i first rented this game in probably around 1993 and i was so infatuated with it that i wanted to own a copy. i eventually did get a copy and played it until i deemed it became too difficult and gave up. based on the maps i remember playing through i’d say i never played more than a third of the game. so why did i give up on a game that i supposedly loved…i’d say out of frustration. the game very purposely creates frustrating situations. a good example would be on a level where a fast moving water or flying unit takes the long way around the map to infiltrate your unguarded home base. losing your home base means restarting the level which could potentially mean losing an hour or more of gameplay. what’s evil about this is that the game lets you build up a feeling of safety where you feel like no unit could make it past your advancing units and get to your home base. and this holds true for a lot of early missions then the game suddenly plunges a knife in your back.

but really i feel like i was being too much of a baby back then. the scenario i described above only happens on certain maps and once you’re aware that it can happen then you know to be on the look out for it (and leaving a unit or two guarding the home base). but there was more to the game that i didn’t understand back then and i still don’t fully understand all of the intricacies even now. #1 i thought reputation was based solely on the drawing on tarot cards. that’s completely incorrect. your reputation is greatly determined by which units liberate towns. you’ll want to liberate towns with very high alignment (ALI) units only to maintain a high reputation. some people go as far as designating a single unit as the liberation unit and they exclude it from combat. even on my play through now i messed things up a bit with my reputation. i believe i messed up opportunities to recruit norn and rauny because of my low reputation. the important thing to remember regarding reputation is that it’s fixable. i remember at times thinking well…i certainly messed up there’s no reason to keep playing now, but there’s no reason to feel that way. if liberated towns get retaken by the enemy this will drop your reputation as well. so it’s best to avoid this whenever possible. i try to avoid it happening by watching enemy unit movement patterns and double or triple guarding town in their path. the “boots” item can definitely help get you out of a jam in this regard by immediately teleporting a unit to a town of your choice.

#2 which is related to #1 is the fact that i never used to pay attention to character alignment. i’m actually annoyed by this element of the game because it feels very anti-RPG. and by that i mean you’re penalized for constantly building up a particular unit. and by penalized i mean that particular unit will be considered extremely evil (ALI rating of 0). now some class types actually require a low alignment rating so it’s not all bad, but you’d still have to maintain a single high ALI unit for liberating towns. because in the scheme of things ALI is not important compared to reputation. a low reputation will cause you to miss out on various aspects of the game. but back on the topic of ALI, i feel like the developers included this to discourage someone from creating a handful of super units. because if you felt like it you could use 3 or so units to fight every battle and they’d be fairly high level and probably only have to work hard in a boss battle everything else would be cake.

but anyways i like a middle of the road approach. if i have a particular unit that is leveled up sufficiently i will return it back to base and deploy another…or i’ll not deploy it on the next map and allow for other units to gain levels.

there’s 25 main missions in the game and i’m on mission 13 so i’m basically half way through. i feel like i’ll probably get a mediocre ending because of some mistakes that i’ve made. however, there’s no way i’m going to go back and redo missions i messed up on. too much time involved.

Comments are closed.