Rudra no Hihou Ranking: B
Rudra no Hihou, which translates to Treasure of the Rudras in English, is another Japan-only Square SNES RPG with a fan translation. The game looks and sounds great as it features detailed, animated sprites and an excellent soundtrack. Rudra no Hihou also has a few unique features that set it apart from other RPGs of its era, but these unfortunately have some…mixed results.
If you hear people talk about this game, you’ll mostly hear about its magic (“mantra”) system. The game allows you to type in any text you want and it’ll interpret it as a spell. So for instance…
Rudra no Hihou, which translates to Treasure of the Rudras in English, is another Japan-only Square SNES RPG with a fan translation. The game looks and sounds great as it features detailed, animated sprites and an excellent soundtrack. Rudra no Hihou also has a few unique features that set it apart from other RPGs of its era, but these unfortunately have some…mixed results.
If you hear people talk about this game, you’ll mostly hear about its magic (“mantra”) system. The game allows you to type in any text you want and it’ll interpret it as a spell. So for instance…
In the world of Rudra no Hihou, BONER costs 3 MP and does water damage to all enemies. Sometimes, the game will assign no element to a spell, in which case the word itself does damage:
Now...while highly amusing, the system is nowhere near as freeform as it appears. The game has specific words that become proper spells, and it fully expects you to find and use those. Given the game’s rather punishing difficulty, you do in fact need a proper set of spells. Going around shouting, “VAGINA” at enemies will not get you very far.
Yes, this game is hard. Expect to take ~200 damage at times in a game where 600 HP is considered inordinately high, only obtainable through heavy grinding (which I did, because I’m me). This is with neutral affinity, by the way. The game has elemental affinities in pairs: fire and water, thunder (electricity) and wind, and light and dark. Equipping armor in one element makes you resist that element but take increased damage from its opposing element. While similar systems exist in other games, I mostly ignored those and stuck to only non-elemental equipment for the obvious reason that I can’t possibly know every future enemy’s affinity ahead of time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really do that here – the vast majority of gear in Rudra no Hihou has elemental affinity, so only using non-elemental gear means passing up most equipment upgrades (and thus limiting characters’ stats). The game exploits this heavily as well – to give an example, the best headgear for many of the characters is the thunder-elemental Baker’s Cap. The last boss’s first two forms specialize in wind attacks, something you don’t learn until well after you’re locked out of buying new equipment. I walked into battle and promptly took 400 damage on her first attack before resetting and simply removing all my headgear. Yeah, my stats went down, but that made the fight actually possible. It’s…not a well-implemented system unless you read ahead in a guide or keep multiple sets of gear that you’re constantly swapping around.
Battles in general tend to throw you off. The enemy’s turn order constantly varies regardless of the speed stat (which is supposed to govern turn order), so an enemy may move last in one round and first in the following round, thereby dealing two potentially high-damage attacks back-to-back without you being able to do anything about it. You can mitigate this somewhat with buffs and debuffs, except the game has exactly no visual indicator for any of those, so good luck trying to determine whether that magic defense barrier you cast that’s been keeping the enemy from obliterating you is still active.
The game’s other unique aspect is my favorite part of Rudra no Hihou: the plot presentation. The game takes place over 16 days and follows three protagonists – the soldier Sion, the scholar Surlent, and the environmentalist Riza (there’s a fourth, the thief Dune, except I don’t know why he’s even in the game). All three of these protagonists’ scenarios happen in parallel, and you can jump from one scenario to another to see events from different perspectives or how the actions of one scenario affect another. To give you an example…
Early on in Sion’s scenario, he meets Foxy, the daughter of a faraway lord named Eremia. She joins him to help find his missing captain because she was hunting the same cult the captain was investigating when he disappeared. Meanwhile, Surlent and his boss (?) Dr. Muench are researching an ancient stone in some ruins near Eremia’s manor. Dr. Muench asks Surlent to borrow an artifact called the Holy Grail from Eremia because the Grail has containment powers that may help him handle the stone. Surlent goes to see Eremia, but then Dune appears and steals the Holy Grail. Soon after, Eremia’s house gets overrun by monsters (I guess the Grail was keeping them at bay or something).
