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If you are a player who likes RPG games, and you happen to have lived through the SFC and PS era in the 90s of the last century, then the name "Square Enix" must be like thunder. It started with a traditional Japanese RPG, and after joining the Sony platform, it completely exploded, and many excellent works represented by "Final Fantasy 7" became the most heavyweight bargaining chip to win the console war. With the help of new hardware technology, Square Enix in the PS era not only brought the old RPG to a new height, but also made a lot of attempts in many gameplay fields that had never been set foot in before, and achieved excellent results.
In this issue, we review an important innovation in the tide of 3D games, which performed well in terms of word-of-mouth and sales, which is "Br**e Fencer Musashi".
In December 1994, Sony officially entered the home console battlefield with a new PS console, at this time Nintendo's SFC console was in its heyday, and Square Enix, as a Nintendo partner, was also considering future development, while continuing to launch several blockbuster games in SFC, and on the other hand, secretly cooperating with Sony to develop "Arc The" in the form of technical support lad), the excellent performance made Square Enix see the huge potential of the PS console, so he did not hesitate to break with Nintendo and threw himself into the Sony camp.
On January 31, 1997, Square Enix took out his biggest trump card IP "Final Fantasy 7", 3CD's super large capacity brought an unprecedented game experience, cinematic storylines and a variety of rich game systems, allowing people to have a new understanding of RPG, and also attracted many users who had never been in contact with the game, with global sales of 9.72 million sets, which is also one of the milestone works in the entire game history.
However, Square Enix did not meet the existing achievements, although the new generation of PS consoles has 3D polygon processing power and large-capacity discs, but the hardware conditions at that time were very difficult to achieve full 3D pictures, at that time many games had gorgeous and detailed CG animations, but the actual characters were very rough, forming a huge contrast. Final Fantasy 7 takes a compromise approach, with various scenes modeled using 3D technology and then rendered to generate static images, and players do not have the freedom to rotate the perspective like modern games, essentially a 2D game in the guise of 3D. This method was widely adopted in the PS era, and in addition to the Final Fantasy series, there were also masterpieces such as "Parasitic Eve", "Resident Evil", and "Legend of the Dragon Knight".
Square Enix also started researching true 3D games early on, and also took the opportunity to try new genres, such as "Planet Fight" (Tobal), which was launched in August 1996, and achieved 920,000 unit sales, and the overall performance was not inferior to that of the old arcade manufacturers;Launched in November 1997, the side-scrolling flight shooter game "One-Armed Optimus" (Einhander) runs smoothly with a full 3D background and rich ** effects, and the sales of 310,000 sets are the top for this kind of gameplay. These experimental games showed the strength of Square Enix, and they were full of anticipation for more 3D graphics games.
In July 1998, Square Enix launched a new game "Musashiden" on the PS console, which adopts a real-time combat gameplay under the full 3D screen, and most of the plot dialogues have voice, Hironobu Sakaguchi as the producer, Yoichi Yoshimoto as the director, Tetsuya Nomura is in charge of character design, and Tsuyoshi Sekido is responsible for the creation, and the excellent performance has quickly won the popularity of many players.
The story of the game is set in the Age of Magic, 150 years ago, the dark wizard led an army of monsters to attack the kingdom of Alucanit, and at the moment of crisis, the king ordered to summon heroes to repel the enemy and seal the ** power. Now the kingdom is attacked by neighbors again, and the enemy tries to **remove the seal and regain** the power, but this time it is a young boy Musashi who claims to be the reincarnation of a hero, but despite this, as the protagonist, you are still given the Fusion Blade, and since then you have embarked on the path of defending peace and finding the Hero Excalibur.
At first, Musashi has no interest in saving the world, just to complete the mission and return home, when he retrieves Excalibur, he finds that the enemy has captured many people around him, and in the process of rescue, he finds five scrolls that can increase his strength, and defeats the badge guardian who protects the scrolls. In addition, there are a large number of puzzles and mini-games in the game world, which you need to solve one by one to advance the story, all in real time, and the "mine stepping" turn-based combat that veteran players are very familiar with and disgusted will not appear.
Musashiden's graphics use full 3D polygons, although the level of detail is not high, but the exaggerated ** shape makes up for the shortcomings, most of the scenes are presented in a third-person perspective using a variety of pre-set camera angles, Sony's action game masterpiece "Crash Bandicoot" (Crash Bandicoot) gave Square Enix a lot of inspiration, players can experience a bird's eye, tail-end, spin and other rich cinematic adventures. For example, at the beginning of the game, Musashi climbs up along a spiral road, encountering horizontal logs and vertical discs, and needs to jump and dodge sideways, which clearly and intuitively shows the rules of the game, and even newcomers who rarely play games can easily learn it.
