Sega Saturn : Sugoventure - Dragon Master Silk Gaiden (JPN)

Sugoventure - Dragon Master Silk Gaiden ( すごべんちゃー ドラゴンマスターシルク外伝 ) is a board RPG that developed by Gimmick House and published by Datam Polystar back in 1998, exclusively for the Sega Saturn home console system and the Japanese market. It's a spin off of the main Dragon Master series. The story revolves around the four main heroines from the Dragon Master Silk series (Aka, Ao, Ki and Ruli) plus a fifth new school girl, Mitsuki, that was summoned into their world in order to join them on their new adventure. Dragon Master Silk Gaiden is a turn based board / RPG game which is a quite uncommon genre for the Western standards. Your main goal is to control the 5 characters in a tabletop style map and beat an antagonist (different every time). For those who are interested, the game takes advantage of the Saturn's 6 Player Adaptor peripheral ~for a unique multiplayer experience. In order to win you must increase your bonds with the other characters ~through dialogues, open treasure chests ~gaining extra moves/stats and defeat smaller enemies for xp . Doing all these will activate the appearance of the map antagonist who is usually a more challenging test than the other enemies. The core mechanics can be seen in the video. Generally speaking, it's a fairly difficult game as there is no clear strategy on what you should do. Luck , intuition and experience are your best allies here. Overall, DMS Gaiden is a funny (some dialogues are quite humorous), enjoyable game which is also, quite challenging as the difficulty level can be inflated based on random circumstances. It's not an import friendly game.