In the midst of a violent invasion of Earth by unknown alien forces, photojournalist Wakatsuki Tetsuya comes across a scantily-clad alien woman, cutting a swath of death through the Terran ranks with her sword. After a chaotic struggle, Tetsuya is knocked unconscious, only to awaken aboard her starship. To his surprise, she turns out to be Kahm, the invaders' princess - and she has picked Tetsuya for a starring role in her upcoming wedding. As the groom....
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I’m sorry.
This was meant to be a review for the whole game but I’ll go over it later. Here we have a game that I’m sure most have never heard of. This is a licensed game from 1987. This was developed by the dreaded Micronics. A company known for making shoddy ports of Arcade games like 1942 and even some terrible original games like Onyanko Town. There’s some history I have with this game.
You see I never really knew this existed until I think probably the Chrontendo video that had this game in one of the episodes. I honestly forget what he even said in it. I remember the only other one I watched was the Famidaily video which I’ll get back to later but I remembered he talked about how his video was the longest anyone played the game for a video on the game. He’s right because I couldn’t even find something as simple as a longplay. I decided to play it because I wanted to help give some opinion of the game but first I had to read the source material. While it wasn’t fully what got me back into it, Outlanders partially got me to get back into reading manga after 6 years. So with all that out of the way, what is Outlanders?
Outlanders was created by a man named Johji Manabe, this was actually his first work on a Manga series. The story is a sci-fi themed one that involves aliens coming to claim Earth as they are said to be the first to live on there. One of the aliens is a blonde girl named Kahm and goes on Earth and eventually finds a man by the name of Tetsuya. The two would soon talk it out and the alien decides to marry him and hopes this will resolve issues with the aliens and humans. There’s a lot that goes on in these 8 volumes so I’d rather you read it if you have interest in it. If you want my opinion I think it’s good and I love his drawings, especially the impressive space ship designs plastered on many pages, it’s a work of beauty. Be warned that if you decide to read it, it does have stuff like gore and topless nudity. Stuff like the Famidaily video complain about its similarities to Urusei Yatsura but I feel like outside of the alien and marry stuff, they’re not really alike.
That said however, the game actually follows the OVA made by studio Tatsunoko Production and AIC for the series which is a 40 minute long animation similar to the events of the Manga. I say similar because it’s not only missing a lot of characters and almost all of the Earth segments, it doesn’t even really end properly. Like the Manga series, it has been localized, in fact it was dubbed twice. Be warned though, you probably should just try to find it online as the DVD release is like $150. Even then though, it’s okay at best and your time is much better spent with the Manga anyway.
Now with the game and the moment you start you realize it actually skips a bit ahead. This is when Tetsuya and Kahm were separated and you start the game and you’ll do combat and will probably die in seconds, what the hell? Well I try again and die again! Then I finally realize you need to hold the button to use the sword you have. Once you’re done you explore the overworld going to towns and other inside locations to look for important characters. There are three floors with many towns and caves and dungeons to look into. Sounds simple? Well let’s talk about some things wrong with this game and by that I MEAN ALL!!
This combat I was talking about earlier? It’s basically a rip off of Konami’s 1987 FDS game Esper Dream. I played the 2nd one this year and while it was just a decent game in my opinion, it had much better gameplay than this. To encounter enemies you need to touch these weird blue symbol things trying to catch you. There’s many issues with combat like the hitboxes making zero sense and you being able to take little abuse before death. You need to be precise where your sword lands. You do later get a rail gun but because movement is very rigid and your starting position sucks, you need to run away for a little to get enough space. Combat just isn’t fun and by the end of my third session I was avoiding enemies. I almost never do that in RPGs unless I have reasons like I need to heal or they are too weak of enemies to bother.
There also are the dungeons where you barely see any enemies, I only ever saw one boss that you didn’t even need to kill. You can get stuff like items or talk to NPCs. Some shops and places to help you out also are in these. None of them are creatively designed visually or in any gameplay sense of the word fun. They’re all just square rooms. Worst of all, just trying to travel anywhere just takes so long that you have to do it.
