For the longest time, this game was one of the white whales of untranslated Japanese games for me. Footage of the gameplay and cutscenes showed evil Santa suit guys, Hitler, body horror, and bonkers monster designs. On top of that, the art was directed by the legendary Tatsuyuki Tanaka, best known as the artist for the Akira movie. Thanks to an over 10 year long translation effort, Linda Cube Again is now fully translated and playable in English and we finally have context as to what the hell is going on.

Linda Cube Again, the PlayStation remake of a game originally on the PC Engine, covers three separate scenarios following the same initial premise: a colonized planet Neo Kenya receives a message from God of its inevitable destruction and that one male and female of every species needs to be collected and put in Noah’s Ark. The protagonist, Ken, and his love interest Linda volunteer to be the humans to board this ship and collect the animals. From then on, the two of you set out to capture animals for the ark. This is where the main gameplay loop takes place- you explore the world with little direction beating animals to an inch of their life so that they can be captured for the ark.

Combat in this game is fairly standard for a turn based JRPG of its time. You gain abilities as you level up and occasionally will gain abilities after registering an animal on the Ark. When an animal is defeated, it will be collected in your inventory and can either be registered, sold, crafted into weapons and armor, or tamed to fight alongside you. While this is pretty straightforward, an interesting challenge is that if you deal too much damage, the animal will explode into a mess of guts and can’t be salvaged afterwards. The use of animals as a resource for weapons and armor almost feels like a precursor to Monster Hunter, and while I don’t care for that series all too much, it feels pretty innovate for a game from its time. If Ken dies in combat, the party is sent to a hospital in the first town without losing any save progress. However, you will lose some of the animals in your inventory. Given the limited time frame and specific requirements to encounter some animals, this can be annoying so it’s important to pick your battles wisely. There’s not too much of a strategy to combat- it’s more a matter of having good enough weapons and a high enough level to beat them.

Linda Cube operates on a season system, where different areas will have different weather depending on the time of year. Certain animals will only be present under certain weather conditions or at different times of the year. As you progress in the game, you really start to get a feel for the different ecosystems and animal behaviors. It almost feels like a puzzle game where you are made to deduce where to find certain animals based on NPC hints or your own trial and error. I really started to get accustomed to Neo Kenya and its different regions throughout the in game years. It’s a subtle addition that really goes a long way in making the world feel immersive.

Like I said before, Linda Cube has three different scenarios. The first two scenarios are much more plot driven, with different plot beats occurring while you’re out collecting animals. I don’t want to go into the plots of these stories too much and spoil them because they truly are as absurd as they seem. Scenario A involves Ken’s evil twin brother, Nek, working for a shady pharmaceutical company where all the employees are dressed like Santa. Scenario B has a mad scientist who looks like Hitler and has a robot daughter. Both of these scenarios are full of twists and turns, and I was always hooked to see what would happen next. Despite their absurd concepts, both scenarios feel cohesive and are really well done. They’re not super deep but are able to cover pretty heavy topics like the colonialism and the pharmaceutical industry in ways that don’t feel hamfisted. The cutscenes and voice acting are also super well done and add to the suspense of these stories. However, the plot elements do feel pretty disconnected from the gameplay loop. You’re only able to progress the story after receiving voicemails sporadically on your journey telling you to go somewhere. Sometimes there will be story-based boss fights where your leveling up from monster collecting matters but otherwise the story and main gameplay feel pretty separate. Despite this, the sheer absurdity and shock of the story kept me playing to complete the story based scenarios. The different stories aren’t branching paths either- they’re completely different stories where a character who was evil in one scenario is completely chill in the others and vice-verse. It’s a bit jarring to talk to a character who was a villain in one route and have them be completely nice, but it somehow works well in each of the stories. It feels like the writers had different ideas for directions to take the game in and decided to include multiple alternate tellings in somewhat small and compact stories.

This is where Scenario C comes into play. It’s a much less story heavy route, instead focusing on even more monster collecting and NPC quests. I wasn’t a huge fan of this, to be honest. While this scenario let you access the main overworld from the get go unlike the other routes, it lacks any of the cutscenes or shock from the first two routes. All of the side quests are technically optional, but will reward you with items that are crucial for unlocking a whole new map in the game. These quests are also missable too if you wait to long to complete them, leaving you completely screwed to complete the requirement of 100 monsters in time compared to Scenario A’s 50 and B’s 75. Giving credit where credit’s due though, this stricter requirement really forced me to interact with the world more and pay attention to which animals were in which climate and region compared to the first two stories, where I was able to find most monsters by chance of just walking around the overworld. I can see the merit in this more subtle open world story telling but it just misses the mark for me, especially when the requirements to find some animals are completely obtuse. I’ve heard that the first two routes are seen as warmups for C, but the lack of cutscenes and an overarching plot just make it feel sort of empty to me.

