Growlanser 2 & 3- official
Growlanser 2&3 is the latest offering from the oft reviled Working Designs. For those of you who are oblivious of what GL is, it’s one of the most popular SRPG series in Japan, and its legacy is just as rich than that of series like Shining Force and Fire Emblem.
The strategy RPG genre was created with Nintendo’s Fire Emblem, but much of the inspiration for many of these games comes from Sega’s Shining Force series. Yes, FE was the first game to bring the turn based strategy and role playing genres together, but it focus is drastically different. The former has you fighting battle along a huge, sprawling landscape, giving you dozens of units to help you carry out your designs. Sega’s game on the other hand, is more of an amalgamation of chess and RPGing. Your army usually consisted of no more than a dozen troops, and most battles took place in relatively small environments.
Masaya’s Langrisser series(which is the unofficial predecessor to GL) , which revolved around the struggle for sword of the same name, has some elements from both series(actually, Langrisser was released 2 years before the first SF, so it might have been a source of inspiration for that series) and managed to fairly well in carving its own niche in the genre.
Langrisser/Warsong
http://www.genesisproject.co.uk/Genesis/U-w/Warsong.gif
The Genesis version of first Langrisser was(and only game in the series to be) brought to the states by Treco as Warsong. For whatever reason this game never got the acclaim it deserved, and was completely forgotten by Genesis fans and S RPG buffs alike. Wasn’t this first S RPG to be released domestically?
Unlike the myriad of me too strat RPGs that have one single protagonist controlling his army of spunky kids with bad haircuts setting out to save the fair maidens and whatnot, this game had you allocate your troops among multiple commanders.
Another distinctive aspect of this game is that it gave special importance to positioning your troops according to battle field terrain. There was no way in hell that a bunch of ground troops could storm a pack of archers on higher terrain. If you’d try such silliness, all of your troops would probably be torn to pieces by a fierce barrage of arrows. And to add insult to injury, this game would force you listen to listen to digitized fatality voice overs that were roughly about the same quality as those in Golden Axe 2.*cringe*
All in all, Warsong was a great game, but it wasn’t without its errors. The flaw that got to my nerves was that enemy troops were often more willing to throw away their lives than Kamikaze pilots in WWII did. And their suicidal stupidity hardly inflicted any damage to you, they’d simply rush into your commanders and archers, as if they had nothing to lose.
This game is also available on DOS, PCE, PS1, and the Saturn.
Langrisser 2
http://www.genesisproject.co.uk/Gene...w/Warsong2.gif
I haven’t played much of this game. My thoughts on the remake are down below.
Der Langrisser
http://www.boomspeed.com/zenogaga/DER.jpg
This game was a remake of Langrisser 2 and and saw the light of the day on the Jap SNES. Generally more polished gameplay, and the ability to choose your own alignment really made this the coolest 16 bit Langrisser. If it weren’t so easy that my Cat can probably plough through it without being killed at all, it would probably be able to top Shining Force 2 and Fire Emblem 4.
I believe that this was also ported to the PC FX.
Langrisser 3
http://www.ncsx.com/lang3a.jpg
The next game in the series was released for the Saturn. It supposedly has some heroine selection system that affects your path in the game.
Langrisser 4
Released for the Saturn and PS1.
Langrisser 5
Likewise. Sound track is done by the guy who worked on Lunar/Grandia/ ESP.Ra.De.
Langrisser: Dramatic Edition
The first 2 games on one CD.
Langrisser: Millennium
http://www.wolfgames.com/dclang.jpg
The developers strived to rejuvenate this series by giving it a radical new direction. A new direction that involved ripping off Dragon Force and making an extremely poor game in the process.
Langrisser: Millennium WS
I can’t find any screens right now. I’ll upload some when I’m in the mood.
The Wonderswan game is much better. It plays just like the older games from what I’ve seen.
And now to the Growlanser series…..
Growlanser
http://www.boomspeed.com/zenogaga/grow-02.gif
http://www.boomspeed.com/zenogaga/grow-01.gif
Much of the staff who worked on the first 5 games left off to form Career Soft. The GL series retains much of the charm of the original series, while managing to improve on them in a multitude of ways. The combat is the most interesting aspect of these games, it’s supposedly a hybrid of orthodox S RPG battles and real time combat. Fans of this series say that this games combat dims that of conventional games in the genre, just as how Panzer Saga kills Final Fantasy.
This game was released for the ps1, btw.
Growlanser 2&3
http://www.rpgfan.com/pics/growlanser2/logo.jpg
http://www.rpgfan.com/pics/growlanser3/logo.jpg
http://www.rpgfan.com/pics/growlanser2/growl2-02.jpg
Working Designs is trying to bring this over, but supposedly keeps on getting shafted by Sony.
Growlanser 4
Yeah, it’s recently been announced. Taking into account WDs incredible speed, I doubt that they will have the time to localize it within this generation.
All art is done by Satoshi Urushihara, who supposedly is some prominent hentai artist in Japan.
