Babel

[termis]

And on to my next review of a J-RPG that I've yet to hear much about from others -- Babel.

I had some high expectations for this game, since Telenet has produced some other excellent RPGs.  From what I understand, the story has quite a bit of religious tones to it (if you haven't noticed from the title).  Essentially, you're in some distant planet that sorta looks like a post-apocalyptic type world.  This world was created when earthlings lost control of their spaceship and landed here.  They go on to teach their advanced technology to the people, and along the way, deify themselves to the people of their new planet.  Few hundred years pass, and you're some rambo-type guy who rescues some girl being kidnapped by soldiers.  And of course, this girl is no average girl, and you are swept into this storyline.

In the game, you use modern weapons to fight against your enemies, which I though was really cool.  However, the encounter rate is on the ridiculous side -- you are caught in a fight between 2-4 seconds of walking, and what really is annoying is that you don't gain much from fighting.  There is no experience system, as your characters level up only depending on where you are in the storyline.  You do get money from fighting, but not much, and you're never really in need of much money anyway.  In fact, towards the latter part of the game when you can easily run away (about 3/5 in to the game), I ran away from all my peon fights.  In addition, the there is pretty cool fighting animations, but it has to constantly load the animation from the CD, which is a drag.

Decent graphics & sound for an RPG.  Cool enemies and characters.  The overworld isn't big, but the towns are huge.

One thing -- this is NOT an import-friendly RPG.  Unlike some import RPGs where you can only go to one or maybe two other spots at a time, you can go to multiple towns/places in this game, and you have to search through these huge towns & talk to the right people to advance the storyline, so if you don't know exactly where to go next, you can be wandering around aimlessly for a long, long time. 

I'd guess that it took me around 17-20 hours of gameplay to complete the game.

Less loading time during battles, as well as less frequent, but a more meaningful, battle encounters could've improved this game tons.  It does have a rather good storyline, but if you don't understand it, the gameplay alone may not keep import RPG players playing this game for a considerable amount of time.


Japanese faq site here -> http://rko.jp/babel/index.html

...
Moving on to my next obscure RPG -- I'm thinking about either the Nekketsu Legend Baseballer (a baseball(!) RPG), or some other wacky title.

[GUTS]

Yeah that game seemed really cool, but I quit after about an hour due to the language barrier.  I absolutely HATE huge towns in RPGs, they're no fun at all.  How were the cinemas, was the ending at least pretty cool?

[Keranu]

From what I recall, Victor Ireland gave this game a pretty bad review in Turbo Play, but it always looked cool to me.

[TurboXray]

My friend ordered this game when I ordered Legend of Xanadu. He finished Babel and I finished LOX and then we traded, but neither of us got around to finishing the others game.

[termis]

How were the cinemas, was the ending at least pretty cool?

Yeah, I'd say so.  Cinemas are on par with something like Valis series (another Telnet series), which is to say it's pretty good.

And especially for its time, the game really has some adult-themed stuff, including sex, and more serious violence (i.e. one of the innocent-sweet-charming type characters getting their face shot at point blank range - well, you don't actually see it, as the screen scrolls side to the gun and then he pulls the trigger, but it's still just as effective on your mind.)

[ccovell]

...you can go to multiple towns/places in this game, and you have to search through these huge towns & talk to the right people to advance the storyline, so if you don't know exactly where to go next, you can be wandering around aimlessly for a long, long time.

Does anybody seriously like this type of game?  And yet they keep on buying them...   

[NecroPhile]

Does anybody seriously like this type of game?  And yet they keep on buying them...   

I do........... if they're in English and characters give decent instructions so that I know where I'm supposed to go.  Otherwise, they're too damn frustrating to be much fun.

[Tatsujin]

funny game and such common in here. have about 6 copies meanwhile.

[gbapalyer]

i started the game on saturday. the first city is very big but in my opinion its ok. i just finished the big city riddle in 2 hours.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I like this game, but its a pain in the ass because I don't read Japanese so goodlike.


This was one of the first Japanese games I imported.

[gbapalyer]

i can only read hiragana and katakana and around 40 kanji so far. ;)

[gbapalyer]

after finishing the big city in the beginning, where do i find the first dungeon and progress the story?
japanese guide says something about "forgotten valley" and "tower of eni"

anybody has a guess??

[seieienbu]

I really like the art style the game has going on.  It's different from, well, everything else on PCE at the very least. 

I don't know if I'll ever give it an honest go, sounds too much of a pain to actually get through.  How much does the game compare to, say, Kaze no Denestsu no Xanadu?  I swear, I just got to a point in that where I'd speak to everyone twice, wait fornight fall, speak to everyone twice, kill all the monsters I could find, speak to everyone, and essentially just solve the game via exhaustion method...