Growlanser

released on Nov 25, 1999

Growlanser is a fantasy SRPG (strategy role-playing game), and the first in the Growlanser series of games. The main character is Carmaine, an orphan raised by the palace royal magician, Sandra. Prophesied as an infant to become either "the darkness to destroy the world" or "the light which saves it", Sandra carefully watches over him and never allows him to leave Rolandia's capital city, Rosaria, or have any contact with the outside world. However, throughout his childhood Carmaine experiences strange and vivid dreams of people and places he knows nothing about. When at last he becomes old enough, Sandra tells him it is time to go out and explore beyond the city gates. Accompanied by Tippi, his tiny fairy-like companion, he leaves the city to discover his destiny.


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Career Soft's answer to the eternal question of "what would anime Baldur's Gate look like?"

There's some drags and low points, but probably the most impressive thing about Growlanser 1 besides the full voice acting is that despite being about 50 hours long and having a fairly basic combat system the amount of variety in missions and combat encounters keeps the experience fresh the entire way through. There's a lot of good usage of time limits and "protect a target" type missions here, tweaked pretty finely to not be annoying.

The story is also pretty solid, decent cast of characters and a plot that (for the most part) uses its long run-time to tell an interesting story. Almost any small detail brought up in this game will probably come back to do something later, even if it's something very minor. There very clearly was a lot of planning put into this plot even if it seems fairly straightforward in the abstract.

sometimes i wanted to scratch out my eyes but only sometime