Meanwhile, in Riza’s scenario, she gets roped into helping a resistance faction against an evil mayor named Kurgan. Kurgan then dies for no discernible reason and his ghost ends up in the Netherworld. Riza continues on and meets Dune, who decides to give her the Grail for also no discernible reason (maybe he thinks she’s hot?).
Dr. Muench decides to handle that ancient stone without the Grail, but then a lizard demon awakens from it and kills everyone in his lab, including Surlent. Surlent’s ghost goes to the Netherworld and meets Kurgan’s ghost, who tricks Surlent into opening a portal back to the surface world, where Kurgan possesses Surlent’s body. This portal also frees the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, except in this game, they’re not horsemen at all and consist of a sentient boulder, an aquatic parasite, a body-snatcher, and a 2-headed bird. I’m being completely serious.
Surlent, in an effort to reclaim his body, learns that he can use the Holy Grail to seal Kurgan’s soul, thereby kicking him out of Surlent’s body and allowing Surlent to re-inhabit it (which also brings him back to life, I guess). Surlent encounters Riza, who’d left the Grail in some ruins, so she directs Surlent to those ruins to recover the Grail. Surlent does and uses it to trap Kurgan within and reclaim his body.
Sion meanwhile recovers an ancient sword, but that frees a giant manta ray called a Heg that is being possessed by Yol-Gee, the aquatic parasite I mentioned that Surlent inadvertently set loose. Sion’s group beats down Yol-Gee and they demand Yol-Gee free the Heg, but Yol-Gee reveals the Heg is dying and he is actually keeping it alive. Yol-Gee gives Sion the Heg’s Ocarina, which can call and direct the Heg, and tells him he needs to find a way to heal the Heg if he wants Yol-Gee to let it go. Foxy wonders if her family’s Holy Grail can help, so they go to her house, but it’s overrun with monsters, and they find a note from Eremia to Foxy saying they’d retreated to a nearby town. Sion’s group goes there and Foxy reunites with her father. She asks about the Grail, whereupon Eremia explains that thieves jacked it and Dr. Muench was looking for it. Foxy leads the group to Dr. Muench’s lab, where they find his corpse, but the body-snatcher Nagiya (also inadvertently set loose by Surlent) possesses it and fights the group. Sion kicks Nagiya’s ass, but not before Nagiya kills Foxy. Dr. Muench’s ghost tells Sion to go to a hidden village where they have herbs that can revive the dead, so Sion goes there, where he meets Riza’s group. Riza’s group includes a reptile boy who’d stolen one of the revival herbs from the village, and Riza gives the herb to Sion to resurrect Foxy (yeah, death in this game means basically nothing).
Another member of Riza’s group is a mermaid, who notes that the Heg’s Ocarina is one of her people’s treasures. Sion gives her the Ocarina as thanks for them giving him the herb. He also says exactly nothing about Yol-Gee or the dying Heg, much to my annoyance. He’s not alone; eventually, Surlent gives the Grail back to Eremia, but absolutely fails to mention that it now contains the ghost of an evil ex-mayor.
You can probably see where I’m going with this review from reading that summary. I really liked the way plot points and characters interweave between the scenarios, but the plot points themselves are weak and tacked-on. Those Four Horsemen I mentioned have no role other than to give Sion some bosses to fight and to move the plot forward before the game unceremoniously forgets them. In fact, most of what I wrote above has nothing to do with the main plot of the game, which involves averting the end of the world. See, 19,999 years and ~11.5 months ago, the gods created a race called the Danans, who are basically humans except they’re all bald? 4,000 years after that, the gods used a space laser on the moon and a monster called a Rudra to commit genocide on the Danans (not sure why they needed a Rudra when they have a space laser, but whatever). The gods then created a race of merfolk. 4,000 years after that, the gods used their lunar space laser and another Rudra to commit genocide on the merfolk so they could populate the world with reptiles. 4,000 years after that, the gods used their lunar space laser and a third Rudra to commit genocide on the reptiles, then replaced them with giants. 4,000 years after that, the gods decided to stop killing people and…just kidding, they used their lunar space laser and a fourth Rudra to commit genocide on the giants and populate the world with humans. For those keeping count, this means humanity has been around for 3,999 years and ~11.5 months, leaving precisely 16 days before the 4,000-year mark when the gods use their lunar space laser and another Rudra to commit genocide on the humans and pave the way for whatever new lifeform they dream up. The protagonists eventually band together to stop this, but the game spends more time haphazardly introducing and discarding plot elements like four random not-horsemen than on the main story.
