Welcome to Retro Arena as in this edition we have the battle of the Zelda clones. The first game is from Hudson’s infamous Zelda clone of Neutopia II for the TurboGrafx. The other is Crusader of Centy for the Genesis, a game published by Sega. If you missed the reviews on both games, then check them out in these links Neutopia II and Crusader of Centy. The practice of using a tried and true formula from other game studios’ concepts isn’t something new. Whether this was back then in the Golden Age or today in modern gaming, it’s a trend that continues. It's not necessary copying as both games were still doing its own thing like most clones are often known to do. On both systems, they didn’t have anything close to Zelda: A Link to the Past in terms of quality. Aside Neutopia on TurboGrafx and Light Crusader, Landstalker and Beyond Oasis on Genesis, those remain as the only exceptions. When a Zelda style game hits a console that ordinarily doesn’t have that many, you can see why one could get excited. Gameplay Neutopia II I will admit that when reviewing this title two years ago, it felt biased of me now to compare this to Zelda: A Link to the Past. I should have paired it against Crystalis for the NES or another clone on the Genesis. The reason is Zelda ALTTP was absolutely on another level of quality compared to Neutopia and its sequel. The gameplay uses the typical Zelda standard of exploring an overworld, visiting towns, collecting items and finding labyrinths (dungeons). The items were a little similar and include the Rainbow Drops (ladder), Moonbean Moss (lantern), Boomerangs and bombs. However, there were also other tools and secondary weapons that weren’t even in the original Zelda. The Flail performs a 180-degree spin attack and the fire wand returns as it causes a pillar of fire to stretch across several spaces. Let’s not forget they included two new elemental rods of wind and lightning. These elemental tools when the player has full health can cause a great deal of damage to a few of the enemies. The Lightning rod can cause several strikes of lightning to come down and the Wind Rod can produce strong gusts. Of course, the player does get the occasional sword, shield, and armor upgrades as they progress. The gameplay was also updated as you can move and attack in six directions with the sword now. Unfortunately for Neutopia II, the game suffers several issues that should’ve been fixed by 1992. The dungeons’ challenges feel like they are nearly the same level design as the last. I mean from the enemies to the puzzles (if I can call them that) and even the bosses feel like it’s the same thing. The enemies pace back and forth shooting a projectile on occasion. While the puzzles are either killing all monsters, bomb a wall, or push a block to open passages. With the bosses, all you have to do is avoid their attacks and strike with whatever weapon and tool is in possessing. Another problem stems from the items the player obtains as they are only good for one or two uses. Then these items afterwards become useless as seen from the Chalice of Agony or the Aqua Lungs. Even the boomerang got blotched in its design somehow and if the player doesn’t catch it they must fork over 300 gold every time. What is more surprising is how they didn’t bother to design slashing the sword at an arch. It’s quite lazy that Hudson didn’t want to add such an essential updated feature to the genre. It’s especially true when Willow on the NES had that function, so one would expect for a new generation console to do more. Crusader of Centy The game is one of the few adventure-based titles to hit the Genesis in a sea of action and sports titles. The gameplay has some differences from Zelda’s format and instead of using tools there are animal allies. Each one allows the player certain techniques from guiding the sword to bouncing it against walls to hit a switch that isn’t reachable. Some of them even execute extra abilities such as letting the hero move swiftly and adding elemental attacks to the sword. The level design isn’t the same step on switch, push blocks to solve the puzzles or receive keys to open locked doors. To complete an area, you must venture through the environment and use the animal allies to open other parts. At the end is a boss that is waiting and every time you defeat one, the player’s health increases. As I have said before, I have to give it to Sega for not copying Nintendo completely like Hudson did for their clone. Using the animal allies as tools and to learn other abilities was something different. It was even better to combine the other animals’ skills which does add an extra power to your attacks. The elements does play a strong factor on some occasion as seen in the Water Lily level right here. The player had to wait until the wind slowed down in order to jump on that yellow creature and get to the boss. In a level like this you also had to use the elements to travel across a stage like using the wind's momentum to jump across a gap. CoC also did something better for its boss battle compared to Neutopia II’s rinse and repeat formula. Most of the bosses made you try to figure out how to damage them instead of simply dodging and slashing away. Roxie and Georama were the best examples that had the player use the abilities from the animals in combination. Of course, the player sometimes would have to wait until a weak point got exposed to cause any damage as well. It’s still miles