It's a kind of miracle. Let's Play Legend of the Ancient Dragon PURSIVAL

Put your Let's Plays in here.
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Mirinae Software was a South Korean software developer from the late 1980's and 1990's. They released more than a dozen games, none of which seem to be well-known outside of South Korea (I can't speak to how popular they were in their own country), though at least some of them received US or European releases.

In 1996, they released "Goryong Jeon'gi Pursival" aka "Legend of the Ancient Dragon Pursival". This was the second RPG they produced, after "The Romance of Forgotten Kingdom" which never received a Western release.

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There was also a US version published in 1997 by JC Research. There are only two reasons I'm sure this US version ever existed: first, I had a copy about 20 years ago (it wouldn't work on my PC at the time, so I gave it to my friend who was excited about the "hot elven chick" on the cover), and second, there's one terrible "unboxing" video on YouTube where some guy just shows the jewel case on video and opens it up. Anyway, the cover of the English version just says "Legend of the Ancient Dragon" which is a far less distinctive title.

The version I'm playing is the European version published by Midas Interactive Entertainment in 1999 as part of their "Pocket Price Games" label. This one is equally hard to find anything about, but it was the literal only copy I could find on eBay, so here it is.

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The guy in the middle with the huge plate armor is the main character. Notice how his hair is dark brown on the CD, despite being blonde in the image above!

The back of the jewel case promises, "An epic Role Playing adventure, battle against the forces of evil, with the might of steel, strength and sorcery with you. Travel with your five companions and interact with other characters to help you progress through the story. Over 300 types of monsters. More than 20 magic spells."

Wow, did you hear that? It has over TWENTY magic spells! This is the good stuff right here.

Now, for reasons that are entirely unclear, the English release of this game does not have music. They just... didn't put it on the CD. Nobody knows why. There's more than enough room on the CD for it. And I can't find any trace of the music on YouTube or anywhere else. I've never even heard it. So I have no idea if it's good or not. The game does have sound effects, though I haven't been able to get sound support working well on my virtual machine. Fortunately, visually everything is completely fine and there are no problems at all.

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Like I said, it looks great!

Actually, getting this game to work in any capacity is quite the chore. It does not work at all on Windows XP or later, and it's extremely hit-or-miss on Windows 95/98, but it requires DirectX so it won't work on anything earlier. Additionally, it runs at an unusual resolution (320x216) so your monitor may not even support it. If it does, on some systems the game crashes when you open a menu, or the screen just becomes a garbled mess of pixels, or some combination of both, making the game completely unplayable.

Fortunately, it's behaving itself on the VM, aside from the sound effects. But yeah, this game is a mess.

What kind of LP is this going to be?

Seeing as this is a turn-based RPG with no music, and seeing as I don't have a good microphone anyway, this will be all screenshots. Additionally, I don't know how far I'll get in this game - it's extremely buggy and I've heard the English version may not even be winnable. But that's okay! Mainly this is an excuse to show off an obscure, glitchy mess with possibly the worst translation job I've ever seen in a commercially-released video game.

Does this game have branching paths, side-quests, or multiple endings?

Who can say? As far as I can tell, there's not a gameplay video or walkthrough to be found for this game. As of this post, I've done a test playthrough of the first few dungeons, and it seems to be fairly linear, but according to the manual on the CD:
YOU CAN PLAY TWO SCENARIO BECAUSE THIS GAME IS WRITTEN AS A MULTI SCENARIO GAME.
SO, YOUR SELECTION EFFECTS GAME DIFFICULTY! IT MEANS THAT YOUR SELECTED ROUTE WILL EFFECT THE PLAY
TIME AND DIFFICULTY OF THIS GAME! THERE ARE SOME REPEATEDLY ROUTES AND SOME ROUTES YOU CAN PLAY
BACK! AND SOME ROUTES MAKE DIVIDE THE SCENARIO DEFINITY.
YOU MAKE SURE THIS POINT AND PLAY!
So, hopefully that clears everything up!

PART 1 - THE BEGINNIG

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Let's get things started with a NEW GAME.

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So, right away we can see how rough this translation is going to be. As far as I can tell, Lotland, Roteland, Lortland, etc. are all the same place. We'll be seeing at least half a dozen different variations. I think "Lortland" is the most common, but it's close.

Also, I should point out that this text scrolls by QUICKLY. I had to record video and go frame-by-frame to get these screenshots, and also to be able to read any of this stuff myself.

So we have some terribly-translated exposition, in a funky-looking font, on a plain black background. Well, at least yellow on black is easy enough to read...

