Rating of
3.5/5
The “G” Stands for Gamrius
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/30/18
1996 was truly a banner year for one-time RPG titan, Squaresoft. In that one year, the Japanese developer/publisher released 10 stand-alone and spinoff games, with no direct sequels in sight. Only one of those releases, however, was in North America. The current game in question was one of those ‘lost’ stand-alone Squaresoft titles that never saw the light of day outside Japan: “Treasure Hunter G” (“THG”), a Tactical RPG that leans more heavily toward the traditional RPG side of the scale than the Tactical side. Fortunately for those of us in the West, a group of friendly hackers, including MetalHawk and ObsoleteTranslation, put together a fanslation, which was released in 2004.
Presentation
“THG” is an obvious late-era Squaresoft product in appearance. It uses both Mode-7 for the overworld and pre-rendered, 8-direction, pseudo-3D sprites for the characters, NPCs, and enemies. While the cast of characters are fairly generic and uninspired, there are plenty of interesting-looking monsters to kill, plus the spell effects tend to be rather snazzy.
Audiowise, the music and sound effects are both top-notch. While neither Uematsu or Mitsuda worked on the soundtrack, a number of Squaresoft house musicians who later worked on “Final Fantasy Tactics” contributed to the “THG” soundtrack, resulting in a pleasant accompaniment for all of the game’s events, including a battle theme that reminds me, in places, of Stevie Wonder’s Uptight.
Technically, “THG” is quite sound. I never experienced any actual game glitches or bad behavior, though there are a few lines of garbled dialog and mistakes in MetalHawk’s/Obsolete’s fanslation, I don’t hold it against the original material.
Story
The story material in “THG” draws heavily from Norse mythology and incorporates the more modern interest in OoPArts (translated in-game as OPARTS), or Out of Place Artifacts. Our heroes are a pair of brothers, uncreatively named Red G. and Blue G., who live with their grandfather, Silver G., due to their perpetually-absent father, Brown G., always being on the hunt for OPARTs, thinking that they’re all involved in some grand mystery. As a ‘professional’ treasure hunter, Brown just can’t give up his search and be there for his kids.
As the story begins, Brown is off in search of a so-called Ferric Falcon, a mysterious metal bird from the ancient past that most people don’t believe actually exists. Shockingly, he uncovers the Ferric Falcon in a cave near Silver’s hometown, and his entire family witnesses an attempt by unknown forces to destroy the Falcon and kill Brown in the process. Back in town, Red, Blue, and Silver encounter a mysterious girl, Rain, and her pet monkey, Ponga, who are also apparently in the sights of the unknown Falcon bombers, as the town is razed to the ground, with Silver dying in the process.
The quartet of Red, Blue, Rain, and Ponga then set-out to see if Brown and the Ferric Falcon, which was seen flying erratically away from its resting place, are still in one piece, which sets off a chain of events revolving around fairies, elves, the World Tree, a resurrected Dark Lord, and some sort of dragon poorly-translated by MetalHawk/Obsolete as ‘Bone Dino,’ but in text translations is more appropriately rendered as Jormungand, a.k.a., the World Serpent.
While the main cast of characters does receive a decent dose of character development during their journey, the supporting cast is largely one-dimensional. The villains are particularly lame, with no real back-story to speak of.
“THG” holds great promise with its basis in Norse myth and plot points involving Out of Place Artifacts, but ultimately doesn’t deliver. What should be a rollicking tale delving into the mysteries of the world and of lost civilizations ultimately comes off as, rushed, pedestrian, and fairly generic. Perhaps the story could have been done better if the game was more than a super-brief 20-hour experience.
Gameplay
“THG” takes the grid-based movement, directional facing, and individual XP gain that would later become the bog standard mechanics of the TRPG sub-genre and crams them into fairly standard Turn-Based RPG, with towns, dungeons, and an overworld. The player guides the party of heroes, led by Red G., around town as they search through grass, flowerbeds, and barrels for loot, then travel out into the wider world in search of their next lead. There are no overworld encounters, but the game is extremely linear in the way it railroads the player to specific locations one after another. There are no side quests to speak of, and grinding doesn’t really do a whole lot.
Every battle in a dungeon or other explorable environment is staged. Once cleared, that battle won’t appear again unless the player leaves the entire area and goes back to the world map. Characters gain individual experience points for attacking or using abilities in battle, with 100 XP granting a level-up. As characters get stronger, they earn less XP from the same enemies (a la ‘Suikoden’). In order to keep things more or less, even, though, every character who is alive at the end of a battle receives an amount of experience for the battle, which prevents the problem in games like “Persona” or “Final Fantasy Tactics” where a powerful character gets all the kills and becomes ever more powerful while the rest of the team languishes in mediocrity and weakness.
Battles play out on a large grid of squares. Each character has a number of Action Points, which determine the number of things they can do during their turn. Moving 1 square costs 1 action, as does attacking (in any direction, even diagonally), using an item, or casting a spell. What’s interesting is that AP expenditure per action increases depending on the color of the grid square the character is standing in. A colorless square costs the least AP, followed by blue, then yellow, and finally red. Enemies cause the squares around them to darken along this scale, severely limiting the number of actions a character can take per turn when in close combat. I found this system to be rather unique and well done, as it prevents characters from wiping the map in one turn, but also allows for strategic positioning of characters based on weapon range and for characters to rapidly close the gap when one cluster of enemies is defeated but another cluster is still sitting on the other side of the map spamming magic. Characters can also throw items from their inventory at enemies or each other. Characters can’t just ‘use’ potions on each other, but must be lined up for ranged targeting. Many of the thrown, single-use attack items apply debuff status ailments to enemies, and I was quite pleased to see that even boss enemies are vulnerable to debuffs.
The game’s inventory system is really its only black mark from a gameplay perspective. Much like the old NES ‘Dragon Quest’ games, each character carries their own stash of items that only they can access during battle. These include everything piece of equipment that character is wearing (it’s also noteworthy that characters can change equipment in battle for free, so it makes good strategic sense to carry a few situational weapons). Each character can carry 20 items… but there’s no buffer or overflow at all. Even dating back to “Dragon Quest 4,” characters could chuck extra items into the ‘wagon’ when their personal inventories were full. That isn’t an option in “THG.” If all of the characters’ hands are full and the player comes across a new item they really want, they have to dump something someone is holding. Permanently. Likewise, if a character with an empty inventory slot picks up weapon for a different character, there’s no good way of doing Inventory Tetris or swapping items. In order to hand that weapon to the character who can use it, that character needs to dump an item. Blue G. does have a rucksack item that contains all of the OPARTs as well as other plot items, so they don’t take up space, but it is possible to accidentally remove an OPART or quest item from the sack… with no way to put it back in!
Overall
I went in expecting a super-exciting ‘Indiana Jones’-style adventure revolving around the types of things I used to read about in Time-Life’s ‘Mysteries of the Unknown’ books. What I got was a solid Tactics game with a story about as dumb-but-serviceable as “Secret of Evermore’s” and that doesn’t really do justice to the concepts it invokes. “Treasure Hunter G” isn’t a huge disappointment, but the poor writing and rushed pace keep it from standing alongside the likes of “Chrono Trigger” and “Final Fantasy 6.”
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 2.5/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
