Record of Lodoss War is best known to long time anime fans as a Japanese high fantasy series that is often mistaken as fodder to capitalize on Japan’s obsession with dragons and elves that was partially stemmed from the intense popularity of the DragonQuest franchise.  What many people, even some older anime fans that got their start on Robotech in the 80’s, probably aren’t aware of is that Lodoss War didn’t originate as an anime or manga series, or even novels.  Believe it or not, the series originated as a transcript of actual Dungeons & Dragons sessions that were published in a popular computer magazine.  The printed log of some group of computer programmers’ and novelists’ D&D campaign grew to become its own traditional RPG series, and would venture out into other mediums.  To put it short, Lodoss War’s origins were that of the truest form of RPG; the kind that requires some dice and paper.

The Dreamcast game is but one of many Lodoss War video games, though it’s the only one to date to see a release outside of Japan.  Don’t let its massive story or originations prevent you from playing.  It had been years since I glanced at anything related to the franchise, and even back in my anime fanboy days, I never really had a chance to get into it to even remember who half of the main characters were when I popped the disc into my Dreamcast.  Turns out it really didn’t matter; the story itself is fairly simple to get into without any knowledge of the massive Lodoss universe, but borrows enough from the series for fans to appreciate.  This (most likely) non-canonical side story, subtitled Advent of Cardice in its Japanese release, places you in the role of a vanilla name-him-yourself hero from ages past that is resurrected from the dead by a wizened wizardly-type gent misfortunately named Wart.  You’re somewhat half-assed necromanced in a last ditch effort to destroy, in Wart’s own words during a cutscene from the intro “the evil goddess Kardiss” (note that in this translation, “Kardiss” does rhyme with “goddess”) and her followers on a whimsical journey across the island of Marmo.  That’s right, you never step foot on the series’ namesake island-continent, you’re stuck in this hellhole where zombies, skeletons, ogres and goblins tend to be the general populace.

Almost every synopsis of this game I’ve read is very quick to classify this as a “Diablo clone”.  While they’re both isometric Action-RPG dungeon crawlers, Lodoss differentiates itself in enough ways for this to make me wonder if anyone writing these descriptions actually played this game for more than two or three hours.  Diablo has about as much in common with this game as King of the Hill does with Beavis & Butthead in terms of content; they’re both animated comedies that look alike, but take on a much different approach.  This chapter of Lodoss strays from the Tabletop RPG methodologies that not only created this franchise, but also inspired many other video games.  Instead, the game was developed with most of the standard gameplay ideas expected from a console Japanese RPG, being more story-driven and appealing to those more used to Final Fantasy rather than Ultima. 

The story starts off very bland and stereotypically “high fantasy”, but things start to become interesting once you’re introduced to other locales (most of whom are asshole dark elves or just assholes in general) and visitors to Marmo.  For those familiar with the series, Parn, Deedlit, and the rest of the gang from the anime/manga make appearances as non-playable temporary allies.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, characters concocted from some hardcore “otaku”* celebrities’ D&D campaign will try and keep up with you while you kill anything else that moves.  Expect them to amazingly annoy you with their awful British accents in a few scenes, but somehow manage to captivate you when their lines are in text. 

There are a few CGI cutscenes, but nothing which really stands out as significant, even when taking the era into consideration.  With there being so much beautiful art that has derived from this franchise, it’s a shame that only dry, basic computer generated cinematics were used.  While CGI works wonders for the core game itself, integrating some 2D stills and animation in certain areas could have made the feel and look a lot more original in a sea of games still riding on Final Fantasy VII’s coattails three years after it was released.  This sounds like the rantings of a bitter nostalgia freak, but this game had a universe already established visually well before the 3D CGI boom.  Final Fantasy VII’s setting was designed to be rendered.  Lodoss isn’t a franchise that can’t be translated to 3D, but to do its cinematics justice, it would have needed a lot more rendering and texturing work than what went into this.  The rest of the game looks fine for it’s time and for the hardware it was being ran on, with the exception of some rather nasty slowdown when taking on a screen filled of forty huge monsters.

