Wizmans World Re;Try

One of the major trends of modern gaming is the re-release of games both locked to defunct hardware or never had a global release. We have City Hunter coming up soon, but before that we have another artifact from the past, the Game Boy Advance RPG Wizman's World Re;Try.

I was immediately drawn to the game by the promotional artwork, our hero surrounded by some very cute fairy girls promises adventure and fantasy in equal measure. As you might expect, I knew little of Wizmans World, locked as it was in Japan on older hardware, but as someone who often viewed shop store shelves in Tokyo, stuffed with games sporting beautiful artwork, I'm very happy to finally have the chance to dive in.

The game starts by setting out the stall for the world we find ourselves in; following three calamities the town of Wizarest finds itself cut-off from the outside world, surrounded by impenetrable dungeons full of monsters and without any way to communicate beyond the borders. What's worse is a collective amnesia that sets in regarding the cause of all this grief, with memories only being slightly retained by adventuring into the dungeons. Generations of skilled warriors have attempted to find a way through, but none have successfully returned.

The game opens with a bitchy alchemist called Giselle meeting with the town's leader, Archmage Adan, to inform him that she has found a young boy in the dungeons who she intends to raise as her own. It's unclear whether he's the product of lost adventurers who started a family in the caves, or something else entirely, but I like the idea that two townsfolk got stuck in a dangerous dungeon and decided to just get it on anyway. Bold.

Some years later, you take on the role of the foundling, now named Claus, who intends to find the recently missing Giselle with the aid of the three homunculi she created - Aen, Doe and Toori. These take the form of beautiful girls with wings on their backs and pointy ears, so essentially they're man-made faeries. In-game they appear as glowing coloured orbs

The homunculi appear as orbs, but the portrait art is gorgeous and adds character

The game does a great job setting things up - the backstory, principle characters and urgency of your mission are laid out concisely and with some excellent dialogue that establishes the cast well. 

The gameplay is mission-based, with the basic loop requiring you to equip yourself in town, along with any other preparatory acts you might want to engage in (we'll get to some of those) before you leave to fulfil each quest. Chatting to the townsfolk reveals sub-quests which you can undertake for the rewards, but only the main missions are required adventuring. 

Fusion allows you to power up your comrades

One of the core mechanics of the game is the Anima Fusion system. When you kill your enemies you gain their souls as items, each containing specific characteristics, and these can be blended with your homunculi harem to create enhancements and buffs. As you fight, Claus acts as the core of the group, learning new attacks and skills as you gain experience and ensuring that he's not overshadowed by his partners - though each of the girls will also level up over time, providing a varied party with a unique class system reliant on captured souls and gene splicing.

All of which sounds fantastic. Sadly the game does trip over itself in execution to a degree. Some of this may be down to limitations of the hardware, but the game suffers from a few RPG traps; the overworld encounters are so frequent they become highly frustrating rather than fun, the combat is dogged by bad balance (too hard at first requiring constant retreats back to town for healing, then becoming laughably easy after you level up even a little) and worst of all, the dungeons are pretty dull.

The battles become insultingly easy once you're levelled up even a little, with overly frequent encounters making it a grind

In combat, the game is turn based - after every battle, your team is fully recovered, even if their hit-points reached zero (they just don't level up) and only Claus has to survive in order to win. His health and magic will fully replenish, the only resource you really need to keep an eye on is the SP levels of the homunculi, as that won't replenish and you are highly reliant on it. Therefore frequent treks back to town will be required to keep your resourced well stocked for the bosses.

These present more of a challenge as you might expect, and some take up half the screen (again, the pixel art is a huge win for this game). Because the battle menus are simple and effective, these battles are more fun to take part in and lose yourself to the action, but unfortunately getting to them can be so tedious that it kills all the game's momentum.

This is such a shame because there's a great setup here, and even some nice touches, like the Monster Compendium that allows you to take on bosses at any time in order to practice defeating them - you'll gain less XP, but you won't die. Quite forward-thinking for the time.

I really wanted to love this game - finally translating the game and allowing it to find new fans in the West is a fine goal, but I suppose the developers were in a bind - changing too much of the core gameplay would make it a different game, and leaving it as is exposes the fact that the game was always deeply flawed, in which case I'm not sure why so much effort was poured into bringing it over in the first place. 

So it looks fantastic, the story is engaging and the cast are all intriguing and beautifully rendered. Unfortunately the core of the gameplay lacks balance - fewer encounters and better pacing for enemy levels would have vastly improved the game, but it seems more interested in throwing you into yet another easy battle than telling its excellent story. I wanted to progress events, revel in the plot twists and enjoy my time with the characters, but ultimately the game gets in its own way, and that's a massive letdown given how strong the music, visuals, story and characters are.

Had there been a special edition with an artbook I might have actually caved and picked it up for the stellar artwork, as it is there's just a poster if you order direct. And I'm still tempted!