Growlanser is a role-playing game released on 25 Nov 99 on the Playstation. The game was developed by Career Soft, the people who have brought us the Langrisser series of simulation-RPG games. Atlus (instead of the traditional Messiya) is the publisher of this title. This article is a review of the game. Please be forewarned that this article is written with a critical tone on some other RPGs.
One thing that Growlanser is not is an RPG with lots and lots of pointless random encounters to jerk up the total playing time. In fact, Growlanser consists of lots of "event battles", many of which contain some twist to distinguish them from the usual "party vs. enemy" affair. For example, you may have to defend certain NPCs, or you may need to move a character to a certain spot to perform some task while the rest of your party cover him. Wandering enemies are visible on the map, and can often be avoided. (They are much more easily avoided than in Grandia, since they don't chase after you.) Battles take place on the same map as the one on which you move your party around normally, and (event) battles occur in a variety of places, including in town. Unlike typical RPGs where battles are merely an unwanted obstacle, the battles in Growlanser do manage to be mostly interesting.
The battle system is a brilliant combination of real-time movement and turn-based actions (attacks, spells, and item using). The characters move around in real time, but there is a period of inactivity, called the "charge time", after making a physical attack or using (or equipping) an item, and before casting a magic spell. The length depends on the type of weapon (generally, the longer the range of the weapon, the longer the charge time) or the power of the spell. A spell is delayed if the caster is physically struck while the spell is being charged, so it is important to cover one's magic-users. Though there is the real time element in combat, the time flow is paused when the command menu is open. The menu opens automatically whenever a character has completed the last command you assigned to him (and also at the beginning of a battle), thus eliminating the "click-fest" problem prevalent in so many real-time battle systems. (You can also open the menu manually to change a character's action.) This means that the emphasis of the real-time battle system is not quick thinking or dexterous controls, but rather, the real-time system is adopted to provide better continuity and realism, and to make battles progress more speedily and smoothly. The battle system, with its interface, is quite well-designed. There may be some minor problems, such as a moving character taking a sub-optimal route, or a moving character attacking physically when the player does not intend him to, but these problems can usually be got around by designating movement in smaller steps.
After a sequence of starting events, the player's group becomes officers (agents) serving the country, and they have to fulfill a series of missions assigned to them. Each mission usually contains some adventure parts where you need to visit people and places, some event battles, and sometimes a trip to a dungeon. By completing the missions one after one, the player unveils the mysteries behind the evil forces plotting to take over the world. When you complete a mission, you will receive a vacation of 1 to 3 days. (The length depends on the contents of the mission and your performance in the mission, such as NPC survial rates.) On each day, you can choose to visit one of the vacation spots. Once there, you can communicate with your party characters (generally, 3 times per day) and improve your 'intimacy' with them. You will sometimes go through special vacation events, if you visit a party character in the corresponding town (usually the town of his residence). The mission system and the vacation system work quite well, in bringing an overall enjoyable gaming experience.
The story is quite good, with a similar scale and emphasis on military operations as the Langrisser games. Although the story is basically about the player's party saving the world from some ancient reviving evil figure all the same, both the party and their enemies do show some tact in their ploys: they usually try to get objectives accomplished through the most effective means, rather than always relying on brute force to get anything done. There are quite some unexpected twists in the story; it's not a straightforward no-brainer, and the player can't guess the rest of the story after seeing half of it. Meanwhile, the story writers have managed to maintain a logical story and world by laying down threads and keeping everything well-explained; we don't see someone suddenly turning psycho just for the heck of it, or some ancient evil menace suddenly popping out of nowhere.
The characters are attractive. They have got likable and convincing personalities, without anyone being annoyingly juvenile or stupid. For example, Wallace, the primary fighter character, does possess the wisdom of a veteran warrior, rather than being an incarnation of foolhardiness whose sustained survival one would question. The character designs are by URUSHIHARA Satoshi (traditional character designer for Langrisser), and the girls are very cute. A large bust-up picture of the character, in a variety of emotional expressions, is displayed during dialogue and in the status screen. Although the game is not entirely full-voiced as is Azel or Atelier Marie, it is quite close to that, with most lines of significant characters (as well as some lines of the more generic characters) spoken by voice actors, and the voice acting is good. Much of the dialogue is rather interesting, too. One issue in RPGs is that it may be undesirable for the game to "put words in the player's mouth" by speaking the player character's lines. In Growlanser, in order to get around this issue while trying to retain the feel that the player is actively participating in the story, the player character is accompanied by Tipi the homoculous, who substitutes for the player's mouth. The dialogue lines in the game are quite well written: the daily dialogue is often funny and witty, while the critical emotional scenes manage to be a bit moving. Sometimes the player is presented with silly dialogue or action choices along with the right-minded ones, and some especially silly choices will lead to Tipi serving the player with her specialty "Tipi-chan kick".
