Kalin no Tsurugi (FDS) -  [Part 01] -- Ankara region
Channel: Artimes
Date: 2023-04-11

This next game I was kind of contemplating rather or not I wanted to upload because it does have its share of issues. For starters, the translation emulated version of this game has a glaring bug where sometimes if you enter towns, you will get an error 007 message, but I figured since it’s a very short game and also important to the history as being recognized as Square first foray into the rpg genre, I wanted to include it in my library of classics.

Kalin no Tsurugi (カリーンの剣 lit. Sword of Kalin) is an rpg for the Nintendo’s Famicom Disk System, developed by Square’s DOG (Disk Original Group) in cooperation with Xtalsoft and published by Square in 1987. Yes, this game even predated Final Fantasy as one of the very early first attempts at an rpg game. It shares similar elements to Hylide games and mixes several different concepts from the Ultima series.  Xtalsoft Developed a few games in the mid 80’s such as Lizard and the Mugen no Shinzou series the latter of which was noted as being extremely influential to the Dragon Quest series. The gameplay in this game can be a bit grating and somewhat unforgiving, given its bump mechanic controls but without being able to exit the battle fields like Ys, adds a more challenging experience as you need to be able to be ready for any fight. One of the more annoying aspects to this game though is its brutal difficulty, especially in the early parts because of never being able to anticipate how many monsters you will face and no way of escaping, you are pretty much stuck relying on save states. I can only imagine how it was for kids playing this on the original hardware. Couple that with the apparent bug, this can really be a hard game to get through. But Here I am ready to give it a go. So will see how it all turns out. 

The story is very typical and probably the most basic of any rpg I have played. You are tasked with controlling a lone warrior knight who has to save the Kingdom of Altenia from an Evil Mage and his army of monsters. You travel from town to town, gathering items and equipment until you can venture into the Dark world of the Mage where you can finally vanquish your foe. The world in the game is not extremely large, comparable to like the first Dragon quest and it’s pretty basic compared to such games as Silviana and Dandy. It is historically important as being the first rpg game by square’s early staff of developers though so for that, It has some what of a legacy. 

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Special Thanks to KingMike's Translations for creating the eng translated patch. 

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