Cosmic Fantasy is a series I’ve always been really interested in. Unfortunately out of four installments only the second one was ever localized. Until now. Thanks to the Cosmic Fantasy Collection on the Nintendo Switch I could finally see what the series is all about. I went in knowing that the original game was archaic. If you’ve stuck around this blog for a while then you know that’s what we’re all about. I’ve always had a fascination with these older role playing games even with their limited stories and unintuitive interfaces. Fresh off of completing Cosmic Fantasy I’ve made my mind up about it. While there are plenty of misses for the most part it sticks the landing. I would even say it’s one of the best RPGs of all time. Let’s take a deep dive and check it out.
The first thing that’s really interesting about Cosmic Fantasy is that it’s a sci-fi RPG. These are more common now, but back then it was a rarity. You play as a cosmic hunter (a space traveling group formed to maintain peace in the universe) named Shu who is responding to a distress signal sent from an underdeveloped planet called Norg. Our intergalactic hero, along with his side kick motorcycle cat, thing, named Monmo wind up crash landing on the surface. It’s now up to Yu to investigate. As the plot unfolds our likely hero gets swept up in a story that leads him to save the very planet from an evil witch named Morgan. There are plot twists aplenty, as well as a cast of memorable characters. The most striking thing about Cosmic Fantasy is that it features voice acting as well as several animated cut-scenes.
While the sci-fi premise is really interesting the story here leans more heavily into the medieval themes. After the opening sequence it’s a while before you see any references to space travel or other planets. Cosmic Fantasy is also filled to the brim with anime tropes. There are a lot of moments that will leave many gamers rolling their eyes. The characters are also paper thing, and our protagonists have almost no character development through the adventure. With that said I actually found the story decent. It’s not amazing by any means but the whole ‘futuristic warrior saves medieval world’ theme is handled fairly well. The anime cut scenes do a lot of heavy lifting as far as giving the cast personality. The final villain also kind of comes out of nowhere, but at that point I was here for it.
The advanced storytelling methods are a stark contrast to the gameplay. Cosmic Fantasy is a very dated and old looking video game. It’s entirely sprite based and looks kind of simple even by PC-Engine CD standards. When it comes to gameplay it’s pretty much what you would expect from a game this old. Cosmic Fantasy is a very traditional turn based RPG. Encounters break out randomly while exploring the world map or when trekking into dungeons. From here you’re moved to a separate screen with a head on view of the enemies. When it’s your turn you get a list of commands on the lower left side of the screen, and after making your selections watch the action play out. In the beginning it’s about as basic as the original Dragon Quest. You cannot use spells, and are limited to just attack, defend, run and items.
To be honest the first few hours almost lost me. The rudimentary battle system doesn’t offer a lot of strategy, nor does it have much to differentiate itself from the pack. Despite being a some kind of futuristic space warrior Yu uses basic swords in combat. Boring. On the plus side he does have access to laser style weapons, but these are used as items and have limited ammunition. You can also only carry one of these at once. A lot of the time the basic sword is either as powerful, or does more damage regularly. Yu can also throw up barriers that sometimes block enemies’ attacks. Unfortunately they have a low success rate so I pretty much just ignored them. It’s worth noting that Yu does learn psychic abilities as he gains levels from experience awarded after battle. The handling of this is odd to say the least.
You see, these psychic abilities use MP. Most of the time Yu has none, and therefore cannot use his spells. It is only during specific story sequences that he gains them back, and only for a limited amount of time. It’s usually (but not always) when you’re about to face major boss characters in the narrative. Then he loses access to them. I get that the developers were going for the whole ‘anime character powering up’ idea here, but it’s frustrating to say the least. Eventually I just gave up and relied on the tried and true attack command almost exclusively. Even when magic was available to him. This was due in part to the fact that I didn’t know what most of the spells actually did, because again, I used them so infrequently. Take Cure, for example. You would think it recovers HP but instead it heals status elements.