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oh for fucks sake

Well whatever. You get the idea. Pursival is a big, old, fearsome dragon who burninated all the peasants and did bad stuff.

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All right, I'll transcribe this one:
The imprisonment of Pursival was quite accidental.
During the period of Pursival's dormancy,
Human,elf,dwarf intruded into
the cave of Garuun
and imprisoned Pursival.
It's a kind of miracle.
After imprisonment of Pursival,
Each of them established their kingdom.
Five kindoms of Gromen,
Moss, Metara,Rutania, Rossrolien
composed lordland
Moss, which was called 'the Kingdom of Magic'
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Gelman, had strong troops
became the leader of lortland
Gelman, which was called
'the fantastical kingdom of the West',
was confronted with Moss, the kingdom of magic.
Rosslorien, which was controlled by elf,
went to war with Rutania, the kingdom of dwarf.
War clouds hang over Roteland.
War didn't come up to the surface
only because of Metara, the sacred kingdom.
If you had "Elves and Dwarves hate each other" on your RPG Cliche Bingo card, go ahead and mark that one off now.

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In the year 1302,
the Gelmen calendar,
The large-scale Dark-elf hunting
started in the whole Gelmen land
Dark-elf
who lived in the whole Gelmen land
was exterminated by the hunting.
In spite of wizzard Crrumunades' objection,
Philgran 19th
who insisted on the pureness of Gelmen
kept up with hunting for 10 years.
And in the year 1312,
the Gelmen calendar,
the hunting ended finally.
remaining
one sorcerer
and one dark elf...
Check off "evil empire hunting down magical beings" while you're at it.

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You know, this timeline was confusing enough before you decided to have two completely different calendars for no reason. Do these calendars have the same year length and are just 700+ years apart, or is it a whole different system? I don't know, and none of it matters. A few years ago, Gelmen killed off all of the dark elves except for one. There you go.

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Finally, history lesson over. Time for some real action: the first cutscene!

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To the left is our hero, Prince Blade. Coming in from the hallway is an unnamed royal servant.

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Or should I say, a "SERVENT" of the castle. And yes, everyone in this game SHOUTS IN ALL CAPS despite the intro clearly demonstrating that the game's font comes in both upper and lower cases. Maybe everyone in [Lort/Rote/Lot]land is just at that level of intensity.

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I'm going to guess this name is a reference to Pope Innocent III. If there are any parallels between this game and 13th century European history, I suspect they will be tough to wrest from this utterly heretical translation.

BLADE: MY FATHER SENT FOR ME?
WHERE IS HE?

SERVENT: YOU MUST APPEAR AT THE ROYAL COURT
AT ONCE.

BLADE exits the room and walks briskly through the north hallway, but is stopped by his sister...

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Himedes? Geez, could they have given a worse name than th-

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...oh. Oh no.

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GUARD 2: THE KING IS EXPECTING YOU.
BLADE: I KNOW.
GUARD 1,2: PLEASE SEE HIS MAJESTY IMMEDIATELY.

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BLADE: THANK YOU.
BUT FATHER, WHY HAVE YOU SENT FOR ME SO EARLY?
ISN'T MY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
IN THE EVENING...?

INNOCENTIS 3RD: YOU CANNOT PARTAKE
IN YOUR BIRTHDAY FESTIVITIES THIS YEAR.

BLADE: BUT WHY...?

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INNOCENTIS 3RD:BY ENTERINGTHE GARUUN CAVERNS
AND BRING BACK THE SEVEN JADE JEWELS WHICH LIE HIDDEN.

THIS IS DONE TO COMMEMORATE THE LATE KING,
KALANT II WHO PUT THE ANCIENT DRAGON
BACK TO SLEEP.

NOW, OFF WITH YOU, BRING BACK
HE JADE JEWELS AND PROVE BRAVERY TO ME AND THE PEOPLE!

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Yikes. So BLADE's birthday present is to go solo a monster-ridden cave while everyone else in the kingdom stays at home to have a jovial celebration. What the shit, Dad? He might as well just give his kid ten bucks and tell him to fuck off.

INNOCENTIS 3RD: HERE, TAKE THIS FOR YOU TRAVELS.

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BLADE:THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
I SHALL BE OFF AT ONCE.

INNOCENTIS 3RD: LEAVE RIGHT NOW...

Welp. Our princely hero departs the castle, forbidden to return until he collects the jewels.

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Dude, you better watch it with that "Our Majesty" crap. His Exalted Royal Highness King Pope Innocant Innocentis III doesn't seem like the type who would take that well.

