REVIEW: Tengai Makyō: Ziria

[termis]

After another long hiatus, I finished the next PCE RPG, so here's another review.  This time, it's relatively better known (at least amongst this crowd) Tengai Makyō: Ziria.  AFAIK, this is the first console-CD RPG that was released, and along with that was tagged as PCE's "big budget" RPG-series of the era.  You can tell that this game clearly had Dragon Quest/Warrior as a template, and the developers simply changed the environment, added in some wacky humor, and added couple extra tidbits that CD-format allowed them to do.  It's also pretty damn long.  I'd guesstimate the playtime at maybe 50-60 hours or so, but it felt like it was double that.  I've said this in previous reviews of other RPGs - perhaps I'm just more time-impatient these days with a job & family and all that, but this one was a just a grind toward the end.  It took me 13 months(!) of on-off playing to finally finish this one off.

Anyway, starting from the gameplay - TM:Ziria feels like it was created by a cookie-cutter console-RPG-template back in the days.  It's got the typical talk/tools/magic/status/etc menus in the overworld, and fight/magic/tools/run/etc... during the fight scenes.  You meet several NPCs before your party eventually stabilizes into a group of three, and you carry on your fight against the evil baddies, and you have to grind quite a bit to make sure that your party has a chance of survival as they move on.  Sound familiar enough?  Well, the developers made sure you got a looooot of it.  It's not the most impressive CD-game in terms of presentation, but man, I can say that they took advantage the abundant space storage to make sure that there was a lot of game.



As for the more unique bits about this game, you can't not notice the wacky environment.  There's the pseudo-feudal Japan setting, and the game throws a lot of goofball characters at you.  Because of this unorthodox setting, it makes it more difficult for those of us who are non-Japanese to really "get" everything (language barrier aside), but it at least makes for an interesting, and more exotic setting than your typical console-RPG settings.  The plenty of wacky characters that are strewn throughout the game are also memorable - the crazy gaijin Hotei, the oni father-son duo, mischievous tanuki monsters, etc., and also Tsunade, the little girl with a big axe, who provides plenty of comic relief throughout the game.



The overworld graphics are pretty dated, but is colorful and interesting enough with the aforementioned Japanese environment, and there are a couple scenes that look quite good.  Battle graphics are better than your average RPG, as there are a number of cool backgrounds, and the enemies are well detailed and are quite sizable.  Cinema scenes are pretty basic - it's mostly static background shots with characters talking along.  I suppose the big wow for its time would be the addition of speech, which is nothing now, but at least the voice acting is pretty well done, especially whoever did Tsunade.

The music is almost all chiptunes.  It's not bad, and it fits the mood and atmosphere of the game.  However, it's nothing particularly memorable IMO.  Being a CD game and all, some cool redbook tunes here and there in the overworld would've been nice.





All said, I would've been mighty impressed had I played this game when it was first released -- when I was playing the likes of Dragon Warrior I.  Compared to the competitors of its time, graphics are much more colorful, enemies are big and detailed, plenty of cut-scenes, and even speech(!).  The only one that might've held a candle to this game perhaps would've been Phantasy Star I (which was way ahead of its time IMO).  However, there are just a number of aspects about this game that hasn't aged very well.

Still, if you're a retro-gamer, you can appreciate how much has gone into making a game like this in a 1989-context.  If you like old-school RPGs and the PCE, Ziria should be on your playlist, but make plenty of time for it. 

I still have the sequels - Manji Maru and Kabuki-den to go through (which I've bought in 2005!), and just from screenshots and reviews from others here, I'm expecting a lot more polish from them...

Compilation of my other reviews:
Aurora Quest: Otaku no Seiza in Another World
Ane-san
Babel
Bakushō Yoshimoto Shinkigeki
Blood Gear
Burai
Cosmic Fantasy 1
Cosmic Fantasy 3
Dragon Knight III
Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes
Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes II
Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari
KO Seiki: Beast Sanjūshi
Kūsōkagaku Sekai: Gulliver Boy
Nekketsu Legend Baseballer
Tengai Makyō: Itōryōdan
Valis I~IV
Xak I & II
Xak III

[esteban]

Dude, I have enjoyed reading all of your reviews .

