[Before I start with the goofs: What happened in Orlando today was truly horrific and I hope the US can figure out a way to stop those incidents happening on the reg. This year's been plenty scary and awful and stupid in various quantities already, but the deaths of four dozen (and counting) people easily surpasses all of that in sheer shittiness. Stay safe out there, and please do whatever you can to help if you're local to the area.]
Hey folks, welcome to the first of a four-day series I do every year to combat the fatigue of the E3 season. While I'll be there in the chat watching every conference and after-show livestream with the rest of y'all, I tend to get tired of E3 hype very quickly. It's no secret to anyone who reads my output that I'm not the most... well, "current" video game critic on the block, as I tend to take my sweet time getting around to anything significant. My goal is to approach everything in due time with as fresh a perspective as possible, and so I tend to avoid a lot of news and previews and reveals and really anything beyond the Quick Looks produced by the staff.
Which is why I look to anything that can help take my mind off E3 when there isn't a stream happening, and potentially helping anyone else in a similar situation, by creating a blog series that lasts the entire length of E3 but has very little if anything to do with the event itself. In this case, I'll be Let's Play-ing a JRPG Squaresoft put out almost twenty years ago this month: Rudra no Hihou, or Treasure of the Rudras.
Rudra no Hihou has the distinction of being the last Squaresoft game developed for the Super Famicom (SNES to you or I) before Squaresoft would depart in a huff to the Sony PlayStation in a now legendary fracas with Nintendo after their plans to create a CD-based format for their next console fell through, and after they'd already given Sony the means to produce a competitive CD-based console with the abandoned plans for a Super Famicom/SNES CD peripheral/add-on to compete with the Sega CD. Squaresoft wouldn't develop another game for a Nintendo platform until 2002's Chocobo Land: A Game of Dice, a Japan-exclusive Game Boy Advance port of a PlayStation 1 game. (I should state for the record also, that the last game Square published for the Super Famicom was Sting Entertainment's Treasure Hunter G, which was released a few weeks after Rudra.) Chronologically speaking, Rudra no Hihou (April 1996) occupies a space between Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (March 1996) and Final Fantasy VII (January 1997). Sitting between two stone-cold classics like that, you might expect Rudra to be one of Square's great forgotten classics, hidden behind a language barrier due in part to the game's innovative text-based magic system which I will absolutely get deeper into in due time.
Well, sorta. The game's director was Akitoshi Kawazu, who Square fans might know as the divisive project lead behind Final Fantasy 2 and the SaGa games that followed; a director who tends to put innovative and complex gameplay and character development systems front and center regardless of how much fun to play they might actually be. USGamer's Jeremy Parish wrote up a wonderful profile of the guy on his site, and how his obsession with creating distinctive RPG mechanics often put him at odds with fellow Square developers and Square fans alike. It's fair to say that, especially within the notoriously formulaic JRPG genre, a little bit of eccentricity can go a long way towards endearing yourself to the genre fans with enough patience to figure out what the hell you were going for with whatever hopelessly oblique systems you came up with this time. What piqued my interest more was the involvement of composer Ryuji Sasai, whose previous project was the unjustly underrated soundtrack for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. I've been wanting to jump into Rudra with the volume up and with no idea of what to expect for a while now, and E3 seemed like the perfect time to do it, even though I seriously doubt I'll get too far into the game before the four days are up. The game is scenario-based, like many of Squaresoft's late 16-bit RPGs (1995's Romancing SaGa 3 and Seiken Densetsu 3/Secret of Mana 2, for instance, or 1994's Live-a-Live), so I'm hoping I can just squeeze in the one scenario and come back for the rest at a later time. Before I start though: a big shout-out to the Aeon Genesis fan-translation group for performing the impossible and translating this game with its text-based magic system intact. I can't imagine the scripting difficulties that challenge presented.
Part 1: No, Really, What's a Rudra?
(Note: To avoid giant image dumps that'll take your browsers a few seconds to sort out, each of these parts will be behind a spoiler block. There's about twenty images per "part", and they're in a relatively svelte PNG format with an increased resolution.)
