Tengai Makyou: Ziria
Long time ago, humans lived in a paradise, the Garden of Eden. But the brave
and audacious members of the Fire Clan were banned from Eden, and had to seek
shelter on the Earth. They built their own paradise – the land they later
called Jipang. However, the evil demon lord Masakado wanted to destroy Jipang,
and the Fire Clan fought and defeated him. Now, many years later, a young
thief named Ziria learns that he is a descendant of the Fire Clan. He must now
find the other members, and prevent the resurrection of Masakado by his
followers.
Loosely based on the Japanese folk tale of the ninja Jiraiya, Tengai Maky ō:
Ziria was the first role-playing game released on a CD ROM; thanks to the
medium’s greater storage capacity, the game was able to include full-screen
anime-style cutscenes with voice-overs. It is the first entry in the Tengai
Maky ō series, and is generally considered the first RPG with significant
humorous content. The game’s setting parodies many aspects of feudal Japan,
containing comical and sometimes deliberately stereotypical portrayals of
characters and plenty of supernatural elements.
Basic gameplay mechanics follow a template introduced in early Dragon Quest
and Phantasy Star games. The player navigates Ziria and other characters who
eventually join him on a top-down overworld, visiting towns to rest and buy
supplies, and facing randomly appearing enemies in round-based combat viewed
from first-person perspective. Each character uses his or her own unique
weapon and equipment types. Magic spells cannot be bought or learned
automatically when leveling up; they must be sought out in specific locations,
often those not required to visit in order to advance the story.
The game’s overworld is fairly vast, divided into provinces, each containing
several towns and other locations. It is possible to teleport instantly from
the world map to any previously visited province.The game emphasizes overworld
exploration; dungeons tend to be smaller and less maze-like than in many other
contemporary role-playing games. In towns, the player can gamble and deposit
money in banks; this money is preserved if the party is annihilated in combat
and transported back to the town, with the money it was carrying cut in half.
When a character levels up, his or her hit points (HP) and magic points (MP)
are fully restored.