What happens if we go back in? Do the guards stop us?

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Nope. Let's see what happens if go bug Innocantis a bit more!

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Wow. King-Pope-Dad is being the biggest possible douche to his son, on his own fucking birthday. What does this poor kid have to deal with on a typical day?

NEXT TIME: The journey begins!

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I've played a couple of (almost always) bad Korean RPGs because I just... I dunno, make bad choices. On purpose. But I can't say that I've played one that botched translation stuff this badly, despite apparently being a professional release. Or was this inconsistent with text formatting. Or managed to misspell basic words on the regular. Or spell names several different ways back to back in rapid succession. Or, well,
rujasu wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:04 pm
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Hey, uh, guys? The text box is... It's at the opposite side of the...

Nah, never mind. It's fine.

Honestly, compared to some of the opening text crawl it is, because I can at least read it without actively trying hard. Yellow font on a bright white background with no border around the lettering is terrible. Why would you ever do that. That's just mean.

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Rossrolien looks like they might have been going for “Lothlorien”, which I’m pretty sure is a Tolkien place.

This looks amazingly cursed and I love it already.

Well, this should be entertaining, though I hope that the game itself will be at least slightly interesting. Looking forward to barely comprehensible adventures in the great realm of lortlnad.

But seriously, how did they even manage to have multiple different spellings of a character's name in the nametags of that character's own dialogue boxes? This whole thing was definitely machine-translated, but apparently no one even even did the most cursory glance over the result to check whether at least the absolute basics came out somewhat coherent.
AweStriker wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:40 pm
Rossrolien looks like they might have been going for “Lothlorien”, which I’m pretty sure is a Tolkien place.
Might be worth a try to figure out what each of the garbled multiple-choice names was supposed to be. I'd guess the world's name is Lordland, if only because that's the only obvious option that actually has a meaning.

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I'm here for this purely because there's something adorable about a terrifying ancient evil dragon named Percival. Our dad's a colossal asshat, let's go make friends with Percy.

Stuff from the instruction manual

My copy of the game did not come with a printed instruction manual, but there are three different ones on the CD. There's an ENU_MA~1.TXT which I think is an English translation of the original release's manual (it says COPYRIGHT (C) 1996 MIRINAE SOFTWARE INC.), a CREDIT.TXT which appears to be a slightly-revised version of the same (JC Research Inc. is added after MIRINAE) and a smaller README.TXT which seems to have been added at the last minute (Copy right 1997 ALl right reserved by JC Research inc.) So it would seem that the Midas Software version is just a reprint of the JC Research version released in the US, but I will say one thing I recall about the US version is that it came with built-in save files on the CD (seriously!). This version doesn't have any save files built in, so perhaps there were some changes.

Both versions of the full manual refer to the game as "THE LEGEND OF ANCIENT DRAGON FURSIVAL" (sic) while the readme calls it "THE LEGEND OF ANCIENT DRAGON" or "L.O.A.D" for short (great acronym!) Now, I'm used to seeing poorly-translated video games, but not being able to keep the title of your game consistent is really going the extra mile. Also, while I'm all about researching the origins of names and such, I don't think I'm brave enough to look up "FURSIVAL" on Google.

Anyway. The manual has a prologue synopsis which is different, but just as horribly-translated as the one in the game:
SPRING, 2032, MOSS KINGDOM CALENDAR.
THEY CELEBRATE SOME EVENT IN MAGIC KINGDOM MOSS BECAUSE OF THE COMING-OF-AGE CELEBRATION OF KING 'INNOCENTIS THE 3RD'`S SON, PRINCE BLADE.
ACCORDING TO THE MOSS TRADITION, PRINCE BLADE GO TO THE GAROON`S CAVE SEALED ANCIENT DRAGON AND FIND THE 7 JEWELS NAMED RAINBOW STONE!
THIS TRADITION ORIGINATED IN KARAND THE FIRST, SEALED THE ANCIENT DRAGON.
MOSS MAJESTY SHOWS THE BRAVERY OF THE PEOPLE BY THE TRADITION.
IT IS THE VERY DELIGHTFUL EVENT TO DECREASE THE HORROR FOR THE ANCIENT DRAGON 'FURSIVAL' IN THE LORTLAND PEOPLE.

THERE ARE 5 KINGDOMS IN LORTLAND.
THESE KINGDOMS` CREATION STORY IS RELATED WITH LEGEND OF ANCIENT DRAGON, SEALED AT GAROON CAVE, NAMED THE LAST DUNGEON.
MAYBE THESE KINGDOM WERE FOUND BY THE ANCIENT DRAGON.

