Ghost Lion (NES) Playthrough
248A playthrough of Kemco's 1992 role-playing game for the NES, Ghost Lion.
Originally released for the Famicom in 1989, Beyond the Pyramids: The Legend of the White Lion (ピラミッドの彼方に ホワイト・ライオン伝説) was a license-based tie-in with the similarly named film (ピラミッドの彼方に―ホワイト・ライオン伝説―, "The Legend of the White Lion: Beyond the Pyramids") released in Japan in 1988.
Ghost Lion (or "Legend of the Ghost Lion," as the title screen refers to it) was one of the many "me too" titles that sprouted in the wake of Dragon Warrior's success (https://youtu.be/J392i9NKvvo). Anyone who has played an 8-bit JRPG will immediately recognize the template the game was built on.
The story revolves around Maria - a young girl who, if the box art is to be believed, is also an 80s hair metal singer turned aerobics instructor - who is abandoned by her parents. Deciding that their hunt for a mythical white lion was more important than raising their daughter, the couple takes off in a canoe and is never seen again.
Maria informs the village elder that she intends to go after them, and after warning her that she's chasing certain death, the elder hands her a key and a possessed spear and sends her on her way.
The plot is certainly on the strange side as far as 80s JRPGs go, and the game play is equally as strange. While it closely mimics the look and structure of Dragon Warrior, there are no experience points to be earned by defeating enemies. You level up by finding "fragments of hope" which provide boosts to your "courage" (hit points) and "dreams" (magic points).
There are no attack and defense stats - Maria's physical strength relies solely on the quality of the weapons and items used in battle - and there's no "party" in the traditional sense of the word.
Instead, Maria carries objects that house spirits, and by spending dream points, she can temporarily summon these spirits - a motley crew of meat shields (including a centaur, a giant slug, and an African tribal warrior, among others) - to fight alongside her with a wide range of skills and spells.
The lack of experience points and a traditional stat-based growth system is a bit of a double-edged sword. The only thing you earn from battle is money, and you can easily ignore most of the items sold in shops, so you don't have to grind to keep pace with the enemies. The downside is that without any incentive to fight, the constant random encounters feel like a total waste of time.
The presentation is a mixed bag. The tile sets used for the overworld, towns, and dungeons are generic fantasy JRPG fare, but the nicely detailed portraits add some much needed flavor to the battle scenes. The music hurts, though. The soundtrack is the work of Masuno Hiroyuki, Kotobuki's resident in-house sound programmer and composer who is best known for his work in the NES MacVenture games. Most of it is perfectly servicable for a fantasy RPG, but the battle "theme," if you can call it that, sounds like someone pushing buttons on a microwave during an air raid siren. It makes me want to shoot myself in the face after five seconds, and when you consider that fighting accounts for 3/4 of the game's play time... well, that's hardly ideal.
Overall, Ghost Lion is okay. It's not terribly engaging, the plot is paper thin, the translation is hokey, and the battle music will give you a migraine, but the game's cutesy tone, attractive battle graphics, and short length make it fairly easy to digest. Its quirkiness lends it some charm, but unless you're specifically looking for a beginner's JRPG, you'd be far better off playing one of the excellent Dragon Warrior games.
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