The party development system is quite satisfactory. Your party contains three staple characters, and there are two other slots which you can fill with your choices from the remainder of the player characters. As you earn experience by defeating enemies and go up a level, you receive a few "bonus points" which you can invest towards acquiring new skills. The skills range from new magic spells to fighter support skills such as "poison attack" and "critical hit". The spells resemble the ones in the Langrisser series. Each character has a different set of available skills, and sometimes the same skill has different costs for different characters. This is a clean system which provides for some customization, without involving complicated equipping operations or redundant actions in battle. Characters who are currently not in your party earn 75% of the experience you're earning in battle, and gain levels and skills accordingly. Even though you cannot control which skills to assign bonus points to for such characters, this at least allows you to use different characters in a game without requiring more "levelling".
The equipment system is very reasonable and to the point. Each character can equip one weapon, one armor, and one accessory. Armor and accessory are limited by character type: only magic-users can equip robes, and big fighter guys can't. The accessories provide a variety of effects, from simple defensive protection to enhancement of attack range (for ranged attacks), spell-casting ability, or movement speed. Each character can equip two types of weapons. There is often an interesting choice, since different weapon types have different qualities. For example, Wallace can equip either a glove for speedy attacks, or a thrown blade for slower but more powerful attacks at long range. Ruise, the mage type, can equip either a card for reasonable ranged attacks, or a staff for enhanced magical ability but poor physical attacks. Throughout the game, money does not come in excess, so the player is always making interesting decisions in party customization and equipping. When a character leaves your party, you can conveniently retrieve all his equipment with a single button press.
Although the story is mostly linear, Growlanser is not without its fair share of secrets and hidden stuff. The "heroine select" system since Langrisser 3, or more closely the character ending system in Yukyu Gensokyoku 2, is here: depending on how you interact with your allies (during mission events and especially during vacations), you may enjoy a romantic ending with one of the girls, or a warm "friendship" ending with one of the men. More than that, your actions will actually affect how soon a certain member will join you, or whether a potential ally will join your party at all. (In other words, some of the player characters are hidden characters. Not in the sense of actually being "hidden" away in an obscure cave, since they all make their entries early in the game, but that their joining of the player's party is conditional.) There are several optional tasks. There are also an arena and a few optional dungeons which you can fight to get some extra stuff.
The game is presented in beautiful 2D graphics, matching those in the late Langrisser games. The music is quite good, and as aforementioned the game is filled with good quality voice acting. There are two similar but different opening anime sequences, with two vocals in the same melody but sung by different singers. The opening is very nice, both for the anime and for the song.
There are a few minor bugs in the game, which occur when the player takes certain unexpected actions. Since one is not likely to encounter them when just progressing through the game normally, these do not create any major obstacle in the enjoyment of the game.
For players who do not have a good command of the Japanese language, the language barrier in the game is, unfortunately, quite high. This is not a typical, no-brainer RPG; there are various missions (not always "enter the dungeon and kill the boss"), battle objectives, and interesting dialogue choices. In order to present a logically wholesome story, the game often requires the player to follow instructions and visit a designated person or place he has been to before, too. There is a fair amount of text (much of it accompanied by voice) explaining the world and its history, and that might be boring to a player who can't read. There are a good number of factors which preclude enjoyment of this game by players who do not know the language, and I won't recommend the game to such players, despite the high quality of the game otherwise.
Growlanser is a quality RPG from Career Soft. In additional to good story and characters, there is a nice battle and party development system, and pleasant graphics and abundant, well-done voice acting on top of that. The game is indeed mid-way between an orthodox RPG and an SRPG such as Langrisser: one can think of it as Langrisser with shorter, less involved but more numerous battles. The game provides over 60 hours of interesting game play (on first playing; re-playing reprotedly takes around 35 hours), with some amount of re-playability. Most players who like the Langirsser games are likely to find delight in Growlanser. The game is easily one of the best RPGs of the year (if not the best), and is recommended to all players, novices or veterans alike, of RPGs and SRPGs, provided that one has means of circumventing the Japanese language barrier.
Copyright 22 Dec 1999 Alan Shiu Ho Kwan
Career Soft unofficial homepage
Atlus (Japan) official homepage (this game)
Langrisser Memorial (English fan page)
Alan Kwan / tarot@netvigator.com / created 22 Dec 99 / last modified 25 Apr 00