So…that’s my take on Rudra no Hihou: not a bad game, but has notable flaws. To wrap up, here is the closest the game has to a main character: Riza, the Chosen.
Yes, this game is hard. Expect to take ~200 damage at times in a game where 600 HP is considered inordinately high, only obtainable through heavy grinding (which I did, because I’m me). This is with neutral affinity, by the way. The game has elemental affinities in pairs: fire and water, thunder (electricity) and wind, and light and dark. Equipping armor in one element makes you resist that element but take increased damage from its opposing element. While similar systems exist in other games, I mostly ignored those and stuck to only non-elemental equipment for the obvious reason that I can’t possibly know every future enemy’s affinity ahead of time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really do that here – the vast majority of gear in Rudra no Hihou has elemental affinity, so only using non-elemental gear means passing up most equipment upgrades (and thus limiting characters’ stats). The game exploits this heavily as well – to give an example, the best headgear for many of the characters is the thunder-elemental Baker’s Cap. The last boss’s first two forms specialize in wind attacks, something you don’t learn until well after you’re locked out of buying new equipment. I walked into battle and promptly took 400 damage on her first attack before resetting and simply removing all my headgear. Yeah, my stats went down, but that made the fight actually possible. It’s…not a well-implemented system unless you read ahead in a guide or keep multiple sets of gear that you’re constantly swapping around.
Battles in general tend to throw you off. The enemy’s turn order constantly varies regardless of the speed stat (which is supposed to govern turn order), so an enemy may move last in one round and first in the following round, thereby dealing two potentially high-damage attacks back-to-back without you being able to do anything about it. You can mitigate this somewhat with buffs and debuffs, except the game has exactly no visual indicator for any of those, so good luck trying to determine whether that magic defense barrier you cast that’s been keeping the enemy from obliterating you is still active.
The game’s other unique aspect is my favorite part of Rudra no Hihou: the plot presentation. The game takes place over 16 days and follows three protagonists – the soldier Sion, the scholar Surlent, and the environmentalist Riza (there’s a fourth, the thief Dune, except I don’t know why he’s even in the game). All three of these protagonists’ scenarios happen in parallel, and you can jump from one scenario to another to see events from different perspectives or how the actions of one scenario affect another. To give you an example…
Early on in Sion’s scenario, he meets Foxy, the daughter of a faraway lord named Eremia. She joins him to help find his missing captain because she was hunting the same cult the captain was investigating when he disappeared. Meanwhile, Surlent and his boss (?) Dr. Muench are researching an ancient stone in some ruins near Eremia’s manor. Dr. Muench asks Surlent to borrow an artifact called the Holy Grail from Eremia because the Grail has containment powers that may help him handle the stone. Surlent goes to see Eremia, but then Dune appears and steals the Holy Grail. Soon after, Eremia’s house gets overrun by monsters (I guess the Grail was keeping them at bay or something).
Meanwhile, in Riza’s scenario, she gets roped into helping a resistance faction against an evil mayor named Kurgan. Kurgan then dies for no discernible reason and his ghost ends up in the Netherworld. Riza continues on and meets Dune, who decides to give her the Grail for also no discernible reason (maybe he thinks she’s hot?).
Dr. Muench decides to handle that ancient stone without the Grail, but then a lizard demon awakens from it and kills everyone in his lab, including Surlent. Surlent’s ghost goes to the Netherworld and meets Kurgan’s ghost, who tricks Surlent into opening a portal back to the surface world, where Kurgan possesses Surlent’s body. This portal also frees the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, except in this game, they’re not horsemen at all and consist of a sentient boulder, an aquatic parasite, a body-snatcher, and a 2-headed bird. I’m being completely serious.
