![Mercurius Pretty: End of the Century [メルクリウスプリティ ～end of the century～] Game Sample - Dreamcast](/images/yt/wf/mercurius-pretty-end-of-the-century-end-of-the-century-game-prgkc.jpg)
Mercurius Pretty: End of the Century [メルクリウスプリティ ～end of the century～] Game Sample - Dreamcast
58As the loose predecessor to NEC's cult classic, "Pixygarden", "Mercurius Pretty" was their first "life simulation" game featuring fairies (more specifically, it's a "Homunculus Raising Sim"). Originally released in 1994 for the PC-98, the game would get enhanced in 1996 for Windows PCs and a complete remake would be delayed for roughly one year before seeing release on Sega's Dreamcast in late 2000. Appropriately titled the "End of the Century", MP2000 is a game that not only requires players to raise a living being but to also be mindful of the balance of nature and how the elements interact with each other. Unlike PG which changed its aesthetics to be more futuristic in response to the end of the millennium, MP2000 is more faithful to the original games while receiving a audio / visual overhaul, playing up its themes and historical references, and streamlining some of its more arbitrary mechanics.
Like PG, I was intrigued by the game's theme and general narrative. Basically, the player takes the role of the "Unnamed Disciple of Paracelsus" (yes, the same "Bombastus von Hohenheim"), the late theologian, philosopher, physician, and alchemist of the 16th century. He was once your teacher but was suddenly driven mad and died during one of his experiments (his beloved homunculus grew sick and disappeared from the grower, filling him with grief and leading to both their premature deaths), passing down his knowledge of alchemy to you so you can pick-up where he left off: the successful alchemical education of a spirit in a flask. After a short introduction, one of his closest friends lends you a house on the outskirts of town, and the game begins proper. He restored the setup Paracelsus had and calibrated the "Virtual Crystal" which is fundamental in the homunculus' growth and said to be a land only the homunculus can explore which can alter the foundation of the world. Everything has a price...
Let's start with the good: the music fits the tone of the game, the voice-overs are top-notch and the illustrations are gorgeous. That said, the technical issues with this game... On the surface, MP2000 is much like the raising sims that inspired and preceded it (Princess Maker, Graduation, etc.). The object is to raise your beauty in a flask from childhood to maturity and explore the Virtual Crystal. While there are less initial stats than the PC-98 game (4 vs 11), some of the more ambiguous traits are wrapped up in the "balance scale" system which sways depending on your actions, books you read, etc. How the homunculus is raised has been greatly simplified, mainly for the worst -- the core actions at your disposal are reading, dancing, making Kunst (crystals you sell and your only source of income), summoning spirits (raise elements) and limited VC exploration. Due to how stamina and stress works, it's a no-brainer to pool 70% of your time into raising intellect as this reduces the time needed to perform other tasks and clear the game. You can only raise stamina effectively by dancing, and this becomes "Reading & Dancing: The Game" very quickly. While there are other options you can take (visiting the town's colorful cast, making the occasional choice, etc.) or play the rare mini-games to break up the monotony (if you're in good standing with your homunculus), the game lacks depth compared to your typical sim.
Yeah, you can get different types (Wild, Fancy or Intellectual), go on SLIGHTLY different adventures based on your starting element (which is pre-determined by the name you choose at the start) and elemental growth, and the game gets a little better around the halfway point, but you have to do a whole lot of nothing to get there (you need a semi-mature homunculus of 12-16 years before you can really do anything) and the replayability doesn't sit as high as some of the greats of the genre. A lot of the choices you make have almost no weight on the plot itself and most characters are flat (to be fair though, this is the case for a lot of breeding games). I could forgive all of that though if the game was FASTER -- there is no way to completely disable prompts or animations, and they look great the first few times, but after the 300th time? Hmmm...
A lot of care was put into this title right down to the game embracing its European and Western sensibilities with this release such as the somewhat accurate German text and the characters hailing from parts of Turkey, Russia, England, etc., but it's not on the same level as PG. I can honestly say that it's a pretty good remake of the original MP, but with caveats in terms of the game mechanics and how things are handled... this game is simply too easy, and that's with the game's "reduced" time limit of 48 days. There are almost no items in which to speak of, you only need one or two books for the whole game, and the basic restorative items are OP. The game does have multiple endings, but this aspect also isn't as strong as its PC98/Win version. (TBC...)