Yuko! Valis Warrior! Playing Valis II for the First Time on TurboGrafx-CD

Long ago, in the ancient Land of Vecanti, a kind and generous King ruled the countryside. But alas, one day the mighty King Rogress died. As the people of Vecanti mourned his death, the country fell into a state of war and despair. 

The latest game in my TurboGrafx journey is Valis II.

I had always been interested in the Valis series, mainly because of the ads that I saw in gaming magazines back in the day and the great anime art style the games had, but I never had a chance to play any of them growing up, so I was very excited to finally get a chance to play Valis II.

The actual experience though... may not have quite lived up to the hype I had for it.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand and acknowledge that Valis II existed in a very different time and place when it first released.

I've also been on an action-platformer kick lately, so I've been playing lots of classic Ninja Gaiden, plus modern games like Vengeful Guardian Moonrider and Blasphemous, so that likely influenced my experience.

But let me get into the good parts first.

The cutscenes in Valis II are very cool, and I certainly would have loved them, along with the fully voiced (and cheesy) dialog, back in the day.

The graphics in the game itself are fine, but the enemy animation seems a bit lacking in detail and the gameplay graphics in general are decent but not amazing.

The gameplay isn't exactly what I would call hard, but there seemed to be a lot of cheap enemy hits where I would get hit by enemies dropping down from above or coming at me quickly from the sides of the screen before I had a chance to react. 

Of course this is not uncommon in games back then, but I found it a bit frustrating after a while (in fact, I opted to not keep continuing during my first play session because it got to be a bit much after a while.)

EGM reviewed Valis II back in March 1991, and generally liked it. They mentioned the great sounds, music and cutscenes, but found it to be on the shorter side, complained it was too easy, and weren't impressed by the gameplay itself. You can see their review in the image below.

You can see my very first time playing Valis II in the video below:

While I'm glad I finally got a chance to experience Valis II, I'm ready to move onto the next game in my journey.

The next game I'll be playing is... Cyber-Core!

I don't remember hearing about this one back in the day. All I know is that it seems to be some kind of Shoot Em Up, but that's about it. 

Until next time!

Hurry Adol You Must Help Us! Playing Ys Book I and II for the First Time on TurboGrafx-16

Eight hundred years ago, Ys was a land of peace and prosperity. Ruled by two beautiful goddesses and six priests, Ys was a world of magic. 

The latest game in my TurboGrafx journey was Ys Book I and II. I had never gotten a chance to play any of the Ys games before, so I was excited to dive into this one.

Being a TurboGrafx CD game, of course the first thing I noticed about the game was its excellent music and large screen-filling opening cutscene. These classic games really did have something special to them. 

The game opens with your character arriving to Esteria by ship and you are greeted by Sara, a fortune teller, as soon as you disembark. Sara invites you inter her shop and explains that something terrible has happened in the country and only you can save them (although she doesn't really explain why, but back in the day this was the only motivation we needed.)

Right away I thought the game had good looking graphics, even outside of the cutscenes, and its controls seemed tight as well. 

Like many classic RPGs, the story is relatively interesting, but it's also quite simple compared to more modern RPGs. I did think the writing was pretty funny at times, like the guy in the first town's tavern complaining that he can't go home because his wife is angry with him since thieves stole a sapphire ring from him. Certainly very tame by today's standards, but a nice touch back in the day.

I ended up liking the world exploration and fighting, but it did take me a little bit to figure out that you just walk into enemies to attack them.

The funniest thing that happened, it's sad to have to admit this, is it took me quite a while to figure out how to equip my sword and armor. I thought I had equipped them, but since I had never done it before, and I didn't know how the game should look with them equipped, I actually didn't have them equipped. 

I was getting straight up slaughtered by the enemies, and ended up building up by strength quite a bit by just grinding and killing the lower level enemies over and over again. 

By the time I figured out my mistake and properly equipped my items I was fairly OP. Oh well.

You can see some of my beginning gameplay (including my mistake not equipping my items) in the video below:

I was able to make it to the Vampire boss, but I still haven't been able to defeat him. I even watched a few lets plays on YouTube and saw how he was defeated, but it doesn't seem to work for me yet. I'll give the boss another try sometime and see if I can beat him.

Honestly it took me quite a while to finish this post, since I was really torn on how I felt about Ys. On the one hand it has lots of good points that make it fun to play, but it also seems unnecessarily difficult in some places that takes away from the enjoyment. In any case, it's time to move onto the next game in my journey.

The next game in my TurboGrafx journey is...Valis II!

Until next time!