Sword of Vermilion™

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Sword of Vermilion is an dungeon-crawling jRPG with action combat, where you control a single prince on his quest to not look awkward with that sword. It was released near 1990. I think it's near the end of 1989 in Japan and at the beggining of 1991 in the US, at least. Made by Sega AM2 division in Sega of Japan. 3 save slots, 5 Megabit ROM, which is such non-2-dividable strange number. It also came into west with a hint book, sure thing you aren't getting that on Steam.
I sure love how it used to be marketed as having 300 hours back then while it barely stretches to 30, ha.

The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.

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 "sov.smd".
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 "SV_PC_MG_EFIGS_US.pdf".
But then again, since the game doesn't tell you what kind of magic you are going to buy in shops aside from name, you totally should check out original manual on SegaRetro site. Should totally not miss Sanguio (healing) and Aeris (teleport) magic.

And yep, this game includes saving. In-game saving, not emulator one. Bedroom HUB works fine but Simple Launcher doesn't support in-game saving in Sword of Vermilion! The oh-it's-for-charity-honestly priest in church may say that saving was successful, but nope, nothing. Use new hub. Or just use your own emulator. Or use save states and be purist by using them only in church.


So, Sword of Vermilion. The game has a lot for it going at a time. There are around 4 different gameplay sections that you can cover here, even.

First, in cities and towns you walk around in top-down perspective and poke NPCs for info, in the world where every has green pixels all over their faces for some reason, trying to figure out what to do next and if their king would happen to have a ring. And somebody is likely to give you a map for the surrounding area, so you should do it for sure. It's usual and some might even complain that cities and villagies look alike. You also buy stuff in shops, equipments, items and magic. Equipment actually gets progressively better in each town, just get the most expensive ones. Really, you control only one person in this jRPG and there is no magic equipment of any sort so there isn't much deciding involed.

Then once you are outdoor the screen divides into two: On the left side you got first person dungeon crawling perspective and on right you got the big map of the area, which shows your character as well. The funny thing is that you are going to use map portion the most, as the scaling and perspective was done pretty bad in the first person screen. Really, not much to say for only 5 Megabit sized game. You will only see tress, grey columns in dungeons, and their orange variation that is supposed to represent mountains, I guess. They don't have smooth scaling and they don't work well as walls in dungeons, you can see other things flickering right through them when moving. You don't even see "walls" right to your left or right side, so it's not easy to navigate there. Still, fancy try and you still got an useful map. Though you often have to find the map for the area first, otherwise it will show only closeup tiles.
Protip: Don't forget to 'take' item after you 'open' the chest.

And then you will bump into one of the very very common enemy encounters. So common that it's possible to get two enemy encounters in same square. Once you enter the battle the game switches to top-down perspective and you control your prince, swinging sword while walking in amazningly awkward way. Then again, all the other enemies also run around aimlessly while wagging their swords, so eh. Er, no, hero doesn't do it automatically, gotta press the button to attack. But yes, you are placed in the center of battlefield and up to 8 enemies of same type appear immeditly, so you often have to react fast so not to get overrun or just to launch magic. You can use only one magic that you have readied beforehand, so you just have to test around which one works on which location the best.
It's not very deep either. You can't block for example or do anything aside from moving and attacking. Hitting an enemy makes them retreat for a while, so there is a bit of crowd control, but there isn't much to it aside from that.
And yea, there are various types of enemies, like the ones that teleport. The problem is that the game runs out of ideas near the end. Even more is that you can battle only one type of enemies at one time. I think that this game would have been more interesting if we could battle few at a time.

Protip: Endgame curse-removing item allows you to use cursed swords without penalty.

Oh, and for boss battles? Guess what! Another change of perspective! This time it's 2D side perspective, as you move knight around to do some 1 vs 1 with Archmonster, huge detailed impressive-for-the-time-I-guess. It starts off real cool, with hero putting down helmet for once. Too bad he is still awkward boy, swinging sword like a golf club, which also destroys projectiles of a certain boss. The control of this section is extremely limited and sorta slow, can only walk, duck and attack. It still works for variety.

Also, you can't get game over. If you die then you are restored in the church with half of your money.

Oh yes, and music should be mentioned separately. It's awesome, instruments sound great and atmospheric. And not orchestra. And memoriable too. And well, I can only praise, I can say that music is better than game itself.

And well, if each element of game is taken separately, it's nothing great by themselves. If it was usual jRPG with usual slow-paced combat instead of action one, I probably would have got bored with it's frequent encounters. Plot, while throws fancy and trollish (look, no inn in town to restore health) situations at you, is quite stereotypical, even if enjoyable. Action is extremely basic. But as a whole game it was an enjoyable adventure. Even if gets repetitive.

I want to see if I can be the only person who has ever recommended this game to anyone. I want to lead someone down a path of sadness. I want to make someone's life worse by pointing them towards this game. I am a monster and I pray for death.