it took me years to remember the name of this fever dream of a game.
I never owned a Saturn but my friend did.
I watched him play this game and it always stuck with me because of how dynamic the branching paths were.
There is an early game timed section of 5 mins that determines which scenario you will play.
5 pretty distinctly different scenarios in total.
the battles went into a crazy isometric 1v1 fighting system. during some fights, the player can capture his opponent, allowing the player to control that opponent in future matches. The player cannot capture an opponent when using a previously captured character.
literally pokemans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Savior
according to wiki this game is hardcore.
the TRUE ending requires doing all the things within a time limit and without the aid of save points. _This is also the only scenario where the source of the game's name, Dark Savior, becomes apparent._
Wow Iāve never heard of this before and it looks awesome. Iām a huge fan of 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds, plus the gameplay mechanics looks fun and varied.
Thanks for injecting this into my brainosphere! Definitely gonna be checking it out.
Only recently, where I finally got my hands on a Saturn flashcart/ODEā¦ And upon spending hours and days thoroughly peepin the entire Japanese and English library, Dark Savior was placed right on the root of my ODE storage device, along with the rest of the games Iām interested inā¦ Not much else to say, sorry lol. Iāll get back to you when I get around to playing itā¦. heh. It is in the realm of the type of games I enjoy though.
I remember reading about this game in a magazine in 1997, at a tender age, and being deeply fascinated by how it looked. Still have yet to even see a Saturn, let alone play this, but one day I will.
Kat Koller did an excellent overview and analysis of Dark Savior this year. It goes into good depth about the gameās scenario system and how that gets used for plot twists later on, particularly in a meta-commentary sense. The gameās quite fun without the crazy story shenanigans it pulls, but it adds a lot to what's otherwise a somewhat jank successor to Landstalker.
Fun fact: the game's script writer, [Toshio Terada](https://vgmdb.net/artist/4853), is a prolific TV drama writer for Japanese networks. I'm not sure exactly what he did for the game itself, but he's a lyricist and writer for the game's CD dramas which go into further depth re: plot events and backstories. It seems this was the first and last time he worked on a game, which I can believe since it didn't exactly sell great or lead to many prospects for Climax Entertainment.
The game also looks positively _gorgeous_ when you raise its internal resolution in an emulator like Kronos or Yaba Sanshiro: https://youtu.be/zRmiYQxPpg4?t=115
Whoever made the textures and models deserves kudos for future-proofing the game so well. It's just a shame it'll likely never get re-released unless M2 takes up the mantle.
There was a really good article about this game like two years ago on one of the big sites (I think!) but I canāt find it now. It really inspired me to pick the game back up, because the parallel system is more than just 5 different stories, itās 5 different facets of one metanarrative masquerading as 5 different stories. It's got that amazing 2D/3D mix, optional monster catching, odd music, weird platforming, and a whole lot of mystery and obtuseness.
Put that all together and it's definitely one of the most insert credit games of all time. Of course pursuant to that it's also quite difficult, and knowing about the 5 parallels makes me want to "do it right," which causes some odd stress and ultimately means I haven't ever finished the game, not once, but I have started it and played the first hour about 10 times since 1999 or whenever I got it. I really need to get back into it and really try to complete a full playthrough, but after your second time accidentally falling into some go and getting warped back to the entrance of a dungeon with less health (health being pretty scarce in this game) it's like... is this a game I have time for?
Tried this game a few years ago. I got a couple hours in, died some, and wrote it off thinking I had seen what I needed to see out of it. Glad to be wrong! Donāt think Iāll boot it back up, but hearing about the branching story has piqued my read about/youtube playthrough interest.
@PasokonDeacon#26943 nice find. oh god i remember that opening scene, watching it over and over.
vaguely recall my friend and I realizing there's more to the game than _Parallel V: Marathon of Death_ the purgatory tournament but it didn't matter bc upon resetting, that heckin timed section on the ship was so labyrinthine and isometric movement/ platforming so jank, the game felt impossible. We did have fun capturing monsters and battling with them. the world building/ scenario design was so interesting it stuck with me for 25 years. I really should play this overly ambitious mess of a game.
