Game:

Zeliard (1987)

Duration: 10:54

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Original Air Date: July 07, 2009

As I (sorta) said in the introduction, Zeliard is a beautiful game that was ahead of its time and sadly fell into deep obscurity. The gameplay is simple by today's standards, but this game was nothing to sneeze at during the mid-late eighties. The game is a sidescrolling hack and slash RPG comparable to Ys III or Zelda II. Ys3 didn't appear till several years later. From the cutscenes to the music to the standard visuals, everything about this old game is impressive on several fronts.

For example, everything is nice, colorful and distinguishable and menus are neat and organized. When you enter buildings, people actually acknowledge your presence and greet you with a neat animation. Some places like the magic shop even have lights that cast shadows! You can even get ITEM DESCRIPTIONS. There are a lot of games from the ninties and up that don't have item descriptions in the game. The game showed off what it could do with sound not only with the amazing natural audio, but with added elements like hearing sounds behind doors that bosses are in when you get near them. Your hero has standard attacks like stabbing in front of him, crouching and slashing, slashing below him and swinging in an arc. When enemies get near him, the game intelligently alters his swing if an enemy is above you so as to limit the harm done to the hero. I could go on further, but that should do.

Leveling up requires you to defeat monsters and gain Almas, though how much isn't exactly clear, though you'll level at a decent pace. While you can find many items and things like gold, the major way of earning gold is to sell the almas you've accumulated, which varies from place to place. For an old game, the dialogue is more laid back and intelligently written for what it's worth. While the game has some annoyances, the faults are far and between (that's a compliment coming from me, lol).

Oh, before I forget, the game is one huge series of underground mazes with plenty of keys to collect and numerous towns that you can find with folks that will help you. The game is tough but it's not too tough. The mazes will give you more grief than the enemies after a while. The only problem I have is the managability of old games like this. Most folks will probably be running this through DosBox unless they have a positively ancient computer lying around and a copy of this game that still works. I have three computers and my oldest has the potential to support Win98 (even though it has Win2K), so... yeah. I have no idea how one would access their saves in DosBox, which could pose a real problem for a game like this.

Anyway, enjoy.

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