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[RPB]

I don't know how many people are really interested in these, but I'm finding that I really like doing Let's Play threads--they give me an excuse to replay cool old games I'd probably be playing anyhow, except this way I can pretend I'm doing something vaguely constructive.

So without further ado here's Chaos World, the best RPG ever made for the NES. Final Fansaywhatnow? DIDN'T THINK SO.



Most people have probably never heard of it, seeing as it was never released outside of Japan, appeared late in the Famicon's life cycle, and didn't really have a franchise. It's not like the developer went on to become known for this kind of game, either.



Yes, that's the company that does Harvest Moon. Apparently before they were in the business of making monotony simulators they made ridiculously awesome standard JRPGs.

Since I don't read Japanese I'm playing using the fan translation from Aeon Genesis (coincidentally, I just noticed they were the ones who translated Ball Bullet Gun). Copyright diehards will be relieved to know that the ROM I am using it on was not downloaded illegally but rather obtained through a vague but completely legal series of events too elaborate to be detailed here. Suffice to say it involved a beach umbrella, a freight car's worth of cashews, a barber, a rabbi, a stuffed moose, six quarts of grape Kool-Aid and exactly two and a half live ducks.

It's been a while since I've played through this but I seem to recall the translation as being pretty decent at least as far as dialogue goes, although some of the interface menus aren't very polished and there are actually a few incomplete bits. But that's okay as the incompleteness shows up in combat messages that are pretty easy to figure out from context.



It's a pretty good looking game as far as NES games go. Battles aren't quite as impressive looking but the scenery is very nice.

OK! Let's begin.



There's not a ton of room for interactivity in this game but that's probably alright as the LP following on this forum doesn't seem to be active enough to sustain highly interactive threads. Still, there are a couple choices to make as far as our lead character goes.



(I had mentioned the fan translation left some of the menus unpolished, hence why the dialogue box is clearly large enough to fit "Priest" but Th(ie)f and B(i)sh(o)p get truncated; presumably there wasn't enough room to expand the Japanese strings without lots of rearranging within the ROM.)

We need to choose a name (5 letters), a class, and a gender. The gender is not merely cosmetic; it actually does have a pretty marked impact on a character's statistics. Normally this would offend my egalitarian sensibilities but I am prepared to cut Chaos World some slack on account of its general awesomeness.

Generally speaking, male characters lean towards physical offense and defensive magic; female characters lean towards physical defense and offensive magic. In some cases there's not a huge difference between the two genders, but for some classes the male and female options play rather differently.

Fighters, priests, and wizards are all standard-issue RPG classes. Knights are mostly fighter clones; there exists only 1 NPC of each gender for each class, so presumably knights exist so that players can double up on physical attackers if they want. Thieves are second-string attackers with good physical defense and a very little bit of MP to cast basic utility spells. Shaman are middleweight fighters with the ability to cast both priest and wizard spells (but with less MP than either); they also have outstanding magical defense, but not much physical defense. Bishops are more powerful, better-rounded versions of shaman--which is to say, they do fricken everything although not quite as well as the specialists--but this comes at the cost of having obscenely slow levelups compared to other classes.

We'll eventually be able to recruit up to a party of 4 by hiring NPCs; as mentioned there will be 1 NPC for each class/gender combo, but there won't be one that's the same as the main character (so no doubling up that way). For now we only get to pick the starting character's class/gender, so call out suggestions.

[Strife26]

Not sure what to pick.

[Duke 2.0]

Duke Panzer, professional tank.
Male knight.

[ToonyMan]

I'll be a battleship--I mean bishop.



Call him Billy.

[Floirt]

Do a Thief! Backstab people! Loot! Be named "Idiot"! Be a Male too! Do it!

I vote that the guy should be named "Idiot" anyways, whatever class he/she gets.

[Twiggie]

shaman!!!

[Strife26]

Strife the fighter, I suppose.

[RPB]

There doesn't seem to be much of a consensus here, soooo I'm gonna go with bishop since I've never really used them much before.



