The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion was released in 1996 for the PC-98 being one of the last big games made for that platform, only 4 years later the game was remade for Windows remake , and by a remake I really mean it, the PC-98 was a non-linear RPG with a lot of side quest and Grinding between stories points, meanwhile the Windows remake is very similar to other games in the Legend of Heroes series, being a very linear story base RPG, the version that I am playing however and the only one that you can play in English as of 2025 is the PSP port released in 2005, which is mostly based on the Windows version with different graphics, different battle system and added mechanics, the PSP version wasn't made by Falcon but rather Microvision which you may recognize as the same people who made the Diamond and pearl remake in 2021.
This is the 4th game in the legend of Heroes series and 2nd game in the Gagharv trilogy, despite that it was the first game of that Trilogy released in the west and the game that came before it in Japan, came in the west a year after in 2006, but because I already knew that already I played The Legend of Heroes 2: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch first, but never wrote a review about it, I played around an year ago and it was a pleasant surprise , gameplay footage and other reviews about it made me think it was a very generic and boring RPG, that wasn't worth my time , and while I can certainly understand why people felt that way toward it, the Falcom magic just work on me, the game is a very pleasant read even if for 80% of it's run time the game is about 2 teenager going around the world and every adult is super nice to them for no reason, to the point it even off-Putting, if the game was made by any other developer I would had stop playing it before the first chapter had even started but Falcon knows how to make interesting story even if was on a quite mediocre translation.
Story
In my reviews I generally start with the gameplay, but because I was mostly talking about the story in the segment above I will also continue what I started here, this game similar to it's predecessor, is a game that looks very boring on paper, while Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch was a story 2 teenager in a pilgrimage to see all magical mirror in their side continent, which while not very interesting on paper, it's not very trope, Tear of vermilion decides to make a story which a premise full of tropes.Avin and his sister Eimelle are orphans and lived happily in a Cathedral, until one day the evil guys from the evil church attack that cathedral , during their escape they got separated , 8 years after that when Avin becomes 17, he and his best friend Mile decide to go on a journey to see her again, in the way they have to collect 4 McGuffin each dungeon and guardian represent one of the 4 elements of nature and create a magic sword to save the world, but at the grand scheme of things, the destination doesn't matter, the journey is what's more important, for example between the Avin getting separeted from his sister and he going to the journey, there's a segment of the game with dedicated on how Avin and mile became best friends, and not gonna lie the game cought me by suprise on how cute and heart warming it was, the game in it's first 30 minutes made me fell in love with it, before I had fought one enemy.
Gameplay
The battle system here is brand new to the series and it was aperently so much better than the one in Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch to the point to where they retroactily added this game's battle system to the previews game when it came west a year later after this one, the orginal battle system of the first game was an auto battler, where the game pretty much played by itself and you would only give vague commends, similar to how the original PC version of the trilogy worked , the battle system here is a straight foward turn base RPG, if you play one like it before you already have an idea on how this game's battle system.During battle you can perform centain actions depending on the character. Attack, as you can imagine you just strike the enemy with a simple attack with no stringe attached, use magic, which in this game is devided into 3 categories, White magic being composed of Healing magic and defencive buffs, Black Magic which has offencive magic and offencive buffs and spirite magic they are basically summons that hit all enemiesl, and only certain character can use certain types of magic, in the first half of the game Avin can only use Black magic and Mile can only use white magic, for example.
Skill in this game are wierd , they are other action that are character can perform, each party member has their own list of skills, but I rarely found them usefull specially because I could only see their description and what they did outside of battle, and I always forgot to do that , whenever a new party member entered my party or I gained a new ability on level up , because of how the story in this game works, the party will always change depending on the story and rarely someone will stay in the party for too long outside of Avin, not only that even when I knew what they did I rarely had a oportuity to use them, the game outside of one fight (The final boss and the last boss of the first half of the game) I rarely need to step up my game, but because they comsume no MP when use I doubt they would be more usefull than simply doing anything else.
Another thing to note in this game is that you can always escape from battle with a 100% sucess rate, and save anyware which is a nice feature, back to the topic of dificulty , this game is very easy, and I only died 3 outside of boss fights because I wasn't paying attetion and another 6 times during 2 boss fights, that already mentioned before, the first boss might I need to buy my equipament again to have an defenvise focus party, but looking back I probably wound't have issues on that fight if I had another strategy, in the case of the final boss I had to go back from the end of the long final dungeon (As is tradicinal for Falcon games) and warp maze just to buy 2 acesseories for everyone in my party (One to protect status ailments that the boss inflicted and another is a acessory that reduces Metal damege ,which is the only damege type that boss dealt anyway) and go back all the way to the final boss, doing that made the final boss a cake walk, but it took one hour of backtracking, which was fustrating to say the least, but atleast this game's ending was worth the pain.
Graphics
I am not going to sugar code this, I think this game is ugly, the sprites feels looks like lifeless dolls, and worse these sprites don't even match with the low poly and realist background, it's not something pleasent to the eyes and it's what made me not want to play these game for a long time, the saving grace comes with emulation and it's CRT scanline filther, that for some reason makes the game look much better.
I would have undertood if that was the case if the game was a PS1 or PS2 game where the devs made so that the game was supposed to be played on CRT TV, but this game was a PSP excluve , so why does it look so much better with a CRT filthers ?
I looked for gameplay footage of the windows version for comperision.
You can cleary see that they just re-used the Windows version sprites for the PSP but made them bigger which is why the look so bad on the PSP, they weren't supposed to be that big, it also explain why they look better with CRT filters because thoses sprites were ment to be seen in a CRT monitor, addicionally the camera is so close to the characters you also get the negative effect of navegation being confusing especially inside bigger cities because of the FOV was much higher than the PSP version. the Windows version wasn't a particulary pretty game for 2000 escially compared to other 2D games that came out on the same year, I personally think it looks much better than the PSP version.
The only posite thing this port did to this game visually was adding anime cutceness as a intro to the game and adding character portrait to major characters, they are well drawn , change the character expression depending on what they are feeling in the moment and make the story much more engaging to follow.
Music
It's a Falcom game, as usual they do a great job, this game OST is a major improviment from the previus game where they remade the OST to sound more "RPG" and made it sound boring and forgattable, here they just re used the Windows remake OST, which is great thing becuae those music are already so excellent, my only complaint is the final boss music here is underwhellimg.
Pros
- + Well written story
- + Another Falcom banger OST
Cons
- - Unremarkable battle system
- - Fugly game
6
Gameplay
As far as turn base go this is pretty vanilla, while it's not great, it doesn't distract from the experience, which is good enough for a story focus 28 Hour RPG
4
Graphics
This game in any of it's version was never a pretty game, but the PSP version takes a step further and make this game look really unappealing.
9
Story
Falcom demonstration that you can make a very boring premised into an amazing journey if you write it well and make interesting characters and dialogue
8
Sound
The battle music makes the simple battles in this game into something especial and walking around the world into something magical , Falcom JDK doing a great work again
2
Replayability
There isn't much here after you beat it, unless you missed some optional books and NPC dialogue, it's like a book, specially because the gameplay is very shallow.
8
out of 10
Overall
If this game was a book, it would have an ugly cover and a boring title, only those who don't judge a book by it's cover would read it, and I am happy that I am such a person
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