Elm Knight: Introduction

It's time for another episode of "Early Japanese FPSes we never got, and aren't really much better than the ones we don't play." This time its Elm Knight, from Microcabin. I had a debate about this one, it's technically a mech game and I divide mech games from regular FPS. Still, better now than later.It's another one of these Dungeon Master-style games, grid-based, but you can be in-between spaces.

We went to all the trouble of doing a FM Towns release for these graphics. Hey, at least the music is pretty sweet! And it actually plays while I'm playing the game, I don't have my media player awkwardly going on in the background. Huzzah! Anyway, training is a lie, because this just goes through the entire character data of every character in game, I presume. No skipping, god help you if you accidentally press it. I guess character introduction must mean training then. No, it crashes the game. Goody. Maybe. I have no idea, this menu is the jankiest thing I've seen in a while.

Anyway, it seems as though the protagonist is a Rick Chandler, he has a brother named Roy. That's about all I'm going to get from the "training", there's a lot of text and a lot of characters I lack context for at this stage in the game. I don't know who Rodia Baahamu is and I'm not reading a wall of Japanese text to find out. The basic gist though, is that Rick is in some kind of military school, and its found out that he has magic powers. Back to that menu, it's very broken, it seems, moving doesn't properly register and pressing a button seems to do nothing.

Training teaches you movement. Basically you get the numpad, 8 goes forward, 7 & 9 turn left and right, 4&6 move left and right, 4 moves back. A trick of the game's movement is that the player will automatically move left or right if he's going forward, over one tile differences. This is fairly simple, and the game has its tutorial quite well, making sure you understand what it is you are doing. If you fail it teaches you it again.

Until we get to the afterburner. The concept is simple, what the game is asking of you is bizarre. The text is a just slow enough for me to understand, which makes it crap when I press the A key again and the game STARTS THE TEXT OVER AGAIN. I eventually figure out, more through trial and error than reading the actual text, is that it wants you to try to cut a precise path through a sidepath rather than just slamming into the trees. This follows up with silent mode. Press S and you move silently. I hope there isn't a stealth section. I'd hate a stealth section.

Shooting. You have two attacks, Z & X. Z appears to be any number of weapons from a fist, to a heavy cannon to various missiles. X is just a light machine gun. There's a nice firing rate to it all, perhaps too aggressive, its very easy to run dry if you aren't careful. Enter enters the weapon menu, and its still janky, but as long as you make sure you're on the right item by pressing left or right before pressing Z or space, it works.

After the missile training, things get weird again. It wants me to pick out a weapon consisting of some four kanji, a landmine after checking. Fair enough, but I have five options on the weapon menu, none of which have kanji. Which is also weird, because I have six weapons. I have no ammo either. None of the names sound like a landmine.

I discover the issue, I'm missing a key that a FM Towns would have, which is a "transformation" key, translated from Japanese. See, something I didn't notice before now was that you could switch weapons with some function keys, because they're labeled P*F keys in-game and in the manual. At first I tried another emulator, Tsuguru, but that didn't work. Then I noticed that Unz has the option to rebind keys even if its a bit hidden. Ten minutes later after having figured out how to change the region and language in WINE, and I have it set up how I wanted. (Because by default it shows the same thing every non-Japanese computer shows, despite having said fonts installed on my system) Turns out it was the convert key, which I definitely don't have.

Discounting the fact that I don't have the key, this is actually pretty badly thought out. The HUD in its present state can only show three items on each side, of course, but the weapon menu has no such excuse and neither do we for just selecting a weapon. We have 10 numbers on the keyboard, use them. Anyway, mines work like you'd think, they're clever, but knowing me this will have been completely useless outside of situations where it really hits the fan. This is followed up with a stunning mine, another mine which I guess damages radar, and finally remote explosives.

Next up is flares and chaff. F and D respectively. They work like in flight sims, missiles heading towards you, press both keys and hope you didn't just screw up. I still don't know how you're supposed to know which you're supposed to use.

Use the "Non-conversion key" to detect mines. Good thing it was bound to the non-existent non-conversion key on my computer or I'd never find it. Its a toggle, so I can show you what it shows. Movement is fast, so it is tricky avoiding them...at least until I discovered you could punch the mines. Cool.

Now jump over some missiles. You jump by pressing space. You can't jump over the walls or anything, at least not yet. Something tells me if the game expects me to do this on the regular I'm not going to make it to the end of the game.

After this there's a game of chasing three enemies with your fists, then a regular fight. Before all enemies were weaponless. First observation, don't get close, being far away is key. Hit them with missiles, never be within their sight. And that ends the training.

Let's not talk about some of the frustration going on here. The GUI is very effective, telling you everything of value at a glance. Half this stuff I didn't even need the training and manual for, its just that intuitive. We got a compass, energy draining on the right of the game screen, and a timer on the far right. Flashing lights indicate where enemies are if you missed them on the mini-map and radar. Oh, it looks very nice. Only problem is occasionally keys stick.