When making your main character, it gives you a bonus pool to assign to your stats. Other characters don't get this benefit, so it's a neat little perk. Twelve is a pretty good roll from what I remember, although in the long run whatever bonuses are assigned tend to get overshadowed by natural stat growth. I pump strength and agility to 10 and put the leftover into HP.



"Idiot" would've been a close second on the name but a name like Billy is perfect for a respectable religious icon such as a bishop.





Yeah well screw you too grampa. You know I'm sticking you in a shady retirement home at the first available opportunity, right?



Here's our town. It's pretty nice looking, although unfortunately all the towns look pretty much the same so it can be difficult to tell them apart at times. The music is great, though--another strong point of this game.

Note that town designs tend to be pretty big on flower and vegetable gardens. Note also that at no point does the game call on you to water them eighty freaking million times. No, I'm not a Harvest Moon fan.

There are all sorts of neat little touches in this game, but by far the coolest is this right here.



Yes, the towns here have drive-thru weapon shops. Kickass!



Oh wait. We don't have any money yet. Maybe we should go beat some out of the local fauna.



I KNOW. THAT IS WHY I WANT TO GO THERE. Dumbass.

The guards aren't going to let us leave, so we'll see if the townsfolk have anything interesting to tell us.




And you just ominously mutter about it to random passersby? More like talk about creepy dudes.



Oh, is that our plot? I hadn't heard.



Jerk.

Yeah, the plot is going to be pretty cliche. That's standard for RPGs of its era pretty much every RPG ever, though.



Grandpa, you asshole. The bulletin board clearly states the castle isn't even open early in the morning, and we have until 5 PM anyhow.



Elsewhere the dialogue will tend to be ambiguous about the main character, but the king is so important he actually mentions your gender specifically.



Actually I was kinda hoping to cure your daughter's illness to gain, well, your daughter.



That? I think the guy wandering around outside just made that one up.





I've... never been complemented on "yes" being a clever turn of phrase.



Obligatory tutorial battle sense tingling!



Oh, incidentally I forgot to mention the best part about being a bishop: you fight by smashing things with your giant crucifix. Given Nintendo of America's stance on this sort of thing that might be part of the reason the game never made it over here, although there were probably other factors unrelated to NOA's puritanism.

Anyhow, this is the game's tutorial fight. I'm not sure why they felt the need to insert a tutorial fight into this game, as the combat system runs entirely on autopilot. You pick an AI setting and let the party loose. This kind of system has a lot of potential for annoyance, but given how many NES RPGs have battle systems that boil down to "press A repeatedly" it's kind of nice that the computer does it for you.



Billy lays the smack down with his cross for 3... v-squiggly-o-x? I mentioned that some of the combat strings never actually got translated, so you'll see stuff like this (the damage number is accurate, though, and it's the only part that's relevant).



And this, although this time "gold" and "experience" are actually fairly legible, if you ignore the random added gibberish. Is that... a flat sign, though? I'm more or less positive this game doesn't feature musical notation anywhere.

Anyhow, we won so let's go see the king.



Wait, was that supposed to be some kind of paternity test? I think your understanding of genetics may be flawed.

Oh well. I killed your slug, so I get your daughter now, right?



Don't worry, sir. I brought protection.



WAIT WHAT. I know Gramps wasn't exactly forthcoming about the birds and the bees but this sounds way too freaky for me, buddy.



Lady, if you wanna talk about sick you should listen to the princess's father. Jesus.



Man, this town is full of jerks.



Yeah, I'm outta here. Sucks to be you, loser!



Before I leave I head back to the drive-thru weapons shack and upgrade my beatin' stick.




The guards are a lot more helpful now that I've proved my slug-slaying prowess. This one offers to give me the hook-up. Thanks, buddy!

So, next time I'm off to Rarm, I guess.

[Okenido]

A donkey?

Usually one uses a goat...

[RPB]

Oh god dammit. Now it's following me!

(The donkey is nominally your party's inventory room, although it's just cosmetic; the inventory doesn't work any differently than any other standard JRPG. Later it'll be upgraded to a horse and cart with more carrying capacity, which is about the closest it will come to having an actual gameplay effect.)



OH GOD BEES



Like many early JRPGs, at level 1 pretty much anything you run into is a tough fight. Fortunately it only takes about 3 battles to get to 2nd level, which makes battles a lot more reasonable.



