This is a remake of the first two games in the Langrisser franchise, which were originally released on the Sega Genesis way back in 1991 and 1994. In terms of gameplay, it’s a top down grid based TRPG with a heavy emphasis on commanding a large quantity of units. There are various named commanders that are important to the story that act as the main characters, but each can have a number of generic units of various classes underneath them called mercenaries. As such, the battles can get quite large with dozens of units on each side. And to be clear, all of these units are individually controllable, so things can get quite complicated.
Compared to other TRPGs, I felt there was a larger emphasis on large scale positioning. By that I mean you’re not just trying to get a few units into the right positions, but rather trying to form fronts essentially that you use to push through the enemies fronts. Killing a commander also kills every mercenary underneath them, so there’s an emphasis on protecting your commanders while going heavily after the enemy’s. The separation between commanders and mercenaries also results in the game being balanced around the mercenaries being very dispensable. It’ll be pretty common to finish levels with the vast majority of your units wiped out, which is pretty rare for TRPGs in my experience. These factors result in this playing pretty uniquely.
However, I wouldn’t say that’s entirely a plus. While it was certainly interesting at first, eventually it just feels like it’s getting way too cumbersome and slow to manage so many units. There are techniques you can use to have the mercenaries under a commander operate automatically, but the only one that felt useful was the ‘Defend’ command that tells them to surround and protect the commander. And just in general things feel like they’re moving too slow. There’s an option to skip battle animations, which I started doing pretty quickly in both games, but even with that things felt like they were moving too slowly. What was especially annoying was that at the end of each turn, the game goes around and shows each unit that didn’t move and isn’t going to automatically move being put in standby which felt like an enormous waste of time.
The game has a pretty complex growth system for commanders. Each commander has their own class tree where they gain different stat boosts and skills as they class up. The different classes don’t just have different stats and skills in the commanders, but also allow the commanders to command different types and quantities of mercenaries. However, once a class is gained by a commander, they’ll have access to the skills and mercenary types of that class even if they switch to another class, though the stats and quantity of mercenaries only applies when using a specific class. Classes are gained by spending TP, which are given to the VIP of each level at the end or gained when a commander levels up through gaining enough XP. There are also equippable items, which can be purchased through the shop or found on maps. Both items and mercenaries require money, which is obtained through killing enemy units. Money can be a constraint at first, but just from playing the game you’ll quickly have so much money that it’ll become a complete nonissue, which feels like strange balancing.
Story wise, for the most part the game is pretty basic and not particularly well written. What makes it somewhat interesting is that there’s actually a branching story that can vary tremendously. The canon route is a generic story about defeating demons and an evil empire that was working with or wanted to work them them. However, it can branch such that the protagonist betrays their allies to join the empire, join the demons, or just betrays everyone to become a lone wolf. As mentioned none of these are particularly well written, so the crazier they get the more interesting they are. The options where the protagonist betrays everyone are the most interesting because they’re just so unique. Especially in the first game where things can get completely insane. It’s also interesting seeing the same group of characters both as enemies and allies, though none of them are really fleshed out at all.
A big issue though, is that there are way too many routes. In the first game there are eight routes, but each pair of two is incredibly similar to the point it’s probably not worth doing both. I would recommend only doing the bottom of each pair, meaning do B, D, F, and H. The second is a bit more complex in it’s route system and has thirteen routes, but I also feel like those could be cut down. It’s not as clear cut as in the first game though, and thus harder to recommend how to do it. Still, I would recommend playing A, E, H, K, L, and M.
The game has two different art styles and soundtracks, modern and classic. The changes to art affect everything, meaning both the character art and the sprites themselves. I think the community in general prefers the old classic art. I agree that it’s definitely much more unique than the modern art which is more generic. Still, overall I much prefer the modern art. Even if it’s generic, it’s pretty high quality and the character designs are pretty good. The unit sprites I’m not as much of a fan of, but I still prefer them over the pixelated classic style. The soundtrack is decent enough either way, though the big issue is that it gets repetitive.
Though that gets me too what is the biggest issue in this collection of games, how repetitive it is. Despite their being two games in this collection, I’ve very rarely highlighted the differences between them. This is because the two are incredibly similar. There’s major asset reuse from game to game, in terms of art, music, etc. There’s also not any evolution at all in terms of gameplay mechanics from the first to the second. They play exactly the same. And furthermore, there’s a lot of reuse of maps from the first in the second. With each game already being repetitive in and of itself, both games also being pretty much the same results in them being incredibly repetitive and a completely slog to get through by the end. So I would recommend not playing them back to back and only playing the routes I listed above.
A pair of TRPGs with relatively unique gameplay, a pretty weak story, and lots of content that gets incredibly repetitive.
7/10
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