Now, the game itself starting with the intro. Wow, this has some smooth animation. Almost takes me away from how long and unbearable this opening cutscene is. So, yeah, let's talk about that. It's basically just a series of sprites over backgrounds, with said sprites probably being larger than what you can see on-screen. Sometimes it goes as fancy as to have three sprites on-screen at once, on background, one primary and on over-screen.

The intro is divided into three parts, an animated sequence showing two characters entering a cave, Rick in a mech, and another one called Serena coming in through another way. It's not exactly clear to me what's going on outside of Serena getting chased. They seem to at least be friendly to each other considering it ends with them pointing their guns at one another without shooting. Then we get a credits sequence, much like a typical anime. Finally, dialog returns.

After Roy and another character talk about something related to what Rick and Serena seem to be searching for, we get a mysterious character and we return to Rick and Serena. I have no idea what they're talking about. I can read most of it, but it isn't on-screen enough for me to comprehend. They introduce themselves to each other though, that much is clear and then the game begins. I'm kind of not caring that much since this story doesn't strike me as particularly important, it's trying to be one of those animes with the goofy comedy bits to break up tension. You probably know what I mean.

The game starts up rather suddenly. Serena talks before it starts, saying something about escaping from and possibly fighting the imperial army. I was under the impression that Rick was with the imperial army, I don't know why he isn't when his brother clearly still is, and I don't know why I'm going to do anything at all for a woman who just called me an idiot. And then they start arguing about it. What the hell, game? I don't mind playing some kind of traitor to some evil empire, but not for some woman who comes off as a total bitch. This goes on for a good few minutes. And then someone named "Efuru" joins in. Elf? Based on the manual, it's a magic voice inside him.

I've seen games criticized for taking less time to get to the gameplay taking too long to get to the gameplay. This is seriously annoying. Getting to regular combat is such a relief. You start off with fairly low stores, most missiles gone and relatively low ammo, along with being seriously outgunned. Training helped a great deal, using the missiles to safely take out enemies, then switching to a heavy gun, to using the mines and finally just the afterburner and taking a tactical retreat. This game can easily screw things up, but that was fun.

More dialog. I've played this for little more than an hour, counting practice sessions I didn't write down, and I already hate dialog in this game. Something about a magician.

Quite possibly not that far off from my face at this time.

Another animated cutscene. A scientist lady and another military dude are talking, and then they call in a mercenary. The game returns. I move a little, more dialog, another person in my "in-game" view, Sami, this is the mech's computer. The mercenary, Doug calls us up. Blah, blah, blah, you will die, there is no escape. Sure there isn't, just give Serena and Rick twenty minutes to converse over this shocking revelation.

I don't have a lot for this fight, just a couple of mines and the hope that I can shoot the guy enough times before he missiles me to death. Quickly, a conversation starts, he asks us to stop. Rick is shocked by this. Damn it, Rick, don't make me like you. Doug seems to like the cut of Rick's jib. And then the screen switches to a cutscene with Serena. She thinks he could be convinced to join the rebel army. Rick says maybe with a threat. I keep seeing MPS in this game and I have no idea what it actually is. Doug adds in that Rick's magical powers are great, and he either understands it or is joining up.

Another cutscene, Serena's sister, Sofia, talks to us, along with a guy named Rondo Aima. She's glad that he could make it. She calls their group the "Rebels of Riidaa", your guess as to what Riidaa means is probably better than mine. Rick is the first of what she hopes are many pilots who will join up with the rebels. At least I think so. Something I noticed while she was talking was that Serena, her sister, kept making funny faces because her character is to be as obnoxious as possible. Rick is smitten with Sofia because Sofia's the beautiful one, at least by this game's anime standards.

She then has Rondo escort Rick around. During this conversation they talk again about MPS. I don't know what MPS is, and at this point I assume I'm not going to find out, besides it either being magical powers or something important we have to find. And this is the end of the intro cutscene. Next time, base camp and playing as Rick on foot.

I am not particularly worried about finishing this one, I'm just interesting in making my way through enough of it to make a fair judgement. I like the general concept, but Japanese titles make me nervous, they're either pretty good or pretty bad. I don't seem to be able to save in-game, so as long as save states work I'll probably keep on trucking.

That said, based on how this goes, it may be hard for me to keep track of things. I'm going to have to read the dialog after the fact, it's just not feasible for me to do so in the middle of things. I'm going to make the assumption that the story is roughly as follows, Rick leaves the imperial forces at the start, meets with Serena, then fights his way out. The guy I called a mercenary, is actually a member of the resistance, and his fight with Rick is actually proving that Rick can join the rebels.

Further recap, imperial is in the sense of empire, no language trickery. Basically Star Wars, but with mechs and anime stuff.

This Session: 2 hours