Night falls by the time Billy reaches Rarm. Chaos World is not the first game to do this, but time passes a good bit quicker than in some other more famous JRPGs I will not mention, making nighttime events a lot more convenient.



A potion shop open in the middle of the night? This must be that one guard's supplier!



Wait, you keep your store open all night long just so you can tell people to come back in the morning? I wonder how much of his own merchandise this guy is sampling.



Okay, it's daytime now. Hells yeah I want the potion.



Oh sure I will do your stupid stoner fetch quest. Dammit.

Maybe one of these people will tell me what the heck a flower of impression is.



As might be expected, it looks like the town with the chemist is full of hippies. No, this sign has no bearing on anything else anywhere in the game.

Note that, in spite of the fact that its sum output consists of one sign saying "Have compassion" posted in a dead-end alleyway behind Rarm's drive-thru weapon shop, The Rodetian Animal Lovers probably still manage to be more effective than PETA.



That's more like it.



Pit? Forget about it. I'm like Indiana mother-f'in Jones, baby.



Admittedly, my likeness only extends to a shared phobia of snakes. Damn you, pit! Let's go see if we can find someone else who's more useful than the first lady.



But first I need me some healin'. Spell names are another area where the translation gets a bit patchy. We're looking at Feel, the basic HP restore spell.

Armed with healing power, Billy heads back to Rarm to look for clues.



Well yeah, duh. Look, you guys are a village of hippies. You can't tell me you don't have hemp around here.



Hey, I bet that guy with the unique sprite is relevant to our quest attempt to get illicit drugs! But HOW WILL WE GET PAST THIS WATER?



This trick failed to be a puzzle five years ago when Dragon Quest did it. Oh well, at least this presumably leads to plot advancement.



Note he actually doesn't say "son" here, presumably because the programmers couldn't be bothered to insert an alternate string to say "daughter".




Wait. You're not hitting on me, are you?



GAH! Dude! I'm so not into this.



Our first NPC joins us. Sorry, Duke, but the game doesn't let you name anyone except the main character (tanking capabilities are somewhat situational in this game, though, so you probably would have been disappointed by the knight's tankability anyhow).



Booya! You're finished, pit!

: Told you I'm like Indiana Jones.
: What about me? It was MY ROPE.
: You can be Short Round.
: Hey now. It may be round but there's nothing short about it.
: ...okay. You don't talk again, EVER.



The monsters don't do much damage individually, but the damage does add up over time, so Billy throws a Feel on Baram.

: Oh yeah, baby. A little lower...
: Gah! That's it. No more Feel spell for you. If you get wounded you can use the herb.
: So you're just going to be Feeling yourself?
: Dammit. Why can't I have spells with regular names?!



As it turns out, though, the toxic-purple "P.Snail" enemies are poisonous, so we have to turn around to get a poison cure spell. Thankfully this one is just called Pois-C, so I can't make any perverted jokes about it.



It's a short cave, but on the way out the other side there's a treasure chest.

But wait! There's more!



Yes, chests sometimes have multiple items in them, requiring you to search multiple times. About all I can say in the game's defense here is that it's not the stupidest thing ever to come out of a JRPG.

("Herb" is the game's basic HP restoring item. "Dualherb" is a stronger version which any self-respecting localization would've called Herb 2 or something, but Aeon Genesis decided to get fancy.)



Orcs! I'm not sure if those are round shields or giant cartoon boxing gloves, but I'm kinda leaning towards boxing gloves.



That wasn't so hard, eh? Went through the cave, into the forest, found a flower. Boom!



Oh, wait. I just realized I know essentially nothing about botany. This might take a while.



Trial and error (and a vague memory of where to find it from previous playthroughs) eventually yields the real flower.



Back in Rarm, the chemist hooks us up with some roofies. Maybe if I go back to the palace I can score with the princess without her creepy father getting involved.



Don't have to tell me twice, lady.



OH NO! She is suffering from a terminal case of Chronic Ellipsis Syndrome!




Billy does the only responsible thing and slips her some random potion he got from a shady drug dealer in a town full of hippies. Miraculously, it works!