The basic gameplay of this game is based on action-adventure, and you can use swordsmanship to fight against various enemies, which is also the core of the entire game. There are two main ** in Musashi.,The first is the fusion blade that comes with the debut.,Normal attacks are very similar to Japanese katanas.,Not only can you attack quickly and continuously.,You can also absorb the enemy's ability.,You need to consume bp value to use it;The other is the Sword of Light obtained in the first chapter, the attack speed is slower but more powerful, this ** can be strengthened by obtaining five scrolls scattered around the world, each scroll will add an elemental attribute to the Sword of Light, not only to attack the enemy, but also to break certain obstacles, many scenes in the game require players to flexibly use different action characteristics in order to successfully destroy enemies or solve puzzles.
Musashi is not alone in the game, this energetic battle boy is loved by the inhabitants of the kingdom, and there will be multiple NPCs to help him during his adventure, and the aforementioned Light Excalibur also has an important purpose, which is to break the crystal prison to rescue the inhabitants who are imprisoned, and these people will play an important role in the player's mission, such as teaching you new attack techniques, crafting items, etc., in addition to increasing the maximum BP through crystal shards.
Like Square Enix's other titles, this game also offers a wealth of development content, where players can earn experience points by destroying enemies to improve their basic stats, as well as earn gold and purchase items in various shops. There are also several pieces of legendary armor to collect, located in specific areas, which provide powerful rarities such as secondary jumps and increased critical strike chance, and interestingly, these artifacts cannot be used directly and need to be authenticated to show their full strength, which was clearly influenced by Blizzard's action-adventure masterpiece Diablo at the time.
Musashi also innovated the addition of a day-night clock system, which was limited by the hardware conditions of the year, and could only be simulated in the game for 24 hours instead of the modern popular and real time synchronization. The world of the game is also 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the activities of NPCs and enemies are closely related to the time, for example, the facilities in the town will distinguish between work and rest times, and between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., you can also go to specific places to catch creatures called minku, which can drop rare items that increase the maximum HP.
The game's clock system will also affect Musashi's fatigue level, players can clearly see the fatigue in the form of percentages, as time goes by, Musashi will become more and more tired, and his speed of action will also be affected, fatigue below 50 will not have much impact, above 50 will start to be unable to run fast, above 70 you can obviously feel a significant drop in movement and attack speed, Musashi will even faint when the fatigue is full, you need to often pass through food, Sleep and rest to reduce fatigue, players can also sleep directly in the wild, but be careful of being attacked by wild enemies, and can only restore fatigue to a minimum of 20, unless you get a special quilt item in the later stages.
This work has a very important significance in Square Enix's many game works,Not only is it an attempt to play based on action,It is an important exploration of the performance of the full 3D picture game,Although there were previous attempts at fighting and flying shooting,But this time the player operates the character adventure,Plus does not support the free rotation perspective,This puts forward high requirements for the game director,Whether it is the polygon movement law and the performance of ambient light and shadow,The game has handed over a satisfactory answer。
After its release, Musashiden sold 1.14 million units, including 650,000 units in Japan, and was rated 32 points by FAMI TSU magazine, with an IGN score of 85, gamespot rating 77. For an original work with a new gameplay, it can be called a good start for its excellent performance in terms of sales and word of mouth. It is worth mentioning that the limited edition of this game released in Japan, and the US version released later, both use a 2CD configuration, and the other disc contains a demo version of Final Fantasy 8 that can be used in action, which has a huge appeal to players, and is one of the important reasons for the good sales of Musashiden.
Square Enix's performance in the PS era has reached its peak, and many works have broken through the framework of traditional Japanese-style fantasy role-playing, allowing players to feel the unbridled creativity and strong development strength, after the merger in 2005, Square Enix launched a sequel "Musashi 2 Juggernaut" on the PS2 console, both sales and word of mouth have not performed well, and since then the name has faded out of the player's sight. "Musashiden" has not been ported or remastered since then, and it is still a rare original exclusive on the PS console, but fortunately, it can be played on the latest Sony consoles in a simulated form, and the classic adventure experience has remained in everyone's minds forever.
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