Introduction

It's been over 20 years since Virtual Hydlide was released for the Sega Saturn and I just finished it for the first time about an hour ago. I originally purchased the game used at Funco Land back in the late '90s and barely even touched it. I remember loading it up and thinking it was terrible and quickly went back to other games like Magic Knight Rayearth and Dragon Force.

But I've always had this nagging feeling that I should play this game....for some strange reason. I'm glad I finally did, but it was such a weird game that I felt the need to type up a review for it.

Virtual Hydlide is an action RPG that was released exclusively for the Sega Saturn in 1995. It's the fifth and final game in the Hydlide series, which originally began on the NES. The game is actually a remake of the first Hydlide game, which meant nothing to me since I've never played any other Hydlide game.

This game is just...weird. It's weird right from the start with its unusual "Virtual Hydlide" name. Virtual? What does that mean, exactly? All I can figure is they were trying to latch onto Sega's common practice of throwing "Virtual or Virtua" at the beginning of games in that era. I know Sega published the game in Japan and Europe, but who knows.

Anyways, the front of the packaging indicates this is an action RPG, which I suppose is accurate. There is definitely action and some RPG elements, but it does some very unusual things and even to this day, it feels so different from other RPGs.

Now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, let me go ahead and lay it out there for you. This game is terrible. Like, really bad. It's mostly due to a horrendous framerate that makes the game nearly unplayable, but it's so much more. As I've said many times before, I feel there's a redeeming quality in every game and Virtual Hydlide is no exception. The purpose of this review isn't necessarily to berate this game since you can find lots of reviews on the Internet that will do that. I'm more interested in highlighting some of the things I noticed on my 5 hours or so playing the game.

Before we go any further, here's a short gameplay video I recorded so you can get a feel for the game.

Graphics

The game uses digitized graphics, which were all the rage back in the mid-90s as CD-based formats became the norm. The game is 3D in the sense that you wander around a 3D world, similar to other Saturn games like Ghen War and Tomb Raider. But as far as I can tell, all of the "props" in the game are actually 2D (digitized) sprites. This includes the main character, enemies, treasure chests, foliage, signs, etc. It's very similar to FPS games at the time like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.

The graphics aren't awful, but they're not amazing or anything (for the hardware). This is an early Saturn game and it shows. There are a number of dungeons to explore and they all have a sort of theme, which kept things somewhat fresh.

The main issue with the graphics is the engine simply can't handle them. I've played A LOT of Saturn games and this one has to be the most poorly optimized game I've ever played. I'm talking like an average of 10 FPS and a few dips into single digits, depending on the area you're in. I'm really not sure why it's so slow since the graphics aren't that great and the draw distance is rather short. It's a shame, really, because this is without a doubt the most crippling aspect of the game.

One nice touch is that as you acquire new equipment, your character's appearance will change in-game. Cool?

Sound / Music

The sound effects are about as basic as it gets. Nothing special, but they worked fine. Whatever.

On the other hand, I actually thought the music was decent for the game. Each dungeon had its own theme to again keep things fresh and I don't recall any obnoxious music. I won't be listening to the soundtrack anytime soon, but it was fine while playing the game.

Gameplay

To its credit, Virtual Hydlide does have some interesting tricks up its sleeve in terms of gameplay. Not all of these pan out in a positive way, but at least they tried some new things. One of the more interesting things is that the game world is randomly generated each time you play. This means the locations of dungeons and items will vary from game-to-game. You can also enter a code / seed to replay a certain world. This is a pretty common thing nowadays (at least in survival / Minecraft-style games), but back in 1995 I don't think I had ever seen anything like it.

It gives the illusion of a random world with an endless number of adventures...but that's not really accurate. The problem is, the quests you need to complete are always the same. Sure, you're going to a different spot on the map, but you always do "this" before "that" and so on. Cool idea, but it falls short in the long run.

As far as I can tell, the difficulty selection for the game only affects whether your map is initially explored and / or if you have quest markers. This is another interesting idea, especially given the random world aspect, but with how slow the game runs, I saw no point in making the act of traveling around the world anymore tedious and therefore played on "Easy". This gave me a full map and quest markers and I'm totally okay with that.

