Benkei Gaiden

~ BENKEI GAIDEN ~

Sunsoft

HuCard

1989

I'm always up for a good HuCard RPG, but the chance to hear another Sunsoft PCE soundtrack was the main reason I was looking forward to playing Benkei Gaiden. City Hunter and (especially) Batman have high-quality audio, and I was thrilled to discover that Benkei, too, features that distinct sound that Sunsoft was able to pull off with the system's soundchip. Sweet, breezy town tunes and a frantic (but remarkably catchy) last-battle track highlight the effort. The number used for the game's random combat scenes is supported by a bassline that sounds an awful lot like a frog croaking really fast, which I find strangely amusing.

Toad-like rumbling aside, Benkei's battles have some issues. They take a little too long because the accompanying text messages, though they pop up immediately, hang there for a moment as if to make absolutely certain the player reads each insignificant tidbit (such as "TWO DAMAGE") in its glorious entirety. Sure, you'll probably get used to the delay after a while, but players shouldn't have to get used to such things. Also, if more than one of a certain enemy type is present for a fight (say you've got three giant skulls to deal with), you can choose to attack the group of 'em, but you can't specify which individual beast you'd like to target (so your party members might split their assaults among the aforementioned skulls instead of intelligently killing one at a time, leaving all three alive to perform their own attacks).

I don't like most of the enemy designs that are utilized early in the game. Even while allowing for some crudeness due to the title's age, I find too many of these frontline foes to be poorly drawn or simply goofy in concept. For a while, wolves and mysterious women in white are the only neat adversaries to be encountered; but additional impressive designs, including ocean titans and horses with manes and tails of fire, are delivered later on.

The bosses, while not a particularly stout group, do look cool (and sometimes a bit crazy).

The designs for your own party members (for the images that appear in their profiles, that is) were also well done.

Outside of the enemy and character graphics, Benkei presents visuals that are likely along the lines of what you'd expect from an old chip RPG.

As you might also expect from such an effort, there aren't many memorable moments plot-wise to experience. The story does take a somewhat shocking turn towards the very end, the gist and resolution of which players can pick up on with or without knowledge of Japanese. Earlier in the adventure, there's a cool sequence that has the heroes investigate a sparkling spot of sea only to be accosted by an enormous water dragon.

Benkei's not very difficult to get through, but here are some pages in Japanese that can provide plenty of assistance:

http://gamersparadise.fc2web.com/koryaku/benkei/benkei.html
http://kogemaru.sugoihp.com/benkei/index.htm
http://www.h3.dion.ne.jp/~realrobo/game/benkei/ben.htm

Even with those guides, you'll need to do some poking around to uncover all of the game's secrets. You never know when you might stumble upon something important.