There has to be something here I can hit...Let's Play The Sword of Hope

The correct path is west twice, south twice, and east twice.


That leads to this screen, where you need to HIT the rock to reveal the path. (This game doesn’t let up, even in its final bits.)




And notice this room’s available paths: You can go back up, or west. The R DOOR isn’t a choice. Going west? Sends you back where you came from.

It’s interesting how the game changes in its final segment (which is around a third of the game, I guess). The underground is much less about exploration to find useful things, and much more about mapping (in stages) to find the one true path that you can zip through in ten minutes on your final run. There are basically no NPCs, and no equipment upgrades. All of the puzzles and warps just function as things to waste your time and sap your HP and MP with more encounters. If not for the need to grind to beat the final boss, you could use a map to zip through the final dungeon in less time than it took you to solve Martel’s domain.


Let’s check out that door.




A pointed tool? The only thing that even seems to vaguely qualify is the RUBY. (Though I’ll admit, I had to spam my inventory in this room many, many years ago when I first reached it.)


Here’s the final Nintendo Power map.

And now, a brief departure. You’ll notice I’ve done all of this exploration at Level 23. Given that I’ve been fleeing from most encounters (for good reason—virtually every non-solo encounter includes a DRUID), this hasn’t been a big deal. But I’m pretty sure the final boss will demolish me like this.


So I go enter a password. A very special password.

A password that give me max XP, topping off Theo’s level at 31. Note that this requires more than tripling the XP I’ve acquired so for in the entire game.


These are the stats. Basically equivalent to getting another sword and armor upgrade, plus plenty more HP and MP. You can beat the game at level 25—heck, you could probably do it at level 23—but it requires the RNG being very, very kind to you. And I’m so close to being done with this LP, I just can’t handle the zillion retries that requires.

So, we’ll jump back to where I was, just before a final boss fight, but eight levels higher.


What a dusty room!


One final thing to HIT: The wall. Fitting, somehow.


It’s the dragon painting from the opening!

…crap. Hi, dad.






THE KING is a nasty opponent. He alternates attacking, casting XPLOSION2, and casting ARCTIC2. All three do significant damage. He also is fast enough to usually go first. Surviving this battle is basically a matter of alternating attacking and casting RECMAX. (Honestly, I wish there was more strategy to it, but attack spells don’t have any advantage over your sword arm and the stat-altering spells don’t have enough effect to be worthwhile.)


The only nice thing about THE KING is that he’s only got around 100 HP, so three solid hits can take him out. (At this level, that is. At lower levels you’ll be running on MP fumes by the end of the battle.)


But it’s not over!


The evil dragon returns to its body and attacks you!


As the archive LP of this game noted: The first round of this battle is the one, true place to use the TRTFRUIT. You’re probably running on fumes coming out of the battle with THE KING, and you don’t get a chance to heal or restore MP.


The DRAGON is, as you might guess, the true final boss. 255 HP and all that. It’s a strange sort of fight, though, because the DRAGON only does two things: Attack (sometimes doing massive damage, sometimes piddling) and cast RECMED (prolonging the fight in an irritating way).


When the DRAGON first injures Theo, this sequence occurs.


From then on, most of your attacks strike a vital part of the DRAGON—basically, your critical hit rate skyrockets for the rest of the battle.


After that, it’s again the fight, RECMAX, fight, RECMAX sequence you used against THE KING until the DRAGON is defeated.




The king wakes up, freed from the evil but apparently with no memory of his deeds while possessed—he’s not even sure who Theo is!






This sequence is kinda fun: It actually walks you through all of the screens between where you are and the exit to the mirror castle.

The fact that both the king and the magic painting were hidden—trapped, most likely—in the sealed room, in the hidden caves, in the magic mirror world, in the castle suck deep underground implies that the magicians are much more powerful than anything we see them do. Granted, these protections are probably the result of 15 years of work on both their part and that of other wizards who don’t help Theo directly, but the evil king and the dragon were both pretty damn secure and not really able to terrorize the land. If not for the proliferation of monsters, it might make more sense to put those wizards to the task of undoing the tree-transformations and forget about freeing the king at all.










The ending sequence wraps everything up nicely. With the dragon and the sword trapped forever in the destroyed mirror world and the king freed from evil influence, the kingdom is restored to its former glory and Theo’s deeds become a legend.

There’s no credit roll in the US version of the game; I’m not sure if the Japanese version has one.

Upon reflection, this is the sort of game that could get a fabulous remake and never will: If you smooth out the encounter difficulty and XP curve to reduce grinding, add a lot more descriptive text / interactive things, and (of course) re-do the graphics to modern standards, you’d end up with a game that could hold up to modern standards but still be in a genre that’s basically unique.

As usual, thank you all very much for reading and participating. I think I lost a bit of my motivation partway through this, because it’s been a super-long and involved LP and the participation part didn’t work as well as I would otherwise have hoped. I’m thinking I might take a little break before I do another one, rather than risk running out of steam mid-LP.

Until then, though, I hope you’ve all had fun with this particular bit of my Game Boy Youth!

Nice job on the LP, Beowulf. =)

Great LP Beowulf. It's amazing how much they could pack into Gameboy carts even if they cheat a little with the landscapes and whatnot. This was still a really interesting game what with the mashup of adventure and RPG styles.

Thanks for the LP, I enjoyed it a lot. The last time I played it is years ago, so this was a nice journey back through a game I played very often as a kid.

This was a really entertaining LP of a game I had never heard of before, but now wish I had played. I got a Gameboy pretty late into the system's life (around the time Gameboy Pocket came out) and mostly played the big Nintendo titles, so I'm surprised at all the cool games I missed on the system.

Yeah, this was cool as I haven't played this since waaaaay back in the day.

Are you going to do the sequel next?

Good deal, thanks for doing this.

Thought it was interesting how the game combined RPG combat with graphic adventure-style puzzles and movement.

For that much effort, you might as well just create a new game. This game is basically "The Goonies 2 RPG," which is a really neat concept, but I don't feel like there's anything to the actual game outside of the genre mashup that bears revisiting.

Thanks for this great LP. Having never owned or played this game, I never knew this kind of game existed for the Gameboy. I really missed out back in the day...

Just read through this LP. It's a neat concept, attempting to combine a first person RPG with a point and click adventure, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I've got no interest in playing The Sword of Hope myself, but in the right hands a spiritual successor or game that draws inspiration from it could be pretty awesome. Preferably one with less useless gold, mimics, and repurposed screens.

Also how the plot boils down to doing random adventuring nonsense to get three magic pigeon eggs to power up your sword and save your possessed dad from a painting of a dragon is pretty crazy.

Congrats on another LP Beowulf!