October 03, 2003 - The likelihood that you've actually heard of Growlanser Generations and its inspiration is probably pretty low. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to even come close to recognizing its developer Career Soft if not for the fact that its old Genesis RPG Langrisser actually made it here to North America in 1991 (though we came to know it as Warsong when it arrived). Veiled from western eyes for the last couple of seasons, Growlanser originally got its start back in 1999 when it made a huge splash on the PlayStation One among genre cultists. Wowing audiences with its unique battle system and open-ended storyline, it immediately spawned two sequels for the PlayStation 2 and is about to be joined by a third follow-up this coming December. Of course, we American folk have yet to get even one of them.
But for those RPG fans that have kept their hopes high, they'll be happy to know that the translation crusaders at Working Designs are looking to change that reality entirely. Hard at work for the last several years at porting Growlanser II: The Sense of Justice and Growlanser III: The Dual Darkness, W-Designs have collected their efforts under one banner to form a single two-game collection. Though the choice to do so wasn't exactly the original plan (the company was running into Sony approval problems trying to publish the games individually), the end result provides the foundation for one of next year's hottest compilations.
Luckily for us we've managed to get our mitts on a nearly complete build directly from Working Designs. It's made up of the first half in the series (Growlanser II) and is already quite a massive undertaking. In fact, The Sense of Justice is so big that in order to see roughly 70% of the game you'll need to play it all the way through at least twice. The final 30% is so difficult to unlock that the publishers have boasted it takes eight full completions to see everything it has to offer. The scary part is, this is only in the first half of the collection.
In keeping with the idea that every role-player needs an epic storyline, Growlanser II begins immediately after the events of a horrible three-way war. The kingdoms of Lanzak, Rolandia, and Burnstein have come to a truce, but not without resistance from its people and its politicians. Your job as the player is to assume the role of a young Knight named Wein Cruz as he sets out to prevent an unknown threat from sparking the conflict once again. Plot twists, surprises, and other such fable-oriented madness ensue immediately.
At his heart, Growlanser is your typical turn-based RPG; or at least in terms of outward appearances it is. Simply selecting what kind of attack you want to perform (such as magics, defense, techniques, and other such stuff) allows your characters to take on enemies with stats determining your effectiveness. Where the strategy comes in, however, are your positioning and battle-objectives. Instead of immediately attacking a foe at the start of a battle, their location on the map may force you to have to move towards them during your turn -- leaving you open for long range or magical attacks in the meantime. Civilians and team members can be killed in the midst of your travels as well: oftentimes triggering your defeat or a shift in the storyline that affects the rest of your adventure.
Its this obvious need for clever planning during battle that separates Growlanser from the common crop of role-players. As every fight is an important one and you'll never know what affect certain outcomes will have on the grand scheme of things. Forming relationships with characters, establishing a love life, and interacting with NPCs outside of combat is another key component to doing well in the long run. Most conversations are made up of complicated dialogue trees that offer multi-branching pathways and changes in reputation with whomever you're speaking with. Of course, we've only experienced a few hours of this so far, but from what we can tell -- it can get pretty deep.
If there were one area of complaint we could assume most gamers will adhere to, however, it would have to be the dated visuals. As beautiful as the 2D artistic style is, the animation moves along robotically with slow-paced actions and a very deliberate presentation. They definitely won't please everyone, and with this build almost 100%, we can't imagine that this fact will change much by ship time in March. At least the more powerful magic spells sport some pretty sweet CG cut scenes, though, it makes the animation problem a little less painful.
To its credit, Working Designs has strived hard to enhance The Sense of Justice over the Japanese version considerably -- there are over 7000 audio clips and 13 hours of dialogue between the two games combined and the opening cinematic will be re-cut and re-recorded with a new song. Other new refinements include the addition of a Suikoden-like auto-battle feature, combat command hot keys, and the analog control its Nippon inspiration sorely missed. Expanded save recording, menu reorganization, and a more flexible skill point system (experience) have also been included, and there are a myriad of other changes too numerous to list here (we'll save that one for our review).
But from what we can tell all these changes are for the better. As the first part of this two-part Growlanser Generations collection has been extremely enthralling thus far (be it the battles or the storyline). And with a bunch of extras planned for the later sections of the game (like 21 minutes of outtakes, music player, and various mini-quest epilogues), there's still plenty of stuff for us to check out and experience.
To see things in action for yourself, click on our media page below for a small collection of movies taken from the beginning of the game and a ton of screenshots that show off its many characters and aspects. We'll be back again soon over the coming weeks with a closer look at the next section of Generations, The Dual Darkness. Stay tuned.
