Hello, and welcome to my Let's Play of Sting Entertainment's Yggdra Union, a turn-based strategy game that—
What's that, you say? I said back when I was doing Riviera that I didn't want to do any other Dept. Heaven games? Well, I happen to have changed my mind about that as of late.
Anyway, this game is very unusual as far as turn-based strategy games go. It superficially resembles some bizarre hybrid of Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle, but in truth it's...different. Quite a bit of the gameplay is based around things that only Sting would think to put in a strategy RPG, and they work together quite well despite looking like they shouldn't (except the item system...).
Now, you might be wondering what the game's about, unless you only clicked this because you've already played the game many times and want to talk about how wrong I am about everything. I think I'll let the games opening scroll explain it, because I honestly suck at explaining things.
Here, the game switches to a voiced narrative for the rest of the intro.
So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed reading that, because it took far too many attempts to get all that autoscrolling text. I trust you can tell that the Empire are the guys we'll be fighting just from the fact that their leader is called the Emperor of Carnage. Our main character is the princess of Fantasinia, who will find herself leading a hastily-assembled guerilla force that will be charged with liberating the kingdom.
Of course, this particular game isn't content to have a simple plot about the good Kingdom, led by the mighty Gallant, fighting against the evil Empire ruled with a generic fist by the scheming Emperor Goofus. There's plenty of good people on both sides, a fair bit of the protagonists questioning the morality of their actions, and so forth.
Unfortunately, the plot is bogged down by the standard-issue problems of insufficient backstory, poorly-executed morals, and the fact that practically nobody who matters has more than two functioning brain cells. Really, there's the potential for a good story here, but it doesn't work nearly as well as it should.
The game was originally released for the Game Boy Advance in 2006, then rereleased for the PSP in 2008. The PSP version includes redrawn graphics (actually redrawn instead of just smoothed like Riviera), remixed music (of course), voice acting (which is thoroughly mediocre, save for maybe Gulcasa), and two new recruitable characters. It also tones down the somewhat infamous difficulty of the original release quite a bit (several formerly invincible enemies are now merely unkillable, and the combat mechanics are altered so that standing on a fort doesn't make you nearly invincible), and includes two difficulty settings, the lesser of which grants health restoration when you level up and locks out one of the new characters for no reason.
At any rate, here's how I'm going to approach this. I intend to transcribe all the dialogue, which will help significantly in mocking it mercilessly but will do nothing for my sanity. The script will be formatted like this:
- The name of the character who is speaking will be bolded.
- Any snarky comments from me will be italicized. Longer comments might involve me breaking the script format entirely so as to isolate them.
- If I break script format and write text that is italicized, I'm transcribing one of the many banners and such that this game uses to display messages.
- Items obtained will be listed in parentheses after the line that precedes their acquisition.
So, the script would look something like this:
- Yggdra: I am saying a line from the game right now. I, meanwhile, am mocking something about that line.
- Imperial Soldier (Fencer): I am also saying a line from the game. This game likes to use generic soldiers to say throwaway lines, but the script never specifies what class they belong to. I'll do so for it in parentheses.
I am currently explaining something about the plot and how it works (or, more likely, doesn't). It isn't shown in italics during a normal line because my statement here is too long and rambling and would therefore be difficult to read if I put it there.
- Imperial Soldier (Fencer): Oh no! It seems I have misplaced my lungs!
Slain! -A warrior has fallen!-
- Imperial Soldier (Fencer): At least...I won't have to...eat salt pork...anymore.
Situation has changed! -Some dude just died!-
Also, I'll be playing the PSP version on Hard mode. One thing I should say is that I haven't actually completed the game on this difficulty level before, so I reserve the right to switch to Normal mode if I'm getting severely torn to bits.
I'll begin soon with the first map of the game.
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