have to say. In conclusion, this game is way less annoying than the first one, but it also doesn't quite have the same impact. Honestly, if I were going to replay one of them, I'd probably go for the first one. The second one is far from bad, though, and anyone who liked the first one will enjoy it.