Hidden Gem The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion The most Generic JRPG done right!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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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
BlackRock has done a complete 180° on its "woke" policies. A multi-trillion company like this isn't woke nor anti-woke, they just go where they think the money will be and shift as the winds change.

And I'm kinda sad to see people trying to tear down the Trails in the Sky remake. I'm not a big fan of the current trend of remakes but this one is really well done, and really doesn't deserve to be slandered with blown out of proportion censorship accusations. My only complaint is the price.

Back to the game. What makes A tear of Vermillion's translation bad? Typos, poor English that makes the story harder to follow? I'm tempted to give it a try but clunky translations usually irk me.
 
BlackRock has done a complete 180° on its "woke" policies. A multi-trillion company like this isn't woke nor anti-woke, they just go where they think the money will be and shift as the winds change.

And I'm kinda sad to see people trying to tear down the Trails in the Sky remake. I'm not a big fan of the current trend of remakes but this one is really well done, and really doesn't deserve to be slandered with blown out of proportion censorship accusations. My only complaint is the price.

Back to the game. What makes A tear of Vermillion's translation bad? Typos, poor English that makes the story harder to follow? I'm tempted to give it a try but clunky translations usually irk me.
THANK YOU

People are using evidence but it's old stuff, so much has change in the business world in one year, people just like to be mad at the something and blame for everything they don't like one them, it's easy to hate on multimillionaire corporation , they use few cases of genuine censorship , like the Neptune games, to say that everything they don't like is trying to censorship them, it's like a mob that doesn't try to be rational.

Going back to the game topic, I generally can deal with bad translation because I am a hasty reader, I generally read it too fast to notice typos and poor English also why some of my post have typos and the like even when I proof read.
 
WTF i have a degree in business administration, apparently i got shafted in my education, where the hell did you learn all of this stuff. This isn't normal business stuff is it, something like global finance level stuff ? Shit so the corporations really do control everything are constantly social engineering us basically thru "capital" and fancy words like "stewardship, voting choice, and ongoing engagement", which really just do what I want or else ?
I am currently doing a business degree too, these typo of stuff are thought there, I think you are only told about them if you get an MBA.

I have a degree in finance from a top 10 worldwide university and work as a consultant these days. At one of the 10 top universities, they talk a lot about leadership and you do learn a lot of this stuff,and they position it as philanthropic/noble leadership type stuff.

But its when you work in the New York finance sector, you learn its all about power and control from highly nepotistic and insular rich networks. Often rich families have lots of wealthy children that are just bored and use capital and influence to push their pet projects. A good example is Larry Ellison who has nearly half a trillion dollars, has a lesbian daughter Megan Ellison who uses capital to constantly push LGBT stuff into videogames and movies basically thru her Annapurna subsidiaries. She has a REAL grudge against stuff for regular dudes, she uses the full power of network as much as possible to push her stuff and change the industry to favor basically people like her affluent white women lesbians using people of color etc as a shield. It's really all about narcissism for these rich nepo kids.
Dealing with her directly was one of the reasons I got into retro games again.

Just way too many people in the western world don't care about entertainment, it's all about pushing their pet message, and punishing the people they don't like. There is no live and let live mentally anymore among the western oligarchs, it's all about power and control by any means possible.
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THANK YOU

People are using evidence but it's old stuff, so much has change in the business world in one year, people just like to be mad at the something and blame for everything they don't like one them, it's easy to hate on multimillionaire corporation , they use few cases of genuine censorship , like the Neptune games, to say that everything they don't like is trying to censorship them, it's like a mob that doesn't try to be rational.

Going back to the game topic, I generally can deal with bad translation because I am a hasty reader, I generally read it too fast to notice typos and poor English also why some of my post have typos and the like even when I proof read.

That's just ignoring the evidence presented in front of you.
Blackrock is STILL pushing DEI and ESG policies.
 
BlackRock has done a complete 180° on its "woke" policies. A multi-trillion company like this isn't woke nor anti-woke, they just go where they think the money will be and shift as the winds change.

And I'm kinda sad to see people trying to tear down the Trails in the Sky remake. I'm not a big fan of the current trend of remakes but this one is really well done, and really doesn't deserve to be slandered with blown out of proportion censorship accusations. My only complaint is the price.

Back to the game. What makes A tear of Vermillion's translation bad? Typos, poor English that makes the story harder to follow? I'm tempted to give it a try but clunky translations usually irk me.
Obviously a quick google search shows Blackrock has not done a 180 on its policies, they literally just renamed DEI/Climate stuff into a new team, and merged it more directly into the core company goals. BlackRock has rebranded its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives to "connectivity and inclusivity".

Renaming stuff doesn't mean the woke was put away, they just renamed it because of the negative press, and apparently lawsuits from red states.

why can't a multi trillion dollar company be woke ? they literally put it on their website, and got a huge backlash, the ceo literally said he wanted to change peoples behaviors. That's pretty messed up either way, and you can't spin it. I didn't vote for blackrock to stuff only a government should, no one did. These rich assholes think they own us, honestly screw them!
 
I find it a bit surprizing that you're a lot more concerned about the Ellison daughter's influence because she owns a media company (not a small one but not the biggest player in the game either) than her centibillionaire daddy's. Their respective influence and the weight they can throw around aren't nearly comparable, but since she's a lesbian what she does with her money is obviously of far greater concern.

And so BlackRock is a trillion dollar company in the hands of Marxist woke activists. Ok, I'm definitely giving A Tear of Vermillion a try because no matter how bad the translation may be it still can't give me a worse headache than the one I having right now.
 
This just renamed it and made it a more core part of their policies. Renaming it and removing it are two different things.

LITERALLY FROM THE LINK YOU POSTED, DID YOU EVEN READ IT?
A section previously titled "diversity, equity and inclusion" was rebranded as "connectivity and inclusivity."


The company maintained that supporting "diverse perspectives" remains crucial to preventing groupthink but avoided using the term "diversity" explicitly.

It's clear you are completely dishonest and not acting in good faith at all.
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I find it a bit surprizing that you're a lot more concerned about the Ellison daughter's influence because she owns a media company (not a small one but not the biggest player in the game either) than her centibillionaire daddy's. Their respective influence and the weight they can throw around aren't nearly comparable, but since she's a lesbian what she does with her money is obviously of far greater concern.

And so BlackRock is a trillion dollar company in the hands of Marxist woke activists. Ok, I'm definitely giving A Tear of Vermillion a try because no matter how bad the translation may be it still can't give me a worse headache than the one I having right now.

Oh I am super worried about Larry Ellison and the tiktok stuff, but he's not involved in video games, so I mentioned the only one of kids WHO IS Involved in videogames related stuff. All the Ellisons are up to no good.
 
I used to have this game for the PSP back in the day except it was titled simply 'The Legend of Heroes'. I loved every second of it from the music to the gameplay and all but it was just really easy UNTIL the final boss in which the game finally decided to give you an actual challenge. Never did beat it though.
 
I lost my account my friends I had to start all over again I lost my profile as I was already going to level 5 I was at level 4 if anyone wants to help me any moderator
 

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Game Info

  • Game: The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion
  • Publisher: Bandai
  • Developer: Microvision
  • Genres: JRPG
  • Release: 2005

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