: I already got one too many, thanks.



What, this again?






Er... okay, I guess. Howsabout permission to enter your daughter? But without, you know... the donkey, and stuff.




: Awwwwwwww snap!
: Yeah, uh, I think Prince Levin died. In bed. With another man. Yeah. So, y'know, if you're looking for a rebound...



I'll break off here. Next time we head to Ruval to investigate an ancient religious conspiracy manufacture some compromising photos of Prince Levin.

[Mephansteras]

I'm enjoying the writing. Most humorous! 

[Golgath]

I'm enjoying the writing. Most humorous! 

I'll second that, and say I hope that you post more.

[Twiggie]

thirded!

i vote we ignore the king and dont go to ruval, but stay in this town and live happily ever after. or not.... whatever....

also, anyone else misread rarm as a mispelling of 'the farm'? or is 't just me being retarded?

[RPB]

Billy the bishop continues his mission to lose his virginity!

: Hey! I'm not a virgin. I've had tons of sex, really.
: Suuuure. Hey, you know I could help you lose your cherry, right?
: Um, no. I need a woman, dammit.
: Threesome, huh? Kinky. I like it!
: Why are you still here?!

Billy the bishop continues his mission to lose his virginity find less creepy companions!



This funny looking building is a guild/pub. Most towns have one (but you can't use them until you complete the introductory quest to cure Princess Meldi.)



Recruit lets you pick up new party members, if there are any recruitable NPCs in the place you're at.



The game's nice enough to include two right here. Note more untranslated text. Also note gratuitous typo:



: L5 priest LFG no noobz plz



: Kickass, a mage! Hey, I've got a special mission for someone with talent like yours.
: Oh, how fortunate! I am honored to-
: Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. Now take off that robe and wear this tank top.
: Wait, huh? What is... "Hooters"?



(Here's another nifty feature; as you progress through the game you'll occasionally see guilds post jobs that you can assign NPC allies to for various rewards, letting you get some use out of NPCs you don't have in your adventuring party. There really aren't very many jobs throughout the game, though, and you can't repeat them for extra rewards or anything, so it feels a little tacked-on. Still kinda neat, though.)

: Later!



: So wait. We know about an ancient apocalyptic prophecy that possibly spells the end of the world as we know it, and we're just going to sit on our knowledge and not tell anyone else? Not even our allies?
: Okay, first? That one dude just made it up. Second, even if he didn't, you realize it doesn't really prophecize squat, right? It's like the most vague prophecy ever. It's not like it actually contains any useful information. And third, why am I still talking to you?
: I'd be tempted to suggest you're secretly attracted to me, but honestly? Look at my competition.
: lol stfu noob
: Dammit. Why couldn't the guild have posted a job that one of you losers was qualified for instead of that Wendy chick?



Heading north, there's a village in front of the tunnel to Ruval. If we had come here earlier we could've upgraded equipment, but anything they're selling will probably be obsolete as soon as we go through that tunnel. More importantly, though...



It has a guild! With two new recruits!

: a/s/l?



: I don't think you're supposed to tell people you're a thief, hun.
: But Momma always said honesty was the best policy.
: That's... oy. Words fail me. I think they fail Nande too, but that doesn't seem to take very much.



: What, are you some kind of princess Meldi-obsessed stalker fan?
: Basically, yeah. Hey, do you have any of her hair?
: O... kay. Congratulations, you're marginally less creepy than Baran. Hey guild guy! Can't I dump one of these freaks here?



: Males only? Sounds like this one's right up your alley, Baran.
: thx i g2g farm frst job l8er
: What? Wait! No, not him! Take Baran! BARAN! ...dammit.




Billy heads to Ruval in the hopes the guild will take some of his party members away for more jobs.



: Wait, isn't this the forest we just sent that Nande guy into? ...that the guard explicitly warned us not to enter?
: Oh no! What if one of us gets lost?
: That is a risk I'm willing to take!



: Should we be concerned that the ominous mound in the distance never seems to get any closer no matter how long we walk?
: Iunno. Probably?



: OH GOD IT BURNS

The forest doesn't seem to let us progress--the screen just loops heading into the forest without actually going anywhere. So we move on.



