Platform : Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation
Release Date : 1998
Genre : Simulation Role Playing Game
Developer : Career Soft and NCS
Langrisser is the final release (?) of a series of strategy game that is dated back to 1991 when it is first released in Sega Mega Drive. It featured a unique turn based battle engine, and character design by Satoshi Urushihara.
"Langrisser" is a name of a sword in the game. It is a holy sword that can only wield by descendant of an ancient holy war (Langrisser 3) between good and evil. Langrisser 5 (the game) is the finale of series is about the adventures of a "bio-cloned" warrior called Sigma.
Langrisser I - IV (NCS)
Langrisser Millennium (NCS)
Growlanser (Atlus)
The story is basically OK. It has a well developed plot, although it is not as good as games like Ogre Battle or Tactics Ogre. Without giving the story away, the ending is touching, and wraps up the series properly.
For those who is familiar with the Langrisser series, the battle engine can be boring. The battle engine from Langrisser 1 to 5 has been extremely similar (with the exception of Langrisser 3).
But for those who have never played the series, you will find it pretty original. Each character in the game is allowed to control up to 5 extra "soldiers" units like cavalry, pike men etc. If the soldiers are within the "zone of control" of the character, it receives bonus during battle.
The frequency of the character and his soldiers can move is determined by the reaction of the character. Each character has a limited amount of movement points which limits the range of the character in each turn. Usually character that has high movement points (knights, dragon knights) have slow reaction; while priests, mages and fighters have low movement points, but has good reaction.
Each character and soldier units has 10 hit points. During combat, hit points of the units will decrease, and a unit is considered destroyed. If a character/commander is destroyed, all its soldier units will be destroyed together. Hit points of characters can be recovered by healing spells and resting, while soldier units can recover hit points by staying next to the character who commands the soldier units or by the use of a healing spell.
This game also has aspects of love in it -- a trend of in Japanese game industry since the release of Tokimeki Memorial. Comprehension of Japanese is helpful in the love part of the game.
Satoshi Urushihara is a well known cel artist in Japan. And he did a great job in character design in this game. The first thing you probably notice of his character design is the female characters are very sexy. This is also true in his whole works in other games and in anime.
A concern in this game is the game can be sluggish; loading time could be slow sometimes. This game takes a reasonable amount of time to beat (20-25 hr.).
For those die hard Sega fans, they should definitely take a look into this game. In the big sea of PS games, import PS gamers also should not miss this game. I highly recommend this game to all importer gamers.
Back to Game Review Main Page