AMONG OF THESE KINGDOMS, MOSS THE MAGIC KINGDOM, AND GROMEN AT WEST ARE IN ANTAGONISM EACH OTHER.

GROMEN AT WEST IS FAMOUS FOR HIS ARMAMENTS, ESPECIALLY HIS KNIGHTS NAMED THE KNIGHTS OF THE WEST FANTASIA UNDER THE EMPERER OF GROMEN. THESE KNIGHTS ARE KNOWN BOTH AT HOME AND ABROAD ALL OF LORTLAND.
THE KNIGHTS UNDER THE PHILGRAN 19TH MADE A NAME FOR THEMSELVES BY THE COMMANDER OF PERNAND.

ON THE OTHER HAND, PRINCE BLADE WENT TO THE GAROON CAVERN LIGHTLY, FACE UNUSUAL SITUATION
NO ONE CAN IMAGINE THAT HORRIBLE THING HAPPEN, EXCEPT ONE PRIEST, RUTANIA SERAPHINO OF RUTANIA AND THE QUEEN OF LORSLORIEN IN FOREST WITH ELVES, 'LADY LARA' ....
The manual specifies that you must have a 2X OR HIGHER CD-ROM DRIVE. I'm not sure why - the game installs to hard disk and can play without a CD in the tray, so the speed of your CD drive isn't really relevant.

On attributes:
THERE ARE SO MANY MONSTERS AND WEAPONS, MAGICS IN THE LEGEND OF ANCIENT DRAGON( L.O.A.D ), AND THEY WORKS IN THE CATEGORY NAMED 'ATTRIBUTES'

THERE ARE 4 ATTRIBUTES IN L.O.A.D. THESES ATTRIBUTES MAKE ANTIPATHY EACH OTHER.
IT IS HARD TO PLAY THE BATTLE, IF YOU UNDERSTAND THESE ATTRIBUTION SYSTEMS.
IF YOU DON`T UNDERSTAND THAT SYSTEM, YOU MAY HAVE QUESTION LIKE THAT
"STRANGE. I CAN NOT DEFEAT THE SO WEAK MONSTER!"
If you're wondering how to defeat the SO WEAK MONSTER, that's explained a little later:
MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ATTRIBUTS

THERE ARE MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ATTRIBUTES LIKE UNDER GRAPH.

WATER Ḃæ FIRE Ḃæ EARTH Ḃæ WIND Ḃæ WATER
So yeah, the formatting is messed up, but I assume it's water beats fire, fire beats earth, etc. Worth keeping in mind. And don't forget to check off "Four Elements: Earth/Fire/Wind/Water" on your RPG Cliche Bingo Card!

On magic:

Code: Select all

YOU CAN ONLY USE 12 MAGICS IN L.O.A.D.
THESE MAGICS HAVE TO GRAPHIC EFFECTS, MINIMUM EFFECT AND MAXIMUM EFFECT ACCORDING TO USER LEVEL.
YOU CAN RECOGNISE THESE EFFECTS BY THE MAGIC ANIMATIONS.

  MAGIC LIST
NAME                 ATTRIBUTE       RANGE          CLASS       MIN USING LEVEL     MAX USING LEVEL
NIXAS                   WATER      ALL RANGE      ALL CLASS             1                3
GAIA                    EARTH     INDIVISUAL      ALL CLASS             1                4
ICE CUTTER              WIND      INDIVISUAL      ALL CLASS             2                7
FIRE OF AGNI            FIRE       ALL RANGE      ALL CLASS             4               10
BLESSING OF             WATER     INDIVISUAL       WIZARD               13              13
APHRODITE
GRAND SHAKE             EARTH     INDIVISUAL      CLERIC                13              15
STORMER                 WIND       ALL RANGE      CLERIC                16              17
SARAMADEL               FIRE      INDIVISUAL      WIZARD                17              20
IGDRASUS                WATER      ALL RANGE      CLERIC                20              22
ANGRY OF EARTH          EARTH     INDOVISUAL      WIZARD                21              24
VACUUM CUTTER           WIND       ALL RANGE      CLERIC                22              26
EFREET                  FIRE      INDIVISUAL      WIZRAD                25              26
Hey wait a minute! The back of the CD clearly promised more than TWENTY magic spells! Now you're telling me there are only twelve? I am looking forward to casting some "ANGRY OF EARTH" though.