ahead of what the opposition had to offer and comes closer to that standard Zelda: ALTTP set previously. The only problems were actually minor like the sword slashing feeling as if the hero lazily swung the blade instead of being impactful. Another issue comes from every common enemy, boss and the hazards causing one point of damage to the health. Some of these baddies need to cause more damage than one point. When you design complex boss battles, those types of enemies should come off more threaten. Conclusion: Its appears Sega snatches a win for its clone as CoC provided a better gameplay experience. With its unique item system of using the animal allies to progress and solve puzzles went a long way. It made up for the lack of tools especially when you can combine their powers to do more things. The boss battles had creative ideas that would engage the player to figure out how to defeat each one. Even the level design wasn’t an exact copy of the Zelda’s puzzle solving we see so often from other copy cats. The problem with Neutopia II is it didn’t improve from the first title at all and just copied and pasted. With only seven levels, using the original Zelda’s outdated level design and gameplay mechanics is why its gameplay fell short. The gameplay has nearly the same issues as the first game in most areas. These are often found in either the hit detection or the enemies getting pushed back towards the player when attacked. Graphics/Presentation Neutopia II By the TurboGrafx standards (not including games on the Turbo CD), Neutopia’s successor had good graphics. The sprites and environments both were colorful and continued the trend from the first game. The NPCs and the enemies are everything you would expect from a 16-bit title with its cartoon designs. The environments for the overworld do have the typical places like grasslands, sub-sea, snow plains and deserts. It still maintains that diverse landscape we expect to appear in these fantasy worlds. The animation is about the same as the original and I’m confident Hudson could’ve done more. Unfortunately, using the “tried and true formula” doesn’t work for this game. Nothing has changed aside from a few tweaks, but most features haven’t been updated like a sequel is still supposed to do. The NPCs have no animations aside a single still pose and with the exception of Princess Keia’s walking, nothing wasn’t improved. The music suffers from the Mega Man III effect as the soundtrack came across as uninspiring. The only track that tried to preserve any quality was the remix of the first game’s dungeon theme for level five. Even then the music was truly lack luster that it actually bored me out of my mind. Another issue comes from Hudson not explaining the lore or backstory of this world. Crusader of Centy Sega by 1993 and 1994 had plenty of experiencing developing around the Genesis’ hardware. It's no surprise that CoC had some great visuals and can keep up with the other RPGs and Adventure games like Phantasy Star IV. However, the environments were lush and lively that created diversity among its many locations. At least Sega put some thought into this with decent names for these places and they did capture a little of my imagination. Like any fantasy themed world, CoC has places from beaches and valleys to ancient places like the Tower Babel, Castle Freesia and Root Temple. That’s a major element CoC has over its opponent and the variety of locations for the levels created unique environments. The environmental effects would add to these places and would play to the strengths of each area. Even most of the soundtrack got handled better with its catchy tones and grinding rock themes. The only issues were with the lack of art structures like statues containing true unique features. I always claim how important it is to design artistic structures around these places. It creates a sense of history that makes you guess what inspired to make such culture designs aka telling a story of the area. The plot felt like Sega rushed through the writing because I found some story moments that could’ve been expanded. A theme that includes humans as a possible problem wasn’t written enough back then even for the Zelda series. Conclusion: Sega takes a second win against the TurboGrafx as the graphics came off looking great. It had so much effort that CoC is right behind some of the better-looking games on the Genesis. Even though they both shared the typical environments, its CoC that took its concepts further. With lush environments that had an excellent use of special effects took this further. The areas could have used some artistic structures but regardless, it was miles ahead of its competitor. The issues with Neutopia II is that nothing saw any changes from its lore as well as the game’s many areas. More effort went into the overworld then the dungeons’ environments. The only things that stood out was the sub-sea overworld and the fifth dungeon’s remix song. A studio needs to do more and go the extra mile if they wanted the graphics to take advantage of the console’s power. Speaking truthfully, nothing stopped Hudson from being creative and trying to work around the TurboGrafx’s limitation. Features/Content Neutopia II As I already stated, the sequel doesn’t offer that much in content aside for a password system. It does support a recording feature but unlike Willow for the NES (another Zelda clone), Neutopia II’s Turbo Chip doesn’t support a