Super Hydlide
System: NES
Release Date: April 1990
Developer: T&E Soft
Publisher: Seismic
Genre: RPG
Another Genesis RPG comes our way with Super Hydlide. This is two sequels down the road from the NES release we’ve already seen. Our hero is beckoned to awaken from his slumber to rid the evil that has burst through the ground in fiery fashion. Choose from one of four character classes and defeat the baddies strewn about the land!
You start by choosing from the Warrior, Thief, Priest, and Monk classes. Warriors and Thieves are physical based classes and learn limited magic. Priests and Monks are granted greater magic capabilities. I chose a warrior because I figured this would be the most balanced profession to play as. You’re dropped into the City of the Woods and walk around talking to townspeople. They shamble around getting in your way, along with the scenery. A few of them are helpful, but others give you a response of “!?…” This is supposed to clue you into the fact that they have nothing to say to you right now. With $2000 gold in your pocket, you need to equip yourself. It’s important to only use weapons that weigh less than what you can handle and also stay under your carry weight, or you slow to a crawl.
Leaving town puts you on the overworld map. Here you see creatures roaming around and your first instinct is to kill them with extreme prejudice. However, this is a mistake! There are both good and evil creatures to contend with. Killing good creatures knocks down your morality stat, which comes in to play at the end of the game, and I think affects prices for items and weapons. It takes ten monsters to raise this stat one point, but killing a good creature drains it quickly. You want to kill a lot of creatures because you need a lot of experience and gold to carry you through the game. Levels and spells are bought with experience and the costs increase as you buy more. Instead of walking into enemies to damage them, you press the A Button to attack. This is a welcome change and makes battles much less of a crap shoot.
Talking with townspeople gives you a bit of an idea on what to do to proceed, or you wander around the overworld until you find something to explore. The tower is a maze of four levels that ends with a power switch that lets you ride the elevator to the top. Here is your first boss battle and it’s an easy one. It took me awhile to figure out that the item I gained opened up access to a new town. This opened up the ability to get to the next area and so on. Some areas require a lamp to see more than a tiny circle on your character’s location. These are annoying navigation puzzles, as enemies are still present, you just can’t see them well.
There is a time mechanic that requires you to have rations to eat every six hours and a place to sleep at night. Effectively, this gives you a time limit on your exploration, which kind of sucks. You can speed up or slow down the passage of time in the Change Speed menu, but it also affects your movement. I settled on using fast speed when grinding and normal otherwise. I was nearing the end of the journey, but the inventory management became the death of me. I dropped a key item that I thought I no longer needed. I was wrong, but because the game saves at every night at the Inn, I couldn’t reload to an earlier save and didn’t want to go through the hassle of seeing if it respawned, because I’d have to drop other unique items.
Graphics: 1.0
The sprites are tiny. The colors are garish. It’s really unremarkable.
Sound: 3.0
If Super Hydlide does anything right, it’s the sound direction. I really liked the music.
Gameplay: 1.5
Your day consists of grinding, grinding, and more grinding. It’s better to attack with with the A Button. The weight mechanic is infuriating.
Difficulty: 2.0
You get enough hints to stumble your way to the next objective, you’ll be doing a lot of grinding in between, though.
Fun Factor: 1.0
I wasn’t hooked on the gameplay loop, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever played.
Overall Grade: 1.7
Super Hydlide earns a C-. There are better games to play. This isn’t the most awful thing, but it isn’t good.