0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Blaze & Blade Eternal Quest

         

Blaze & Blade Eternal Quest is a Fantasy action role playing game with an anime visual style that was developed by T&E Soft for the Playstation. The windows version of the game was developed by Conspiracy Entertainment, the game was published by Funsoft for it’s Playstation release, while THQ would publish the PC version of the game.

The game released first on Playstation in Japan, on the 29^th of January 1998, with the European releases of the game coming on June 4^th of the following year, also in 1999 the game released on PC in France, with a North American PC release coming in January of 2000, the game never released on Playstation in North America.

Notable people who worked on this game, Ken Kojima who worked on the Gamesound and Sound Effects  for Blaze & Blade Eternal Quest. He previously worked on Red Alarm in 1995, the following year he worked on the Sound Composition for 3-D Tetris, and composed the music for the 1997 released The Note, which was an first person action puzzler with survival horror elements.

When playing Blade & Blaze Eternal Quest and navigating the level, there is very little UI interfering with your view. Along the bottom of the screen you will see your four characters names, each showing below their names their current HP and MP.

Between the characters name plates and stats, two on either side is a small compass which shows your current direction of travel. The game moves in real time, as you move around the map enemies will spawn, the player than has the choice to either engage the enemies or continue about their journey.

 

Basic controls for the game, the D-Pad is used to move your character around the game world, pressing either up, down, left or right. Camera movement is controlled by the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons, only the group leader can control the camera movement.

The camera angle can also be changed by pressing the L2 or R2 shoulder buttons, this adjusts the camera to a lower or higher angle of view. Using both L1 and R1 or L2 and R2 together will zoom the camera in and out, R1 and R2 together will give you a five second overview of the screen.

 

Characters in the game have the ability to jump this is done using the Circle button, to perform an attack on an enemy the Square button is used, characters also have access to a special attack which is done with the X button.

Each of the eight available character classes you have to choose from when starting the game have a special ability. For example the Warrior’s special ability is blocking attacks using his shield, while the Priest can use healing magic and the Fairy can use status changing magic as their special attack.

Back to the controls the Triangle button is used to access the sub menu, this is the menu where you can use items, change weapons, armor, magic and change which character is the party lead. Using items such as potions, magical items and weapon upgrades must be accessed though the sub menu and not the main menu.

 

The main menu which is accessed by pressing the Start button, here you can view your characters stats, save your game progress and view the map of the current level. You can also choose your groups leader as well as change the hair clothes colour from the available options, pressing either L1 or R1 will switch you between the screens.

The Map screen allows you to mark important locations, to do this simply go to the map screen and press the X button to place a marker. When selecting cast magic from the option menu is fairly simple depending on the spell, a set of commands will appear on the screen for example X, Circle, Square and Square, all the player has to do is press the select button and input the shown commands to perform the spell, the harder the spell is the more difficult the input commands will be.

Character creation is an important part of the game with the player able to customise even the characters style of speech, starting with that option the player has the choice of eight speech types. From Normal, to old, impulsive, cool and childlike as well as others.

The player can set the protective element for their characters, this is the stat for the element that the particular character will be based on, for example a character that is based on Water will be strong against water attacks, while a Earth based character will be protected against Earth based attacks.

Your characters base stats are chosen at random when you create a character, your character will start with a base stat of 15 for each of the available attributes. The player then draws cards which will increase the base stats of your character, if you are lucky enough to draw three of the same number in a row you will be able to draw even more cards. If you get a card you don’t want or the number is too low you can press the Circle button to keep trying.

 

Once you have finished drawing your cards you much distribute you points across the seven available skill stats. These stats are for Strength, which increased your attack power as well as increases your characters hit points.

Intelligence, this stat increases your characters efficiency in the use of sorcery, Willpower is the opposite and will determine your characters resistance to magical attacks. Agility will determine your character defence against Physical attacks.

Constitution, this stat will determine how resilient your character is against status changing effects and ailments, it will also affect how quickly the character will heal. Magical Power will determine how fast you recover your magical energy, this stat being key if your character is a Sorcerer. The final stat is Luck this determines for example the chance that when your character gets hit if they will suffer damage, it also affects several other factors.

