Rating of
3.5/5
Pants!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/19/17
1996 was a big year for game releases. Not many of that year’s strong lineup actually made it to the West, however, leaving those outside of Japan with the impression that 1996 was something of a downer year, with the SNES in decline and excitement ramping up for Sony’s brand new PlayStation. One of the titles Japan received in 1996 that the rest of the world didn’t was “Do-Re-Mi Fantasy: Milon no Dokidoki Daibouken,” a sequel to “Milon’s Secret Castle.” While the original subtitle, directly translated, means “Milon’s Heartpounding Great Adventure,” when Hudson, the venerable company behind this title, re-released the game in all regions on the WiiWare service in 2008, they didn’t bother to translate the title… or any of the game’s other text. Thankfully, Fanslations have come to the rescue once again, as the now-defunct Gaijin Productions and RPGone Fanslation groups collaborated to Anglicize all of the text and graphics in the game, giving it the much simpler title, “Do-Re-Mi Fantasy: Milon’s Quest” (“Do-Re-Mi Fantasy”).
Presentation
“Do-Re-Mi Fantasy” is a beautiful and elaborately-illustrated game. The sprites have a very cute, hand-drawn quality about them during gameplay, and the cutscenes are fully animated with very anime-styled character close-ups. This is one of those games that critics used to gush about ‘looking like a cartoon brought to life,’ albeit with a few rougher edges thanks to 16-bit pixel density.
The soundtrack is somewhat understated in a game that has musical terminology in its very title and is based so strongly around retrieving magical musical instruments, but is pleasantly catchy in its own right. Several of the tunes in the soundtrack attempted to go beyond simple MIDI, and employ highly compressed sound effects, which include some audible hiss. However, far from being detrimental, this side effect from compression tech of the time actually gives the game’s soundtrack more character, in much the same way as a vinyl record does with music albums.
Story
“Do-Re-Mi Fantasy” is a platformer from an era where platformers didn’t really try to push the narrative envelope. The fact that it has cutscenes and dialog at all is remarkable. But it’s no great epic, nor does it do anything particularly original.
The titular Milon is a small, elfin boy who lives in the woods with his parents. Every day, he plays with the forest creatures, including a fairy named Alis. One day, an evil bastard named Amon – who is apparently a well-known evil bastard and his evil-bastard-antics aren’t particularly unexpected – kidnaps Alis and takes her away to his castle in the sky. Milon jumps to the rescue and heads off to rescue her, encountering a number of musicians along the way who explain that Amon’s evil-bastard powers can only be resealed by recovering, then uncursing the 5 sacred instruments.
Everything plays out exactly as one would expect. There are no plot twists or exciting changeups. Milon simply travels through a set of 7.5 worlds (the last “two” are kind of mashed together into a single map), including the obligatory Ice World and Lava World, retrieves the instruments, hunts for stars to power the uncursing ritual, then hands over the instruments to the land’s friendly musicians to do their thing. None of this takes particularly long, and it’s possible to clear the entire game in less than 10 hours.
Gameplay
In general, “Do-Re-Mi Fantasy” is a fairly generic 2D Platformer. However, the fact that it is a reasonably polished, eyecatching 2D Platformer is what gives it staying power, and what gave it enough of a reputation to garner a Fanslation in the first place. The mechanics are simple: Milon can move on a 2D axis, jump, and shoot bubbles at enemies from a blowpipe. Enemies hit by bubbles are temporarily encased in a bubble, an can be blown away with a simple touch, while Milon can also stomp on enemies’ heads to temporarily squash them and turn them into navigable platforms.
Milon’s power-ups include a bubble range improvement, a bubble fire-rate improvement, Fluffy Shoes that allow him to slow-fall, bubblegum that will save him from one insta-death via bottomless pit, and spike shoes (which I never managed to find) that make ice less slippery. Milon also relies heavily on pants. Yes, the little elfin kid wears multiple pairs of pants to protect himself from danger. Perhaps he poops them in fear when an enemy hits him, and must discard his soiled pants. Either way, pants are the single most valuable power-up in the game, as Milon can go from wearing a single pair of red pants to a doubled-up pair of blue pants to a full-on layered look with green pants, all at once, absorbing an equal amount of hits. I found it hilarious that I was constantly in search of pants after getting biffed by enemies in this game… but maybe I’m just weird.
“Do-Re-Mi Fantasy” is a bit of a bi-polar game. It looks cute and kiddy, and friendly and accessible… and for the most part it is. The stages that Milon must navigate as he clears each of the game’s world maps are all quite easy and straight-forward. The player can replay and exit any stage at any time to grab power-ups, ala “Super Mario World,” and while it appears that stages might hold secrets that can only be accessed once Milon has uncursed a specific sacred instrument… only the first world has ONE stages that holds such a secret. As such, “Do-Re-Mi Fantasy” lacks all of the esoteric mystery that made “Milon’s Secret Castle” simultaneously compelling and tooth-gnashingly aggravating.
The other half of “Do-Re-Mi Fantasy’s” bi-polar personality is the boss fights. There are 7 of them, and while they start off just as easy and manageable as the stages leading up to them, there are several later bosses that are absolutely brutal. The thing that makes “Do-Re-Mi Fantasy’s” boss battles tougher than most cute platformers of the 16-bit era is the fact that pattern memorization only goes so far, as the bosses can and WILL randomize their attack patterns at the drop of a hat. Perhaps the biggest pain in the butt about dealing with bosses is that they are about the only thing in the game that will kill a competent player, which means the player will get to go back and retrieve power-ups (specifically: pants) between each attempt… unless they employ a save state before the battle.
“Do-Re-Mi Fantasy” sits in that uncomfortable space of games using no method to save progress, games using passwords to save progress, and games using battery backups to save progress. “Do-Re-Mi Fantasy” opts for the middle options of employing passwords, which doesn’t eliminate nearly as much tedious repetition as battery backup saving would.
Overall
“Do-Re-Mi Fantasy: Milon’s Quest” is an eyecatching 2D Platformer in the classic style that is ultimately too unambitious and simplistic for its own good. Uneven difficulty between the stages and bosses makes the pacing feel off, and the lack of interesting secrets to find makes it pointless to revisit stages in search of anything besides more pants.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 2.5/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
