Zeliard (DOS) first playthrough, part 1 of 3 (up to Helada)
2I had never heard of this game before, until Board Boosters randomly selected it to be their focus for April 2024. Personally, I don't like speedrunning a game to be my first experience with it, and I was intrigued by this side-scrolling action RPG that immediately invites comparisons to Ys III, so I wanted to play through it casually first.
I am playing the DOS version of the game, localized and released by Sierra On-Line in 1990. Zeliard originally released for the PC-88 in 1987, 2 years before Ys III existed. The PC-88 version is notorious for being far more brutal: all exchange rates are halved; level-ups have fewer benefits, no refills, and zero EXP rollover; and deaths lose both all gold _and_ all almas (instead of half). The one thing the PC-88 version has going for it that the DOS version doesn't, as I found out, is that on PC-88 if you die or use a kioku feather you warp to the latest sage, whereas on DOS you always warp to the first sage in the entire game, effectively making the kioku feather completely useless and dictating that any death beyond the first area warrants reloading your save file.
Zeliard starts out seeming innocuous enough: its first two areas seem purposefully designed to introduce you to its maze-like maps without ever being too far away from towns, and the first few towns have forgiving economies. The game also makes it clear pretty early that its soundtrack includes a few bangers.
That being said, this was the honeymoon phase; let's see what happens when the honey moon inevitably ends.
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