Beyond the Beyond - PlayStation 1 - Intro & Gameplay from this Camelot Software RPG [4K]
6Beyond the Beyond was developed by Camelot Software famous for the Shining & Golden Sun series on Sega and Nintendo formats respectively. This was their only Sony platform RPG and it was also one of the earliest RPGs on the PS1. Heavily overlooked in the west as at the time of its release 2D graphics were out of fashion, it didn't help the western release was almost a year later in North America and no European PAL release didn't help the game either, making it a bit of an unknown title to many. Had the English released arrived in December 1995 the series may have had a very different fate.
A very good if slightly flawed RPG, Camelot struggled with starting off their games in the early years and the opening cave section is bland, boring and slow. It suffers with some early difficulty spikes as well just like Shining in the Darkness and Shining the Holy Ark do. Once it gets going, however, the game quickly picks up the pace with a fast moving story and plenty of puzzles to solve and hidden characters to find.
The game’s combat was borrowed from Shining in the Darkness, but uses a new 3rd person camera view. In turn Shining the Holy Ark and Golden Sun would later use this system as well, Ark however, kept with the Dungeon camera view used in Darkness. Overall the combat is quick and fun with you able to manually control characters or set them to A.I. patterns. However, random battles occur too quickly after one another and need a longer cool down period
The 2D graphics are lovingly drawn and look like a cross between Shining Force II and Shining Wisdom, however at times it does look like a Mega Drive game in the overhead sections. Disappointingly some of the location map layouts do feel uninspired and bland with little of interest in them. It was the first Camelot game Motoi Sakuraba did the music for and as you would expect the game has a great music score.
Gameplay sample from the second hour of the game, we skip over some of the early scenes to show some town exploring and a few fights. At this point we have a few characters in our team, so battles are over fairly quickly.
It's a solid title that while bettered by many of the later PS1 RPGs it set a trail to follow and many later games clearly borrowed design elements from it. It feels like Camelot Software clearly hadn't quite got to gripes with 32bit hardware when they released Beyond the Beyond and could have done better. Well worth importing if you're a fan of Camelot's other games.
Also known as: ビヨンド ザ ビヨンド ～遥かなるカナーンへ～ (Japan)
Release: 1995
Developer: Camelot Software Planning / キャメロット
Publisher: SCEA (North America) SCEI (Japan)
Format: Sony PlayStation (PS1) / プレイステーション (PSOne)
Beyond the Beyond is not available on any other platform and nor does it have a digital re-release on PSN.
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All footage in this video is captured directly from a PlayStation 2 console, via an Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro using a RGB Scart to HDMI upscaler. Upscaled to 4K to improve the video bit rate.