Typical Squaresoft plot so far. It actually doesn't give a whole lot away yet, simply that the big G is a stand-up guy. Like I'm going to believe that for a hot minute.Take, for instance, these guys. The Danans (bald wizards?), Merfolk (fish lady), Reptiles (melty Godzilla over there) and the Giants (facepaint Fabio) were races that occupied the Earth for a time, but all vanished. Why? The game doesn't suggest a reason yet, simply that it "shit happens".They were replaced, in time, by mankind. These four faces are actually significant, and we'll find out why in a moment. Now you might think that the translation group put together some ghetto-ass early 2000s Photoshop rendition of the original title screen, but it's actually super close to how the original looked (visit the wiki page to see what it looks like). So then it's time to name our hero. I really can't think of anyone who personifies the reckless and brave warrior archetype than our very own VBomb. Hopefully someone will give him something more substantial than a statue arm to swing around.Brad was a wizard once for GOTY, right? "Wizmaker" is a good way to honor that FMV buffoonery, and doesn't have any sort of possible second meaning whatsoever.Token lady means I've been stopped dead in my tracks to name everyone after Giant Bomb staff, though she is a DREWidess so I went with a feminine anagram of Drew's surname. Sclonna sort of sounds like Schala, of Chrono Trigger fame, but it also sorta sounds like an unfortunate medical procedure.A Squaresoft thief with a heart of gold? During E3 season? There's no way I couldn't use this name, the eight character limit be damned.And herein lies our first big decision: Which scenario to pick? You'll notice that there's a conspicuous gap at the bottom and no means to play as the thief yet. I suspect the two absences are related, and that I may have to beat these other three scenarios before it shows up. We're starting with VBomb's scenario, because it's probably going to be the most straightforward and I need to ease myself into this game if Kawazu's behind it.VBomb's introduced as a knight of the castle of Cryunne, one of several that have been hunting members of the Rudra Cult. No-one's quite sure what they're up to, so capturing a cultist for interrogation's a big deal. Turns out it wasn't the knights, but the imaginatively titled heroine Foxy, who captured the cultist.Doug is actually Vbomb's brother. The translators didn't turn him into a jock or anything. Bro.This is the first screen you can visit once you finally have control, and the books here just give you some simple combat tips from the perspective of a knight. It's non-intrusive tutorializing, and I sorta like how incidental it is. Your first instinct in a library is to check the books, right? I mean, unless you think the game has too many words in it already.Foxy's the daughter of some noble and a bit eager to prove herself a fighter. I guess when you get called Foxy, you have a lot more work to do to avoid a career where you beat up other girls in a bikini.This comes up a few times. The Tower of the Valiant is a continent-wide contest of something or other involving swords and battles, and with the castle's legendary captain missing Vbomb's stepped up to the plate as Cryunne's entrant. The game also mentions a few times that the contest is four days away, and the time matters a great deal in this game for reasons that will become apparent shortly.All right, for the sake of not turning this into a running gag: The in-game Rudra is a world-destroying deity that awakens every four thousand years like a big reset button. In our world, Rudra is an aspect of Shiva in the Hindu/Buddhist religion who pretty much is just as badass. Squaresoft loves their eastern theism.The King calls us in to tell the player what's going on, throwing in the surprise that Vbomb's friends Rostam and Huey - we just saw them drag in that cultist - will be competing with Vbomb for the contest. What's more, Foxy has been volunteered as our comrade-in-arms. I'm not sure how the contest works, but apparently we can have help? Maybe the King isn't as confident in Vbomb as we would like.But first! Drama! The cultist manages to get out and the chase is on. Could this have been the Cult's plan all along? Why didn't we think to lock his jail cell, more's the point?
Part 2: I Finally Leave the Castle
Last time, on Rudrantics: We're still in the prologue, folks. Nothing too exciting has happened to the stalwart if reckless soldier Vbomb quite yet. But that might soon change...
We (briefly) visit the town of Vod, adjacent to the castle. We're On Demand elsewhere though, as we discover the cultist passed south through the town.The world map. I can tell, because I'm suddenly towering over the town I just left. As long as it isn't one of those games with random encou-Well, all right then. Fortunately, my knight dude vastly overpowers these guys. I guess what else is there around here to train on?Sweet. I'll cook some pasta when I get home, then.Those knuckleheads. This here's the Tower of Giants, and... wait, I'll just let this ominous disembodied voice explain:That Dr. Muench. What a scream that guy is. You might remember the Giants from the intro: they were one of the ancient and extinct races and managed to not make the playoffs for the fourth year in a row. What is Coughlin even doing?Oh here we go. It's always the humans' fault that carbon emissions are so high. Look, JRPG hair doesn't just happen without a huge amount of aerosolized product, you know...Well that's a downer. And that's the game's impetus in a nutshell: each scenario occurs concurrently and is based on days, which pass after story events rather than resting at inns or some real-time timer to worry about. Scenarios even overlap, having characters appear at different points of different characters' storylines. Importantly, though, we only have sixteen days to save humanity from the Rudra's next visit.Of course, there's some mystical gem business at the core of all this, and Surt here managed to beat us to it.Acquiring the gem from a fossil on the top of the tower (how did it get up there?), Surt manages to power-up. I'm getting some pretty strong antagonist vibes from this fellow... We show up on the tower's summit just as the cultist gets thrown off by the enormous enraged giant throbbing with eldritch magics beyond our comprehension. Vbomb's first instinct is to attack. Glad I picked the right name.I'll have to see if "bigods" actually refers to something or is just a typo. Bigods presumably swing in at least two mysterious ways.I already love the sprite work in this game. I mean, it's very late SNES era, so expect it to be fairly good.You have zero control over this fight, but it seems to be going surprisingly well for our heroes. They manage to lop off the giant's hand, at least. The one holding the ruby it stole from the statue.The ruby manages to embed itself in the hero's eye as the other knights lie unconscious, so maybe it's something of a Pyrrhic victory.A depowered Surt is definitely out of sorts, now that he's down a godlike power and a hand. Somehow, Doug is here.Did you notice that Vbomb had an eyepatch during the pre-title screen sequence? Because I didn't until I started uploading these screenshots. Nice touch.So yeah, the gem "chose" us by burying itself in our skull. I can't help but feel this might not be an entirely positive development.At which point, Surt decides to split, shoving the two comatose figures of Huey and Rostam off the tower in the process. It's, what, only a 100 foot drop? They're probably fine.We don't get to find out though, as the tardy Doug and Foxy drag our cycloptic unconscious form back home to Vod to rest for a while. Well, if we're in Vod we can always watch it later.And here's where we'll leave it today. After this begins the first "day" of Vbomb's storyline, where I'll get more control and start playing the game proper. Expect there to be fewer story screenshots going forward - the start of every JRPG is always a big and sorta dry info dump. Like, say, how do we save the world? Where did our friends go? We still need to prepare for that Tower of the Valiant contest, right? What does it mean that we have this Rudra ruby in our eyesocket?And how the hell does the magic in this game work? We'll find out the answers to all of these questions tomorrow. Until then, enjoy the first day of E3 and I'll see you all soon!