Unfortunately the likelihood of my setting up an emulator and downloading a rom is much lower than my playing through on hardware, though I do reckon that would be a nicer way to play!
I still have this mental block of emulation being fiddly and annoying to set up and combined with my reticence toward playing games on pc in general it might take a while to get over. But maaaaybe some day!?
I recently got a Retroid Pocket 2S, a game controller/android phone mashup thatās just about powerful enough to run Saturn games, and I also recently got a copy of Dark Savior, so Iāve been playing it. It took me a while to figure out which of the Saturn emulators on the device would actually run the game (Yaba Sanshiro 2, by the way - saturn.emu also runs it sort of ok but by skipping like two out of three frames and it makes the device get really hot), so Iāve played through the opening ship sequence half a dozen times. Based on that experience, Iām pretty sure Iāll never get access to any parallel other than 1 because I cannot get close to the end of that stage before the timer goes red.
Anyway, for now Iām an hour and a bit into the first parallel and stuck on a fight where you have to beat three guys in a row without any chance to heal. Iāve been close, but I just canāt do it, and each time you fail it sets you back a few minutes worth of platforming (which amusingly you do while carrying an unconscious guy around - though I think you also have the option of leaving him to die - which often requires you to throw him across rooms. Iām sure heāll be fine). I looked up a FAQ for tips on fighting these three guys and it just said something like āthis is pretty easy, you wonāt even need you second health barā, which is not helpful. Sometimes I can get through fights without taking a hit, other times I just get destroyed. I do a lot better if I manage to stay on the left side of the screen for some reason. If the enemy and I switch places Iām almost always doomed. Iāve started using save states - I made one just before the three fights start and it worked for a while, but then for some reason each time I reloaded state after losing it would lock up when the fight started. Not sure whatās going on there. I wonder if playing on a more powerful computer would help with the saves and also maybe improve my performance as player. It could be that the game isnāt running well and thatās why Iām doing badly, instead of me lacking ability.
I havenāt managed to level up or upgrade my equipment. Both options are open but I have nowhere near enough exp or trade items to do either. I wonder if Iām not finding hidden items? You can look around with the analogue stick which is pretty good for a Saturn game. I know I missed a chocolate on the ship in the opening sequence because I was trying to rush through it, maybe if Iād explored more Iād have found enough stuff to upgrade my weapon in the first town. That would probably have made this fight Iām stuck on easier. Alternatively, the game lets you pay experience points to skip the fight, maybe I should just do that.
Iāve decide Dark Savior is a save state-em-up, at least for me. I eventually got past the three guy battle I was stuck on in my last post, used the experience from it to level up, then died in the next room because I didnāt have enough experience points left for the bird guy to pull me out after falling in a pit. Then I made it through that room and died on a fight in the next one (after having a guy refuse to open a door until Iād thrown a āskeleton headā through a basketball hoop - not sure why they didnāt go with āskullā there). So now Iām saving state often, though actually after that sequence the save points got more frequent and the tasks between them less punishing, at least for a while. Loading state still crashes the game pretty often - itāll seem to work but the music will be stuck holding one note and when I try to move to another room or start dialogue or whatever itāll freeze. I find hitting reset and waiting for the sound that plays when I press start on the title screen will usually get loading state to work again - I think it clears something out from the sound system.
Iām finding the controls pretty challenging, which shouldnāt surprise me after the trouble I had with Landstalker. At least in this game you can rotate the camera to get a better sense of where things are in 3D space. Whatās killing me at the moment is that each of the cardinal directions on the d-pad will move you in a specific direction, which Iāve gotten fairly comfortable with, but each pair of directions (up-right, up-left, etc) also has a specific direction. I want to control Garian by starting holding one direction and then rolling my thumb to the next direction to turn - hold up to go up-right, and then if I want to go up-left roll my thumb over to left and if I want to go down-right roll my thumb over to right. This only works for going left (or more generally for turning anti-clockwise). If you want to change directions 90 degrees clockwise, you have to release the direction youāre facing before pressing the direction you want to go or else roll your thumb past the cardinal to the next diagonal direction. I think itās because when you hold both directions at once (up and right in this example), Garian moves in that diagonal direction, so as long as you then keep holding either component direction heāll keep going the same way. Which kind of makes sense and I guess the intention is that you play by holding diagonals instead of cardinals but thatās not how I want to do it.
