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Blue Almanac is a futuristic RPG influenced in part by "Star Wars" and Sega's "Phantasy Star" series, developed by Hot-B (now Starfish-SD) in June 22nd, 1991. Originally slated for release outside Japan but cancelled, the only-known English prototype and rights to publish the game have been recently acquired by the low-profile localization group, "Super Fighter Team", who have done minor modifications to the game's code and translated the game (part of which is modeled around the ENG proto) exactly twenty years after the game's original release. The core plot is faithful to the original release, but several adjustments were made to make the dialogue more entertaining to read as well as various character name changes which were made partially due to character space limitations which only allow four characters. For example, the protagonist, Miyabi by default (in the Japanese release, named after the director of BA), is renamed Toby in English. In Japanese, Miyabi can be spelled with three characters, but not in English.

The intro begins prior to the start, being told from the perspective of a travelling spice trader, Yan, who describes how he got entangled in the adventure of a lifetime to save the universe from disaster while merely observing Starseeds floating throughout the Union Empire galaxy sixteen years ago. In modern times, it's Toby's sixteenth birthday; he is old enough to go out and see the universe on his own. Given a few gifts by his parents and tasked with going to Terra to further his education with a female friend, Toby is in for more than he bargained for as he starts hearing voices in his head, meets a variety of strange characters, and grapples with many tragic events. The localization is quite good and moves the story along with some genuinely interesting segments and the rest of the dialogue serves its purpose, though the game is fairly vague on what to do at times. The best part in the game is probably when you have to deal with the psychological problems of one character who has to be diagnosed by a number of therapists that detail this character's interesting past and why he has nightmares. The good scenes aren't spaced out enough and are relatively early, leaving much of the second half of the game feeling quite boring.

The graphics are pretty good for their time. The overworld is somewhere between Phantasy Star II and III and the battle graphics are quite good. Every battlefield has something animating and characters/foes are large and also possess basic animations. Bosses take things one step further and possess additional animations such as idle animations. The spells, or "Force", also look decent, though they all cause the background to do this cheesy "rain and lightning" effect; even the support and healing skills. The audio is decent... every planet has themes associated with them and the game even has male and female audibles for Force abilities, which are more coherent than quite a few voice samples you'll hear come out of your Gen/MD, even if they don't really mean anything. The battle theme is also fast-paced and appropriate, though this game has no boss music or even FINAL BOSS music... you know how I knew I arrived at the final boss for the first time? Its speech was more omnipotent than any foe before it and made you feel insignificant without baselessly trolling the player or swearing. Bah.

The gameplay... may irk you. It's not that the game isn't particularly original (it features many RPG staples, though you can fight ranks of enemies on rare ocassion similarly to the "Aretha" titles), but the way the game is structured. On the plus side, enemies get stronger as you do (an example of such sorta being SaGa Frontier) which reduces grinding and gives a fair challenge through the majority of the game. On the down side, the encounter rate is really high and when you enter an annoying dungeon and fight every few steps, you'll be begging for the encounters to end. Characters like the hero and (later) heroine rely on special swords to use Force while other characters have other factors to use Force. While Force can be useful, it's mostly outweighed by regular attacks. Most enemies and bosses can be effortlessly taken down with one or two well-placed critical hits (as they have low HP and criticals are very powerful and common later in the game from half-decent attackers), so to artifically extend the length of the game a bit, the devs included the incredibly annoying trait to make nearly every character you get JOIN AT LEVEL ONE. It doesn't matter if they're halfway in or near the end, they're still joining at level one.

Still, while Star Odyssey has a few pacing issues, it is well-meaning and comes off as a pretty good RPG of the era (from a company known more for their adventure titles than RPGs, I assure you). While I've had the JPN release for years, it's good to finally see this game being released in a language other than Japanese. Enjoy.