Sugobenchah [〜ドラゴンマスターシルク外伝〜] Game Sample - Sega Saturn

Sugobenchah (a portmanteau of "Sugoroku" and "Adventure") is a mediocre multiplayer board/dating hybrid (and terrible single-player game) based off of the semi-popular "Dragon Master Silk" franchise by Gimmick House, and is a "Gaiden" or "Side Story" from the main story. Published by Datam Polystar in 1998 as a Saturn exclusive, the game tells the tale of DMS, who has gone missing, four scantily-clad "friends" of Silk (Aka / Red, Ao/Blue, Ki/Yellow and Ruri/Ruli) and an original character summoned from the "Dokodemo Mirror" (an unsuspecting school girl named Mitsuki Shirafuji from the contemporary world partially due to the perversion of Maryuu-sama) to become the "Yuusha no Ken" or the legendary "Sword Hero" to discover Silk's whereabouts. Along the way, they must battle powerful enemies to move the story along and increase their powers. It sounds like the game could be fun so far... a board game with romantic undertones based around the quirky DMS franchise... so why am I opposed? Well, the mechanics are significantly flawed for one thing, but even worse, the A.I. cheats so much that they ruin most of the enjoyment in this title if there is more than one CPU at a time and the random enemy/item placement doesn't exactly help. The game is broken up into multiple stages with secret events, but the first sign that something was wrong with this game is when I gleaned the packaging; there is not one single screenshot of anything other than the first stage. As I played the game, it became apparent to me that the devs couldn't be bothered to show anything beyond that because, aside from savestates or cheat manipulation, clearing the single player campaign naturally (by placing first) is almost impossible... picture Sonic Shuffle without the ability to gain ground in some of your favorite mini-games. Let's say there's a boss and he's an awesome fifteen spaces away... the CPU will either land on a space and get a card to move 15+ spaces or will inexplicably improve their dice rolls, throw three dice, and "magically" gain fifteen EXACTLY... no more or less... every time. Need to get a treasure? They will either run there automatically (without using a die) or get the exact roll, so either way, you get robbed. If they fight you and you have a sacred item, they will likely take it or pull off a scenario where it will get taken later. What are the odds, hmm? I hope you like low rolls and getting the short end of the stick CONSTANTLY. Anyway, the core gameplay involves choosing a character, rolling dice, and landing on a variety of spaces like any standard board game. The "perks" of this one is that each character has unique characteristics, personalities, and can be taken to a variety of "Date Spots" to improve your relationship with them. Each character has unique questions and answers, but the questions are not randomized, meaning (with patience) that a player can easily write down or memorize the best answers with repeated plays, even in a generic fashion. Characters can also level-up in different ways to improve the number of dice they roll, how many skill cards they can use, etc. All of this should've been good, but it mainly serves to exasperate the player and work in the computer's favor. A.I. opponents don't have to date, and every time you do, you waste a turn. In the amount of turns it takes to get a "special level up" (doing well on all dates), the computer can procure most treasure, call the boss, kick their ***, end the game and make you place last. Even if you do everything right, you still have to worry about each characters' traits. Aka and Ki are almost unstoppable (Aka chases enemies unprovoked, has amazing raw combat skills, and can "second chance attack" extremely often if she rolls lower than an enemy, while Ki is very lucky, disables many traps and has the most powerful default skill cards) while Ruri isn't to be taken lightly (sleep traps are ineffective, she tends to roll high, and has a penchant for auto-grabbing treasure, but can sometimes stumble, ending her move usually to her advantage). Mitsuki and Ao are meant to be more balanced but don't possess particularly good skills (they don't randomly grab things as much and are more laid back / meek, so they aren't likely to second chance in battle, but you have more direct control as a result), so they are ideal for multiplayer. Each girl has special needs which you can choose to ignore, but you will lower your relations as a result, which can sometimes happen every other turn. Multiplayer helps mitigate some of the problems of single player, but you have to play SP to unlock more things in the game, which is almost counter-productive to enjoying the game as a whole. While this is a curiosity (as you learn more intimate details about the characters), play the regular DMS titles instead. This is a video going from the intro to the first stage (with the bad ending... could've cheated easily on an emulator, but used real hardware instead).