I’m pissed. I hate this game. What the heck is up with a lot of the gameplay decisions here? Why is trying to get to one location so slow, like seriously TETSUYA GO FASTER!! There’s bread you can get in this game from bakeries and enemies, what does it do? It’s for your hunger meter! Yes you have to eat bread while you’re moving around or you lose health. Who thought that was a good idea? That belongs in something like Mystery Dungeon, not in a stupid bad kusoge Anime game. Omg the hitboxes on enemies is soooo trash. I die sometimes because the game just makes up its own rules! Why does Tetsuya become this weird green color when you’re almost out of health? The way you level up in this game is stupid, you have EXP which for the record gives you very little for each enemy but you also need smiley pins! This involves you having to help out NPCs in towns or dungeons. How does this even make Tetsuya stronger, is it willpower? This game is so damn ugly, this is one of the ugliest games I’ve ever seen. When I got to the part where I saved Battia, I was like “BATTIA WHAT HAPPENED!?” I wish I could have shown it but her sprite is abysmally bad. Every sprite looks horrific. Once you get Battia you can use her magic but I forgot to use it but make sure you have Energy Orbs for them. Have you ever played a game where the talking animation was terrible? This game might have it the worst, go ahead, stop reading and go try to find a video that shows the first cutscene when the game starts where Nao and Tetsuya are talking, it has to be one of the worst talking animation cycles I’ve ever seen! Ohhhh there’s just so much more I HATE about this game!
You know what, let's keep going. You know what I couldn’t stand? The music. None of it lasts over 25 seconds! If I have to hear this damn song for the 100th time because IT ALWAYS PLAYS IN DUNGEONS, I’m gonna go insane! Okay so in this game you can heal by using medicine or going to a clinic, sounds good right? WRONG! Don’t do that second one and do the more annoying method that’ll save you time and gavas (that’s the currency), get your password and reset the game. Yes I’m not kidding when I say this, using your password to reload gives you all of your health back. So this means I gotta put this annoying password in everytime. You just gotta do it, it’s optimal so it just makes sense to do but good god is it tedious. I haven’t even mentioned how the menus feel clunky to go into and I swear it loves to eat your inputs and I made sure to check, this was not my crappy keyboard’s fault! It was playing the Guardian Legend just fine right after. I just can’t fathom how nothing in this game is good, it sucks, there’s nothing! It would be even more hell if I wasn’t looking at a map!
Finally let’s just get over with it now, why did I not beat this game? Well, I just couldn’t mentally do it man. I really wanted to just beat it and make sure no one had to suffer, got it all covered and all's well that ends well. I just keep pushing it back and every time I do play it, I’m just miserable. I'm already a person that’s been depressed a lot this year. I’ve actually been a little better lately thanks to a oomf I’ve been chatting with on discord and also just taking antidepressants I think helps too. I don’t wanna be miserable playing a game right now, I wanna go play something I actually wanna play, I guess I just am not the right person for this kind of thing. It’s a shame because I really did want to beat it but I have to realize myself comes first and I had to learn it was finally time to stop after around the two hour mark. That could have been close to the end, I don’t know. I can’t really check a video playthrough cause there is none.
In the end, I think Outlanders is the worst kind of bad where I come out finding pretty much nothing redeemable. I seriously think the only cool thing I ever saw in that game was sometimes walls are in random battles if you’re near a wall when the battle starts. I guess the cover is cool but that was just taken from the OVA. This might be Micronics worst game though honestly I might still hate Athena more. I just can’t believe something this bad exists. It’s baffling like who do I even blame for the poor quality? I hate being defeated like this especially since I can only think of like two games where this ended up happening with. It’s especially annoying since I went out of my way to read the source material for this only for nothing! Well at least I enjoyed the manga. If anyone reads this, I’m sorry it ended like this. Maybe one day I’ll go back but it’s very doubtful. Though one day I wanna do a video review on it but god I’m dreading the time I ever do that. Just don’t play Outlanders, it’s not worth it not even as a joke. It’s another example of a bad licensed game of the era that does so much wrong it’s astounding. Honestly I just don’t know what to say anymore. How about a nice song from the ending of the OVA to end this review? If you read this far, I’m sure you can enjoy a nice Japanese song for your troubles.
