When I was younger, I was very attracted to underdog consoles. I'm sure I annoyed my friends by raving about how much cooler the Master System was than the NES. And likewise, I championed the Turbografx-16 a few years later. Unfortunately, both of those consoles were acquired at close-out, which meant that finding new games for them was very tricky. I was able to amass a decent SMS collection given that the Power Base Converter gave stores reason to keep the old games in stock. But TG16 was a different story. Basically, we got a system and within a year the local Babbages and Electronics Boutique had completely purged their stock.
The Turbrografx we picked up came bundled with a voucher for a subscription to Hudson's magazine. I can't even remember what it was called now. But all I know is that for months, I kept seeing all these cool and exotic TG16 games that I'd never get to actually play. My own collection for the system was very slim. I remember really wishing I could get a Turbo Express and the CD-ROM drive, but alas, it never panned out. I could drool over screenshots of Splatterhouse and Ys all I wanted, but this was pre-eBay. Either your local store had a game or it didn't. And TG16 was pretty niche. To be honest, I don't remember if I was even aware of Langrisser back then. Probably not. And Masaya Games certainly wasn't a household name. But I guess I was introduced to them even if I didn't realize it. Gynoug was localized for Genesis, and I picked that one up on a whim out of a clearance bin. I enjoyed it quite a bit actually. I also had Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle on SNES, which I only had because it came out in the wake of the Street Fighter II hype and I was hungry for any fighting game I could find. I remember thinking it was okay. Many years later, I discovered Gley Lancer which had been released on Genesis and was a fairly overlooked shmup with awesome cutscenes and soul-crushing difficulty spikes. The original Langrisser was released in 1991 and was actually localized for the Genesis as Warsong. Thus, it actually beat Shining Force to the market by a year, making it possibly the first SRPG I'd have encountered had I ever even heard of it. Langrisser II followed in 1994, but was never brought to the west. I guess the first game didn't sell too well, even if Shining Force had been a hit on some level. In 2020 the first two games were completely remade for PS4, and that's the version of Langrisser II that I'm playing today. Although the sprites have been reimagined in HD and the cutscenes are now full on anime, the gameplay is definitely old school by design. Langrisser II is a very early 90s SRPG. If anything, I'd say it's very reminiscent of Shining Force for me. You've got some exploration and basic old school (Fire Emblem) style battles on rather large maps. The big difference is that each character you control is actually a whole unit of fighters. Your unit fights another, so rather than just a life bar to denote the HP of a single character, it's actually a matter of how many mercenaries you have left in a specific party. It's a neat concession that makes Langrisser stand out from the myriad similar games of the era. If anything, it more closely resembles Daisenryku but with the usual Japanese take on European swords and sorcery. I've long championed Shining Force. And as a 16-bit contemporary, I can honestly say that Langrisser II is something special. The whole thing where each unit can recruit up to four mercenaries is really unique. You've got to think about what kind of mercenary to recruit, and how much money each costs. You also need to think about positioning them. And on offense, this system shakes up the gameplay. Killing a commander also kills all their recruits. So often it's not just about killing everything on the field, but figuring out how to do that in a smart way so that you're killing a commander (which can result in wiping four units off the map) while still leaving as many as yours alive. Maybe you weaken them up with magic or arrows from afar? Maybe you brute force it? There's tons of strategy here. And the battles and maps are absolutely gigantic given the era in which this game was released. I'm also impressed with the class tree. Going back to Shining Force, that was a game that allowed you to promote each unit once. Here, you're able to continually promote units based on CP, an in-game currency earned from performing well in battle. This means that it's actually pretty often that the flow of battles is switched up based on the new class and skills and spells and so on that you've unlocked. I guess what I'm saying is that for a 16-bit SRPG, Langrisser II is incredibly deep. All in all, Langrisser II is a truly fantastic game. I wish I could have experienced it all those years ago on TG16, but alas it was not meant to be. But I'm thrilled that we were able to get this re-release of the first two games on modern hardware. Now I just hope that the other Langrisser games are re-released on PS5. Heck, bring on the spiritual successor Growlancer games while you're at it, because Langrisser has a new fan.
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