Cosmic Fantasy finally opens up a bit when you get your second party member a few hours into the adventure. Saya is a mage/healer, and unlike Yu she always has access to her spells. This character more than makes up for her low strength by offering a surprisingly comprehensive magic list. The effects are various. For example she can heal one character, both, temporarily increase their stats, damage enemies, or even lower their attributes. Saya is infinitely more versatile than Yu and after a while you’ll rely more heavily on her than on him. I do have one complaint with her magic however. Spells cover different elements, but as far as I can tell there’s no weakness or strengths to this. That means you’ll only have to use the highest damage spell in every single situation. That’s kind of a bummer because you’ll be casting the same thing repeatedly.
The naming convention behind them is also confusing. To make matters worse the game offers no explanation as to what anything actually does. That means you’ll have to use the spells to figure out what they actually do. Lo, for example, lowers enemies defenses. The name provides almost no hint to this. The same goes for ranat. How am I supposed to know that this is the spell that heals my party? Whatever happened to names like ‘heal?’ I understand that the game is translated from Japanese but the team could have done a lot better than this. On the plus side items, weapons and armor are very easy to figure out. Shops provide you with details on items before you buy them, and your most powerful gear is always listed at the end in the equipment screen. It’s just the magic that suffers here.
With those issues aside Cosmic Fantasy has an intuitive, fast, and functional battle system. It’s not flashy by any means, but it definitely gets the job done. It is however pretty limited. As I already mentioned you only have two characters at most in your party at once. The maximum number of enemies you’ll face per battle is three. This kind of limits your options. One neat element to the game is the fact that it scales battle size based on how many characters you currently have. If it’s just Yu you’ll mostly face just one enemy at a time. Two at most. After Saya joins it’s almost always going to be two or three. This is true even when returning to areas you’ve already been after she tags along. There’s even a section where Yu is alone, and the scaling is maintained. This makes things more manageable.
Okay so let’s talk dungeon designs. These are decent. Not the best I’ve ever seen, but about as complex as the original Final Fantasy. That’s not bad for what is essentially an 8-bit RPG. You’ll have some sections with branching paths and multiple stairways. Sometimes these lead to optional treasure, but other times it’s just dead ends. The thing about Cosmic Fantasy is you’ll usually find chests in these instances, and most of the time it’s worth your while. The encounter rate is also surprisingly manageable. This seems pretty variable. Sometimes you’ll take three steps and face a group of enemies, and other times you can walk across a giant room with absolutely no encounters. Thankfully nasty status ailments like poison or stone are pretty rare. When the enemies can put characters to sleep they tend to just do it to one party member instead of both.
I really wasn’t a big fan of the world map however. It feels like there’s too much empty space on it. It can take way too long while exploring the overworld to find the town or landmark you’re looking for. The game gives hints, but sometimes these can be vague. Progression is typically locked behind guarded bridges and you get permission only after completing the currently available dungeon. This makes moving forward feel really stiff. On the plus side almost the entire duration of the quest you can select Monmo as an option from the menu, and this allows you to ride him to fast travel to towns you have previously visited. There’s also a ship you get later on, but its use is limited due to only being able to land in ports. I wish exploration felt more natural here.
Cosmic Fantasy is pretty darn short for a role playing game. Even from this era. Truth be told it took me less than ten hours from start to credit roll. There isn’t really any optional content, and a lot of my time spent here was grinding due to the limited options. Cosmic Fantasy also isn’t a very difficult game. It seems to hold punches when you’re at your most vulnerable. This is particularly true when it comes to status effects only hitting one character at a time. With that said the game does require a fair bit of grinding. You don’t have enough options to venture far from the standard strategies. The only option is to become more powerful pretty much every time you get stuck. Money is also rarely an issue as the ultimate healing item is cheap in stores.
As I mentioned earlier the game is kind of ugly. The Turbografx-16 had a very limited color palette. Scenery is never lush because almost nothing is vibrant. The world map in particular is pretty bad looking. Not even the water is animated. The battle sequences fair a bit better with occasionally pretty backgrounds and fantastic enemy designs. This is especially true when the game focuses on futuristic settings. It’s the anime cut scenes that really stand out. These look absolutely amazing at times when in motion. The characters look fantastic in these moments. Cosmic Fantasy is a mixed bag graphically, but when it shines, it really shines. The soundtrack on the other hand is almost universally bad. The game doesn’t make use of redbook audio despite the CD format, and we’re stuck with boring bleeps and blips. I definitely wish the music was better.
Discover more from Infinity Retro
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