Art from the Record Of Lodoss War anime series.

You’re given a classless hero, with a traditional experience point leveling system.  After a few introduction tasks, you’re given a base of operations where you can melt down weapons and armor found along the way and reforged as your primary gear.  As a lot of JRPGs do, an additional system is introduced where mystic inscriptions can be forged upon your primary equipment, such as stat boosts and new abilities and skills.  At the cost of mythril, you can have many of these inscriptions permanently forged on.  These inscriptions can be found on slabs scattered across the island, but upgrades to a lot of the stat-boosting inscriptions can be learned by permanently forging them to the maximum number of times allowed.  It’s an interesting system that allows some room to develop the type of character you want, be it a beefy warrior, a swift bladesman, or a mage-warrior.  The problem is that there is indeed such a thing as a too strong/weak path of character development.  While you can easily refocus what stats you’re forging into your gear, forging costs money, and Marmo is apparently in the middle of a tough economic recession.  Mythril drops from slaying monsters and hostile dark elves are rather uncommon, and playing catch-up to rework your character could result in a lot of hours slaughter goblins for what may or may not be a lucrative killing spree.  Regardless, you’ll often find yourself not grinding for experience points, but rather for money.  If you’re the obsessive compulsive type that wants to be a master of all trades, well, all I can say is that I hope you like hearing the same battle theme repeatedly in addition to your blacksmith reminding you the basics of forging every time you need to do any adjustments, despite the fact that you’ve already done this too many times to count.  Be thankful the music score isn’t horrendous… just very limited.

Further separating itself from Diablo’s kin, Lodoss does not incorporate randomly generated dungeons or mazes.  The puzzles in a lot of these dungeons do require a good bit of thought, but none are too hard for “softcore” gamers.  Further absent are other typical dungeon crawler elements, such as permanent death mechanics found in most rougelikes or any way to permanently “lose your path”.  Monsters only progress in difficulty based on location, and not based on your level.  Curative items tend to borrow more from Metroid’s energy tank system, using refillable bottles of water that can be refilled at any of the water wells scattered across the lands (and yes, a bottle that once held some petrifaction cure potion can be reused for water.)  Also, there are no level or stat limitations to the equipment you can use; it’s feasibly possible to obtain one of the most (if not THE most) powerful weapons in the game rather early through a little bit of grinding. 

Gung-ho PC gamers would probably not take interest in Lodoss for a couple of reasons.  One is that it plays like what it is; a console action-RPG with a few very basic dungeon crawling elements.  The second is that this game is easily exploited in a lot of areas.  Game Over screens are rare, if only for the Recall spell that takes you back to your home base at no cost to refill on water and save, can be used almost anywhere except in a room fighting a boss, and can take you right back from where you left off.  In fact, the only real danger is getting ganged up on by too many mobs at once.

Aquirability: Because of its obscurity and age, a new copy of Lodoss is not going to be cheap; we’re talking $80.00US if you’re lucky.  But a used copy can normally be found on Amazon in the $20.00-$30.00US price range.  If you’re a fan of this style of adventure, I can say $25.00 is definitely a fair price.  If you’re unsure, well it’s not like the game is still in production anymore, so if you’re daring and still want to give it a try, you can always surf a torrent for it.

Final Analysis: Lodoss is a game that’s well worth the used price, but only if you’re not expecting Diablo-style gameplay.  While it’s not exactly the most challenging Action RPG I’ve played, it’s still a fantastic entry to the genre, and one of the few franchise based titles I can personally recommend.  If you’re a fan of the Lodoss series, then there’s a few extra perks, but nothing that will alienate anyone that has never heard of the series.  24 hours logged, and I’m still engrossed in it, and this is only after doing a quick look at the series to see what story elements weren’t created specifically for this game.

*Japanese slang for creepy obsessive fanatic on one topic and is often considered to carry a negative connotation.  Used in English slang as a label for any anime fan, but four times out of five, end up falling under the Japanese definition anyway so there’s no point in reminding them about the negative connotations in its native language.