EVO: Search for Eden - Finale

EVO wraps up with the Modern Era. Really interesting game here, another of Enix's weird classics that grows on you if you let it.

Originally posted March 2015, revised for 2026

EVO: Search for Eden (Super NES, 1992)

Time to look at a true classic from Enix. ...and by classic I mean a stiff, difficult grind-fest that is definitely an acquired taste. Despite that, there's something appealing and cool about this game that made it a lot of fun back in the day, and back in 1997 or so this was actually my rental of choice for a little while.

I pretty much permanently associate this game with New Year's Day, since I spent Jan 1st 1997 playing it and sipping egg nog.

Originally posted March 2015, revised for 2026

Mystic Ark (Super Famicom, 1995)

Time for a classic Super Famicom RPG that never made it over here, like many great RPGs of the mid-90s. This is the game that would have been known as The 7th Saga II, had it gotten a North American release. It fixes many of the problems of the original game, and lets you have a three (!!!) person party. It wasn't far off from a NA release either, considering Nintendo Power covered it and played it up as on the way here.

Legend says that this was one of Enix's better efforts of the 90's. Thanks to the folks at Dynamic Designs (formerly Magic Destiny), we eventually got a fan translation of the game. If Lennus 2 was any indication, it'll be a great translation. Hell yeah, I'm excited for this.

Originally posted over 2013-2014, now remastered for 2025

The 7th Saga (Super NES, 1993)

This week I'm doing a full series for one of the more difficult RPGs on the Super NES. This game came out in 1993, and I first played it in 1995. That was before I was interested in RPGs (which didn't happen until Chrono Trigger) so I didn't really know what I was doing. As a result, when I initially played this, I couldn't finish it. Not even close.

In this run I'll avenge a career loss, to put it in MMA terms. How far did I get in 1995, you ask? The battle with Red Pison. Tune in to find out how it went with double digit years of experience under my belt.

This is my playthrough from 2008. Originally posted in 2013, now remastered for 2025

Brain Lord (Super NES, 1994)

 

Another of the many quirky Enix RPGs for the SNES, this is probably the biggest game of theirs that I totally missed out on (this and Robotrek). Right off the bat, the box art for this game is incredible and punches well above the game's weight. I definitely would have rented/played this as a kid if I'd ever actually seen it in a store. 7th Saga had really nice art, too. This is basically a "sister game" to that one, made by the same people and using the same graphics style.

Wanted to do a retro RPG I'd never played before, and that list is short, so here we go.

The 7th Saga: Lux Solo Game

 

LUX is a character I really like, and I've been back and forth about whether or not he's the best of the seven characters. He starts with easily the strongest stats of the seven, which makes up for his total lack of weapons/armor and slow stat growth. I'm going to make a run at this game with him solo, so this should be fun.

Dragon Quest VI (Super Famicom, 1995)

 

DQsmas continues with me bringing back DQ6 from the dead. I never finished covering the original version so it's my one remaining loose end in the first six games of this series. Covering it the same time as the remake was an experiment and it didn't work out great for the original. Regardless, I'm re-editing the first 60-70% or so that I did, then covering the last 30-40%. Let's go.

I've never been that crazy about this game and definitely put it in the bottom half of the series quality-wise. I've only played the SFC version once before, in 2001, so it'll be interesting to revisit it after all this time. This version never got an official US translation (all of the US releases were based on the remake) so I'm playing it on the same fan-translation from 2001.

Dragon Quest V (Super Famicom, 1992)

 

It's the Fifth Day of Christmas, and the actual day, which sounds like a good time for a 5 game. Today on DQV, we go back in time. Way back in time.

Dragon Warrior IV RAW IS WAR, Episode 1

IT'S MY LIFE IN A BOX, AND IT'S HARD TO BEAT!

TAKING CHALK IN MY ARMS, IT'S THE SOUL OF ME!

YOU WANT FIRE, ASHES SEE ME LAYING FACE DOWN!

