@Ziggy
Pokémon games totally count for this month's TR!
I've had issues losing saves before when moving between GBA and Super Game Boy for Pokémon titles, so be careful with that. Not sure why that is but it's happened a few times for me.
Anyhow, today I started up my next title for the month, Madou Monogatari I for the Game Gear.
We play as Arle, a kindergartner at a magical school. In order to graduate Kindergarten, Arle must pass the graduation test - enter a giant tower full of terrifying monsters and death traps that is in the middle of the school playground and find all the magical orbs within. Magic school is rough!
Arle begins the game with 2 spells - Fire, and Ice Storm, and can cast these freely on enemies. Some enemies are weak to one and some the other. You also find a few spells as you progress - I've found a sleep spell, an illusion spell, a healing spell and a power buff so far. These use up MP though, so you'll want to be more sparing with them.
Early on, Arle is a bit of a pushover and the enemy Puyos who appear on the base floor will beat you down (yes, this is the RPG franchise that Puyo Puyo is a spin-off of!). Luckily after a few level ups I've found I'm smashing my way through most enemies since. It can also be hard to gauge how well you're doing because the game hides all of your stats from you. I have no idea what level Arle is in my game, and at any point I can only make an educated guess as to her current HP and MP and the power of her attacks. When in battle you'll have to judge from Arle's comments how you're doing - so if she says she's 'doing fine' then you can probably take a few hits, but if she says she 'can't go on' then it's time to heal for sure. Outside of battle you judge based off of Arle's expression - her face takes up a full quarter of the screen real estate after all, and a happy face is a healthy Arle whereas a frowny face spells trouble.
The exploration is pretty nice in the game. The game is nice enough to map stuff for you, although I have been making my own maps anyhow. The game map only shows the floor and wall layout, but it doesn't show location of chests, stairs and other events so I thought I'd better note that down myself.
So far I'm enjoying the game a lot. The combat is simple and the exploration isn't hugely complex either but the game is loaded with charm and the music, visuals and voice samples (!) are absolutely phenomenal for the console. This game really shows off what the Game Gear can do and there's honestly nothing on Game Boy that can match this presentation - and nothing comes to mind on NGPC either for that matter. Some of the top tier Wonderswan games might stand a chance, but this is a contender in presentation for even a lot of GBA stuff, genuinely.
Anyhow, I'm on the 5th floor now so made some good progress. I don't think the game is too long so we'll see how long it takes to finish. So far I'm very tempted to pick up the other 3 games in the series on GG too though!
If I remember tomorrow I'll upload pics of my scribbly maps. I didn't even have graph paper to hand so I had to draw them the hard way