Game of the Day 2/5/2016: Miracle Warriors

[celerystalker]

When people talk early console RPGs, it tends to degenerate into comparing Dragon Quest and Phantasy Star. Not taking anything away from those two fantastic series, but Miracle Warriors on the Master System, Famicom, and Japanese computers is every bit as early, and surprisingly stands up pretty well on its own!

The story is pretty bare bones, tasking you with defeating the dark lord, whose seal has been broken and is now wreaking that special form of havoc only dark lords can. Combat is similar to Dragon Quest, though you do get a party of four characters, and you choose whose turn it is each round, alternating against your enemy, one at a time. There are some cool differences in presentation that are kinda neat, though.

For one, the screen layout is very different, showing a small portion of the map in the upper right corner, status on the bottom third or so of the screen, and a behind your party's back view of the terrain taking the largest part of the screen. It'sa little odd to get used to when you're used to Final Fantasy and such, but I quickly acclimated and grew to appreciate the feeling of walking the land it offered without slowing things down. You also have some different abilities in combat, such as the chance to talk to enemies before fighting. While often useless, it can at times yield interesting results or avoid conflict. Lastly, instead of just getting money from fights, from many monsters you'll instead get fangs and such to sell in town at varying rates for cash.

Miracle Warriors is a little short by modern standards, but is at least as long as the first Dragon Warrior. The game keeps a better pace, I'd argue, as leveling never seemed to be as cumbersome as in Enix's game. Plus, it comes with one of the cooler maps I've seen packed in with an RPG.



To me, Miracle Warriors is one of the better 8 bit RPGs, and a strong backer to Phantasy Star for the Master System's RPG lineup. Heck, its clues even made sense, but even now I feel like I'm not describing it as well as I'd like... Have you played it? Have a better descrption to offer?