WHY AM I THE THORN! IN YOUR EYE!

Dragon Warrior II (Game Boy Color, 2000) - A Side

Dragon Warrior 2, yet again. I missed out on playing this on the original NES until the advent of emulators in the late 90's. In a world without emulation, I likely would have been into this portable version of the game back in 2000. Let's see how it translated into a smaller-screen format. Many years before we had the fancy high-res phone version, we had this. Note: I'll be using Warrior and Quest interchangeably here when talking about the game, but I'm specifically referring to this as Warrior in the title because that's what it was called at the time. 

Dragon Quest II (iOS/Android, 2014)

It's bigger, it's badder! As in, it's worse. Again, the Android port is solid though.

Dragon Warrior (Game Boy Color, 2000)

That's right, we're going back to the Game Boy now. Seeing where portable games were at just a mere decade and a half before the HD Android ports. What a difference a few years can make. I've never played this one before so I'm looking forward to it.

Dragon Quest (iOS/Android, 2014)

I always have time for a quick run-through of the original Dragon Quest. This Android remake completely redoes the game's dialogue while revamping the graphics to the level of the Super Famicom DQIII remake. For a portable game, it's really well-done. It's still a fairly short game but you can get more out of it if you want to.

Dragon Warrior III (NES, 1991)

Time for what might be my favorite RPG on the NES. It's either this or the original Final Fantasy.

I put the SFC version of this on here a year ago, and I've been wanting to cover the original ever since. It'll be less Buffy-ized this time, as we see the real story of Erdrick.

Dragon Quest II (Super Famicom, 1993)

Time for the second half of the Super Famicom remake double-header. To put it bluntly, I don't like this game as much as the first. It makes heavy use of mountain ranges to constantly block you off from exploring the overworld at your leisure, so it loses a lot of the open world feeling... even though it is, technically, a pretty open game. Aside from that, the game seems poorly-balanced in general. But if you like fighting baboons on the overworld for 80% of the game, it's a good time.

Regardless, it's fun in a classic sense, and this version has improved graphics. Let's get to it. And if you haven't, check out my posts on the NES version of the game.

Dragon Quest (Super Famicom, 1993)

 

Time for the original Dragon Quest. Wait, didn't I cover this game already? Yes, but I covered the English NES version, Dragon Warrior. This is the Super Famicom remake that came along later. It's awesome.

Dragon Warrior II (NES, 1990)

 This time... there are more than one of them. This game should have been called Dragon Warriors. You know, like Aliens.

Dragon Warrior (NES, 1989)

The Dragon Warrior series (Dragon Quest in Japan) is one of my favorite RPG franchises. While it lacks the fanfare of Final Fantasy, these games tend to be less linear and more about character-building than melodramatic plots.

This is a game that I've played a few times in the distant past. This time around I'm going to try something new: A Tool-Assisted Asskicking. It's like a tool-assisted speedrun, except with excessive 'sploiting of states and luck. I plowed through the whole game in one morning. And here... is the story.

Lennus II, Part 1 - The Legend of the Nude Hero

This game is one of many Japanese RPGs from the Super NES era that didn't make it to the states. It's the sequel to Lennus, a game that DID make it stateside as Paladin's Quest. The advanced difficulty of these games relative to most RPGs of the time ensured that they were marginalized by the major publishing companies. After all, American gamers had the stigma of being "too dumb" to play complicated Japanese RPGs. Luckily, Americans would completely dispel this stigma years later by being able to clearly tell the difference between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

Paladin's Quest, Part 1: Whiskey Dick

A Game For The Ages

Paladin's Quest is a 1993 RPG for the Super NES. Originally called "Lennus" in Japan, this is a fairly underrated classic with a unique world. They made a second game, Lennus 2, but it was never released outside of Japan. This series is similar to Dragon Quest in terms of how it plays, with a higher than average difficulty that is, at times, brutal. Join me for this look at a game that almost no one played. For these posts, I'll be calling the game "Lennus" - the original name of the game. The one that means something.