The Princess is in another Castle

Yesterday when I pluged in my SNES, NES and PS1 I found a game which shackles me
for hours to the Playstation. It’s called Azure Dreams.
What a baaad game…

Azure Dreams plays in the destert town Monsbaiya. Monsbaiya is popular and well known for his big Monster Tower which habitat more then hundred types of monsters. The town sells the monster and is getting more rich than ever before. Adventures from all over the world come to this tower to find money and Monster Eggs.

You the hero, named Koh, are born as the son of the best Monster tamer ever.  His name is Guy. One evening when Guy reaches the top floor of the tower a shiny and bright light appeared over the tower.  Later at the same night his Monster returned back to his family without any sign of Guys life.

Years later you are 15 years old and now an adult. Your mom gives you the Monster tamer Necklace of your father so you can enter the tower and tame monster. This is where the
game begins.

The aim of Azure Dreams is to reach the top level of the floor to find the legendary Monster Egg. That sounds really simple. But it’s actually not!

There are some cool features in Azure Dreams. Like in Lufia II or Diablo theres a random map generator. Forget to notice or draw maps. It’s useless! Muahahahah…… sorry…

Another feature is that Azure Dreams give you the chance to meet girls and fell in love with them. This is funny but totally useless. In the Japanese version of the game you can marry the girl that you like most. But as I said it’s only in the Japanese version.

You also can upgrade your house or other buildings in the town. It’s not necessary but the people will talk about you and so you reputation grows the more buildings you build. This has no influence on the game but it’s funny. You also have a lot of Minigames if you build buildings. You can build a track in which you can be part as jockey and earn money. Or you can build a Casino.

Hmm the Gameplay have positive and negative sites, but mainly negative.

You can only enter the tower if you have less than five items in your bag. In addition you can’t leave the tower as you want. You have two ways of leaving the tower. The first one is the easiest. If you find Wind Chrystal you get warped in your house. The second one is to find a fruit which let disappear your monster which is with you in the tower and after
this send you at home. If you die while you are in the tower you lose all your money which you have earned and every item! Yes even the items you brought with in the tower.

In addition the hero is able to level up in the tower. But every time you leave an re-enter the tower your level is set to Lvl:1 again! Only the Level of your monsters remain unchanged.

Your monster have MP. Even if you only walk the monster is using MP. If the MP turns to 0 your monster fell asleep. If you come to this point your f*cked! If your monster is asleep you can’t give him any food to recover MP or something like that. So you have to leave the tower or pack your monster away and go on. But I wouldn’t suggest that.

You can visit the tower as much as you want. But after a few time it still s*cks… Every time you do the same thing. Run…Run…Press X to hit the monster…Kill the monster…Run…Run…
find a item… Run…Run…Lift…next floor. The fights are boring and slow.

But the game still have charm if you wanna say so. You train your monsters…just to defeat the best ones! You gotta catch em all! … Wait wasn’t that in another game…?
Ahh screw that! Who cares about that?

Facts:
- Azure Dreams was released in 1998… 2 years before in 1996 a game called Pokémon was published by Nintendo…
- A semi-sequel called Tao’s Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal was released in 2006.
- Tao’s Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal was under the top 10 of the worst game 2006.