See ya!
This was meant to be a review for the whole game but I’ll go over it later. Here we have a game that I’m sure most have never heard of. This is a licensed game from 1987. This was developed by the dreaded Micronics. A company known for making shoddy ports of Arcade games like 1942 and even some terrible original games like Onyanko Town. There’s some history I have with this game.
You see I never really knew this existed until I think probably the Chrontendo video that had this game in one of the episodes. I honestly forget what he even said in it. I remember the only other one I watched was the Famidaily video which I’ll get back to later but I remembered he talked about how his video was the longest anyone played the game for a video on the game. He’s right because I couldn’t even find something as simple as a longplay. I decided to play it because I wanted to help give some opinion of the game but first I had to read the source material. While it wasn’t fully what got me back into it, Outlanders partially got me to get back into reading manga after 6 years. So with all that out of the way, what is Outlanders?
Outlanders was created by a man named Johji Manabe, this was actually his first work on a Manga series. The story is a sci-fi themed one that involves aliens coming to claim Earth as they are said to be the first to live on there. One of the aliens is a blonde girl named Kahm and goes on Earth and eventually finds a man by the name of Tetsuya. The two would soon talk it out and the alien decides to marry him and hopes this will resolve issues with the aliens and humans. There’s a lot that goes on in these 8 volumes so I’d rather you read it if you have interest in it. If you want my opinion I think it’s good and I love his drawings, especially the impressive space ship designs plastered on many pages, it’s a work of beauty. Be warned that if you decide to read it, it does have stuff like gore and topless nudity. Stuff like the Famidaily video complain about its similarities to Urusei Yatsura but I feel like outside of the alien and marry stuff, they’re not really alike.
That said however, the game actually follows the OVA made by studio Tatsunoko Production and AIC for the series which is a 40 minute long animation similar to the events of the Manga. I say similar because it’s not only missing a lot of characters and almost all of the Earth segments, it doesn’t even really end properly. Like the Manga series, it has been localized, in fact it was dubbed twice. Be warned though, you probably should just try to find it online as the DVD release is like $150. Even then though, it’s okay at best and your time is much better spent with the Manga anyway.
Now with the game and the moment you start you realize it actually skips a bit ahead. This is when Tetsuya and Kahm were separated and you start the game and you’ll do combat and will probably die in seconds, what the hell? Well I try again and die again! Then I finally realize you need to hold the button to use the sword you have. Once you’re done you explore the overworld going to towns and other inside locations to look for important characters. There are three floors with many towns and caves and dungeons to look into. Sounds simple? Well let’s talk about some things wrong with this game and by that I MEAN ALL!!
This combat I was talking about earlier? It’s basically a rip off of Konami’s 1987 FDS game Esper Dream. I played the 2nd one this year and while it was just a decent game in my opinion, it had much better gameplay than this. To encounter enemies you need to touch these weird blue symbol things trying to catch you. There’s many issues with combat like the hitboxes making zero sense and you being able to take little abuse before death. You need to be precise where your sword lands. You do later get a rail gun but because movement is very rigid and your starting position sucks, you need to run away for a little to get enough space. Combat just isn’t fun and by the end of my third session I was avoiding enemies. I almost never do that in RPGs unless I have reasons like I need to heal or they are too weak of enemies to bother.
There also are the dungeons where you barely see any enemies, I only ever saw one boss that you didn’t even need to kill. You can get stuff like items or talk to NPCs. Some shops and places to help you out also are in these. None of them are creatively designed visually or in any gameplay sense of the word fun. They’re all just square rooms. Worst of all, just trying to travel anywhere just takes so long that you have to do it.