The way magic works is, you have scrolls and MP. You don't get to learn spells permanently, you have to be the right class for the spell, and a high enough level, and enough MP to cast it, AND you spend a scroll of the spell you want to cast. That's right: there is no way to cast magic in this game without spending a consumable item. Fun!

There are lists of items and weapons as well, but I won't spoil those.

Game controls:
ESC CALL THE MAIN MENU OR CANCLE
ENTER CALL THE MAIN MENU AND SELECT
SPACE BAR START THE DIALOGUE WITH N.P.C, SELECET THE OBJECT AND TOGGLE SWITCH
UP ARROW MOVE UP ARROW AND ATTACK IN BATTLE STATUS
LEFT ARROW MOVE LEFT ARROW AND USING ITEMS IN BATTLE STATUS
RIGHT ARROW MOVE RIGHT ARROW AND USING MAGICS IN BATTLE STATUS
DOWN ARROW MOVE DOWN ARROW AND RETREAT IN THE BATTLE STATUS
OK, this is roughly what you'd expect for keyboard controls on a console-style JRPG. There are also hotkeys:
F1 QUICK SCROLL
F3 AVOIDANCE THE BATTLE ON THE FIELD ( TOGGLE )
F4 FULL SCREEN MODE
F5 SMALL WINDOWS MODE
F6 DEFAULT WINDOWS MODE
F10 CHECK THE GOLD
DEL REMOVAL OF EQUIPMENTS
As far as I can tell, F4/F5/F6 don't actually do anything, at least in this version. F10 shows you how much gold you have (why not just put this in the menu?) and DEL is the unequip button.

F3 works though, and it is the greatest button in the history of all buttons.

You'll see why in the next update!

Freely being able to turn off random encounters? Pretty ahead of its time on that one.

Of course that's a pretty ominous promise right there.

Not only is the translation a trainwreck but it seems like the back of the case was lying about the game.
I've got a great feeling about this one.

I appreciate this showing how far machine translation has come, because I've used it for Japanese to English before and the results, although not exactly sterling, are at least way better than this.

Fursival seems to actually be a real name, but there are also a number of references to this game.

Being able to turn off encounters is nice, though.

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Oh no, Percy's a furry.

This game promises to be a glorious trainwreck :allears:

Black Robe wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 7:37 am
This game promises to be a glorious trainwreck :allears:
I'm about halfway through the next update, it should be up this weekend, but I keep getting sidetracked because I keep finding more bugs and general weirdness. Every time I play this game, I realize it is even more broken than I thought.

PART 2 - A RISKY ADVENTURE? SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!

Having been cast out of the castle by King Innocentis and his highly-questionable parenting skills, we're now in control. Let's open up the menu and take a look at our status.

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So, Blade is a knight in addition to being a prince. A level one knight with exactly one experience point. And no horse. Well, at least he should be well-armed, right?

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Sigh. Well then, let's wander about the town before departing. Maybe we can find a shop to spend some of our 1000 gold in. I guess King Incendiary couldn't be troubled to let his son visit the castle armory, or put some damn pants on before sending him off on this vital mission.

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So BLADE is 20, and I'm going to assume this is well before Lortland passed a minimum drinking age, so you know what that means: time to hit the pub! Let's get sloshed, and ask around about these caverns I guess.

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Nice name, Tud. Also, this guy is almost as drunk as whoever translated this game. He won't be any help to us.

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KERINE: SIR SHIKEE WILL SOON ARRIVE TOO,
AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE HOLY
KINGDOM.

Take note of what this guy dressed like a leprechaun has to say. I'm guessing METTARAH is what the opening crawl referred to as Metara. Shikee is a name we'll see later on.

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PUB: EACH OF THE NEIGHBORIN
COUNTRIES HAVE COME TO
CELEBRATE YOU BIRTHDAY!

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Oh good, for a second I was thinking the bartender's name was just Pub. Maybe it's his last name. He's Ian Pub.

PUB: BUT WHY ARE THERE SO MANY MERCENARIES
GATHERED HERE? AND SO MANY VAGRANTS TOO?
ONE OF THOSE BUMS OR JUST OMEONE

PUB: WHO JUST WANTED TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE
CAME IN AND SOUGHT A PARTNER TO GO
WITH HIM TO THE GARUUN CAVERNS.

BLADE: WHERE IS HE NOW?

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I never trust a man who is rinking by himself. But I suppose as long as we're here, we should talk to him.

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BLADE: THEY SAY YOU ARE LOOKING
FOR AN ASSISTANT.

