Momotarou Densetsu Gaiden

~ MOMOTAROU DENSETSU GAIDEN ~

Hudson Soft / Summer Project

HuCard

1992

My Momotarou RPG adventures concluded with what's probably the strongest of the three for the PCE. You actually don't play as Momotarou in this one; instead, you control acquaintances of his in three separate mini-quests.

The premises of the three quests are pretty interesting. One is a fairly standard RPG mini-adventure, but another stars a princess of demons who needs to make her way up through the depths of the underworld to deal with beasts that have attacked her island, and the other features a fellow who swipes money off monsters and gives it to fallen mendicants. There's also a bonus quest, a second trip through the money dude's adventure during which you can use a different character (and experience super-fast leveling).

Like Momo Densetsu II and unlike the primitive Turbo, Gaiden gives you groups of enemies to beat up on and multiple playable party members (for two of the three journeys, at least). In fact, at the beginning of the princess's expedition, you can select her allies from a group of odd creatures and monsters. There's still plenty of leveling to do, but the fights are as fast as ever.

The graphics are much better in Gaiden than they are in its crusty predecessors. Battles here have some very nice-looking backdrops. The field visuals might seem only a bit better at first, but you'll notice significant improvements once you set foot in certain dungeons (which feature some fairly well-designed layouts and puzzles).

Most of the enemies are kind of small, but that's okay. The music is not okay, however; it's often annoying, in fact, especially a certain battle tune that has a buzzing bassline.

The gameplay doesn't deviate from the series's simple norms for the most part, but it does deviate a bit from Momo tradition in that your characters earn spells the usual old-RPG way (upon reaching certain experience levels) rather than by passing trials of the old hut-hermits. In fact, this game is more straightforward than the other two on the whole, meaning there are far fewer potential "stuck-spots" here than in II and (especially) Turbo. There are no particularly long or difficult boss battles, either.

I guess II is my personal favorite Momo Densetsu game, perhaps because I played it first and it was a pleasant surprise, and because I really like a lot of the enemy art and find the game funny at times. But people new to the series will almost certainly find Gaiden to be the best, as it's definitely the least primitive (and easiest to get into and complete) of the bunch. It's too bad that Hudson never went ahead with a CD episode, as I believe the designers were really on the right track with many of the ideas they had, and such a sequel might've been like the great Ziria but even better in a lot of ways.