I’m pissed. I hate this game. What the heck is up with a lot of the gameplay decisions here? Why is trying to get to one location so slow, like seriously TETSUYA GO FASTER!! There’s bread you can get in this game from bakeries and enemies, what does it do? It’s for your hunger meter! Yes you have to eat bread while you’re moving around or you lose health. Who thought that was a good idea? That belongs in something like Mystery Dungeon, not in a stupid bad kusoge Anime game. Omg the hitboxes on enemies is soooo trash. I die sometimes because the game just makes up its own rules! Why does Tetsuya become this weird green color when you’re almost out of health? The way you level up in this game is stupid, you have EXP which for the record gives you very little for each enemy but you also need smiley pins! This involves you having to help out NPCs in towns or dungeons. How does this even make Tetsuya stronger, is it willpower? This game is so damn ugly, this is one of the ugliest games I’ve ever seen. When I got to the part where I saved Battia, I was like “BATTIA WHAT HAPPENED!?” I wish I could have shown it but her sprite is abysmally bad. Every sprite looks horrific. Once you get Battia you can use her magic but I forgot to use it but make sure you have Energy Orbs for them. Have you ever played a game where the talking animation was terrible? This game might have it the worst, go ahead, stop reading and go try to find a video that shows the first cutscene when the game starts where Nao and Tetsuya are talking, it has to be one of the worst talking animation cycles I’ve ever seen! Ohhhh there’s just so much more I HATE about this game!
You know what, let's keep going. You know what I couldn’t stand? The music. None of it lasts over 25 seconds! If I have to hear this damn song for the 100th time because IT ALWAYS PLAYS IN DUNGEONS, I’m gonna go insane! Okay so in this game you can heal by using medicine or going to a clinic, sounds good right? WRONG! Don’t do that second one and do the more annoying method that’ll save you time and gavas (that’s the currency), get your password and reset the game. Yes I’m not kidding when I say this, using your password to reload gives you all of your health back. So this means I gotta put this annoying password in everytime. You just gotta do it, it’s optimal so it just makes sense to do but good god is it tedious. I haven’t even mentioned how the menus feel clunky to go into and I swear it loves to eat your inputs and I made sure to check, this was not my crappy keyboard’s fault! It was playing the Guardian Legend just fine right after. I just can’t fathom how nothing in this game is good, it sucks, there’s nothing! It would be even more hell if I wasn’t looking at a map!
Finally let’s just get over with it now, why did I not beat this game? Well, I just couldn’t mentally do it man. I really wanted to just beat it and make sure no one had to suffer, got it all covered and all's well that ends well. I just keep pushing it back and every time I do play it, I’m just miserable. I'm already a person that’s been depressed a lot this year. I’ve actually been a little better lately thanks to a oomf I’ve been chatting with on discord and also just taking antidepressants I think helps too. I don’t wanna be miserable playing a game right now, I wanna go play something I actually wanna play, I guess I just am not the right person for this kind of thing. It’s a shame because I really did want to beat it but I have to realize myself comes first and I had to learn it was finally time to stop after around the two hour mark. That could have been close to the end, I don’t know. I can’t really check a video playthrough cause there is none.
In the end, I think Outlanders is the worst kind of bad where I come out finding pretty much nothing redeemable. I seriously think the only cool thing I ever saw in that game was sometimes walls are in random battles if you’re near a wall when the battle starts. I guess the cover is cool but that was just taken from the OVA. This might be Micronics worst game though honestly I might still hate Athena more. I just can’t believe something this bad exists. It’s baffling like who do I even blame for the poor quality? I hate being defeated like this especially since I can only think of like two games where this ended up happening with. It’s especially annoying since I went out of my way to read the source material for this only for nothing! Well at least I enjoyed the manga. If anyone reads this, I’m sorry it ended like this. Maybe one day I’ll go back but it’s very doubtful. Though one day I wanna do a video review on it but god I’m dreading the time I ever do that. Just don’t play Outlanders, it’s not worth it not even as a joke. It’s another example of a bad licensed game of the era that does so much wrong it’s astounding. Honestly I just don’t know what to say anymore. How about a nice song from the ending of the OVA to end this review? If you read this far, I’m sure you can enjoy a nice Japanese song for your troubles.
See ya!