battery pack. Instead, it used the TurboBooster-Plus add-on to save a game on to four files (a ridiculous item to rip off more people). It's no wonder why the TurboGrafx failed back then if you need to convince gamers to buy another add-on to save a game file. As you would guess, Neutopia II doesn’t have side quests of any kind to take part in during the main journey. There are also no other items to find as an option like health or magic bar upgrades. There are bomb upgrades the player can receive from monks which seem like the only thing they bother to program in the game. You have the main quest of seven levels and a few areas to find key items to face off against Dirth. I get the impression that Hudson didn’t want to go the extra mile to produce content when the competition was already destroying NEC. When you look at the Original game, Hudson went out of their way to make a great title. It’s true the first title didn’t have that much content either, but it still felt like a full game. With the sequel, the studio didn’t even bother to make an eighth level and one of the reasons is they probably knew the console was truly done by 1992. I'm truly amazed that there is a password system this long. This puts the dreaded 16 letter password system to shame and makes it truly look good. How could they try justifying a 48 letter save function in this form? No joke but I tried putting this in and it took me literally five minutes to do. Luckily the WiiU's harddrive renders these passwords useless and lets you save normally. Crusader of Centy When it came to packing content in their games, Sega knew the importance of giving gamers their money’s worth. There are several things to take part in besides the main quest. The gameplay will take players about 3 to 4 hours to complete the game. That was the standard length for the genre back then and it clearly tells me Sega took notes from their competitors. Unlike Neutopia II, CoC in fact has replay value where you can choose to take part in the Training Grounds. The area provides environmental challenges ranging from pits, spikes and springs to get through. The Training Grounds isn’t completely open as only the first area is accessible at the start. As you gain more abilities and animal allies the player then can reach the other parts. When each part of the Training Grounds gets completed, the player receives a bronze, silver and gold medals. The player can trade these later on to receive the holy sword by the king of the land. Of course, what Zelda style game isn’t complete without searching for health upgrades along the way. These are in the form of golden apples called Apples of Life, and the player will find them scattered around the world. Last but not least is finding other animals that are not required to completing a level. These are also the rental ones who have a onetime use like Kitty who can heal health. The optional choices are not the best of this category but at least Sega paid mind to these features. Conclusion: Sega takes another win as CoC followed the trends of the genre. The play through had enough content to engage players for more than a few hours. The content has a healthy combination of a lengthy main quest, the Training Grounds, finding the Apples of Life and the other animals to aid the hero. As mentioned, this is not the greatest content for an adventure game, but it still satisfies the need to do something else besides the main quest. Neutopia II on the other hand hardly had any content or features to engage gamers. The only optional things to do is either find the monks to increase your bomb count or obtain the Wind and Lightning rods. Aside those items and increasing the bomb count, there were no side quests to take part in besides the main objective. Even the save feature relied on a 48-letter password system (worse then the 16 letter one) and could only record unless the TurboBooster-Plus got added. While CoC had a battery pack to save the game at any time. Final Conclusion Thanks to the previous developments with RPG and adventure games, Sega produced a great adventure title. As mentioned many times through this editorial, CoC did virtually everything right to follow Nintendo’s style. The gameplay managed something different with the animal allies’ abilities, and this would create a variety of challenges in the levels. The graphics and presentation looked visually good as I felt engaged most of the time. When there is a soundtrack with both catchy and rock grinding themes then something was evidently done right. I can’t stress enough how Neutopia II was a blatant rip-off from the Original Zelda. Even giving it a fair comparison didn't help Hudson’s clone fare better. The gameplay had bland level design that I would feel bored most of the time. It’s like every level was almost a rehash from that last and the only difference was some of the traps got rearranged. The graphics despite being good for the TurboGrafx only got slightly tweaked and nothing more. The presentation was really lack luster with no explanation about whom Murdock was and why his descendants are the only ones to stop Dirth. Its laziness to this degree is why the sequel has so many problems and they didn’t even try to design any further improvements. It looks like Neutopia’s cataclysm has finally fallen on to its realm. Winner: Crusader of Centy
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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