Anyway, gripes about emulators, difficulty and controls aside, this is a cool game. Iām currently infiltrating a secret mine worked by unwilling prisoners where the crow that saves your game is blocking a narrow space between crates so to get around it I went through a big lava filled cavern with a long sequence of jumping puzzles that can be bypassed by dropping onto the last part of it from a bridge at the start. This let me raise a lift to get on the roof of a building where I found these signs:
Yeah, my biggest issue with the game was falling into pits and getting sent back a few minutes of progress or whatever, and it never felt like my fault that I fell, more that I had no clear idea where the game thought I was vs where I actually was, or the controls got away from me, etc.
Starting to seem like maybe I really should be using a mister
Thereās no cash in Dark Savior - instead thereāa a sort of prison barter economy. In Japanese the items were apparently cigarettes, bottles of booze, and porn magazines. In English those were adapted as chocolate, bottles, and:
Going by the title, magazines for new parents. Anyway, shortly after finding this I caught up with Bilan, the monster Iāve been pursuing who can possess peopleās bodies. But there were two people present, and no way to know which was possessed, other than using the liquid nitrogen I was given for this purpose a while ago. Do I think Bilan has possessed Garianās old friend/murder victim Lance, or the guy Garianās been trying to reach/save, Warden Kurt? If Iām role playing, probably Lance, since I know he was possessed recently, he should be dead already, and Garian is trying to save the warden. But since I have seen cutscenes Garian hasnāt, I know Kurt is a real piece of work so I pour the liquid nitrogen on him, killing him and revealing he was not possessed. Oops, I guess, but also good riddance. The game pops up a little eulogyish thing about him, pans to an image of his face, and mentions that you killed him on his birthday. I considered reloading to freeze Lance instead, partly because killing Kurt seems like the āwrongā choice, but also just to see if the game would cheat and have it turn out Kurt was possessed if you do that, but I made my decision and Iām gonna stick with it.
Is this game janky? Itās certainly strange. Technically it seems pretty good for the Saturn. Iāve just finished the first parallel, and it looks like it was all a dream, which might explain how odd it all gets. Like, the ancient secret to defeating the evil monster is to hit it in the back. Which does more damage, but actually hitting it in the front does damage too. Thereās a lot of half-explored story stuff in the first parallel that I assume gets fleshed out in the others.
Anyway, my tips for the first parallel:
-Take your time on the ship and find all the stuff. Thereās no rush because you need to take long enough for the timer to turn red anyway.
-Thereās a woman in the first town who sells a weapon upgrade which you should buy. I couldnāt afford it but if you have all the stuff off the ship you should be able to. You get it for free later on but the hardest two fights in the game (for me at least) happen before you get it for free and should be easier if you bought it earlier.
-After that, donāt worry about the trade items. I only found one more shop selling anything later in the game and I couldnāt afford it, and I was fine. Sell them to the red bird for experience and get some levels.
-But also donāt worry about the levels. I levelled up twice and it made very little difference that I could tell.
-Play with save states so you donāt have to redo easy bits on your way back to hard bits.
Alright, on to parallel 2! If I can clear the ship fast enough, which seems unlikely.
Iāve made it into the second parallel, after a brief detour into the fifth which I was unable to beat even with save states. Iām wondering if I need to switch to a more powerful device for my emulation - I used both shortcuts through the ship and made it to the cabin with seconds to spare, which makes the idea of getting there in time for the third parallel seem impossible, so I looked at a video online of someone starting the second parallel and they took corners just as sloppily as me, fell down at the first shortcut and had to repeat a few rooms, didnāt use the second shortcut at all, and still made it. I think my timer is running fast. Maybe because my copy is PAL and the emulator is running it at 60Hz, which I canāt find an option to change.
