Growlanser Generations?
Morbus Iff — Sun, 2004-12-12 15:44
After five months of waiting, Growlanser: Generations for PS2 finally came out. Anyone else playing it? In poking around, it looks like a) no one has ever heard of it, b) no one seems to care - most notably, the GameFAQs.com boards are active whatsoever. So far, I'm pretty happy with it.
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Alas, no one ever seems to pay enough attention to Working Designs' wonderful translations of underloved RPGs. I'm glad you too have experienced the excellent little strategy RPG that is Growlanser Generations. But it's one of those excellent games made by a lesser-known company in Japan that most people have never heard about. It wouldn't have even made it to America had Working Designs (a company who's built their reputation by localizing little-known but excellent games for US release) spotted it.
The fact that the interplay of choices and decisions throughout the games and their effects on the story are still very complex and not well-understood is not helping the lack of FAQs. Since dialog choices and gameplay choices actually MATTER in this game, (as opposed to being forced to make the "right" choice) it can become very complex to ascertain exactly what you did or didn't do to bring about certain events, particularly with regards to side quests, hidden items, and secret characters. I've missed the ninth novel page TWICE through the game now even though I've tried following the directions given to me by a Japanese player, and it's probably that I'm doing something different that he didn't realize was important for me to do a certain way.
However, there is SOME hope. The number of FAQs at GameFAQs has already doubled since the game's release, so people may yet figure this out! Also, you might try looking up the Japanese listings for Growlanser II and III on GameFAQs since as of this writing they aren't automatically cross-linked with the Growlanser Generations section.
Kudos!
I've had no problems finding the pages (got all of them my first time through), but I got relatively bored getting all the endings in II (which, if you do, can then be used to unlock stuff in the endgame of III). Quite frankly, the endings of Growlanser II weren't strong enough for me to care! Based on the few girls I've gotten (I've an hour or so away from Charlone's ending, but no desire to put that effort in), it's all just a matter of different "I love you!"s and slightly different "what we're doing now", and that's not very interesting to me.
I think, oddly, that one of the strongest aspects of Growlanser II was the thing they did away with in III: no wandering through towns! It was rather refreshing to just pick the NPCs who had something worth saying, as opposed to wandering around and getting random background information that, though informative, didn't really change the game at all. In III, they did away with that, and you're back to wandering. Of similar interest is Xenosaga II's "no shops" mechanic, which it got NEGATIVE points for in almost every "professional" review I've seen. Ridiculous!