[Digi.k]

aye good review there.  I would love an image of the game cover on your op thread too

[RegalSin]

Tengai Makyo is a misinformed take on culture of Jipango. Like a spoof of everything and strived to be ideal like most commercialized works. I was reading somewhere how the entire PCE development was made for this one game.

At first your like oh, look small midget famicom characters. Then you have all the jaw dropping animated sequences, which brings the game to life. Unlike the gba with head shots, of all the characters, you get nice cut scenes instead with voices.

The way the characters are drawn is how everybody should draw as well. After this game, everything went commercial with the series.
Why did NEC try and improve over something perfect?

[roflmao]

Great review!  Thanks.

[Black Tiger]

Ziria actually feels kind of on the short side to me, especially compared to Manjimaru.

It's too bad that they switched to that clay model look at the last minute. Before that, it had a cool anime style similar to TMII/Kabukiden, except with large characters. The overworld still looks nice enough, even if it's not so clear what they were aiming for (see the manual). The fights are definitely an improvement over the earlier versions though, and look very nice compared to most 16-bit RPGs.

This game actually came out on CD before the Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 were released.

[RegalSin]

Clay model look?

[Black Tiger]

Clay model look?

The manual has photos of the SD clay figures that the in-game graphics are based on.

[Keranu]

Great review! Always wanted to play through this one before Manji Maru, sounds like a lot of work.

Does anyone have scans of the SD clay figures? I actually rather like the big-googly eyed sprites in this game!

[NightWolve]

Being a CD game and all, some cool redbook tunes here and there in the overworld would've been nice.

I think I know the reason for that. The data track is 120 MB and going by the standard approach for creating a PCE CD, the last [backup] track is also 120 MB, so there's 240 MB gone right there, leaving a little more than half of the disc for redbook audio (say, 360 MB and what not). So yeah, you're right, they wanted to make sure that there was a lot of game! There are only 3 redbook audio tracks.

This reminded me, here's an old, kinda interesting page a buddy of mine made, a Finish guy, called Akimaru (I hosted it for him ever since he lost his webspace, I thought it was interesting/informative/historical, but a couple years ago when I caught up with him, he asked me to delete it cause he was kinda embarrassed by his English, but I'm an old foggie so I couldn't, I kept it around, tucked away...): http://www.ysutopia.net/special/aki/ziria.html

Basically, he tried to fan translate this game to English back in the day so that was an early project page. Having met him and learning about it, I tried to see if I could hack it myself, but it was beyond the scope of my abilities (even today); I believe David Shadoff looked into it as well at one point with me. I remember we talked about it. But yeah, that's how I knew about the large data tracks. The only other Turbo-CD I can think of that had very large comparable data tracks was good ole Dinosaur Tour, NEC's "educational" series.

Anyway, nice colorful screenshots BTW! I loves me my eye candy and not bad for the ole PCE/Turbo-CD.

[rag-time4]

I would really like to find a complete copy of the CD-ROM2 version of Ziria with the spine and all for around $20, but it's surprisingly hard to find complete.

[Keranu]

This reminded me, here's an old, kinda interesting page a buddy of mine made, a Finish guy, called Akimaru (I hosted it for him ever since he lost his webspace, I thought it was interesting/informative/historical, but a couple years ago when I caught up with him, he asked me to delete it cause he was kinda embarrassed by his English, but I'm an old foggie so I couldn't, I kept it around, tucked away...): http://www.ysutopia.net/special/aki/ziria.html

Ahhhh I remember reading that page 10 years ago! I used to frequent that site often and drool over the Ys IV screenshots! The good old RIGG days, can't beat em!

[NightWolve]

The good old RIGG days, can't beat em!

Eh, we had some good days, AND then some not so good days, but this place was always better if you ask me.

[SignOfZeta]

I have this game but I have never played it, not very long anyway. I have spent quite a bit of time with TM2 and Kabuki Den though and I can say that if you like this one you are going to SHIT A BRICK on the two sequels. They are absolutely amazing.

[grahf]

I sunk about two hours into this one, and loved it so far. I haven't really played any of the Tengais yet beyond just trying them out, but they're on the to-play list. Probably after I finish of Ys IV...

Everyone raves about this series, so I'm sure I'm in for a treat.