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Paladin's Quest

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Overall:		 7.60
7.85
8.00
8.00
Votes: 20
Reviews: 2


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Reviewer: captainobvious Date: Oct 14, 2005
Paladin's Quest: A great game, with absolutely nothing to do with a paladin...

You are Chezni (or whatever you call yourself). You are a student at a school of magic. You are the best of your class, and can wield fire magic very well. Your classmates dare you to climb a forbidden tower and find the treasure at the top. Of course you go, and accidentally unleash a powerful machine upon the world. Now you have to stop the machine, and only you can stop it because it was you who started it. Along the way you will meet many characters of many races, and mercenaries who will join you for the right price: a girl with a hidden past, a miner, a thief, a clown, a war-equipped robot, and many more.

Graphics: 6
Choppy and repetitive, but smooth around the edges. The same tiles are used WAY too many times, the same trees, the same floor tiles, the same town design, but at least they look good. Your characters walking around have three sprites: standing, stepping with left leg, stepping with right leg, in all four directions. The same person was cloned to be at every hotel, ready to save your game. Citizens in towns are male, female, child, or important (other). At least people of different races look different.

Sound: 5
Nothing too impressive... each weapon sounds different when used in combat, each spell its own. The music gets a little repetitive during long walks with many fights. Nothing that sticks to mind, though (except from sheer repetition. You'll hear the songs enough times to remember them, but nothing as catchy as, say, the Super Mario theme)

Gameplay: 8
Standard grid-like world, but the fight system brings up the rating. You can fight using any of your equipment (helm, armor, shield, boots, belt, weapon), and sometimes it yields unnatural results. Using a FireSh[ield] will blast one enemy with fire. A regular shield will only deal a small amount of damage (that is, you bash the monster with your shield). However, the most commonly used items are your main weapon, and your belt (usually equipped with a healing medicine).

Magic can also be used, but there are no magic points. Every spell you cast drains your health a bit (there are no "healing spells" except those that cure conditions). You have to decide whether to conserve life or use it to hurt your enemies. There are a total of 8 spell groups (Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Sphere, Heart, Lightning, and Sky), which can also be combined with any other spell group to make up to 36 spells. Spells are automatically added to a list once you can use them, so there's no tedious experimenting to do. Your Hero can combine all 8 to cast the ultimate spell, Spirit. Each group must be learned individually throughout your adventure. Spell strength increases as you use its magic group(s).

If a party member "dies" in battle, he or she will not receive experience, but will be revived at the end of the fight. A lot more convenient than revive spells and restore items :-)

Overall: 7
I liked it. It gets boring in some parts, mostly because several of the first towns require you to run around and save it from some type of doom. Clues are often vague, but as long as you walk somewhere you haven't been, you'll get to the end of the game. The last page in the instruction manual gives a very vague route of what to do throughout the whole game. Its basically just a list of checkpoints to see how far you are.

Summary: Paladin's Quest is just another RPG. The SNES was good for RPGs, and Paladin's Quest does not put it to shame. It's worth downloading and playing for an hour or two, at least.

Some extra stuff about the game:
There seems to have been some "lossy" translation. Don't feel bad when you have been "wiped out!" Also, some mercenary names are very strange. (Anyone want to hire MeanMa?) Good luck figuring out what some of the item/spell/weapon abbreviations mean (Quick! Attack using the R Crag!)

 

Reviewer: Jyonachi Date: Jul 29, 2001
Possibly one of the strangest RPG's for the SNES... and not in a weird/cool way like cult-classic "Earthbound". I'm sure a bit was lost in the Japanese to English translation... and I'm not even going to go into the nasty/weird pastel colour scheme. But there are a lot of interesting characters you can have join your party, some secret weapons, not to mention the fact that you can use anything from your armory to strike out at an opponent (i.e. you can use your boots to kick, your helmet to headbut, belts to heal, etc.)