0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Boundary Gate Daughter of Kingdom

      

Boundary Gate Daughter of Kingdom is a first person turn based fantasy role playing game developed by Pack-In-Video, Polestar and Studio OX. The games published by Victor Interactive Software and released exclusively in Japan.

The game released on the 17^th of July 1997 on the Playstation, this however was not the first release of the game. The games first release was earlier that same year on the 24^th of January 1997, with the game releasing on the PC-FX system, this release was published by NEC Home Electronics.

Boundary Gate is an old-fashioned RPG with dungeon-like 3D layout. The game is viewed from first-person perspective, with the exception of battles, where the heroes can be seen from an "over-the-shoulder" view. The attacks are animated.

Enemies are random, and combat is turn-based, the party members using equipped weapons to attack or magical spells. Important locations are presented as 2D pictures. There is also voice acting for important conversations.

Movement in the game which is controlled with the D-Pad, the games movement is similar to titles such as Might & Magic and Bards Tale, with the walls buildings in towns and the wilderness outside of them scrolling past the player as they walk.

Important locations are switched to a 2D picture of the location take for example a shop which can be seen in the above left picture which shows the shop shelves with various items on display, this screen also has an NPC in the shop owner present as well. these characters have minor animations such as them turning their heads to look in the players direction.

The player can also interact with NPC around the various locations in the game, NPC in town will appear when the player moves near their location, with the NPC’s popping into view when the player gets close enough.

The D-Pad in addition  to your characters movements is also used when moving between actions, to select the desired action the Circle button is used, you can also cancel an action by pressing the X button. You can view your characters status by pressing the Square button

The combat in the game is turn based, as well as having random encounters, the combat switches the game from the first person perspective of the rest of the game and switches to an over the shoulder view of your character as they fight the enemies.

Unlike the vast majority of the game combat is animated with both the player characters and the enemies attack all animated. Combat like exploration takes part in the main screen which covers the top two thirds of the screen, below this are the various options you have while in combat, just above this and below your characters feet is their HP counter, the game features both weapons based combat and magical spells

A long time ago, the First Mother created the world and blessed it with five magical symbols that would keep it in balance. These symbols were hidden deep in sacred temples, to protect everything and everyone around them. Many years later an adventurer named Finn was looking for work in the city of Ambrose, there was plenty of work to do as well, with monsters roaming the countryside and the threat of war was more real than ever.

One night when Finn was strolling through the city he suddenly spotted a young girl being attacked by monsters, naturally he defeated the monsters and saved the girl. The young girl turned out to be a princess hoping to restore her fathers kingdom. The paid decided to work together and head of to a nearby ruined city which is overrun by monsters.

This being a Japanese only release critic reviews for it are none existent, as a result we will head over to GameFAQs for their user ratings of the game. We find the game currently sitting at a solid user rating of 3.61/5, from a total of 9 use ratings. This average rating does however make it the 63 lowest rated Playstation role playing game, and is currently ranked in 1504^th place for all Playstation releases according to GameFAQs user ratings.

Taking a closer look at the user ratings for the game, we find that with the exception of one user who rated the game at a dismal 0.5/5, the game otherwise did not rate below a decent 3/5. That single low score for the game really did hurt the games overall average taking it down from a 4/5 to its current 3.61/5.

Other users ratings for the game, we find one user rated the game at a 3.5/5 while another single user each rated the game at a 4/5 and 4.5/5. We find the largest majority of users with four in total rating the game at a very good 4.5.

Next up is the games difficulty, here we find 10 users rating this category with it being a close match between two difficulty ratings. We find one user who found the game to be simple in addition, back to the closely matched difficulty ratings, we find four users rating the game as being tough, but just edging it is just right with five users finding the game as this difficulty. Averaging out the game comes in at as having a just right difficulty level.

Last up is the game lifespan here we also find a total of 10 users rating this category. We find one user that clearly did not gel with the game as they spent less than 1 hour with it. We find another user spent a decent 12 hours playing the game, while two more users spent an impressive 60 hours with it. The majority however with six users in total spent around 80 hours playing the game. Averaging out this comes to an average lifespan of around 64 to 65 hours.

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, where unsurprisingly this Japanese only release is not available or even listed, the same goes for Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com. So as a last hope we head over to Amazon.com in the hopes of finding at least one copy of the game available.

We in fact find a decent supply of the game listed for sale and we are greeted by two very good condition copies at the top of the listings. These two copies are both priced up at $21.02 and both come with free shipping, a good condition copy is also available for $23.42 and comes with free shipping as well, this copy however does not state any additional information and the sellers rating is only 90% positive over the last 12 months which is a slight concern.

We find another very good condition copy priced up at $24,91 and another priced at $26.60 to round off the first page of listings. Prices steadily climb for the next handful of copies before used prices begin to increase rapidly with used prices currently peaking at just over $100.

A decent supply of new copies of the game are also on the market, these however will set you back a significant amount with the cheapest new copy currently available for $63.98. Prices for a new copy of the game beyond this price point are insanely high, with the next copy on offer priced at $199.97. Prices for a new copy of the game steadily rise to the current high price of $261.68. A warning for anyone wanting to buy this game, it is a Japanese only release as such a Japanese Playstation console will be required to play the game. 

Written by

P J Gibbon