Bahamut Lagoon review Super Nintendo

The following review of Bahamut Lagoon, a 24Mbit cartridge on the Super Nintendo produced by Square Soft was originally published in the May 1996 edition of Superplay magazine in the UK.

Nintendo may have lost Final Fantasy VII, but there's still more than enough Square to go round...

With a young programming team under the supervision of Final Fantasy producer Hinorobu Sakaguchi, Bahamut Lagoon continues Square's foray into the world of simulation wargames that started last year with the stylish Front Mission.

While the RPG elements are negligible and only really serve as intermissions that tie the thirty-odd skirmishes together, the game's real gimmick is that you can feed a dragon, who fights alongside your party, with anything that comes to hand. Armour, weapons, spells and potions can all be forced upon the hapless beast to change his characteristics and sometimes even his appearance.

Although raising your dragon is supposedly a large part of the game, in reality, it's a rather hit and miss affair. Whilst as a general rule, if you feed them fire magic, their fire attack will increase, you can't actually see how much the dragon will be affected until you feed him the item. What's initially appealing about Lagoon is the sumptuous graphics.

The lead graphic designer, Hitoshi Sasaki, obviously had a vision, and, as he is also credited as the head game designer, it would appear that Lagoon is really his baby. Every screen seems to be overlaid with a mist and diffused light effect that creates a very convincing mystical look. Character designs are yet another variation on the Final Fantasy SD look, but with more fluid animation during the battle sequences.

The downer is that, like Front Mission, Bahamut Lagoon just isn't hard enough. Even without a grasp of Japanese, it's possible to make steady progress through the battles using just the default parties and settings. Make sure you've got enough healing potions, and regularly upgrade weapons and armour and even bosses fall fairly easily. After the sixth round, bonus levels are also available where you can boost your supplies and also uncover treasure which makes life even easier.

Compared to the likes of Tactics Ogre (which we defy anyone without a thorough grasp of the Japanese language to get more than a few hours into) Bahamut Lagoon seems fairly lightweight, and Square fanatics shouldn't feel too cheated if it never appears on Western shelves.

Not content with providing Super Play with two new games in this issue, Square Soft (Japan) are assaulting the Japanese market not only on the ground, but via satellite as well. Their next official cartridge release after Treasure Hunter G is Treasure of Rudola - The World of Downfall and Revival, an RPG which, instead of providing different story endings depending on what characters you choose, gives you three totally different scenarios.

The human race has only sixteen days to live before the, not so benevolent god, Rudola fufills his habit of making a new dominant race of beings every four thousand years. Races like the intelligent Danan's, an aquatic race and even a society of giants have all risen and fallen by Rhuda’s hand over the years. Each scenario has its own hero, Sirent, Cion or Dune and you can choose to complete the tasks in any order.

You also get to decide how many days out of the sixteen you spend with each party. As certain events happen on specific days, there's a fair amount of playing involved if you're to uncover all of Rudola's 32Mbit of secrets. Treasure of Rudola also allows you to mix up your own magic (or Kodama as the game calls it).

The actual spell you cast is determined by whatever name you call it. You can use up to six words to label your magic, and, although the game supposedly generates a spell depending on what you type in, we suspect it's just a random choice from a set list, as you only get to discover what the magic does by casting it.

Whether you type using romanji (Western characters) or Japanese isn't yet known. With a battle system that looks very much like Final Fantasy and graphics dissimilar to Bahamut Lagoon, Treasure of Rudola is set for a Japanese release on 5th April. Meanwhile, in what might seem like a bid to get rid of all their remaining Super Famicom projects in one fell swoop, Square have no less than four games running on Nintendo’s Satellaview channel at the moment. Dynamite Racer, Love Balance, Trigger Conflicts and Radical Dreamers are all RPGs, but with some interesting twists.

Trigger Conflicts has a vertical shooter at its heart, and, by finding treasures and money, you can upgrade your ship for the next stage. Radical Dreamers: Unstolen Jeweller is more of a storybook affair somewhat like Chun Soft's Sound novel series with a time limit on battles and multiple endings. Whether these are full Satellaview-only mini games or demos prior to a proper release we've yet to discover, but They certainly sound more interesting than Square’s current line-up.