And boy is it a good thing I went with quest markers! This game just drops you right in the middle of things. There's basically no direction or anything. Just...go. The instruction manual gives you some hints for completing the first two (extremely short) quests, but after that you're on your own. Without quest markers, I would've never completed this game due to its tedious nature. Don't get me wrong here, I don't need a game to hold my hand or anything. But you gotta give me SOMETHING to go on, especially if the game itself isn't particularly good to begin with.

So you go to a quest marker and you do something, which is generally defeat an enemy and retrieve some sort of treasure. Much like The Legend of Zelda games, this new treasure lets you open a new dungeon and / or defeat a boss you previously couldn't.

Leveling up in the game is really odd. Instead of getting experience by defeating enemies, you only level up by completing a quest. (I think a similar system was used in the game Silver a few years later.) But killing enemies does give you "points". You also gain the same points by picking up gold pieces....say whaaaat? Points are used for several different things:

• You can use them to buy items from a floating crystal. I only found one of them and the main quest never leads you to it...not even sure the instruction manual mentions it either (could be wrong on that), so it's just kinda random. I guess this is where the "gold" aspect comes in?
• There's no magic in the game and thus no MP meter or anything. However, some weapons have special attacks that you can use by pressing B+C together. Using these attacks requires you to spend some points.
• After you complete the game, your total points are recorded as a High Score, much like an arcade game.

So the more you spend on items or use special attacks, the lower score you get at the end of the game. It's an interesting system, though completely irrelevant if you don't care about high scores (and I do not).

The game utilizes a "weight" system where you can only carry a certain amount of weight. You can also only equip a certain amount of weight and you can only carry a certain amount of items. I had real issues with this early on since I hadn't found the crystal store thingy and had a plethora of potions / herbs, but didn't have room to carry anything else. Or I'd find a new weapon and wouldn't be able to equip it unless I unequipped my armor or shield. It's a rather frustrating system, especially early on when you're a lower level and can't carry as much. I also didn't like the fact that I couldn't sell items, so I'd have to just drop them on the ground and waste them.

Again, the RPG elements aren't necessarily bad, but they're just...odd. What about the action? Unfortunately, it's a little more straightforward: it's not good. It's pretty basic, really. You walk around and hit a button to swing your weapon. You hit an enemy a few times and it dies. The end.

Normal enemies were really easy to defeat and posed no real threat. The only exception were the mimics later in the game since they can inflict the "horrified" status effect, which is awful to deal with. Heck, most of the enemies won't even attack you. They'll just walk past you and wander aimlessly. They respawn regularly and you don't get a lot of points for them anyways, so I just started running past everything. That introduced a new problem in that enemies would respawn while I was running to my destination! I would be stopped in my tracks because a super simple enemy spawned while I was running and I'd have to (slowly) side-step to keep moving. Grrr.

There are a few bosses and they were all okay, I suppose. They were all pretty easy, especially once you learn their extremely limited fight patterns. But they were different than the normal enemies and somewhat rewarding to face.

One positive note about the gameplay is you can save anywhere, which was really helpful.

Aside from a short FMV intro and outro, there's basically no story. The main character never speaks, there are no NPCs to interact with, and the final boss doesn't even say anything. The general flow of the story is:

FMV Intro --> Fight Stuff and No Talking --> FMV Outro

Replay Value

Given the random world feature, the replay value should be high...but the game is so tedious, it's simply not worth replaying. For most gamers, it's not even worth playing once. But if you do enjoy the game, it has a few positive things going for it in terms of replay value:

• Random world generation
• Difficulty settings that impact exploration
• It's not a terribly long game, so you can probably complete it in a couple of hours if you know what you're doing (even with a random world)

Conclusion

In the end, Virtual Hydlide is not a good game. It has some interesting ideas, but is ultimately hampered by some terrible performance that renders the game nearly unplayable for most gamers. It's not the worst game I've ever played, but it might be the worst RPG I've ever finished. I can only recommend this to the most die-hard RPG and / or Sega Saturn fans out there...and even then, you probably won't enjoy it.