Cadash
System: TG-16
Release Date: November 1991
Developer: Working Designs
Publisher: NEC
Genre: Action
Defeat the evil encroaching on the kingdom to save the princess in Cadash! Baarogue the Destroyer has kidnapped the princess and is razing the countryside. The people began to turn on one another, as well. Without many choices left in front of him, the King called out to four adventurers. You will choose which one you want to embody, but the question remains… will you be able to fix the chaos?
You begin with the choice of characters. The Fighter is the tank of the bunch. No magic, but high damage and defense carry him through. The Mage isn’t much of a physical fighter, but he has access to increasingly powerful magic as the adventure progresses. The Ninja is fast and strong, but can’t use magic. The Priest has healing and defense spells and amazing attack range, but is weak physically. I played through with both the Fighter and the Priest to get an idea of differences. I didn’t get a lot of use out of the magic. The amount healed for the magic spent was not really helpful.
Cadash is very unforgiving. In fact, it took me about 20 minutes and many deaths before I could get past the first level. The first level is not very long. What I learned is that you’ve got to do a bit of grinding to level up and power up. The difficulty is that you don’t have any access to healing your hit points until you beat the first boss. This means you have to avoid as much damage as you can. Try not taking a hit from these skeletons. Luckily, the boss has a fairly easy pattern, so once you’ve learned it, you should be able to win.
Heading into the first town, you can stop at the INN to replenish health and magic, the weapon shop to grab new equipment for your character, and the item shop to buy medicinal herbs and antidotes, up to 10 of each. These are used automatically as needed. While you need the experience to get stronger, you need to collect the bags of coin that enemies drop in order to buy all this wonderful stuff. If you want to outfit the fighter with the best stuff, you’ll need to amass many thousand coins.
This is not a long adventure. It will take about an hour to go through each area, solve it’s problem, and defeat it’s boss. A lot of my play time came in the final castle when I needed to grind. The Priest was remarkably easy to grind with, but also incredibly boring. The Fighter didn’t require leveling up beyond getting the best equipment. Had I a friend to play with, we could have played it together! The final boss didn’t even really hit me with any tricks to create a challenge. A bit anti-climactic.
Graphics: 3.0
Sprites, backgrounds, and enemies look nice enough to me to stay interesting.
Sound: 2.5
The music is alright overall, though some of it is tinny and weak.
Gameplay: 2.5
Walk around and kill stuff. Use magic if you get it. Rinse, repeat.
Difficulty: 3.0
The hardest part is the opening dungeon. After that, the difficulty curve is about right.
Fun Factor: 3.0
I enjoyed myself enough to play through a second time with the priestess, but not enough to play through four times…
Overall Rating: 2.8
Cadash earns a B. This is a solid title. Not the best game you’re going to play, but good enough.