Known as "Red Arremer: Makaimura Gaiden" in Japanese, this is a game I know I owned as a kid in English, but I don't really remember if I beat it or not. I had so much fun with Demon's Crest earlier in the year, I decided to pick up this (and a GameCube and a GameBoy Player ^^;) so I could play more of Firebrand's series on stream~. It took me just about dead-on two hours to beat the Japanese version of game on stream.
The game opens with a text scroll about how the underworld is under attack my a mysterious army, and a few dying monsters relate that directly to Firebrand as you start the game. Getting through the first stage past the gates of hell, you enter into the underworld to a grim sight. The underworld is crawling with the lackeys of the lord of destruction, Breager. He was defeated eons ago by a legendary hero, and you're entrusted by the lord of the underworld to do it again! There are a few characters in the game who are silly fun in a way, but this is a GB game from 1990 (the first GB game Capcom even put out, so far as I can tell), so we're here for action more so than story, and the game knows that.
Gameplay-wise, this game plays like Zelda 2 had a baby with Mega Man. You have an overworld you walk around in and can get in random battles into, and you also how towns you can enter as well as dungeons to get through to progress the story. The overworld and towns are from a Zelda 1-like top-down perspective, but all the action is sidescrolling that feels more like Mega Man. You get upgrades to your health, jumping/flying power, and attack power as the game goes on, but I don't think any of it is actually optional. The game is for all intents and purposes stage-based with the illusion of a more open experience, as most often beating the big dungeon and/or boss of the section of the world map you're in will dump you into an area that you can't return from. That said, the adventure parts, isolated between stages as they may be, may be simple but are still well executed for what they are. As evidenced by how I beat it in two hours, it's not a super duper long game, but you do have a password system to let you come back and play it in multiple sittings if you want to.
But this is first and foremost an action game, and that's where the game really delivers. Firebrand has a main attack of spitting fireballs, and different fire breaths can be acquired through the course of the story that have different power levels and effects such as making temporary safety blobs on spiked walls, but you generally just always wanna use the most recent one you got. You can also hover with your wings for limited (at first) amount of time. The level design and boss design is pretty darn solid, but the game's main issue is a serious inverse difficulty curve problem. The first and especially the second bosses are really hard because you only start the game with two hearts between you and death. It's not an impossibly hard game, but just getting past the start can be really daunting. And that's unfortunate, since the rest of the game is generally really well balanced and fun, but that first hurdle is likely going to frustrate even people like myself who are quite comfortable with Capcom's action games.
The presentation is pretty good, even for this early in the GameBoy's life. Sprites are fairly well detailed and environments are as well. The music is also quite good, as one would expect from any Capcom game of this era, with my personal favorite being the theme that plays in Breager's Castle.
Verdict: Recommended. This is a really solid, if short, action platformer with an action/adventure twist. It's hardly Capcom's best 2D game, let alone their best GameBoy game, but it's still a very enjoyable, if a bit frustrating, way to spend an afternoon.
The game opens with a text scroll about how the underworld is under attack my a mysterious army, and a few dying monsters relate that directly to Firebrand as you start the game. Getting through the first stage past the gates of hell, you enter into the underworld to a grim sight. The underworld is crawling with the lackeys of the lord of destruction, Breager. He was defeated eons ago by a legendary hero, and you're entrusted by the lord of the underworld to do it again! There are a few characters in the game who are silly fun in a way, but this is a GB game from 1990 (the first GB game Capcom even put out, so far as I can tell), so we're here for action more so than story, and the game knows that.
Gameplay-wise, this game plays like Zelda 2 had a baby with Mega Man. You have an overworld you walk around in and can get in random battles into, and you also how towns you can enter as well as dungeons to get through to progress the story. The overworld and towns are from a Zelda 1-like top-down perspective, but all the action is sidescrolling that feels more like Mega Man. You get upgrades to your health, jumping/flying power, and attack power as the game goes on, but I don't think any of it is actually optional. The game is for all intents and purposes stage-based with the illusion of a more open experience, as most often beating the big dungeon and/or boss of the section of the world map you're in will dump you into an area that you can't return from. That said, the adventure parts, isolated between stages as they may be, may be simple but are still well executed for what they are. As evidenced by how I beat it in two hours, it's not a super duper long game, but you do have a password system to let you come back and play it in multiple sittings if you want to.
But this is first and foremost an action game, and that's where the game really delivers. Firebrand has a main attack of spitting fireballs, and different fire breaths can be acquired through the course of the story that have different power levels and effects such as making temporary safety blobs on spiked walls, but you generally just always wanna use the most recent one you got. You can also hover with your wings for limited (at first) amount of time. The level design and boss design is pretty darn solid, but the game's main issue is a serious inverse difficulty curve problem. The first and especially the second bosses are really hard because you only start the game with two hearts between you and death. It's not an impossibly hard game, but just getting past the start can be really daunting. And that's unfortunate, since the rest of the game is generally really well balanced and fun, but that first hurdle is likely going to frustrate even people like myself who are quite comfortable with Capcom's action games.
The presentation is pretty good, even for this early in the GameBoy's life. Sprites are fairly well detailed and environments are as well. The music is also quite good, as one would expect from any Capcom game of this era, with my personal favorite being the theme that plays in Breager's Castle.
Verdict: Recommended. This is a really solid, if short, action platformer with an action/adventure twist. It's hardly Capcom's best 2D game, let alone their best GameBoy game, but it's still a very enjoyable, if a bit frustrating, way to spend an afternoon.