List of high-quality authors
The nineties of the last century can be said to be the world of Japanese RPG games, and the RPG masterpiece camp has played a vital role in several generations of console wars, especially Square Enix, which is considered by players to be "a high-quality shot", and its infinite scenery is impressive. In the 8-bit FC and 16-bit SFC era, Square Enix was Nintendo's loyal partner, and in the 32-bit era, its creative concept and adherence to the tradition of Nintendo had a disagreement, and finally switched to Sony's new PS platform, in the process of this transformation, a very important work appeared, not only let Square Enix fully appreciate the revolutionary hardware evolution of the PS console, laid an important foundation for the final choice to break away from the Nintendo camp, but also allowed Sony to have its own first-party RPG masterpiece, In this issue, we will review one of the early ace works of PS, "Arc the Lad" (Arc the Lad).
Time came to the end of 1994, with the advent of Sony's PS console, the home game market became Nintendo, Sega, Sony tripartite competition, and Square Enix, who had been developing RPG masterpieces for Nintendo, also had his own ideas for the new environment, but it was a little ugly to get rid of Nintendo, so he maintained a harmonious relationship on the surface, and secretly began to seek new cooperation. Square Enix chose G-Craft, which had a deep cooperation, that is, the SFC version of the strategy game "Front Mission" (Front Mission) development team, after being commissioned by Hironobu Sakaguchi, in the form of technical assistance, and Sony completed the development of "Fairy Warrior", in June 1995, the game was officially released, becoming the most important RPG masterpiece in the early days of the PS console.
The story of this work begins with an unexpected encounter between a pair of teenagers, the male protagonist Ark in order to find his father who has been missing for many years, accidentally met the girl Kukuru who was chased by monsters, and after an adventure, he learned that Ark turned out to be the key person to save the world, his father was the king's brother, and the ultimate goal was to find the ark, the whole game process is similar to Square Enix's previous works, full of twists and turns, and players are easy to immerse themselves in.
The game's visual style still continues the classic 2D top-down perspective of the SFC console, with characters moving around the scene and gaining key information through conversations with many NPCs to advance the story. The combat system is one of the important features of this work, G-Craft applies its experience in the gameplay of war chess to "Fairy Warrior", the battle is no longer a simple side of each station to slash in the air, but a turn-based battle full of strategy, you can use ordinary attacks, stunts, props, and multiple teammates work together to eliminate the enemy, in order to avoid the drawbacks of the slow pace in the previous war chess games and the later boring drawbacks, this work strengthens the combat speed, so that players have a more smooth experience.
The entire story of Fairy Warrior is basically linear, and each battle unfolds with the story, these battles are usually not skipped, and must be won to continue the main story, and the game also provides a lot of open areas for you to explore.
Square Enix has made a lot of new attempts in this work, on the basis of the traditional flat RPG, using the more powerful image function of the new generation of consoles, to achieve a lot of pre-made pictures with a deep perspective. For example, bustling streets and building corridors can be said to be the prototype of "cinematic games". If you've played Final Fantasy 7 and look back at a lot of scenes from Goblin Warriors, you'll feel déjà vu. This form of fixed-perspective background + active characters has created a large number of classic masterpieces in the PS era, including "Final Fantasy", "Resident Evil", "Parasitic Eve" and so on.
In addition, "Fairy Warrior" also added a large number of cutscenes, far more than the cartridge of the large-capacity disc, finally let Square Enix have room to play, although not as amazing as the later works, but still left a deep impression on players, and later some fans even called this game "Final Fantasy 6."5》。
The game was a huge success after its launch, and in the context of less than a year after the console was released, it sold 1.1 million units in Japan alone, allowing Sony to have its own first-party RPG masterpiece, which was largely contributed by Square Enix and G-Craft.
Private deals like this are usually very low-key, but in the final animation of "Fairy Warrior" in the game, a movie-like production staff directory appears, and the game director and main program are introduced, and the G-craft name is prominently displayed. Nintendo was furious when he learned that Square Enix was secretly helping Sony develop the game, and although the other party claimed that G-Craft was a third-party company, Square Enix himself could not be convinced. Nintendo, which has a rather conservative cooperative style, immediately retaliated, and Square Enix's original RPG masterpiece "Bahamut Lagoon" (Bahamut Lagoon) that was originally planned to be launched on the SFC console was dumped by Nintendo, causing billions of yen in the form of cassette, causing billions of yen losses, and the company's stock price was also **, at this time Sony took the opportunity to make this RPG giant its partner.