The monsters around here in this game in every game ever made in Japan are weird.



Man, Ruval is a dump. Even the hippie town wasn't this grungy.



I think this is the first townsperson that has explicitly told us their name. What do you think the odds are they will perform some quest-relevant function? (hint: a lot)



Woah, really? Sweet! This makes my job a lot easier.




Hey y'know you could always just stop paying the neverending ransom. I'm just sayin'.



Yeah clearly you just weren't destined to find Prince Loserface. Obviously God wants you to give up. Oh hey, is that a guild?



This guy looks like he might be relatively normal.



: Ooooh, shot down! Don't worry, though. I'm still here for you!
: Yeah, thanks for reminding me.

So now that Prince Levin is out of the way for good hopefully, maybe it's time to work on... whatever the king had assigned us to work on. Hey, let's talk to Mr. NPC Who Has A Name That I Forgot Already, he probably knows what to do.



Wait, you thought I was... oh, haha, no. I'm more about gloating than rescuing, really.




Oh hey, check it out King Ruval. It looks like some random hobo just outperformed your entire freaking army. Man, Rodetia might have been full of jerks but at least they weren't all losers, unlike this place.



Meh, it's just a desert. How crappy do Ruval's soldiers have to be to get defeated by a bunch of sand? I mean, really.



AHHH OH GOD DAMMIT WHY

Okay, back to town to rest.



(Another neat tidbit: sleeping at inns randomly triggers messages from NPCs in the party, based on their class and your current progress in the storyline. Like a lot of hint-delivery mechanisms it mostly provides rather generic useless trivia, but occasionally they say something relevant. It's a cool feature IMO; it strikes an admirable balance between having actual characters with real personality vs. just having faceless generics.)

: Midi? That's great, sweetie, it really is. NOW WILL YOU STOP WAKING ME UP AT THREE F***ING A.M. TO TELL ME THIS?



Checking back with the guild yields more untranslated garble. In this case this means that a party member has completed a job in another city. Presumably the guildmaster here knows about this through his magic blue neckbeard sense.



Of course we're not going to backtrack to go pick them up. Luckily we don't have to; you can call NPCs you've recruited before and arrange to have them travel to the city you're currently at. It takes them a couple more days, so we'll grind a bit more and come back to see what our other recruits say about their jobs.



: Respect, sister!
: Wait, you made 200 gold in 1 week? Just what kind of "waitressing" were you doing, anyway?



: wtf raidwipe lol
: Loser. At least Wendy managed to get paid for her screwup.

We've got enough people here now to assemble a pretty good party for this area, but first we need to upgrade Wendy's magic.



The "L" (all?) spells are hit-all versions of the basic damage spells. I'm not sure if "flame" and "frost" actually have any elemental effects; near as I can tell, frost is just a somewhat more expensive, more powerful attack spell than flame.



Preeeow! L Frost in action.

Given the lack of MP replenishing items major dungeons tend to be too long to make mages practical, at least in blasting terms (they still have some useful utility spells, though). Blasting spells are really useful for grinding, though, and we'll need to do some grinding at this point to get a few more levels and a lot more equipment.

[RPB]

: Gee, thanks for that keen insight Wendy. If it hadn't been for your timely advice, who knows? We might have gone off completely unprepared!
: Probably, yeah. That seems to be what you usually do, anyhow.
: Blah. Shaddap and help me find a way around this stupid desert.



This town has no story significance whatsoever. It only exists to serve as a stopover point on the way to the kidnapper cave, and...



... to sell this kickass bow (bows being the thief's unique weapon, if you didn't pick up on this from the combat screens). Thieves get some awesome equipment early on, although they are sorely lacking in late-game equipment.



This oasis seems peaceful enough OH GOD RUN

(Actually I'm not even sure if you can catch the whirlwind at this stage in the game...)





: This must be where the kidnappers live!
: Excellent. Let's go congratulate them.



: Yuck. They're not big on housekeeping around here.
: Who cares? These things drop tons of money.
: Where do they get that kind of money, anyhow?
: It must be from the kidnappers' stash of dirty money! That's why the coins are so dirty.
: I think that's roach poop, dear.
: We don't know that. I mean, presumably it would have come from Ruval. You saw Ruval, right?

