A while back I came across
this HG101 page on
Wachenröder, a late-Saturn TRPG I don't think I'd heard of. I wound up picking up a copy and playing through, despite it being very story-heavy and no translation patch existing. What does exist is
a translated written transcript on GameFAQs, and because of the game's entirely linear nature it's easy enough to use. I just kept the guide open while I was playing. Before I talk about the game itself, the FAQ intro is pretty interesting. The author had imported the game, but couldn't read any of the text. He was working in a university library and noticed a Japanese woman who was spending a lot of time there:
Glenn A. Rudy III said:
Since I too "lived" at the library I decided to make her acquaintance. I believe the first thing I ever said to Miss Yumi Makita was, "In Saturn Bomberman Fight!! for SEGA Saturn, one of the characters says 'ikimasu.' What does that translate as?"
The FAQ doesn't provide the translation for ikimasu, but apparently this was the start of a long-term relationship. Since she was interested in working as a translator, he suggested they work together to translate this game. At the risk of getting too invested in the lives of these strangers, I googled them and it appears they got married and had some kids, so good for them.
Anyways, Wachenroder:
Starring:
and
Set on this island:
The premise is that the island is surrounded by fog, nobody can get to anywhere else in the world, and the machinery sustaining the island releases pollution that causes terrible disease in a substantial portion of the population. The main guy Lucian, pictured above, has a sister with this disease. Seeking money to buy her medicine, he enters a fighting tournament and wins, but it turns out she has died while he was away. He swears revenge on the governor of one of the island's cities, Sword Emperor Duran. You might think the tournament would serve as a combat tutorial: it does not. Lucian goes to the tournament, and in the next scene he's coming back from it. The whole narrative is kind of disconnected like this - a lot happens offscreen. There's a scene late in the game where the heroes jump from an airship onto a train. There's an external shot of the train from above, text boxes come up with characters talking about making the jump, then it cuts to the party walking in on the guy running the train.
Anyways, Lucian goes to a bar, picks a fight with a couple of guys, and they take it outside. Meanwhile, outside the bar, Carroll (the woman pictured above) has been surrounded by a bunch of state goons who have just killed her companion. Lucian hallucinates that she's his sister, rescues her, it turns out she's also looking for Duran, and the game is away. I won't go in to the whole story, but it's an odd mix of grim and silly. The setting and aesthetic is pretty dark, but a very large chunk of the playable roster could be considered comic relief. Check out this guy:
This is Chemical, leader of a performance troupe who Lucian and Carroll rescue from thieves in the forest (speaking of which, the thieves have a leader who's invincible and seems like he's going to be a thing, but never appears again). The thing at the bottom left is his weapon. Some kind of laser cannon?
No, it's a giant ball that he rolls over enemies on. Also in the troupe are Fatboy Slim, a skinny dude who inflates into a ball when struck, and Idol Lace, seemingly a child in an animal costume whose special attack involves running up to enemies and pinwheeling her arms at them.
This dude is called Titus Groan. I guess someone on the team had read Gormenghast.
Anyways, here's a gameplay screen. My undoing with games in languages I can't read is often the menus, so it's good to have one that's pictographic. The options here are move, attack, act, and rest. Within attack you've got normal attacks and specials, and the actions are pull switch, something I never used (I think it's a quicksave or something), and heal. For some reason (sexism) all but one of the female characters can use heal and none of the male characters can. At the lower left are your action points, which are consumed when you move, attack, or act. Above the text is the heat gauge - all the weapons are powered and heat up when used. Attack too often, and they overheat, so you're limited in two ways. As the game goes on the AP cost of movement and attacking goes down, but special attacks still cost 50 AP (and 2nd tier specials, which you get at level 20, cost 70). You can also rev up your weapons - hold down on the d-pad while selecting an enemy and it'll move through power levels, which increase the damage done but also cause more heat gain.
Height and facing are also big factors in damage done. In the first of these images, the enemy is striking Lucian from a level below. In the latter, Lucian counters from above, doing way more damage.
But still not much by the standard of the game. This one, I think, is the outcome of Chemical's rolling ball special attack from a level above and directed at the side of the enemy instead of the front. So my tactic for pretty much every level was to get into a position to attack the enemy from above (or at least on level ground) and let them come to me. Because of the AP system, if you walk right up to an enemy you risk not having the points to attack them. Plus on their turn they won't have to walk up to you, so they can attack you repeatedly. Better to move to the edge of their range so that they approach you and run out of AP in the process. Usually moving to the edge of their range will be enough to make the enemies approach, but there are also levels where all the enemies rush at you from the start. In something like Shining Force, these would be the hardest levels, but in Wachenroder those are the second-easiest levels because you can set up a good defensive position (i.e., a high one where all your characters are facing the approaching enemies) and slaughter them. The easiest levels are the ones where you start on high ground - there's one in the middle where you're descending a stairway and you'd pretty much have to deliberately try to let an enemy get higher than you. Late in the game you come back through the same stage in the other direction, which requires a bit more throught, but actually it's a pretty easy game overall - I only had one game over on an early level where I knew there was a turn limit but didn't know what it was so I was rushing and overexposed my units.
I'm not sure it's a game I'd recommend - firstly it's kind of a hassle to play in English because it's not translated, and it's definitely not much of a challenge (the final boss almost got me, but I made a pretty bad decision early in the stage that cost me one of my stronger units and I still managed to win, so it's not that hard. Certainly looks challenging, because it's at the peak of a pyramid and doesn't move, meaning you can't use the usual "get above them" tactic), and the AP system while interesting on paper means that you're often issuing half a dozen commands to a single unit in a single turn which can get tedious. I did enjoy it, though.
The cover looks pretty nice, too. Left to right, I think that's Titus, Orange, Bellebete, Lucian, Carroll, and Duran, i.e. most of the non-silly characters in the game. And there's text in another language I can't understand. Google translate gives Wachenroder as "Guard harvester", which kind of makes sense, because almost all of the enemies are described (by the translation at least) as guards. You're fighting the state pretty much the whole way through.