GIURAN: I DON'T NEED A KID LIKE YOU!

Kid? BLADE here is 20, that's close to a senior citizen in RPG Protagonist Years.

BLADE: I NEED A TRAVELING PARTNER TOO.
DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO ENTER
THE GARUUN CAVERNS WITH YOU?

GIURAN: IF SOMEONE LIKE YOU GOES IN THERE,
THEY WILL SURELY DIE!

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So much for that. Let's leave this guy to his rinking. He has a portrait though, so I'm sure we'll be seeing him again.

After getting throroughly wasted at Pub's Pub, our still-naked hero stumbles into a random house and opens up a treasure chest. Hey, it's his birthday, don't judge him.

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We have a weapon! Also, go ahead and mark "the hero blatantly robs people's houses" on your bingo card. Now, still naked but armed with a single dagger, let us venture out into the world!

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Okay, so the world map in this game is shit. See the roads between places? Generally speaking, you have to follow those roads. Now, what if multiple roads go into a single town or castle? Can you get from one road to another? The answer is sometimes, if the game feels like it. I'll explain this more later on, but for now, there's only one place we can go. That castle at the bottom is Moss, and we can go into the forest just north of it. That big long path to the east is not accessible. So we'll check out the forest.

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Artemis is the name of a goddess from Greek mythology. So yeah, there's not much of a rhyme or reason to the historical and mythological references in this game, it's like they just picked them out of a hat. Greek goddesses, Tolkien characters, Roman Catholic Popes, they're all in the mix here. This is just a filler dungeon anyway.

And, with our first dungeon, you know what that means: it's time for some combat!

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Congratulations to everyone who had "the first enemies you fight are slime puddles" on the bingo card!

So, this is a turn-based game, no active battle mode, so we can take as much time as we like. The turn order is not quite what you might expect, however. In a nutshell, each turn, we choose a party member to do something, and then one of the enemies does something, and then it comes back to us. So even if we have four party members, we only get to attack with one of them each turn. Likewise, only one of those two slimes is going to hit us each turn. So naturally, most turns we'll be attacking with our best damage-dealer, or healing with our best healer, while everyone else gets to stand around and be a meat shield.

Each turn, we have four options. Attack, Magic, Item, Retreat. These do exactly what you'd expect them to, aside from the previously-discussed bullshit of magic costing both MP and an item.

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We beat up a couple of slimes, resulting in a VICTORY.

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If Blade takes too much damage and becomes Groggy, it's EXTERMINATION.

The purple slimes give you the Poison status. Poison is some serious bullshit in this game. Like in other console-style RPG's, it causes your HP to decrease over time. To cure it, you use an ANTIPOISON. However, there are a few things setting this game's version apart:

1. There isn't a very obvious indicator that you are poisoned. Blade doesn't turn purple, there's no flashing every time you take a step, the only way you know is by looking at the character's Condition:

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2. Outside of battle, you don't just lose HP every step - you lose it over time. This means you can lose HP just standing around after a battle.

3. If you run out of HP outside of battle, in most RPG's, you stay at 1 HP. Not so in Legend of the Ancient Dragon PURSIVAL. You hit 0 HP, you die on the map screen, and you get this lovely message:

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Fortunately, if you have too much difficulty beating the SO WEAK monsters, there is good news. You don't have to fight any battles in this game. Just press the F3 button, and you will stop getting encounters.

"But what happens when there's a boss fight?" you ask. "Won't my levels be too low?" Read what I said. Press F3, no more encounters. Not "no more random encounters" - no more encounters, period. If you would fight a boss battle, you automatically win and skip to the cutscene afterward. This means we could, if we wanted to, skip all battles for the rest of the game, leaving us to experience nothing but the story and the game's wonderful dialogue.

Seriously though, dungeons in this game are bullshit and turning encounters off is about the only sane way to get through some of them. But I do plan to fight all boss enemies and other scripted battles, and do enough random battles to show off the enemy types (and see if there really are 300 like the back of the box claims).

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Here we grab a Banded Robe. Equipping the dagger and the robe don't seem to have any effect on our attack or defense. Something about this is bugged, but I haven't figured out exactly what the bug is yet.

There are some other chests in the forest, but they don't have anything especially noteworthy.