There's a ton of stuff to buy, so we spent a while using Wendy's magic to grind roaches for enough money to buy all the many, many armor upgrades available in this area before kicking her to the curb.

: Hey!
: rofl pwned

(Dungeon crawls tend to be feats of endurance more than anything else, so healing is a lot more useful than blasting power. For reference, here's what the party's stats look like right now. Nande is obviously underleveled, but he can sit in back and throw heals and that's all we care about. The rest of the group is possibly slightly overleveled anyhow.)



(I have no idea what the "Place" counters are about; possibly some kind of reputation stat? The numbers seem to go up more or less randomly and don't seem to have any real effect on anything.

Agility has a big impact on physical defense, so Midi has the highest defense of anyone by a good margin. It helps that thieves can use a lot of good armor early on, plus she gets the awesome steel bow for disproportionately high attack--granted, she's merely a close third for attack, but that's rather impressive given her strength.)




As we progress further into the mines, the bats and roaches give way to bats and... more bats.



: This looks like the place. What is up MY DAWGS?
: Doggies! Where?



: What?! Oh god no, there must be some sort of terrible misunderstanding. I'll help you get him back, honest!



: They've heard of me! I'm famous!
: I'm not sure you quite understand what professional thievery entails, Mid.



BOSS FIGHT! I missed the screenshot, but killing these guys yields a gold necklace. It's not of any immediate use but will become relevant very shortly.



: See, look, I'm stealing things. I am too a thief!
: It doesn't really count if you kill them first. That's not really what being a thief's about, it's more like a... what's the word for someone who kills people to take their stuff?
: Bishop?
: Oh har har.

Unfortunately I neglected to grab the "Turning" spell (exits dungeons instantly), so the party makes the long trek back to the surface where...



: Hey look! More loot!

...so the party makes the long trek back to the surface heads deeper into this twisty-ass dungeon to grab a really out-of-the-way chest...



This doesn't really do anything special. It does have a nice bonus to Magic, but we're not using a mage at the moment.

That out of the way, the party heads back to civilization.

: Wait, I thought we were going to Ruval.



: Alright, finally a quest objective I care about. We KILL THE MAN IN BLACK!
: Shouldn't we find out what's actually going on first?
: I don't see why.



This looks like it's supposed to be two sentences; the translator must have missed the punctuation. (I'm beginning to think my memory of the script quality in this translation is somewhat rose-tinted.)

: lol lrn 2 type noob



: Your city's still a festering shithole. I think you're jumping the gun there, buddy.




: What, really? Do you mind if I... smell it?



: I don't want your livestock, I want your damn girlfriend. Jeez.




: Oh, definitely. I'll be sure to "thank" him good.
: Phew! I thought you were going to want to do something mean to him.
: Why do we let her tag along?
: Because a teen girl with borderline anorexia can apparently take hits better than a burly, muscular man in full plate.
: That's not fair, I have a legitimate medical condition! I have a note from my doctor and everything.
: Whatever. As long as we're taking credit for rescuing the prince let's see what kind of reward we get from the king.




: I would have thought contributing to the rescue of the kingdom's heir would have sufficed.
: I guess he must not care about his son. Dayumn, that's cold.




: Oh hell yes! Dude, this is more like you doing me a favor. Say, while we're at the guild we can lord our status as apparent rescuers over that one jerk that didn't want to join us. Hey jerkface, guess who...



: ...wait, really? Sweet!



: Hey Nande, you like repetitive and pointless grunt-work, right?
: huh wtf
: Good. Get lost, cuz we have someone more relevant than you now.








This opens up a new area with lots of new equipment and spells available. Fortunately we are loaded after cleaning out the kidnapper cave. We also have Orion, who is one of the more useful characters. The male shaman is a lot like a priest, but with much better attack power, the ability to use mage spells (although there's not much reason for them to do so), and absolutely obscene defense against magic attacks. Spellcasting enemies are somewhat rare at this point, but having one or both shamans around will make some of the later dungeons vastly easier.