Reviews

I honestly have to say that I was expecting more. When I heard that a Sega Genesis game that was previously lost to English speaking audiences was available in the US not as a rom or a port, but in the form of a brand new Genesis cartridge, I was more than excited. To deserve the time and dedication that Super Fighter Team spent to translate the game, run extensive bug fixes, creating new packaging, art and manuals, this game would have to be the second coming, or at least an incredibly solid role playing experience. Unfortunately, while the idea is solid, the execution falls flat.

The story starts out quickly. The main character, Prince Steven, is frustrated with the life of royalty, and decides to trade places with a beggar who looks completely identical to him. Just in case the allusion is missed, the word pauper is used repeatedly by Tom, the beggar with whom Steven has switched,and pretty much every townsperson that Steven speaks to.The evil Cat Minister takes over as soon as Steven is away and turns the entire town into cats. Steven takes up the cause and must quest for various items to defeat the evil Cat Minister. It’s pretty standard RPG faire from there on out.

Beggar Prince’s dialogue is better written than I expected, not a direct translation with butchered English, and actually made me laugh a few times. The humor ranges from satirizing standard RPG elements to pop culture references as close to gaming as Zelda and as far as the Happy Happy Joy Joy song from Ren and Stimpy. One of my personal favorites is delivered by the prince, when initially confused for the beggar Tom. When one of the townspeople refuses to speak to him based on his appearance he asks “Who’s scruffy looking?”

The story on the other hand fails to compel in every way possible. There is virtually no link between most chapters of the game. After completing dungeons I was often confused in regards to my next step, often to the point of frustration. At times there is absolutely no hint in the game about what to do next and were it not for a Google translated Taiwanese guide, I would never have known that “the use of the gavel will jewelry store nails” or to “find Second Lady, to her milk sugar exchange south gate key”.

The characters are incredibly one dimensional. It basically comes down to three personalities: the spoiled prince, the hapless townspeople, and the evil overlords. There is a point where Prince Steven and a priestess, who I could swear I had never seen before, profess their love for each other, and I am left wondering what the history was, if any, between these two and why nobody felt like telling me.

Beggar Prince’s many dungeons typically feature at least one action element. As an example, there is a cave which Prince Steven must traverse in order to save a mermaid princess from a lustful dwarf. There is a row of spikes in this cave that move up and down in a certain order and of course, the player must navigate this in order to advance. Rather than taking damage when hit with the spikes, the prince is instantly killed. The spikes move fairly quickly, and the game is not built to respond to controls in the same way as an action game is, so I died to each of these elements several times before completing them. In this instance, the journey back is rather short, but in longer dungeons, the loss of time due to death by clunky mechanics is disheartening to say the least.

Puzzles in this game don’t fare much better. Most, if not all of these puzzles came with no clear solution, or even a suggestion of how to get to that solution. For example: I successfully defeated the dwarf from the previous example and received a magic stone. Another branch of the cave that I venture into features five rocks lined up with different symbols on each. That’s your puzzle. The only item that I was able to use in this room was the magic stone; so of course, the stone must go with one of these symbols. If the stone is used on the wrong symbol, a fight with a tremendously hard boss occurs. Of course, the game does not tell you at any point that this is the wrong symbol, and typically, boss fights are meant to advance a game, so imagine my surprise when I finally beat the boss and nothing had changed. There is no clue to which symbol the stone

matches with, so it’s essentially a game of try and reset if it wasn’t right.

Bugs are a problem that hurt this game as well. The original Taiwanese release was so rampant with bugs that I am tempted to play it just to see if it usurps Daggerfall’s throne. Super Fighter Team spent a lot of time and money ensuring that this game would be free of the major bugs that plagued the original, but the sheer number of bugs is problematic. Most of the issues are small, like layers being rendered incorrectly. In my play through though, I found two much larger problems. The first occurs when entering a town and encountering a monster at the same time. During these instances the screen scrambles and the player is forced to attempt to fight or run without actually seeing what is happening. I also had the game error out and present me a full error code.

The game does do some interesting things. The combat system is approached a bit differently than most games. Rather than taking one turn at a time, the prince has a stamina gauge. As actions are taken, more stamina is used until it is all gone. The enemies then get to take their turn with one shared stamina gauge.

The main advantage I saw in this was the ability to easily clear out lesser monsters without having to wait through their turns. The inherent disadvantage however, is that since the monsters have an equal size stamina gauge no matter how many there are, there is no real reward for defeating one at a time. If the prince is fighting six enemies and he kills four of them, he will still get hit six times during the enemy’s round. All that changes is that he will get hit three times each by two enemies instead of one time each by six enemies.

I wanted to love this game. My experience with it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. When Beggar Prince was doing things right, they were very right, but these spots were too few and far between. For a game that came out at the tail end of the life of the Genesis, C&E ,the makers of the original game, should have been able to pull something much better than this off. Aside from the graphics, most of the game is very dated even by the standards of 1996. For those just itching to play a new Genesis RPG, Beggar Prince is worth taking a look at despite its flaws. For most gamers though, there isn't much here.