When traversing the game world you will see bright while circles that appear on the ground, these are save points that allow you to save your progress. When in the Travellers Inn this does not apply as you can save anywhere inside the Inn. Another thing that appears in the levels are shinning green spots, these are healing points, the player just walks their character over them to heal their HP.

Foresia is the northern part of the continent of Moveresisch and was once a lush and fruitful province of the continent. This bountiful land however was devastated when an outbreak of uncontrolled magic was unleashed upon the land, since then Foresia has only been known as the forbidden country.

Many rumours have persisted about these northern lands, that great wealth and magical  monsters can still be found in the region, these rumours have resulted in adventurers venturing into these lands in search of their fortune.

During one of these adventures into the forbidden country an ancient lithograph is discovered, this supposedly very valuable object, with rumours that magical gems fit into the lithograph and grant great power to its wielder. And thus beings the adventure to unite the gems with the lithograph and prove they have found the legendary artifact of lore.

Critic reviews for Blaze & Blade Eternal Quest are a little thin on the ground with just four it total listed on the site that I use. These reviews range from good to above average, with the game not rating below a 59. As usual though we will start with the best of them, which comes from German publication Video Games.

The reviewer finding that the game will no doubt have many friends in the role playing community, especially with the multiplayer function. The reviewer did however find some blatant weaknesses to the game, the one major issue they brought up was spell casting classes with NPC’s not being able to automatically use their magic abilities. They continued by saying, after all, magicians are not primarily characterized by the fact that they hit their opponents with their stick.

Staying in Germany with Mega Fun who rated the game at a decent 73. They also had issue with the games AI not using the powers of certain characters, but had plenty of praise for the multiplayer aspect of the game, while decent when played with another person, these game takes on a new lease of life when four players are playing together and is easily worth another ten points more for this.

Also rating the game at a decent 73 were NowGamer, the reviewer finding that the games visuals look really awful, the graphics being turgid, and called the camera controls rotten. The reviewer finding that they were unable to see far enough into the distance, with the reviewer finding that you simply stumble into situations because you become so disorientated.

On a more positive note the reviewer did praised the games ideas, with it featuring secret areas, quest, sub quests and co-operative puzzle solving, saying the game is stuffed full of good ideas and plays pretty well, especially if you can get three chums away from shoot-‘em-ups and driving games.

Concluding the review said, if only Blaze & Blade had addressed a few of the problems mentioned, it would be a cracker, but sadly there are stocks of other RPGs which it’ll be compared to and consequently many of the games endearing features will never see the light of day, A pity.

For the final review we head over to France and Consoles News who rated the game at an above average 59, this French magazine review saying. From this diatribe, you might infer that Legend of Foresia is horribly bad, but not the same: it's just outdated, outmoded, short, poor and is best avoided.

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 have this game listed with it only releasing on Playstation in Japan and Europe. The same goes for eStarland.com, but a little more surprising that Retrogames.co.uk don’t stock or even list the game.

As a result out last hope is Amazon.com where we don’t find the PAL version of the game listed, but we do find the Japanese version and quite a good supply of it as well. With a very good condition and complete copy of the game can be picked up for $13.90.

We find the four cheapest copies on offer at the time of writing this to be very good condition copies, with prices for these copies ranging from the previously mentioned $13.90 up to $17.04. All four of these copies also come with free shipping.

Used copies currently peak at the $33.80 mark with a few going beyond this point at $42.65 one at $71 and another at $86.40. Also on offer are new copies of the game, with prices starting pretty steeply, with five new copies on offer for $124.33.

Prices steadily rise from this point with all bar one of the new copies on offer peaking at around the $150 mark. As is usual we do find that one copy that has to be priced higher than the rest by a significant margin, this copy comes in at a pricey mark of $195.58.

For those who don’t read Japanese and those who don’t want to muddle through the game I also checked the co.uk version of Amazon for the PAL version of the game. while it did have a PAL version of the game listed, it was the German version of the game only.

Written by

P J Gibbon