Destiny of an Emperor (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
369A playthrough of Capcom's 1990 license-based historical RPG for the NES, Destiny of an Emperor.
Based on the popular 80s manga Tenchi wo Kurau, Capcom's first RPG is a tale set in ancient China. It takes place during the Sangoku era circa 200 BC, and it centers around events that have since been revisted again and again by the likes of Koei's Romance of the Three Kingoms and Dynasty Warriors series.
China has been split into three major provinces - Shu, Wu, and Wei - and the country has seen a nonstop flow of blood thanks to power struggles between them.
Liu Bei, after an act of divine providence, finds himself with the strength and conviction to rise up and reunify China, and after forming a blood oath with Zhang Fe and Guan Yu, sets off to do exactly that.
You don't play as Liu Bei past the first scenario, though. Most of it has you in the role of a nameless peasant who has proven himself in his service and is granted the honor of taking command of Liu Bei's forces. You travel from your tiny hometown of Luo Sang to the nearest castle to offer your sword, and the rest, as they say, is history. A very heavily revised and romanticised account of it, granted, but history nonetheless.
It presents itself like a strategy/sim game, but it is a JRPG through-and-through. You, as commander, travel between castles and towns under the banner of Liu Bei, defeating bandits and warlords and claiming their lands.
In your travels, you come across others who are eager to participate in the fight, many of whom can be recruited if you can best them in battle. There are a huge number of generals that can pick and choose from, and through much of the game you'll be looking out for the best ones to cherry pick for your army.
Battles are fought by these generals, and your HP is determined by the number of troops each of your active generals command. Along with the standard physical attacks, you can use "tactics." Tactics are Destiny's take on magic, and your ability to use them relies on how intelligent and experienced your strategist is.
Though it never went down in the books as an all-time top Capcom classic, Destiny of an Emperor is an extremely solid first effort for the genre. In many ways the game systems feel a lot like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, but the exotic setting and its having been loosely adapted from actual events make it much more memorable than most RPGs of its day.
It's also surprisingly well balanced. You don't need to grind for anything, and as long as you're paying attention to stats and not blindly auto-battling the bosses, the game manages to be reasonable in its difficulty. It's hard, but not impossible. There's always a strategy to take down any boss, and it usually doesn't involve spending hours raising levels.
The graphics are so-so on the overworld, but there are tons of well-drawn character portraits to jazz things up, and the music is some of Capcom's best on the NES. And if it sounds familiar to you, it might be because the composer, Tonomura Hiroshige, was also working on the DuckTales soundtrack around the same time. I've always thought it was great how the battle theme sounds like a China-themed rewrite of DuckTale's Transylvania theme.
The only real qualm I've ever had with Destiny is with its interface: the menus are an absolute nightmare. Pretty much every RPG of the era suffered from this (including Capcom's other big NES RPG, Sweet Home), but given the frequency with which you switch characters here, simple things like swapping equipment and looking at stats is far too cumbersome and time-consuming. It's an unfortunate reflection of its age, but fortunately it doesn't kill the game. It just makes it somewhat less friendly to modern audiences.
Well okay, one other thing. I've always had a hard time keeping track of things in this game. Not knowing Chinese, I often got confused because I couldn't easily distinguish between the several people named Xian or Zhang, the similar sounding town names, or the Chinese tactics names without keeping notes. If you've ever tried to read War and Peace in English, I'm sure you're familiar with exactly the sort of confusion I'm talking about.
Overall, Destiny of an Emperor is an excellent game, and its one of the best NES-era RPGs to receive an official English translation. Niggles with its age and my general lack of familiarity with the Chinese language aside, it presents a story of impressive scope, a reasonably deep battle system, and a lot of replayability.
If you love retro RPGs but are tired of fighting dragons and goblins in vaguely European fantasy settings, Destiny of an Emperor is a great pick.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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