Paladin's Quest (known as
Lennus in Japan) is an RPG for SNES. Its most notable features are its unusual magic system and the mercenaries you can hire to pad out your party. It was also noteable for being very, very weird.
Chezni is a 13-year-old boy in a magic school who accidentally activates
an ancient weapon of mass destruction and then finds himself
Walking the Earth on a quest to defeat it and
save the world. Chezni soon meets with a girl called Midia, also a spiritualist, who becomes the only permanent companion on his quest. The plot is complicated by the world-conquering ambitions of the
Evil Overlord Zaygos who already rules the southern continent and is eyeing the northern one.
A sequel,
Lennus II, was released in Japan in 1996, unfortunately, it was
never localized. The fact that it was released a month after the Nintendo 64 in Japan and the obscurity of the original in North America were probably significant factors.
This game contains examples of:
- All in a Row
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only ever have up to four playable characters in your party.
- Bishōnen: Zaygos turns out to be one.
- Bizarrchitecture: Several, including a continent full of people who live in egg-like houses and a town early in the game built entirely on kites.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: One undead enemy is called a "spilit."
- Boss Remix: The final battle music includes remixed portions of the main battle theme and Zaygos' theme. Likewise, the fight with Zaygos is a remixed version of his main theme.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Once you get your method of flight, and the map reveals the half of the world you didn't know existed, you can clearly see things that were put in there by the devs for laughs, like an island shaped like googly eyes.
- Broken Bridge: Happens a lot.
- But Thou Must
- Cast From Hitpoints: The entire magic system is based on this.
- Commonplace Rare: There is a limited amount of bottles you can acquire in the game, especially of the bigger varieties.
- Crutch Character: Nails. He's one of the strongest mercenaries when you meet him in the Underworld thanks to his missile attack. However, he can only heal by draining enemy hit points (and for a pitiful amount), can't level up, disappears from the party if destroyed, and can only be re-recruited by going all the way back to the Underworld.
- Degraded Boss
- Doomed Hometown
- Elemental Powers: Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Sky, Lightning, Sphere, and Heart. And no, Heart is far from useless.
- Encounter Repellant
- Enemy Without / The Heartless: Suggested to be the true nature of the Monsters of Dal Gran and Noi Gren.
- Evil Over Lord: Zaygos.
- Faceless Eye: Doth.
- Global Airship
- Guest Star Party Member: Several.
- Healing Spring
- Heroic Mime: Chezni.
- History Repeats: It's shown during the time travel episode that the conflict between Chezni, Midia, and Zaygos over Dal Gren is a repetition of the events that happened between Kormu, Sophie, and Gabnid 1000 years ago. Chezni and Midia are explicitly indicated to be the successors to Kormu and Sophie, and Zaygos and Gabnid share the same attack pattern as bosses.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: No less than three different ones, but probably many more total for most players if they finish the game.
- Idiot Ball: Zaygos gets handed one right after an episode of surprising competence.
- Kid Hero: Chezni and Midia are both 13.
- Lethal Joke Item: The "bib" is actually a very strong body armor.
- Load-Bearing Boss / Synchronization: Dal Gren, Noi Gren and their monsters Strabo, Kaymat and Lokiarn.
- Lost Technology
- Mad Scientist
- Magic Knight: Several characters, including the main hero.
- Mecha-Mooks
- Money Spider
- Musical Spoiler: There is a particularly obvious one when you first enter Joyce's baker's shop.
- Nominal Importance
- Non-Lethal K.O.: Characters who fall in battle are back to 1 hp after the battle if the party wins.
- 100% Completion: Every mercenary you recruit will appear in the big party at the end of the game. To get everyone to appear you have to recruit every single mercenary (some of whom may be Lost Forever if you didn't recruit them the first time you go through the area they're in). While this doesn't actually unlock anything special, it does add a bit to the ending since every merc has something unique to say to the party.
- One-Winged Angel
- Optional Party Member: The mercenaries. Some of them want money while others'll join for free if you let them.
- Orphan's Plot Trinket: Midia's crown.
- Our Dragons Are Different
- Random Encounters
- Retraux: One house is done in the style of the original Dragon Quest, complete with priest sprite.
- Saving the World
- Sealed Evil in a Can
- Stable Time Loop
- Sword of Plot Advancement
- Stat Grinding: Your affinities with the spirits that determine how powerful your spells are grow by casting spells related to those spirits.
- The Maze: The crystal world.
- Took a Level in Badass: The mercenary G Rasav.
- Underground Level
- Underground Monkey
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The Crystal Maze, which is also That One Level. There the game changes from an RPG into a puzzle game, a very hard puzzle game.
- Unwitting Pawn: Chezni in the beginning.
- Useless Useful Spell: Partially averted and even inverted. The monsters' attempts to hit the players with status effects and instant death have a miserable rate of success. The instant death spells cast by the players at the monsters don't fare any better than that, but a fully leveled-up Freeze has a decent rate of success in player hands and makes some early boss fights much easier.
- Walking the Earth
- Wizarding School: You start the game in one of these. It doesn't last long, though.
- Womb Level: You get to explore the insides of a dragon. It's a fairly straight tunnel. The dragon's mouth is the exit.
- You Have Failed Me: Zaygos proves himself quite savvy by predicting and preparing for your entry into his temple. However despite having using it to his advantage he shows himself as a major Bad Boss by having the entire town massacred as punishment for allowing you to sneak in. Despite having made it part of his plans in the first place.
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