Aurora Quest: Otaku no Seiza in Another World

[termis]

And next in line of the wacky & goofy Japanese RPG Reviews, we have Aurora Quest: Otaku no Seiza in Another World.

The plot basically has to do with you being stuck in some not-too-distant future where the women have taken over the world, and you are determined to "fight for the the rights of men, and regain the male gender's dignity".  As you can tell, the game obviously doesn't seem to take itself that seriously, and a lot of stupid humor is involved in the plot.  There is no shortage of a lot of strange, WTF-type characters -- Some of the stranger things you can see are things like an eclectic mix of the Salary-Samurai, ("Salaryman Samurai"), sailor-suit wearing oji-sans, cross-dressing singing trios, etc.  Strangely enough, the story all of a sudden becomes more serious after the first half of the game (of what I could understand, anyway).

Like Pack-in-Video's other RPG titles, the heart of the gameplay isn't anything revolutionary.  You have a party of three members, each member can equip all items, so you have a quite a bit of flexibility when choosing weapons/armor to equip.  They all also have a plethora of magic spells at their disposal.  The battle-encounter rate is a tad high, but each fight doesn't take too long, and the difficulty curve is set at a decent level -- enough challenge, but not too much grinding necessary either.  The game doesn't track the hours you put into it, but it's a full-fledged RPG.  Expect to put in anywhere between 25-35 hours, depending on how fast you want to take the game.

Even though there's nothing particularly special about the gameplay, the presentation of the game is extremely well polished.  Definitely the most well done of the 3 Pack-in-Video RPGs I've tried (the two others being KO Seiki: Beast Sanjūshi & Nekketsu Legend Baseballer)  The graphics, music, and cinema all are very well done, and holds its own against any other traditional RPGs I've tried to date on the PCE. 

As for the "importability" factor, I'd say it's on the intermediate-scale.  The game isn't completely open-ended, so you won't be stuck too long, but there are also a lot of weapons, armors, items & magic to be had in the game (though most of the weapons/armor/item are labeled with icons, so that helps to narrow that what kind of "item" it'll be).  If you have zero Japanese skills, there are definitely easier RPGs to get into than this one, but for those that have a few other J-RPGs under their belt and can at least read kana should be able to tackle this one, assuming you can make out the Japanese faq that I have on the bottom through babelfish or something like that.


More gameplay shots at Mobygames.
Japanese FAQ for the game here.

My other PCE game reviews:
Ane-san
Babel
Blood Gear
Cosmic Fantasy 1
Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes
Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes II
Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari
Iga Ninden Gaiō
KO Seiki: Beast Sanjūshi
Kūsōkagaku Sekai: Gulliver Boy
Nekketsu Legend Baseballer
Tengai Makyō: Itōryōdan
Valis I~IV
Xak I & II
Xak III

edit: link fixed.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Both Baseballer links, go to Gulliverboy, you might wanna fix that

[Keranu]

Another game with a name that I'm familar with, but totally have no clue what it's about. This game sounds hilarious and awesome! Thanks so much for the great review! I want to play it now!