Beyond Oasis

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Beyond Oasis is top-down action/adventure game for your beloved Sega 16-bit console. It's called The Story of Thor outside of North America. And yes, it means that it's not related to Defenders of Oasis game on Game Gear. The Story of Thor isn't nearly as Arabian-styled anyway. Well, the translation from Japanese did change main hero name to Ali, so here is that. And some more. It was released in 1994 and came to the West in 1995. Made by Ancient and published by Sega. 24 Megabit ROM of awesome, 4 save slots.

The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version. US version. Original Japanese one. Plus European ones, that are German, French and Spanish, all having gameplay 16% slower with music at correct speed. Because PAL and their 50hz TVs.


Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "BEYONDOA_.68K".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "BO_PC_MG_EFIGS_WW_HR.pdf".

And yep, this game includes saving. In-game saving, not emulator one. Bedroom HUB works fine but Simple Launcher one is buggy:
You have to remember, you have to close emulator in proper way, otherwise it will not have them actually saved in files. That means that you have to avoid crashing it or closing in different way.
Even more, if you load emulator-side saves, the emulator will not see in-game saves and will not be able to do in-game saves either. Even if it makes look as if it does.

The game also makes use of X, Y, Z buttons of 6-button Sega controller. Those are used for menu shortcuts. It's also one of few Genesis games to make use of Mode button. It was a utility button on 6-button controller that you held at console startup if you wanted to switch it to 3-button compatibility mode. Here Mode+B you will switch between chosen weapon and default dagger.


Okay. Let's get to the important part. If you come here as RPG-fan you will be sooo disappointed. The RPG part of it is basic. No shops. Worldbuilding that is worse than even in 8-bit RPGs. Very basic plot and NPCs talking is worthless. They pretty much never react to plot progression and have nothing much to say. Of course 8-bit RPGs had one-liners, but those one-liners still either had something quirky or useful tips.
You can even beat the game in 4 hours or less. And when you do, your game results will be put on leaderboards, giving it more arcade feel.

But hey, what did you expect from Ancient, the makers of Streets of Rage 2? Well, why, they would make another arcade-like game. Beyond Oasis has that beat-em-up feel to combat where you often get surrounded by enemies and have to pull off crowd control. Knocked enemies knock others. They can hit each other. You can knock projectiles with a slash. And attacks all have a good feel to them, with meaty sounds.
And main hero has many various moves for his default knife, all good for each situation. There is dagger poke. If you keep hitting attack it will change into kicking combo. You do double-kick upclose. And holding attack button for a bit and release will do a wide knocking slash. There is this fancy thing where C is used for both crouch if held or jump if tapped. You can dash with double tap in direction which you can finish with a powerful slash. Or triple tap direction and then attack quickly for sliding tap with dagger.
There are also more special moves for Ali's dagger. You can hold Attack or not for those. First, is the dagger spin that is also low on ground, just do a circle with D-Pad then Attack. For a powerful spin-forward slash press Forward, Back, Forward and Attack. And for super move you have to do D-Pad circle, Back, Forward and Attack three times. The last one can also be done with swords.

That, and you do get knocked out a lot at times kinda giving you a clumsy feel.
At least bosses are all varied and fun. Big too. Aside from final boss who is quite anticlimacticly easy.

You also got multiple weapons. Well, there are swords. And bombs you can throw. And crossbows with various types of arrows. All of them are limited in use but the game is easy enough that you shouldn't worry about stockpiling them for final boss who is anticlimactically easy. Yea, the game is too easy. While you do get hit a lot and knocked around and get to rage on platforming and wind sections, the game is very generous at amount of damage you get. And you do get a lot of items dropped. At least you get a game over when you die.
And yea, controls feel clunky. It mostly has to do with not being able to change direction while running nor when you are holding attack for a slash.
Protip: Don't use Elixir items, they automatically revive you if you die.

As for RPG stats: Enemies sometimes drop pickable hearts. You get 2 max HP for each one and your attacks get slightly stronger. Each heart also increases rank by one which is used for leaderboards at the end of the game. The less rank you have the higher you score. You also get to find each spirit stone that increases your max SP by 5 and increase spirit strenght. There are 15 of each in the game.
Protip: In inventory if you press Start you will drop an item onto ground.

And yep, game's second big catch are the four elemental spirits that you get. You can summon one by shooting magic projectile from your amulet at the elementally related thing. For example, any drop of liquid will summon water faerie. The game has that systematical thing with how things interact that help to make it feel natural and smart. The only one who gets a short stick is the plant spirit: just hit obvious venus traps. Each of the spirit has it's own active abilities and passive bonuses.
Actually, the game has few hidden wraps that you can only find with Shade spirit ghost-walk. Those lead to arenas that are far more challenging that main game and will give you infinite weapon of certain kind.
Protip: If you hold A while making faerie do tornado, she will try her best to spin around you instead.

Dungeons are fairly short. The game focuses a lot on combat but it has more than enough nice puzzles. Too bad some interactions are problematic. I am thinking of how it's so hard to light bonfires with fire spirit as he hovers over ground. I just make him explode around.
You regenerate SP slowly in sunny areas. You also save through Start menu outside of dungeons.

Game has greatly animated graphics with wide pallete. Art-style is awesome because soldiers have skull helmet. Being a late big release it also makes use of a lot of sound samples too.
Too bad about music however. It was written by Yuzo Koshiro but in this case he tried to do orchestra on a Mega Drive which is more fitting to consoles with multiple sample channels. At least some compositions are the less generic kind of orchestra. Until he gets too weird and it becomes low-fi cacophony.

Not game for RPG players but arcade gamers who want some action/adventure will be happy.