Alcahest is an action role-playing game with a top-down perspective that plays similar to The Legend of Zelda. It is divided into 8 stages that are progressed by finding items that aid the protagonist Alen on his quest, and end with a boss battle. After specific boss fights, the player will gain the abilities of one of the four elemental Guardians. Alen will also find five allies that will join him at predetermined points of some levels. They are the young wizard Garstein, the princess Elikshil, the knight Sirius, the android Magna and the shape-shifter dragon goddess Nevis. Though they cannot be controlled directly, allies will attack and use special moves when the corresponding button is pressed.
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Was contemplating upon giving this one an 8 but the last leg really sucked me dry. Spent about 25 minutes total on the final boss, with savestates, and that's not mentioning the boss rush beforehand. Hell, even regular enemies start biting chunks of your health bar sometimes in those last two or three stages.
That being said, it's the only real issue I had here. Alcahest is generally quite solid in about every aspect, not necessarily an essential but I would definitely suggest it as a shorter action RPG, being hardly even structured as one and clocking in at only about 4 hours from my experience. The soundtrack from Jun Ishikawa is particularly notable, bringing a sense of familiarity and comfort with its close sound and proximity to his work on the subsequent Kirby games on the SNES. Very good stuff.
I'd recommend this for sure, especially into you're into games like the Zelda series or Soul Blazer, but be wary of the home stretch. It could definitely stand to be at least a little more forgiving, and probably will unfortunately turn out as my core memory of the game.
That being said, it's the only real issue I had here. Alcahest is generally quite solid in about every aspect, not necessarily an essential but I would definitely suggest it as a shorter action RPG, being hardly even structured as one and clocking in at only about 4 hours from my experience. The soundtrack from Jun Ishikawa is particularly notable, bringing a sense of familiarity and comfort with its close sound and proximity to his work on the subsequent Kirby games on the SNES. Very good stuff.
I'd recommend this for sure, especially into you're into games like the Zelda series or Soul Blazer, but be wary of the home stretch. It could definitely stand to be at least a little more forgiving, and probably will unfortunately turn out as my core memory of the game.
Before HAL Laboratory went on to make a few memorable titles, they gave us this joyful experience.
Game Review - originally written by Gideon Zhi (founder of Aeon Genesis Translation Group)
Alcahest! This game is… different. It’s sort of an action/rpg, it’s sort of an arcade game. You play as this guy Alen who runs around slashing things with his sword and collecting other swords and stuff. You can collect power-ups that expire after a fairly short amount of time, and you can do a charge attack, all in standard arcade fashion. What makes Alcahest different from most arcade games is that it’s not nearly as maddeningly difficult as, say, Mars Matrix. You also get continues. Yeah, that’s right, you have -limited bloody continues- to beat the game with. But that’s okay, you can earn more, and the fewer you have the easier it is to gain more. You don’t really get experience or anything, your “EXP” is really just credits towards your next continue, and you lose all your “EXP” if you game-over.
The storyline is… fairly cliche. It’s not necessarily -bad- per se, but it’s very much standard fare. Demon-thing made of hate, hero-guy collects elemental weapons and companions and kicks ass, lots of manipulation of greedy bastards by the hate-demon-thing. No earth-shattering plot twists or anything, which the game sorta needs, but eh, whatever. It’s an action game. The characters are sufficiently cool, but by the time you get to the final level you’ll be using the guy with the homing shots exclusively for everything but boss battles, and the healer chick for boss battles. Everyone else is just sorta chump change in comparison, even for the cool dragon chick :(
Neat trick, by the way - when you beat the game (it’s not that long; five hours most I’d say) let it sit on the “END” screen for a while. Alen will show up and start showing off some of his more puny moves, and the game will cycle through every single music track for your listening or SPC-ripping enjoyment. Joy!
So yeah. I had fun with it, but I’m not sure if I’d want to play it again. It was cool while it lasted, but my attack-charging thumb is goddamn sore after that final boss*%(!
Alcahest! This game is… different. It’s sort of an action/rpg, it’s sort of an arcade game. You play as this guy Alen who runs around slashing things with his sword and collecting other swords and stuff. You can collect power-ups that expire after a fairly short amount of time, and you can do a charge attack, all in standard arcade fashion. What makes Alcahest different from most arcade games is that it’s not nearly as maddeningly difficult as, say, Mars Matrix. You also get continues. Yeah, that’s right, you have -limited bloody continues- to beat the game with. But that’s okay, you can earn more, and the fewer you have the easier it is to gain more. You don’t really get experience or anything, your “EXP” is really just credits towards your next continue, and you lose all your “EXP” if you game-over.
