ガデュリン aka Gadyurin aka Gdleen

The SNES / Super Famicom library is full of great games, and more than a few great JRPGs.  When I discovered Gdleen, a JRPG I had never heard of, that had never been released outside of Japan, and also happened to be the very first JRPG for the Super Famicom, I jumped on it.  Even if it didn't turn out to be a secret classic, I had hoped that it would at least be an interesting time capsule of sorts.  Maybe it would try out some crazy ideas that never caught on, or even prove to be the game that invented something that did catch on.  And if none of that turned out to be true, perhaps it would at the very least tell a unique story of some kind.

Focusing first on the story (an adaptation of a series of light novels), I do think Gdleen is a small success.  It opens with Ryu, a space traveler who crash lands on a spacecraft-looking artificial planet called Gdleen.  Ryu's main goal is to get back to Earth, but he is quickly wrapped up in a quest to unravel the ancient origins of Gdleen, its creators, and perhaps even his own connection with them.

Despite the numerous sci-fi elements to the story, they mostly function as a wrapper around what is actually a fantasy setting.  The inhabitants of Gdleen are all monsters and fairies and magic-using humanoids, different from the space-faring Ryu who begins the game with a laser gun and a helmet that translates for him.  The people he meets aren't primitives -- they have a vague understanding of his technology and about the place where they live -- but their history has been mixed with mythology to the point that they believe Gdleen to have been made by gods, and that their tribal feuds can be traced to the gods as well.

Fana reads from the book of history while nude, in accordance with otaku preferences

Promising stuff, in my opinion, but given that this is a ‘90s JRPG, the majority of Gdleen's story is communicated via dialog with NPCs in small chunks, separated by a fair amount of walking and more than a few random battles.  Again, this is completely normal for JRPGs of this era, but I’m afraid Gdleen falls apart when it comes to creating an engaging game world that can support its narrative one.

The battle system is the prime offender here.  It was apparently designed to be more complex than useful, offering three different ways to flee a battle, a set of options to convince enemies to join your party, and a large number of spells to choose from.  Unfortunately, the enemies that join you leave as soon as the battle is over, most of the spells are essentially useless, and I’m not sure I ever really needed to perfect my fleeing strategy.  In other words, these aren’t much more than gimmicks as implemented in this game.  Normal attacks work as well as anything else most of the time, and the useful spells are sufficiently useful.

But even ignoring the gimmicky fluff, the battles remain a problem because they end up taking far longer than is necessary, due to the amount of time needed to dispatch enemies.  It is not uncommon for a turn to pass in which both sides have either dodged, missed, or blocked all attacks, accomplishing nothing.  To offset this somewhat, critical hits, while rare, do an inordinate amount of damage: usually enough to kill any enemy or ally in one blow.  There are also continuous attacks, in which a combatant lands one hit, and then continues to hit again and again, often until the target is dead. 

Under this system, the flow of battle generally consists of a bunch of people and monsters missing each other or chipping away at their health, while occasionally being killed instantly.  I found a typical battle would last 3-5 minutes, while it couldn’t have taken even half of that time if hits connected more often.  As it is, every battle becomes simultaneously mundane and terrifying, as not much happens moment to moment, but you might suddenly lose a party member without warning, or be wiped out entirely.

Gdleen presents a terror planet of Tyrannosaurs with kinda long arms and boring battles

And because these battles are so long and tedious, I found the actual navigating of the world to be frustrating as well.  Progress in this game is made along a fairly straightforward path from one place to the next, with the expectation that the player will always be moving forward towards the next goal.  Because there is only ever one thing to do next, it struck me as silly to need to wander around a little path trying to find a door to enter, or an unremarkable bit of ground to walk over to trigger an event.  All this while being interrupted frequently by those overly long battles.

In these regards, I don't think Gdleen fares very well against its peers.  It has the distinction of being first on the SFC, but I don't see how it could compete against the better JRPGs on the Famicom or elsewhere.  I do like the story it tells, but I’m not sure this is the best way to experience it.  In addition to the light novels this game is based on, there's an OVA that does similar work, and without the frustrations I’ve described.  As a time capsule, I suppose it’s a fine example of what was going on in the periphery of JRPGs at the time, being a sort of half step between Phantasy Star and Star Ocean, with an attempt to mix in a weakened version Megami Tensei’s monster recruiting.  Even so, when the JRPG canon is compiled, I think this one can be left out.