Surlent, in an effort to reclaim his body, learns that he can use the Holy Grail to seal Kurgan’s soul, thereby kicking him out of Surlent’s body and allowing Surlent to re-inhabit it (which also brings him back to life, I guess). Surlent encounters Riza, who’d left the Grail in some ruins, so she directs Surlent to those ruins to recover the Grail. Surlent does and uses it to trap Kurgan within and reclaim his body.
Sion meanwhile recovers an ancient sword, but that frees a giant manta ray called a Heg that is being possessed by Yol-Gee, the aquatic parasite I mentioned that Surlent inadvertently set loose. Sion’s group beats down Yol-Gee and they demand Yol-Gee free the Heg, but Yol-Gee reveals the Heg is dying and he is actually keeping it alive. Yol-Gee gives Sion the Heg’s Ocarina, which can call and direct the Heg, and tells him he needs to find a way to heal the Heg if he wants Yol-Gee to let it go. Foxy wonders if her family’s Holy Grail can help, so they go to her house, but it’s overrun with monsters, and they find a note from Eremia to Foxy saying they’d retreated to a nearby town. Sion’s group goes there and Foxy reunites with her father. She asks about the Grail, whereupon Eremia explains that thieves jacked it and Dr. Muench was looking for it. Foxy leads the group to Dr. Muench’s lab, where they find his corpse, but the body-snatcher Nagiya (also inadvertently set loose by Surlent) possesses it and fights the group. Sion kicks Nagiya’s ass, but not before Nagiya kills Foxy. Dr. Muench’s ghost tells Sion to go to a hidden village where they have herbs that can revive the dead, so Sion goes there, where he meets Riza’s group. Riza’s group includes a reptile boy who’d stolen one of the revival herbs from the village, and Riza gives the herb to Sion to resurrect Foxy (yeah, death in this game means basically nothing).
Another member of Riza’s group is a mermaid, who notes that the Heg’s Ocarina is one of her people’s treasures. Sion gives her the Ocarina as thanks for them giving him the herb. He also says exactly nothing about Yol-Gee or the dying Heg, much to my annoyance. He’s not alone; eventually, Surlent gives the Grail back to Eremia, but absolutely fails to mention that it now contains the ghost of an evil ex-mayor.
You can probably see where I’m going with this review from reading that summary. I really liked the way plot points and characters interweave between the scenarios, but the plot points themselves are weak and tacked-on. Those Four Horsemen I mentioned have no role other than to give Sion some bosses to fight and to move the plot forward before the game unceremoniously forgets them. In fact, most of what I wrote above has nothing to do with the main plot of the game, which involves averting the end of the world. See, 19,999 years and ~11.5 months ago, the gods created a race called the Danans, who are basically humans except they’re all bald? 4,000 years after that, the gods used a space laser on the moon and a monster called a Rudra to commit genocide on the Danans (not sure why they needed a Rudra when they have a space laser, but whatever). The gods then created a race of merfolk. 4,000 years after that, the gods used their lunar space laser and another Rudra to commit genocide on the merfolk so they could populate the world with reptiles. 4,000 years after that, the gods used their lunar space laser and a third Rudra to commit genocide on the reptiles, then replaced them with giants. 4,000 years after that, the gods decided to stop killing people and…just kidding, they used their lunar space laser and a fourth Rudra to commit genocide on the giants and populate the world with humans. For those keeping count, this means humanity has been around for 3,999 years and ~11.5 months, leaving precisely 16 days before the 4,000-year mark when the gods use their lunar space laser and another Rudra to commit genocide on the humans and pave the way for whatever new lifeform they dream up. The protagonists eventually band together to stop this, but the game spends more time haphazardly introducing and discarding plot elements like four random not-horsemen than on the main story.
So…that’s my take on Rudra no Hihou: not a bad game, but has notable flaws. To wrap up, here is the closest the game has to a main character: Riza, the Chosen.