Since I was a child I was so interested in the RPG kind of games. The idea of a greatest-long fantastic story to play, the character development possibility, the XP (experience) concept and all the advantages or power-ups that you can discover along the game were just unbelievable features to me. But it´s also true that I was unable to play RPGs. Even if I got one on my brother´s PC (that is, installing it secretly) I was never able to play it for long.
I remember the Pokemon´s RPG for the GameBoy Emulator that I had on a CD, for example. It was fun, but I eventually got lost and was left with a subtle feeling of nuisance that made me think that I had wasted my time. Later on I tried with Final Fantasy VIII for the PlayStation and almost got the same result (without the time-wasting moral hangover, that is). I advanced much farther in the game, the second of four discs, that’s a lot to say: more than twenty hours.
The main reason for that to happen is that English is not my mother tongue. I´m from Venezuela so I always played the English versions (you know, NTSC-PAL problems in video consoles). In Final Fantasy VIII I was captivated by the sequences, the music and the characters (I fell in love instantly with Rinoa Heartilly) but nothing about the story or what was really happening besides killing some weird-looking monsters actually reached my mind. So there where more than twenty four hours of rambling around in that gigantic fanciful Square´s world reading unintelligible chatter about an unknowable menace. But it was fun and the places and the faces remain in my memory like friends from an old dream.
Nowadays I played Beyond Oasis (or The Story of Thor) for Sega Genesis. I´m 31 years old and I enjoy it, have to say. The “playability” was great, the scenarios are beautiful, the puzzles and dungeons fairly difficult, interesting enemies and above all: terrific boss design. I was grateful, now that I can understand English, that the story was light and generic. An evil madness loose around the world, two bracelets, ancient heroes, superpowers, etc. The important thing is you´re going to smash some buttons trying to kill ghouls, knights and zombies, not to count a fabulous dragon on a cave and an authentically nightmare-creature at the end.
In fact, I was looking for a videogame just like this one: a RPG that revives the enthusiasm of a great adventure but without the endless hours you have to spend to finish it. I´m glad I found Beyond Oasis.
Anyway, I recommend this game today (it´s from 1994), and if you find some trouble along the way this is a very well-crafted walkthrough that helped me a lot:
http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/genesis/beyondoasis/walkthrough.shtml
Thanks for sharing!
