![Vasteel (TurboGrafx CD) Playthrough [1 of 2] - NintendoComplete](/images/yt/rb/vasteel-turbografx-cd-playthrough-1-of-2-nintendocomplete-8cvbt.jpg)
Vasteel (TurboGrafx CD) Playthrough [1 of 2] - NintendoComplete
130A playthrough of Working Designs' 1993 action-strategy game for the TurboGrafx CD, Vasteel.
This is the first part of a two-part playthrough, showing Stefan's campaign up to the Belose 2 mission.
You can find part two, which also includes Faliall's campaign, here: https://youtu.be/bRB7cos6CLM
Civil unrest on Belose has reached its boiling point, and having been mortally wounded during an all-out assault on the imperial palace, the emperor of the Vasteel star system now lies on his deathbed. His sons Stefan and Falilall have conflicting views on how to bring Vasteel through the crisis, and so, as Faliall is being crowned as the new emperor, Stefan plots a coup with rebel forces.
The game begins with your choice of sides: will you fight to preserve tradition and the status quo as Faliall, or will you fight for progress and revolution as Stefan? Each has his own unique campaign and storyline, so there is a ton of content here.
Vasteel is a strange game, even by Turbografx standards. Developed by Human and originally released in Japan in 1990, it's a hybrid of two wholly disparate genres. It's a turn-based strategy game that, instead of automating encounters with a cutscene (like was standard in games like Fire Emblem, Shining Force, and Langrisser), presents battles as top-down action sequences. This is Vasteel's defining feature, and it's a really cool twist on the standard strategy formula.
Both campaigns span the entire solar system, so you'll be fighting on planets (complete with their own unique biomes) and asteroid fields, keeping things fresh throughout.
Each side has access its own unique hardware, and you'll need to consider things like terrain and firepower to succeed. It's also important to take bases and factories, as these will generate resources with which you can build bigger and better machines.
The units resemble something out of Transformers or Gundam, so if you love 80s anime space operas, this will be right up your alley. Most have a ranged and a melee attack, and it can be a lot of fun to charge into battle and lay waste to the enemy with a plasma sword or a barrage of rockets.
The strategy elements are typical of the era. Each turn, you build units and move them across a hex-based grid toward the enemy's base of operations. The maps are large and often provide multiple "corridors" for resource gathering and flanking opportunities. These segments control smoothly and move at a brisk pace, and they look pretty nice for as zoomed out as they are.
The action side of the game is a bit more of a mixed bag. The units' huge, detailed sprites often get caught on corners and can lead to some frustrating deaths, and enemies constantly fire at you from off-screen.
These problems, however, are easily circumvented by exploiting the AI's limitations. You can turn most battlefields into meat grinders by placing your most powerful units at factories. The AI will always prioritize attacking occupied factories, and the stage's layout makes it easy to trap them in spots where you can fire with impunity, ultimately destroying the game's balance. That doesn't mean it's not fun, but it does turn Vasteel into a more braindead experience than you'd expect from a strategy game.
The game looks and sounds great overall despite not being a Super CDROM² title. The sprite and animation work is solid, but the battle scenes do suffer from nasty bouts of flicker and sprite dropout that result in your inability to see stuff flying directly at you. The flashy cutscenes are fully voiced and well translated, though: Working Designs did a top localization job. The script takes itself seriously, wisely leaving the humor to the catalog-like descriptions of the units, and even though the acting is a bit corny, it all makes for a respectable effort.
The music in Vasteel is uniformly excellent, but you're duking it out to, of all things, jazz. I have no problem with jazz, but it's so out of place here! Turbo CD games were known for their blaring synth-rock soundtracks, and that style would've been a perfect fit here, too.
So overall, Vasteel does a fair bit right, but it fumbles on many crucial aspects of its gameplay. I loved it and have played through it many times over the past few years, and I think that it's the sheer novelty of everything on offer that blunts the impact of its faults.
It's funny how, now that I think about it, I could say the same thing about the majority of Human's (non-wrestling) games over the years. I mean, between Clock Tower, SOS, and Mizzurna Falls, the parallels are clear.
It also would've been a real boon to anyone still clinging to the platform. There were few games of note still being released on the Turbo in the US by 1993, and this meaty title wrapped in a nice CD-style presentation was one of the last worthwhile games to appear before TTi pulled the plug on the brand in 1994.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.