SEGA Genesis Collection -- Sword of Vermilion.

After RPG fans had the chance to play through Phantasy Star II in the spring of 1990 they left were wanting another RPG title to play. SEGA's answer came in the fall of 1990 in the form of Sword of Vermilion. It's easy to say that Sword of Vermilion is a true oddity. It's a traditional Western fantasy RPG created by the Japanese. It takes place in a pure fantasy world of dragons, kings, magic, treasure chests, and dungeons. That's not so odd you say, every other Japanese RPG has all of those elements. The odd part is that there isn't any interjection of anything Japanese at all. The story, creature design, character design, town and area designs are all decidedly Western. The story is of the era. The evil Tsarkon kills your father, the rightful King of Excalabria, and usurps his throne. Your father had his trusted servant whisk you as an infant away where you were raised unaware. Upon the death of your believed father you're told the truth and thus begin a quest to defeat Tsarkon. The game is further odd in its combination of action RPG and dungeon crawler. In towns you'll have the standard RPG view. When you step out of town into the overworld or a dungeon the screen will be split into five windows. The windows show your hit and magic points, the magic you have equipped, your money and experience, your view, and the area map. Most of those are self explanatory, but your view is a first person view. The map will just show your character and everything else will remain covered until you've found the in-game map for that area. After you've found the map the map screen shows your character's position within the overworld or dungeon. The interface system for the towns is entirely menu driven. You have to select talk to talk to an NPC. There are commands for talk, item, strength, open, magic, look, and take. The battles are entirely action based. From the overworld or dungeon view screen you'll see the creature type materialize and then you're whisked off to the battle screen. The battle screen is made up of the correctly matching background for the location, your character, and a random number of the enemy creature. You can move in eight directions and you have one button to swing your sword, and another to use your currently equipped magic type. You either hack all the creatures to death or they kill you. You can run from the battle by exiting the battle screen from either the left of right side of the screen. You'll always start out placed in the center of the screen and often times you'll be entirely surrounded by creatures. The battles are fast and furious. Sword of Vermilion is big on having you be in an area you're supposed to be in, and punishing you for getting ahead of yourself. It takes the latest weapons and magic as well as armor to be able to stand a chance against the current creatures. The boss battles remain action but switch to a single plain where you can only move left and right against a single large enemy creature. Sword of Vermilion's graphics were good in the day and come off somehow charming in a very antiquated way today. The music was very impressive and will even impress today. The story is admiralty straightforward and traditional. Sword of Vermilion was good fun then and it remains so in my opinion. It still remains an oddity. A Japanese game where they set out to make a Western style RPG and threw in three distinct play styles and somehow made it all work. There will be more SEGA Genesis Collection entries, slowly but surely...