While Linda Cube is definitely not a perfect game, it’s just so left field and absurd in ways that I’ve never played in a game before that I really have to commend it for. The gameplay is certainly nothing groundbreaking but does just enough to separate itself that I never felt bored playing it. The translation effort is phenomenal and while I don’t know Japanese to compare it to the original, I’d imagine it captures both the humor and suspense very well given how outlandish the plot can be. I’m just very glad that this game is finally playable in English and lives up to the expectations I had for it years ago when I saw the batshit cutscenes without context.

One of the most unique JRPG and overall game concepts I've ever played.
It's such an interesting idea - basically do a full pokedex before the world explodes, and with a lot of small interesting chanllenges within.
The world is really interesting, the writing and worldbuilding is childish and mature at the same time.
I probably enjoyed scenario B the most - it's where i fully "got" the game, and how it's supposed to played.
At the end of scenario C I was really thinking where to go and where to explore, to get to that final 100.
I'd say that the only thing that's meh is it's combat. It's "fine", but it basically never gets more complicated than "bigger damage = kill" (cept for when you need to deal less damage, but that's the extent of it's depth).
A game I probably won't forget, and a very interesting story, created out of mostly gameplay.

The definitive Noah's Ark game. To think this was originally released a year after Super 3-D Noah's Ark, and three years after Noah's Ark for the NES.
But enough joking, this translation patch was a long time coming after ivantod's fan translation, and I'm truly thankful to be able to experience this game in a way that's not just gazing at the illustrations by Cannabis (Tatsuyuki Tanaka).
There's three scenarios – and an extra Scenario D that's a time trial mode. Scenario A and B are essentially tutorials that serve to familiarise you with the story and characters, and let you explore ⅔ of the planet. The true game begins in Scenario C.
The first thing you want to do is get a free dog, buy a second dog and off you go. You have more than enough time to rescue all the cute, weird and ugly animals before the Grim Reaper comes. Everything else you can ask the NPCs. They will explain some of the many esoteric game mechanics, and others have dialogue that reinforces the game's primal theme of life (sex) and death (the meteor). I appreciate the raunchy humour. It's very human. The whole game is. Makes me want to know more about the PC Engine version, and how much it differs from the remake besides the audio-visuals.
Linda, of course, is the main attraction. I like Linda. Though I must say I prefer her pink hair to turquoise. I also like that you help her through her mental and physical impediment in Scenarios A and B respectively. She's more of a main character than Ken, who has the personality of a punching bag. He makes more in-depth comments about furniture than 90% of the story, despite being a voiced protagonist. Too wishy-washy for my liking.
Ken and Linda's relationship – at first glance – can be summarised by the concept art where Linda yells, "SUFFER BABY!!" to a Ken locked in her Cobra Twist, screaming, "MORE POWER! MORE FREEDOM! THEY'RE GOIN' WILD BABY!! HELP!!!" But their camping scenes are much more intimate, and the pay-off at the end is fantastic.
Linda³ Linda³ Linda³ Again is absolutely worth playing, even if you find yourself lost in this heavenly zoo.

This is a game I’ve been hoping to play for a long time and I’m glad I finally had the opportunity thanks to the Eight Mansions team.

The premise was fantastic - a sci-fi futuristic monster hunting game with truly outlandish monsters. Additionally the world you’re hunting on is in the midst of a multi-year evacuation plan.

The monster hunting itself was very rewarding in that in order to find all monsters you have to be very thorough in exploring and talking to everyone. Adding on top of that, entire planet is evacuating, so NPCs are slowly disappearing entirely. This added for some really unique gameplay I probably will never see in another rpg.

The combat itself was honestly pretty boring, full of skills that I had no need for and many I never even used. The only thing you really have to worry about is accidentally exploding animals instead of catching them, but 95% of combat was me just mashing attacks.

The game being split into 3 different scenarios was also interesting. This means you have to collect 30, 50, then 100 animals starting from 0 each time. By the end I was pretty worn out, but it was well worth the final payoff after collecting all animals and finishing the story!

I would recommend this for any JRPG enjoyer looking for a unique experience.