Rating of
4.5/5
Here Be Dragons
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/15/17
1996 was the end of classic Squaresoft. The following year, the company released “Final Fantasy 7,” which changed the face of RPGs, transmuted the audience from nerd niche to mainstream, and changed the way people thought about the genre moving forward. But that’s a problem for tomorrow… right now, it’s 1996, and Squaresoft has just had a fantastic year, releasing half a dozen new RPGs, including both the Nintendo/Square collaboration, “Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars,” and “Chrono Trigger”/ “Chrono Cross” filler episode, “Radical Dreamers.”
What’s that, you say? You don’t remember a whole bunch of Square games coming out in 1996? The fact that you can read this English text obviously means you’re a Westerner… so, yeah, we got screwed.
See, 1996, being right before the revelatory release of “Final Fantasy 7” in 1997, marked a time before Japanese developers were willing to place untested intellectual properties before the Western consumer. In the years leading up to 1996, we received but a tepid dribble of Squaresoft games out of the whole, mighty flow. One of those games was “Bahamut Lagoon,” a TRPG the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since.
Presentation
“Bahamut Lagoon” is a very attractive game, especially for 1996 standards. The entire game is, naturally, 2D and crafted from hand-made sprites. Overworld character sprites are minimalist, but still make it very easy to identify who is who, while in-battle character sprites are larger and better animated than any prior Squaresoft game. Enemy designs are highly reminiscent of Yoshitaka Amano’s previous work in the ‘Final Fantasy’ series.
“Bahamut Lagoon’s” sound track was composed by Noriko Matsueda, who worked with the legendary Mitsuda and Uematsu on the OST for “Chrono Trigger,” while also contributing significantly to the sound tracks of the first two ‘Front Mission’ games. It is an excellent soundtrack that fully lives up to the quality expected by ‘90s Squaresoft fans.
Story
Because Squaresoft couldn’t be bothered to translate “Bahamut Lagoon” into English (or any other language besides Japanese), it fell to the Fanslation and ROMhacking team at DeJap to do it for them, a feat which was completed as far back as 2002. DeJap officially disbanded in 2004, but their legacy of making up for Squaresoft’s shortsightedness will live on forever.
“Bahamut Lagoon” takes place in the fantasy world of Orelus, in which a vast and endless sky is dotted with floating islands of earth called ‘lagoons.’ On several of these lagoons rest the remains of ancient dragons knowns as The Holy Dragons, with which only a few special people, known as Dragnars, can communicate. Our hero, Byuu, of the Kingdom of Kahna, serves in the royal guard and is sweet on Princess Yoyo. Naturally, our protagonist’s happy life is interrupted by the stereotypical Evil Empire stomping into Kahna to take over.
Yet this overthrow by the Granbelos Empire isn’t really an attempt at being evil or selfish, as Emperor Sauzer firmly believes himself to be the figure spoken of in ancient prophecies who will read the wills of the Holy Dragons, unite the lagoons, and open the door to a New Era for Orelus. Naturally, Byuu and his rather large company of friends don’t see things the same way, thus the story picks up a couple years after the victory of Granbelos with Byuu, a handful of his knights, and an incredibly pompous Royal Guard named Matelite forming a rebellion against Granbelian rule. This small rebellion is joined by a handful of folks from other conquered lagoons who want their old way of life back. The first step in their plan involves freeing Kahna’s Princess from Granbelian captivity.
While this all sounds like stereotypical High Fantasy fare, there are a significant number of twists that make “Bahamut Lagoon” feel incredibly unique and fresh from a storytelling perspective. In addition, “Bahamut Lagoon” doesn’t always take itself seriously, leading to a number of goofy, almost parodic moments, as well as a few moments of downright twisted humor. Having experienced this story first hand, I can understand why Squaresoft backed-out of translating it, as it would have required some ham-handed censorship to cover up several scenes and characters (the brothel liberation scene and one of the party’s clerics being a junky spring instantly to ming) and to tiptoe around a love triangle that occupies a central part of the story’s drama.
Ultimately, “Bahamut Lagoon” wraps up all of its plots and mysteries with a tidy ending that leaves nothing ambiguous or confusing after 27 chapters (and roughly 35 hours) of enjoyable narrative. It’s a well written game, and DeJap’s sometimes too-literal translation really does it justice.
Gameplay
“Bahamut Lagoon” is a 16-bit Tactical Role Playing Game. Not many TRPGs existed or thrived in the 16-bit era, with 32-bit titles like “Final Fantasy Tactics” and the brutal “Tactics Ogre” serving to drive the sub-genre into the public eye. However, “Bahamut Lagoon” isn’t particularly similar to those better-known TRPGs, as it is excruciatingly well-balanced and requires no grinding whatsoever.
“Bahamut Lagoon” reminds me ever-so-slightly of the much more recent Square Enix game, “The Last Remnant” in the way its combat works. On the surface, “Bahamut Lagoon” looks like a typical TRPG, where the player moves units around on a top-down, grid-based map in order to attack enemy units, while enemy units do the same. Where “Bahamut Lagoon” differs from the norm is in the fact that each unit is made of a team of four individual characters plus one dragon. Units can either attack indirectly, in which case they use a ranged attack (typically magic) to hit an enemy with no fear of retaliation; or they can attack directly, in which case, the hero unit and enemy unit involved in the attack temporarily switch from a top-down tactical view to a side-on RPG view reminiscent of… all of the old ‘Final Fantasy’ games. In direct attacks, the player assigns commands to each character in the unit, and they/the enemies attack in accordance to their order.
The dragons, however, are the most unique thing about “Bahamut Lagoon’s” gameplay. Each unit is assigned a dragon, but the dragon itself acts as its own separate unit, and is mostly AI controlled. In battle, each dragon’s affiliated unit can issue it a vague command of either ‘Come!’ in which case the dragon stays near its unit and attacks, ‘Go!’ in which case the dragon flies far away from its unit and attacks, or ‘Wait!’ in which case the dragon flies somewhere out of harm’s way and does nothing.
These dragons have a large number of stats, and a dragon’s elemental affinities in particular have a profound effect on the capabilities of the unit associated with said dragon. A dragon that has strong fire affinity, weak ice affinity, and no life affinity will grant its unit access to powerful fire attacks, but only weak ice attacks, and no/extremely limited healing abilities. It is possible to change a dragon’s stats by feeding it during each chapter. What do dragons eat? EVERYTHING! Weapons, armor, consumable items, grass, pornography… dragons love to munch on anything, and as their stats change, their physical forms change too, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of the Dragon Morphing system from “Breath of Fire 3.”
In addition to its unique combat and dragon mechanics, “Bahamut Lagoon” differs from what has become the bog standard TRPG in the fact that the player can control Byuu and run around the game’s various towns and the Resistance’s flagship between battles. While the game is definitely more confined than a typical non-tactical RPG, it’s nice to be able to talk to NPCs and party members, sniff out secrets, and visit items shops in a more traditional way than via the super-streamlined, entirely-menu-driven methods TRPGs have adopted since.
Overall
“Bahamut Lagoon” is truly a lost Squaresoft classic of the Golden Age. It’s a shame that Square Enix never bothered to translate this for the West, even though they did re-release it on Nintendo’s Virtual Console in Japan… Twice. This game easily makes it onto my short list of all-time best TRPGs by virtue of its compelling story and excellently-balanced gameplay.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
