Description
A playthrough of Hudson Soft's 1988 fantasy horror role-playing game for the PC Engine, Jaseiken Necromancer (邪聖剣ネクロマンサー).
This is part one of a two-part playthrough, showing from the beginning to the party's arrival in Harmonia. Part two can be found at https://youtu.be/N3uW5XRVyTY
Necromancer is a historically significant game that I wanted to share with the English-speaking world, and October seemed like the perfect time to make such a thing a reality. Please accept this translation patch as a humble token of my thanks for the incredible support you've all shown me over the years. The linked zip archive contains my patch (which covers the entire game) and English recreation of the instruction manual: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NCDThMAYZ6rYTqqmM_DASyLZSK94iToL/view?usp=sharing
Jaseiken Necromancer (The Malign Holy Sword: Necromancer) was released in January of 1988, two months after the launch of the PC Engine. It was the system's sixth game, its first RPG, and the first JRPG released for a fourth-generation ("16-bit") console. It predates the first console JRPG released in English, https://youtu.be/X62lxS1LLFw, by ten months, and the Famicom version of https://youtu.be/KXq6KwzG8iQ by a month. It was later rereleased in North America on the Wii U Virtual Console and included on the TurboGrafx-16 Mini, both times still in Japanese.
The kingdom of Ishmeria has come under attack by the demons of Hell, and you are a would-be hero who has answered the king's call to save the people from their plight. According to legend, long ago, the gods forged a sword of incredible power to defeat the minions of darkness in a holy war. That sword, the Necromancer, is rumored to lie hidden somewhere in Ishmeria, and must now be recovered at any cost.
What follows is an adventure that sees you and your companions traveling the world, chasing clues, helping the innocent, and bathing in the enemies' blood for experience and gold.
It's a JRPG that closely follows the formula that ChunSoft established with https://youtu.be/onNy0JlNgi4. Three heroes (two of whom you select from a pool of five) walk between towns, castles, and dungeons doing good deeds to open the path forward, and it's grind-heavy, but it has some fun tricks up its sleeve. The game draws inspiration from Lovecraft's works for its enemy designs, enemies gush fountains of blood when they're killed, and there's a "fear" system running in the background (which takes into account how many times you run from battle or get an ally killed) that'll make your allies flee in a blind panic when they've had enough.
It's also quite a good-looking game - especially for one limited to the HuCard's then max size of two megabits - with a presentation that blew the doors off of anything seen yet seen on the Famicom. The environments are nicely detailed and colored, the monsters are animated, and your entire party remains visible as you walk around the maps with no sign of flicker or slowdown. The box art, which features an H.R. Giger painting, was also quite the eye catcher. (And is it just me, or does https://youtu.be/VB-MfQDLxks look an awful lot like this game?)
The soundtrack, composed by Hudson veteran Jun Chikuma, is pretty catchy, too, with some funky grooves that complement the mood well.
Necromancer has everything you'd expect from a late 80s console JRPG, and the horror theme goes a long way in making it stand apart from its contemporaries. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I hope you guys will, too. If you do give it a spin, please let me know what you think! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the game and translation.
Happy October!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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