A playthrough of Sony Computer Entertainment's 1996 role-playing game for the Sony PlayStation, Beyond the Beyond. This is the first part of a two-part playthrough, showing from the beginning through the party's return to Zalagoon. Part two can be found at Beyond the Beyond was the PlayStation's first Japanese-style role-playing game. It was released in Japan amid a massive marketing campaign exactly one year after the console launched, and it arrived with considerably less fanfare on North American shores nine months later. After finishing work on Shining Force II, Sega's Sonic! Software Planning - an internal development team founded by a couple of brothers who left Chun Soft following the completion of Dragon Quest IV ( - was split. Hiroyuki Takahashi would continue leading Sonic! while Shugo Takahashi went on to establish Camelot Software Planning in late 1994. Camelot was an independent development house that worked closely with Sonic! Software Planning before the two groups merged in 1998 and entered into a partnership with Nintendo. Camelot's first projects, Shining Wisdom for the Sega Saturn and Beyond the Beyond for the PS1, were concurrently developed by a joint staff of 18 in less than a year, and this pair of high-profile games marked a rough start for the company. They were both mercilessly roasted by Japanese critics and gamers for being half-baked, bug-riddled messes offering little more than slight graphical upgrades over what had been seen in 16-bit Mega Drive games. Beyond the Beyond (or Biyo Biyo, as it was colloquially referred to in Japan) was seen as the weaker game of the two. It was regarded as a poor Dragon Quest clone with embarrasingly dated graphics and gameplay systems, and the game's glitches became notorious for how easily they allowed gamers to stumble into situations that rendered the game unwinnable. However, these problems didn't stop Sony from attempting to recoup their losses by localizing the game for the North American market. The NA version of the game fixed most of the bugs, but it likewise reviewed and sold poorly and was soon forgotten. Needless to say, the sequel teased by the game's ending never came to be. Divorced from the context that dogged its release, Beyond the Beyond isn't quite as bad as its press made it seem back in the mid-90s. It's a quaint, slow-paced throwback to NES-era RPGs with a decent soundtrack, and if that's all you're looking for, Beyond the Beyond won't disappoint. In that way, it actually reminds me quite a bit of Tecmo's Secret of the Stars for the Super Nintendo( The story is boiler-plate fantasy RPG stuff: a king of a powerful kingdom falls under the influence of an evil empire that seeks to dominate the world, and you play as a boy from a small town who becomes the hero fated to save everyone. To do this, you'll travel between towns and dungeons speaking to NPCs, slaughtering endless trash mobs of enemies, and collecting plot-driving maguffins, and you'll repeat this cycle ad nauseum until the credits roll. The formulaic nature of it all isn't necessarily a problem, but the execution will test most people's patience. The battle system centers around the obnoxious and obtuse "Active Playing System." In battles, you'll see orange and blue diamonds appear above characters' heads. When they appear, you can mash the controller's face buttons while holding down a direction on the D-pad to trigger things like blocks, criticals, counters, and double strikes. There's little skill or strategy involved, and since the system's effectiveness is based in RNG and there's no explanation of how the inputs work, battles manage to be both exhausting and tedious from the outset, and if you ignore the system altogether, the enemies will wipe the floor with you. This issue is further compounded by a ridiculous random encounter rate that all but ruins the game, especially when you're trying to work your way through the puzzle-heavy dungeons or backtracking through a random cave for the umpteenth time. I remember enjoying Beyond the Beyond somewhat when I first played it back in 1997, but I'd be lying if I said I had fun going through it again for this playthrough. Thankfully, Camelot found their footing the following year with the phenomenal Shining the Holy Ark ( and later on, the Mario Golf and Golden Sun games. That being said, if you find yourself pining for the days of old-school JRPGs and can put up with the battle system, you might get more out of it than I did. _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete ( punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
