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| trial and error (mostly by others), the formulae for all spells are now known. | | trial and error (mostly by others), the formulae for all spells are now known. |
| You too can be a deadly warrior-mage... for a price, of course. | | You too can be a deadly warrior-mage... for a price, of course. |
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| ==Questions and answers==
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| ===What's the 'gomi' (rubbish bin) for in the items menu?===
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| You can only carry 22 pages of items - that's 132 items in total, not including
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| anything that's equipped. 132 sounds a lot, but bear in mind that each item
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| uses a space of its own - in a Final Fantasy you can carry 198 items just by
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| stocking up on potions and antidotes!
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|
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| The bin is simply the way you discard unwanted items. The difference here is
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| that the bin can hold 8 items, which can then be restored or destroyed. So you
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| can actually carry 140 items around with you, if you really need to.
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|
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| ===Are those battle messages really necessary?===
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| The battle system often strikes new players as clumsy and choppy, because the
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| flow of combat is constantly being broken by messages which rarely contain any
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| information not immediately visible from the graphics. Fortunately you can
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| turn them off: push the second button on the configuration menu (the bottom tab
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| of the main menu). I imagine many will agree that this is an improvement.
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|
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| ===What's that 'Turbo-file' option on the main menu?===
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| The Turbo-file was an external storage unit ASCII produced for the Super Famicom. A number of games support it, notably other ASCII titles, although apparently [[Bahamut Lagoon]] as well.
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|
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| ===Is Dark Law the sequel to Dark Lord?===
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| Dark Lord (Famicom, Data East: 1991) does indeed bear a strong resemblance to
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| this game. It has a similar structure (free character creation, scenarios),
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| a similar magic system, and - the real clincher - a battle system that is
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| obviously a slightly more primitive version of the one we have here.
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|
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| Is this an actual sequel? I really don't know, mainly because I haven't
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| bothered to play far enough into Dark Lord to get a feel for the plot. (I hate
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| reading kana-only text.) However, here's a (very) rough translation of the Dark
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| Lord intro: as you can see, the basic premise seems pretty similar.
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|
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| "In the distant past, a pair of gods were fighting for control of the world...
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| At this time the world was still a place of chaos and turmoil...
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| The god of light, Alpharse, governed all of nature and humanity.
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| The lord of darkness, Ragmaila, led the Demi-Humans and the powers of evil.
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| The long war between the armies of the gods continued without pause...
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| But at length the time came for the end of the fighting...
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| Alpharse gathered his remaining power and confined Ragmaila and the
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| Demi-Humans in defeat...
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| By sealing their spirits in water, the world was preserved...
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| So time passed, with people living in freedom and peace.
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| ...that world was Alph Land.
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| And now... the door has opened!"
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|
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| Replace "Alph Land" with "Layfall", "Ragmaila" with "Altzart", and "Demi-
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| Humans" with "Death-Creatures", and you have Dark Law!
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|
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| Another near-parallel is found in the mythology, namely the name of the god of
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| light ("hikari no kami" in both cases). In Dark Lord his name (in roomaji) is
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| Arufaazu; in Dark Lord, however, it is Orufasu (Orphas in my translation).
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| Close, but not identical...
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|
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|
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| ===How is Dark Law related to other games?===
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| Firstly - it has nothing whatsoever to do with Dark Half (SFC, Enix: 1996).
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|
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| There are a number of striking similarities between Dark Law and an earlier
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| title called Wizap! (SFC, ASCII: 1994). There appears to be little or no
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| connection between the plots, so I'm guessing they're only related in the way
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| that Final Fantasies are, but there's considerable consistency in terms of
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| jobs, spells, the scenario system, and general similarities in plot and style.
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| The only major difference is the battle system - Wizap!'s system is closer to
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| Secret of Mana than Dark Law, although there's an option not to play in real
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| time. There's a character called McStarr (or Maxter, if you prefer), a
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| scenario which revolves around a shinigami and a curse, the "people into
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| monsters" topos, and even a spirit/deity called Orufausa (another variant!).
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|
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|
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| ===Tell me about Murasame===
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| I know this is slightly off topic, but Murasame blades are among the weapons
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| that crop up in an awful lot of RPGs, and people really should know the legends
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| behind these things. His rebus dictis, I'll hand over to Gray Brangwin:
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| "Muramasa and Murasame were both famous swordsmiths who forged blades
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| unparalleled in quality, and virtually indistinguishable from each other,
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| except in one important aspect; in that, whereas blades forged by Muramasa
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| embodied the true samurai spirit and brought tranquility and peace, the blades
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| forged by Murasame were cursed and attracted war to themselves. It was said
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| that if you were to drop a leaf in a stream and then place a blade forged by
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| either in the way of the leaf, the leaf would always veer away from a Muramasa
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| blade, and inevitably be pulled towards and cut in two by a Murasame blade."
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|
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| ===What's with the melons?===
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| Due to a slip of the pen, a Chinese character meaning "claw" has been
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| given an extra stroke in the game's font, which unfortunately turns it into a
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| character meaning "melon". This leads to some amusing dialogue: "The wounds on
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| Lambar's neck... they look like melon marks!"
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