Today Spotlight: Bahamut Lagoon (SNES)

[ByteScanner]

I've been looking in the RGT forums and so far I haven't seen any thread dedicated to this title. This post in not by any mean a review, but you might take it as a recommendation at most, beucase I consider this one a good game. Even if you don't feel like to play it soon, feel free to comment about what you think of my description or the screenshots I going to show you (posted below). "Let's just talk videogames"

So, Bahamut Lagoon it's a tactical RPG with that signature style and game design of the 16-bit era of Square-Enix. The setting takes palce in a world that's all sky, no lands or oceans bound by the surface of the planet, but you might wonder... - Who could live in a palce like this? - well the answer is that in this world there are floating little islands and giant aerial contiennts where the civilizations flourished and eventually they developed societies, mythologies, governments and of course copnflicts between nations. The kingdoms in need of a mean to defend themselves formed armies and squads of Knights, Mages, Priests, Lancers, and your typical medieval fantasy combatant classes; but this game offer us an incredible and original addition wich are dragons!

By dragons I mean literal winged beasts that aid you in battle (but can't control directly) that can turn the tables in the fierciest of battles. Each of your units consist in a party of 4 characters wich I like to call squads, each member of the squad contribute with something to the entire team. For example, there is a class called Light Armor that adds movility to your squad and lets you move further on the map, there are also the wizards that can attack in field with elemental spells and priests that can heal your units. For each squad you have a dragon assigned wich also has its own attributes and contributions to the entire party and acts almost indepently to your human squad (they always move after their respective squad assigned).

There are 2 types of attack during each battle: Field actions, that affect entire squads depending the afected area of the action, you can even affect more than 1 squad of enemies (or allies if you want healing) but remember that this let you open to a direct attack of the enemy. The other one is the Attack command that engages you in a battle between your team and the opposing enemy squad, I remember that I used to aviod this during my early hours playing this game but I learned that you need a good balance between field actions and direct combat correctly to win. Also it's fun to experiment with different party combinations (all of this is better explained in more detail during the game so I hope not to confuse anyone Hahaha!).

Now let's talk about the dragon breeding system, I could not explain it in detail because it's complex and I don't even understand it in all its extent, but between each chapter (this is a long game so it has many of them, more or less 28 if I remember well) there is its respective battle so be prepared and treat well your dragons because the more you take care of them the more they help. Besides the usual combat stats (ATK, DEF, AGI, FIRE, WATER, etc, etc...) there are also "hidden stats" that you should to take in consideration, those are stats of behavior, this in result will make your dragon spoiled and won't let your literal side during the battle, they could even block your way if you need to cross a bridge or narrow path. Also you can make them become "antisocial" and they will just wander around the battlefield doing whatever they want, so far I haven't seen a guide on internet that explains how this hidden stats work so I guess its learning through practice and paying attention to how and what you use to feed them.

In conclusion, Bahamut Lagoon offers something unique in its gameplay and a decent story; each chapter and interaction between the heroes and villians feels like watching an anime series, and I mean it, because the animations (yeah! animations in a tactical RPG) are loaded with so much personality that you can precieve each character attiude just by watching them interacting with eachother, even the ones that you might call "that filler character" have something fun or relevant to say or do at some point. And the character design, ohhh dude they are amazing! each one of your units has obviously a proper name and an unique sprite (except for just some counted cases) so you can familiarize with each one easily. So what do you say, Have you played it?, Or if you haven't, what would you expect if give it a try?, Have you seen something similar or that reminds you of this gem?

 

[fake]

Whenever I hear about Bahamut Lagoon, I always think about Near.

RIP :'(

 

[Stingy Perry]

Underrated Hidden Gem Classic 16bit JRPG

 

[RageBurner]

One of the finest games on one of the finest platforms.
Near's presence and contributions won't be forgotten, either.

 

[Ian Naxieas]

Bahamut Lagoon, what a damn good game. I played the DeJap translated version way back when, it was one of the first games I ever emulated actually. I'm not sure why, but I've never beat it, even though I was super close to the end. I've tried starting from square one several times, but haven't gotten far. Now that I'm disabled and have nothing but free time, I should really push to complete it. I'd be using Near's translation this time.