Anyhow, despite Blade being a complete wimp at level 1, he only needs 9 EXP to level up, so let's get him to level 2. Even slimes are extremely dangerous when you have 15 HP, so I died a few times on the way, but after a few fights with just the blue ones:

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MUCH better. Leveling up once doubles Blade's HP, increases his attack slighly, and dramatically improves his defense. Also, the Banded Robe now apparently adds 1 defense, so it's 25 if he's naked. As far as I can tell, level matters a lot in this game while equipment tends to not matter very much. On the other hand, it's all so terribly programmed that it's tough to say for sure. Speaking of terribly programmed, let's venture a bit further...

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This pink-haired elf looks suspiciously like someone seen on the front of the CD! Let's talk to her.

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wait what the fuck

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Aaand now we're on the right. I tried to walk around her, and suddenly I teleported to the opposite side of her cart! Apparently we were meant to approach from the right side, even though that's not possible to do without... you know what, never mind. The cutscene continues normally from here.

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ABRAND: LISTEN, WILL YOU HELP ME?

BLADE: OF COURSE, I'LL HELP YOU!

BLADE: SO, THE WHEEL FELL OFF, HUH?

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Yeah, Blade is all about helping out Abrand here. I think someone has a thing for elves.

ABRAND: I AM REALY INDEBTED YOU.
FOR YOUR HELP,
I SHALL TELL YOU YOUR FORTUNE.

BLADE: FORTUNE TELLING?
I DON'T BELEIVE IN THAT STUFF!

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I just love how "ADVENTURE" is broken across two textboxes here.

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ABRAND: YOU MUSTN'T TRAVEL ALONE...
GATHER COMPANIONS FOR YOU JOURNEY...

BLADE: GATHER.. COMPANIONS..?

ABRAND: MUST GATHER COMPANIONS...

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BLADE: WOW... I SAW AND ELF...
I HAD ONLY HEARD OF THEM BEFORE...

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Yeah, I think Blade here has forgotten all about the Garuun Caverns and is now on a quest to get busy with an elf.

From here, we can exit the woods via three possible paths:

1. The volcano to the west
2. The castle to the north
3. The fortress to the east

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Please vote on which path we should take for the next update! Also, before I go, here's a brief video showing off the Giuran/Abrand glitch. In this case, I started a new game and didn't talk to Giuran in the pub, so you see his full dialogue in the forest.

https://youtu.be/60VoZHntNKE

Yeah, this game is a beautiful mess.

Once again, remember to vote for the path for the next update!

Honestly in a story heavy RPG where you can enjoy the writing and plot that "skip all battles" option would be a cool option.

This does not appear to be such a game.

I vote Path 2 to the castle to the north. The castle might have a store with equipment that actually does something.

rujasu wrote:
Sat Jul 04, 2020 12:57 am
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Ah yes, "I don't believe in fortune telling I do believe in excuses to get away from my stupid pope-king dad."

I guess equipment boosts stats by a percentage? Strange choice if true.

Being able to skip boss battles is definitely not something I would've expected the game to pull.

Anyways surely nothing bad could possibly happen at a volcano so I vote for path 1.

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I enjoy that our hero is called Blade; it sounds so martial but on balance it works for a number of professions. It's not too late to become a chef, Blade!

I vote we should go to the volcano, it sounds perfectly appropriate for a level 2 character.

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Volcanoes are always a good place to find Funtm but...
Reading Wyvern wrote:
Sat Jul 04, 2020 1:40 am
I vote Path 2 to the castle to the north. The castle might have a store with equipment that actually does something.
...my hoarding tendencies dictate this option. Must get more loot.

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Volcanoes are cool, and by cool I mean probably full of bullshit enemies that set you on fire. Let's do the volcano.

I think the castle looks nice, and in addition to possible equipment, could provide some opportunities for more scintillating dialogue. So far, I'm finding this pretty hilarious.

OK, the castle and the volcano are tied at 3... this actually works out fine for me, so I'm going to close voting now and get to work on the next update. Until then, something I forgot to show off last time: the Moss Inn!

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Yep, the innkeeper's animation is continous head-desking. I'd probably be doing that too if I was in this game.

Big 2020 mood from that innkeeper right there.

PART 3 - VOLCANO?

All right, the vote ended in a tie, so I'll cast the deciding vote: let's check out the volcano!

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Shortly after entering, we encounter some new enemies!

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Let's show 'em our Level 2 mettle!

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WELP

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So, uh, maybe we were not supposed to go that way.

Anyway, I know what you're thinking, and yes, we can totally press F3 here to skip battles. Surprisingly (or maybe not so much with this game) we can keep going until we get to a cutscene.

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Wait what the... who are you people?

All right, so clearly we did some accidental sequence-breaking here. As much as I enjoy that sort of thing, I'd like to keep things mostly on the rails for now, so we're going to back up here and go to the castle instead.