Seeing this, players will find that Sony's behavior of "betraying friends" is very similar to Song Jiang's "forcing many heroes to Liangshan" in "Water Margin", of course, I am afraid that there is also Square Enix's own wishes, but from the perspective of the development of the entire PS era, Square Enix has obviously achieved higher achievements, and the real details of the cooperation between the two sides back then are no longer important.
"Fairy Warrior" was originally designed with a huge storyline, but due to the tight listing time required by Sony, the developer could only divide the complete content into two parts, the first generation of the PS version was actually the first half, and the ending left an obvious foreshadowing, and the character level was also limited to 60, in November 1996, "Fairy Warrior 2" (ARC The LAD 2) continued to be sold on the PS console, this time Sony no longer hidden, and even established a special subsidiary ARC Entertainment, Completed the development with G-Craft.
Users can inherit the records of the previous game in "Fairy Warrior 2", the level cap of the character has been increased, and new systems such as regional maps, ** accessory slots, armor upgrades, and synthesis shops have been added, and many side quests and monster cultivation have also significantly increased the game time. The sequel has achieved 920,000 sales in Japan, and many new players have gone back to buy the original game from scratch in order to fully experience the content, and the combination of Square Enix and Sony has begun to show its strength, and the only regret is that neither of these two works was originally released in North America, until April 2002, when it appeared in the form of a PS version of the collection, giving English players a chance to experience it.
Fairy Warrior is one of Sony's first major titles, and along with games such as Wild Arms and Alundra, it forms a new RPG camp. And Square Enix has also gained a lot, and has fully explored the potential of the PS console, and finally launched "Final Fantasy 7" on January 31, 1997, with an astonishing sales of 9.72 million units, and the game experience has also had subversive innovation, and since then it has begun to open up the gap with its competitor Sega SS, G-Craft has also got new development opportunities, and launched the PS version of "Front Mission 2", with 530,000 sales and a good reputation among players, This strategy game has become a classic.
As the PS console career enters the middle and late stages,All kinds of excellent works are in a blowout state,"Fairy Warrior" The traditional 2D picture has been difficult to attract new players,Sony is not willing to give up this once excellent brand,1999In October,The sequel to the series "Fairy Warrior 3" (ARC the Lad 3) released the PS version,This time the game capacity reached 2CD,The new 3D picture and CG have made players have a different feeling,But this time the overall performance is very mediocre, Users who are accustomed to the flashy spectacle are reluctant to experience the traditional gameplay again, and in the end, only 390,000 units were sold in Japan. At this time, Sony already had a first-party masterpiece like "Gran Turismo", which sold tens of millions of dollars, and with top third-party manufacturers such as Square Enix, Konami, Namco, and Capcom, the status of "Fairy Warrior" was no longer as important as it was in the early days of the PS console.
In the years that followed, the Leprechaun Warriors series continued to feature several new titles, including a new generation of PS2 consoles, Bandai handheld WS, and Goblin Warrior R on mobile phones, most notably the PS2 version of Arc the Lad Twilight of Spirits, which features a novel dual-protagonist story design that allows players to experience the conflict between different races in the same world. In addition to the excellent quality of the game itself, this game is well-known by many domestic players because this is one of the few official Chinese games on PS2, and almost everyone has a copy disc back then, and even launched an extremely rare Chinese Simplified Chinese version. However, the follow-up new works have not reproduced the original glory regardless of sales and word of mouth, and this name has faded out of the eyes of players today.
Now looking at the "Fairy Warrior" series, the most representative is obviously the first two games, and the continuous content design has both inheritance and innovation, and many fans hope to have a complete remaster, but now it looks very slim. The game is not a shocking masterpiece, both in terms of graphics and system gameplay, it is a transitional experiment between 16-bit and 32-bit consoles, and the subsequent impact of the overall environment of Japanese RPGs naturally has limited room for development. The birth of this work,At the same time, accompanied by the open and secret battles of the industry's major manufacturers,It can be said that it is an accessory product of "fairy fight",In other words, without the success of this work,There may not be Square Enix's follow-up masterpieces,With this unique significance,As long as you are a PS console fanatic,It's definitely a must to experience。
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