It did have a couple flaws, however. The dragon feeding system is completely bonkers if you're not using a guide. You could probably fudge it with some trial & error, but good luck. Second, the game kind of incentivizes you to use all units of a particular class in the same formation. For example, having four Wizards in the same formation will make them significantly more potent over having a single Wizard in a group. That said, I ignored that and did just fine. x) It's much more fun to create custom formations.

Anyway, great job on the write up! I look forward to seeing more from you.

 

[RageBurner]

Bahamut Lagoon, what a damn good game. I played the DeJap translated version way back when, it was one of the first games I ever emulated actually. I'm not sure why, but I've never beat it, even though I was super close to the end. I've tried starting from square one several times, but haven't gotten far. Now that I'm disabled and have nothing but free time, I should really push to complete it. I'd be using Near's translation this time.

It did have a couple flaws, however. The dragon feeding system is completely bonkers if you're not using a guide. You could probably fudge it with some trial & error, but good luck. Second, the game kind of incentivizes you to use all units of a particular class in the same formation. For example, having four Wizards in the same formation will make them significantly more potent over having a single Wizard in a group. That said, I ignored that and did just fine. x) It's much more fun to create custom formations.

Anyway, great job on the write up! I look forward to seeing more from you. View attachment 10253View attachment 10252

I agree with you there. I too played the Dejap version first, but Byuu's/Near's is signicantly more polished and the one the game deserved.

It's true that the dragon feeding system is quite opaque and difficult without a guide, but I also felt the game is forgiving enough that you don't need to min-max to make progress, which is a good thing (I hate games that force you to do that).

Like other late SNES titles (Treasure of the Rudras, Far East of Eden Zero, Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia), this one looks and sounds phenomenal, truly something that would actually have targeted the Saturn or Playstation 1.

I absolutely love your signature by the way!

 

[Ian Naxieas]

I agree with you there. I too played the Dejap version first, but Byuu's/Near's is signicantly more polished and the one the game deserved.

It's true that the dragon feeding system is quite opaque and difficult without a guide, but I also felt the game is forgiving enough that you don't need to min-max to make progress, which is a good thing (I hate games that force you to do that).

Like other late SNES titles (Treasure of the Rudras, Far East of Eden Zero, Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia), this one looks and sounds phenomenal, truly something that would actually have targeted the Saturn or Playstation 1.

I absolutely love your signature by the way!

Yeah, the SNES had an absolutely wonderful life and held it's own until 2000. Well, in Japan at least. It ended with Frogger in 1998 for the North American market. Oof. Could have been worse I suppose, Frogger is a classic and at least it wasn't a crummy sports game.

Awww, thank you! I was absolutely floored when I came across an artist doing FFT style commissions on Twitter. I wish I would have nabbed one of their excellent character sprites too, but maybe in the future.

 

[RageBurner]

Yeah, the SNES had an absolutely wonderful life and held it's own until 2000. Well, in Japan at least. It ended with Frogger in 1998 for the North American market. Oof. Could have been worse I suppose, Frogger is a classic and at least it wasn't a crummy sports game.

Awww, thank you! I was absolutely floored when I came across an artist doing FFT style commissions on Twitter. I wish I would have nabbed one of their excellent character sprites too, but maybe in the future.

Frogger is a pretty sad end, but when I think the Mega Drive had late games like X-Perts... it's not much better LOL.

 

[Ian Naxieas]

Frogger is a pretty sad end, but when I think the Mega Drive had late games like X-Perts... it's not much better LOL.

Oh fuck's sake, the Genesis ended in North America with Frogger as well. It's a curse. Though technically the last Genesis game was Show do Milhão Volume 2 in 2002, it was only released in South America and it was based off a Brazilian game show. I do remember a Brazilian friend saying that the Genesis was super big in Brazil, so it makes sense. Apparently a company called TecToy was actually still making and selling the Genesis in Brazil until 2023.

 

[Aziamuth]

The story made me go mental but unfortunately the gameplay is not very good because it focuses too much on the dragons and not much attention is given to the army-based system.