Ghost Lion (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
346A playthrough of Kemco's 1992 role-playing game for the NES, Ghost Lion.
For my full write-up on this odd RPG, please be sure to check out http://www.nintendocomplete.com/legend-of-the-ghost-lion/
Ghost Lion, or "Legend of the Ghost Lion," as the game's title screen refers to it as, is one of the many titles that popped up in the wake of Dragon Quest's popularity that all adhered to the basic design tenets of Enix's groundbreaking classic. If you've played any of the older turn-based RPGs, you know exactly what you are getting into here.
Ghost Lion revolves around Maria, a girl whose apparent age changes dramatically from image to image (sometimes she looks six, sometimes she has suddenly become 18?!), and who is decidedly *not* an aerobics instructor, as the box's picture indicates. So, Maria is abandoned by her parents. They decide that hunting for a mythical white lion is more important than hanging out with their daughter, so they take off in a canoe. Maria gets bored and decides to go after them, so the village elder gives her a wooden key and a possessed spear, and tells her that she's heading off toward certain death. Good luck.
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 structure and look of Dragon Quest, there are no experience points to be found anywhere. You level up by finding "fragments of hope," which provides you more "courage," or hit points, and "dreams," or magic power. You don't have any attack or defense ratings (this relies solely on the items you use), and you don't have any other party members throughout the game. Instead, you carry around objects that are inhabited by different battling spirits (old men, giant slugs, etc.) that you summon using your dream points. They fight alongside Maria, and can protect her, cast spells, and physically attack the enemies. They're particularly necessary as meat shields throughout the game, especially toward the end. The lack of any experience system means that there's little grinding to do, but it does tend to make some of the later battles harder. Even still, it's an interesting trade off that does shift the focus of the game play somewhat.
The graphics are an odd mix of nicely-done and stupid-ugly. The overhead graphics look quite similar to Dragon Quest's, except they have random and senseless things going on, like towns made out of mushrooms for no given reason, and the color schemes often clash badly in the dungeon areas. They emphasize utility over beauty. The battle scenes look much nicer, with all sorts of reasonably well-detailed close-up portraits of Maria, her poltergeist friends, and the enemies flashing up regularly as you cycle through menus. The trade-off for that nice bit of detail is an otherwise entirely black screen filled with menus and information windows. The sound is a train-wreck, though that requires some qualification. Most of the songs are fairly good - they all sound like music you hear in Shadowgate, Deja Vu, or Uninvited, which makes sense since Ghost Lion is a Kemco game and the composer (Masuno Hiroyuki) worked on all four games. So why is it a train-wreck? The battle theme. You'll hear it a good 70% of the time you play the game, and dear God, it's f***ing awful. It's not even really music - it sounds like an air raid siren accompanied by the sound of microwave buttons. I think those beeps are meant to be toms? But yeah, its a veritable vomit salad for the ears.
Overall, Ghost Lion was okay. It's not terribly engaging, the plot is virtually nonexistent, and the aforementioned "music" all really weigh it down, but the cutesy tone, nice battle graphics, and short length make it easier to digest. It's not bad, but it's not good. It's thoroughly mediocre, though I'm certain it has some big fans. It's certainly quirky enough to merit that.
I just have to wonder... of all of the Japanese Dragon Quest clones that weren't translated and brought to America, why was this one chosen?
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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