0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Bastard!! Utsuro Naru Kamigami no Utsuwa

         

Bastard!! Utsuro Naru Kamigami no Utsuwa is a dark fantasy post apocalyptic role playing game developed by Opus Corp and published by Seta Corporation. The game is based off of the Kazushi Hagiwara manga which was first published back in 1988 in Weekly Shōnen Jump. 

Bastard!! Utsuro Naru Kamigami no Utsuwa unlike the manga and short anime series it was not translated for western audiences, the game released exclusively in Japan on the 27^th of December 1996

Gameplay is pretty simple with the player going from one boss to the next, combat does have some strategic elements for the player to work with. When a battle starts placing your troops in certain areas will enable them to help during combat, for example positioning an ally diagonally in front of another, the newly placed character will help defend the original character.

 

In addition to positional advantages the game has certain moves that require more than one character to pull off, using 2 or more characters to pull off these spells once the spell has been cast the characters will move to random positions in the players 4x4 grid battle area.

As commented in the GameSpot review the story in Bastard!! Utsuro Naru Kamigami no Utsuwa is closely tied to the Manga series and those who have no previous knowledge of the series will possibly struggle to know what is going on.

This section I will focus on the Bastard!! Story on the whole rather than just the game, the story of Bastard begins with the world suffering an apocalypse after  the release of the Anthrasax, at the height of modern civilisation, as a result of the release all technology is rendered useless.

In the place of technology magic has reasserted itself as a force in the world, shortly after the fall of the modern world, demonic creatures begin to appear, the resulting influx of demonic creatures results in the human race reverting a feudal city state society.

 

The world is now a place of sorcery, revenge and power struggles in this dungeons and dragons like world, this new dystopian world people need magic to survive, against the wild breasts, evil monsters and demonic creatures that roam the land. The Manga while starting off like a dungeons and dragons type story will diverge later on focus on other aspects such as beliefs, morals and religion

The main story of Bastard!! Revolves around the Kingdom of Meta-Licarna, which is attacked by the Four Lords of Havoc. The attack prompts the High Priest to ask his daughter to awaken Dark Schneider, a wizard and former leader of the Riders, from with within the body of 14 year old Luche Renren.

Dark Schneider is the main protagonist of the series, who’s story beings 15 years earlier when he was the leader of the Riders of Havoc, where he had an army of wizards and warriors at his command. Dark Schneider was defeated by Lars Ul Meta-Licana, the prince of the kingdom Meta-Licana, Schneider escaped death however finding a way to reincarnate himself using the dark arts, his spirit was transferred into a young boy.

 

Geo Soto Noto, the head priest of Meta-Licana sealed the spirit within the young boy to prevent Dark Schneider from manifesting, however when all out war erupted and broke the seals of Anthrax, the high priest ordered Dark Schneider to be unleashed upon the world once again to conquer it.

Schneider’s main goal is to conquer the whole world and have all the women of the world, the early parts of the story revolve around Schneider trying to reform his old crew, known as the Riders of Havoc or the Four Heavenly Kings, as well as regaining the power he once had so he can begin his conquest of the world.

Critic reviews for this game are extremely thin on the ground with just one available for this Japanese only release, this comes from GameSpot who rated the game at a 51. the reviewer calling the games 3D engine hideous and screens upon screens of non interactive Japanese text, with the reviewer commenting that it doesn't exactly scream mass appeal.

While praising the attractive animated sequences, the review found that they failed to establish any sense of plot or character, with a heavy lean towards players who have knowledge of the Manga series already, the review was also critical of the games landscapes calling them gnarly and insultingly bad compared to the Playstation norm. In addition the review had problems with the unrealistic character movements and the bogged down frame rate, which the review commented on saying it fell to 10fps at times.

The review did have praise for the games tactical battle system calling it interesting, if a little out of place, even so the review continued by saying, you will be running into so many battles throughout the game, that the fight sequences and even the cool battle hymn will try your patience.

Concluding the reviewer had the following to say. Don’t even think about delving into Bastasd!! If you are no fluent in Japanese, unless you’re an import masochist who likes to blaze blindly though a title. Bastard!! With its awful 3D, strong cinematic soundtrack, distinctive battle system and wearisome storytelling truly define the term mish-mash.

With critic reviews highly limited we now head over to GameFAQs where we find the game was much better received by users, with the game currently sitting on an average user rating of 3.69/5 from a total of 16 user ratings.

Taking a closer look at the user ratings we find the game did not receive a rating below a 2.5/5, with a couple of users rating it at this. Three more users rated the game at solid 3/5 while another couple rated the game slightly higher at a 3.5/5.

Getting into the higher end scores now and this is where we find the majority of user ratings with a clear majority and a total of 7 users rating the game at a very good 4/5. A couple more users rated this game even higher scoring it at the maximum of 5/5.

Moving on to the game difficulty next, where we find a total of 13 users rating this category. With a slight majority in favour of the game being on the tough side, with the game having just the right difficulty slightly behind. The two other difficulty ratings find the game either on the easy side, while some users found the game unforgiving. Averaging out the game comes in at having a tough difficulty level.

Lastly we have the games lifespan, we find a total of 10 users rating this category, with a couple of the users spending around 12 hours with the game. The remaining eight users spent much more time with the game, with an even split between 40 and 60 hours game time, averaging out this comes in at a 42.4 hours lifespan.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

 

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who unsurprisingly don’t stock this Japanese only release, same goes for Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com. The latter does have some Bastard!! Associated products listed, volume 1 of the Manga and a couple of figurines, these sadly are currently out of stock.

Moving quickly on to Amazon.com we find the game listed and available, with a small number of copies of the game available, with prices starting from $9.94 for a complete copy in good condition, it also comes with free shipping.

As does the next cheapest copy which is in very good condition and priced at just one cent more at $9.95, another very good condition copy with free shipping is also available for $10.01. Prices for a used copy continue to climb from here with prices reaching a current high of around $24.

At the time of writing there are no like new used copies of the game on the market, there are however a few new copies of the game available, these are considerably higher priced than the used copies with prices starting at $95.64, the other two new copies on offer are priced at $95.65 and $95.77 respectively, all three new copies come with free shipping.

Written by

P J Gibbon