The storyline is… fairly cliche. It’s not necessarily -bad- per se, but it’s very much standard fare. Demon-thing made of hate, hero-guy collects elemental weapons and companions and kicks ass, lots of manipulation of greedy bastards by the hate-demon-thing. No earth-shattering plot twists or anything, which the game sorta needs, but eh, whatever. It’s an action game. The characters are sufficiently cool, but by the time you get to the final level you’ll be using the guy with the homing shots exclusively for everything but boss battles, and the healer chick for boss battles. Everyone else is just sorta chump change in comparison, even for the cool dragon chick :(
Neat trick, by the way - when you beat the game (it’s not that long; five hours most I’d say) let it sit on the “END” screen for a while. Alen will show up and start showing off some of his more puny moves, and the game will cycle through every single music track for your listening or SPC-ripping enjoyment. Joy!
So yeah. I had fun with it, but I’m not sure if I’d want to play it again. It was cool while it lasted, but my attack-charging thumb is goddamn sore after that final boss*%(!
This game was advertised to be as a Zelda clone and in some ways it kinda is, but in many other ways it's clearly a game of it's own. It's a ARPG with real-time combat and is certainly a lot of fun to go through! Though, once again I've forgotten most it and what it was about, but I remember it being a lot of fun to play and though not strictly a Zelda clone imo (no inventory for multiple items, ect), it was still a lot of fun and you even get a dragon as your companion!
Gameplay + Stream
Gameplay + Stream
Playing a bunch of action games recently and this early HAL game (Kirby, etc - early home to Iwata and Sakurai) has been on my list!
First, the positives - it's a fairly short game, the sound design and music is amazing (by Jun Ishikawa), and the pixel art is nice. There's some fun level design moments. It's very weird that this game feels Very like kirby - partially the sound design, but there's also something to the controls and how you jump around the stage using those jump pads.
But other than that, it's kind of middling as an action game. The game has many many abilities, but the movement/enemy design/level design isn't solid enough to make those work in a meaningful way. Most enemies feel the same - very difficulty to safely kill with regular attacks, so you stand far away or charge a special move. Bosses are the same - their movements are too sudden and your hitbox too unclear, they hit too hard. You can either try to hit the boss 100 times to win, or just spam magic/super skills.
That's not to say there are no good ideas, but there's not much of a solid action game core to be found here. The level design soon reveals itself to mostly be mazes with finicky mechanics (dense spike tiles, conveyer belt tiles). It's a bit of a shame because the story setup is some fun genre stuff - floating mountains, futuristic airships, demon worlds...
I think the kind of action HAL was going for ended up perhaps better suited to something like Kirby Super Star - all the abilities are something fun to experiment with and see (rather than armor on a generic protagonist), the point isn't so much solid combat as it is just going around easy levels with different kirbies.
First, the positives - it's a fairly short game, the sound design and music is amazing (by Jun Ishikawa), and the pixel art is nice. There's some fun level design moments. It's very weird that this game feels Very like kirby - partially the sound design, but there's also something to the controls and how you jump around the stage using those jump pads.
But other than that, it's kind of middling as an action game. The game has many many abilities, but the movement/enemy design/level design isn't solid enough to make those work in a meaningful way. Most enemies feel the same - very difficulty to safely kill with regular attacks, so you stand far away or charge a special move. Bosses are the same - their movements are too sudden and your hitbox too unclear, they hit too hard. You can either try to hit the boss 100 times to win, or just spam magic/super skills.
That's not to say there are no good ideas, but there's not much of a solid action game core to be found here. The level design soon reveals itself to mostly be mazes with finicky mechanics (dense spike tiles, conveyer belt tiles). It's a bit of a shame because the story setup is some fun genre stuff - floating mountains, futuristic airships, demon worlds...
I think the kind of action HAL was going for ended up perhaps better suited to something like Kirby Super Star - all the abilities are something fun to experiment with and see (rather than armor on a generic protagonist), the point isn't so much solid combat as it is just going around easy levels with different kirbies.
Devo fare la pipì, non ho tempo di parlare di un gioco con le hurtbox fastidiose