Paladin's Quest | |
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North American cover art
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Developer(s) | Copya System |
Publisher(s) | |
Designer(s) | Hidenori Shibao |
Composer(s) | Kōhei Tanaka |
Series | Paladin's Quest |
Platform(s) | Super Nintendo Entertainment System |
Release | |
Genre(s) | Role-playing video game |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Paladin's Quest, originally released as Lennus: Kodai Kikai no Kioku (レナス 古代機械の記憶?, "Lennus: Memories of an Ancient Machine") in Japan, is a Utopian/Dystopian science fantasy role-playing video game developed by Copya System and published in Japan by Asmik Corporation on November 13, 1992, for the Super Famicom. It was published in North America by Enix in October 1993. It was different from other role-playing games at the time, because when the player casts magic, it takes away HP (health points) instead of MP (magic points/power).
Its sequel, Lennus II, was only released in Japan.
The game centers on a boy named Chezni who, on a dare, activates an ancient machine called Dal Gren and in doing so releases a being of immense power and evil. As a result, the magic school is destroyed and the headmaster of the school orders Chezni to destroy Dal Gren at whatever cost before it destroys the world. During his travels he meets a girl named Midia, very much like himself, who wishes to help him on his quest, and numerous other mercenaries that come to aid Chezni. The main antagonist is a young dictator named Zaygos, who wants to use the Dal Gren for his own nefarious purposes.
Paladin's Quest draws gameplay features from many other games of its era, and adds some interesting innovations of its own to the mix. Like many role-playing video games, the game has a battle mode and an adventure mode. Within the adventure mode, the character might be in the overworld map or a dungeon (in which case the player will meet with random encounters), or in a town (in which case random encounters do not occur). This mode is a traditional top-down view. In case of a battle, the game switches to a first person battle mode, similar to the Dragon Warrior games. The game's battle mode is Turn-based, in contrast to the Active Time Battle system used by the Final Fantasy games in the same time period. That is, increasing a character's speed increases the chances of acting earlier within a turn, but does not change how frequently that character's turns come about. From each battle, characters accrue experience points, which eventually lead to higher levels, and better attributes. During battle, use of healing items usually, but not always, takes priority and occurs before the enemy can strike.