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Tandaniel is your typical RPG castle with a small town outside of it. Let's chat with the locals.

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This is probably just a terrible translation of "Baaa!" but I think this guy is up to something. Never trust lambs.

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Something we'll notice talking to townspeople here - the local ruler is "THE LORD." Probably would have been better to call him a duke, or a regent, something that would make it a little more clear that they're not all talking about Jesus here. "My lord" would probably be fine too, but everything just sounds off this way. Well, it sounds off for other reasons too, but you get the idea.

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Remember Shikee? Sounds like we'll be meeting him soon.

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RUMOR: 400 YEARS. ONE MUST HAVE A MAP
TO STEER THROUGH THE WINDING
LABYRINTH. DEKOKO HAS FOUND
THIS MAP AND HAS SINCE DISAPPEARED
INTO THE PASSAGEWAY.

All right, so Dekoko is THE LORD's wiseass kid who apparently grabbed a map his dad left lying around, and followed it to find buried treasure. So now he's lost. If there's a dangerous labyrinth under LORD's castle, shouldn't he have people guarding it or something?

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Apparently their plan was to send one out-of-towner in after the kid, and everyone else sits around crying until they both come back.

(Seriously every NPC in this castle and the surrounding town just says some variation of "OH MY POOR LORD!" - I cut out a lot of it.)

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BLADE: THE LORD'S SON?

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This must have been their pitch to Shikee too. "You're the kid's guardian, you are morally obligated to save him for us! No we will not help"

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EL: NOT LONG AGO, THE LORD'S SON
LEONARD DEKOKO DISAPPEARED INTO
THE CASTLE'S LABYRINTH.

A WEEK HAS PASSED, YET HE IS
NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. EVEN SHIKEE,
THE FAMOUS SERRAPHINO, IS HELPING

US IN OUR SEARCH. A HANDSOME
REWARD AWAITS YOU SHOULD YOU
FIND HIM.

BLADE: I ACCEPT. I SHALL DO MY BEST, BUT
NOT FOR THE REWARD.

EL: I APPRECIATE YOUR HELP AND
NOBLENESS. PERHAPS
THIS MAY ASSIST YOU.

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The Golden Wand is an accessory that raises defense. No, I don't know how that's supposed to make sense either. And once again we have an empty textbox with text floating above it. Looks great.

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EL: ONLY RECENTLY.

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So yeah, everyone in this town is fucking useless and wants random passers-by to fix their problems. I mean, that's RPG's in a nutshell I guess, but still.

Next Time: We fix everyone's problems, and we learn why the dungeons in this game are even worse than the translations! Hooray!

I was expecting horrible death from the volcano. I wasn't expecting horrible death to be literally the only obstacle however.

...Seriously, did anyone playtest this game?
(Yeah, that question probably answers itself)

:o
After all these years!! I got this game for my birthday, and no I do not remember which one but I fell in love with it... but the frustration it held OMG. I played quite far and got STUCK several times on different places. On one map that wasn´t displayed at your way until now I was not able to find the exit and on another one the game just crashed when trying to leave the place. I still remember trying several times to solve this or maybe find a patch but unsuccessfully. I will try to receive the CD that is somewhere at my parents house and try to play it again...
Until then you can maybe give an update on your progress?

Yeah, I haven't been able to beat the game (though I think I did get to the map that crashes the game, and it's possible to hex-edit your way past it) and honestly I was finding it to be a slog to keep playing this game to get screenshots. As much as I love the godawful translation, the game itself is not very fun to play. Also I do not really have the attention span to reliably complete LP's. There's a chance I'll be motivated enough to pick this back up, but don't hold your breath.

That said, if you do play the game, let me know how it goes. If you get stuck, I probably can't help much but feel free to ask anyway!

Yeah, i turned everything upside down to find it but unfortunately I was not able to retrieve it. I must have thrown away the CD-ROM because I knew it was broken -.- Curse Mari Kondo XD it did not spark enough joy he he...

I have literally been looking for this game for over 2 decades.
All I could remember before was this:
First monsters encountered are green slimes followed by blue slimes. First area themed as forest. Game begins with a knife as the players weapon iirc. Retail CD came in a standard jewelcase, shipped with save files, and caused a crash preventing progress when playing from a new game (might have just been a crash related to my hardware). Had grammatical errors.
I remember really enjoying this as a kid but due to the crashes I couldn't play too far. I'll definitely be getting back into this for the nostalgia.

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