Game:

Hades (2020)

Duration: 7:15

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Here's another cool game from Exact, the developers most known for the "Jumping Flash!" games released on the Sony Playstation. Some people refer to this game as Etoile Princess, but that is incorrect; information for this game was easier to obtain when mentioned under its true name of Etoile Princesse (shown on the title screen). The title is French with "Etoile" being "Star" and "Princesse" being "Princess" (which is pretty obvious actually). It literally means "Star Princess". While "Princess" is technically correct, people have it listed as Princess under the ideology that Princesse on the title screen is some kind of typo; it is not.

It's a game about a young princess named Rilule who controls the power of stars and resides in a castle and does...well, nothing much. You see, Rilule is a pretty self-centered and irresponsible young maiden...until one day; her elderly servant/advisor enters her private chamber. He wishes to warn her that demons have appeared all over the place and have begun to revolt against people all over Fail-Land and beyond...but before he can even start, Rilule shocks him with magic, thinking he is a crazed invader.

At first, Rilule doesn't care much for what the old man has to say; sure, other maidens just like her are being sealed away and chaos is appearing everywhere, but her castle is safe and that's all she cares about. In other words; she believes that it's not her problem and that someone else will deal with it. However, she is one of the only people who isn't sealed that can still stop the demons. Her advisor then points out that a young man named Sol has been captured by a dark witch, the main one responsible for the demon revolt. She takes a look at the flyer the old man has and gets all lovey-dovey...now she just wants to save Sol. Sure, it's pretty selfish, but it will get her to leave her castle and use her powers to save the land.

The game has nice and colorful environments and large characters as well as stages of decent length. There are some cool environmental animations such as the water on stage 2, the fire of stage 3, the dusty air of stage 4...so on and so forth. The music is pretty top notch, easily up there with the good X68000 titles. The sound effects remind me of other Exact titles, particularly Naious, while the music composition sits highly like Geograph Seal. All in all, the sound fits the fantasy theme well.

The game seems pretty basic at first; you start with one girl with one shot and one powerful spell to rain stars on her foes (done by holding down the shoot button and releasing it when the MP gauge flashes). However, you will free other maidens and can put them on your party to have three people at a time; each with a different shot and spell and with different attack priorities. The game also has an interesting element of "height" that affects the gameplay significantly; even despite the perspective that the game is played in. It's not that it hasn't been done before, but it's quite uncommon. Anyway, enemies can leap over walls to attack and you can jump on top of buildings to gain an advantage point in which to attack from. This becomes even more important when you get more characters. For example, the third princess you get controls fire and her jumping shot functions differently from the star or wind princesses; it goes in an arc and hits the ground, which makes it useful if you use it in an elevated area to hit enemies below.

The game is also something of an action RPG of sorts too; you do very small puzzles like pulling switches, there's a little bit of dialogue, you get multiple characters, and get items to grant you special abilities such as Jet shoes to perform a mad dash, a guard ring to provide additional protection, etc. You also have to find items to boost your maximum HP and can save and and load your game on the world map. The game has variety and it is certainly one of best games on the X68000...which is even more of a rarity given that the game is an X68000 exclusive that hasn't had a port or remake on any other platform that I'm aware of.