Capcom's first RPG, made in 1989-90, is really an excellent game. It takes place in ancient china where war breaks out when no one can decide whether Final Fantasy or Pokemon is better and in the process create something of a mix between the two.
Actually, the game's storyline is taken right out of the ancient text, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," and, in fact, many of the game's characters are shared with the game series of that name as well. (And Dynasty Warriors, and DoaE's sequels of course, etc.) Battles are done kinda like if the light warriors in Final Fantasy fought other groups of light warriors, and as you progress in the game you can hire or convert other generals to join your side, somewhat like Pokemon, though there's only one of each general in existence. Which makes sense anyway.
I've got the game split up into 'chapters' though the game doesn't label them any differently. The game does noticably get stronger after defeating every major plot character(s) though, sometimes by leaps and bounds, so the movie will require drastically different strategies as the game goes on, depending on my strength, my enemies' 'soldiers' (HP), and my 'tactics' (magic).
And to complicate things further, Destiny of an Emperor comes with a function I've never quite seen replicated: All-Out. When the point comes that you're just going to have all your characters Attack over and over, you can select this and the game will play through rapidly, selecting your targets at random. While this makes it harder to optimize the battle, it can make the battle go much, much, much faster; in my movie, the first two battles are All-Out from the start, and the third uses very little All-Out. The end result? The third battle alone is nearly longer than the whole movie up to that point! So juggling between these two options to maximize time while keeping my group healthy to minimize trips to the inn will definitely be interesting. Do I All-Out to win as quickly as possible or do I strategize my attack, allowing me to optimize my strikes for successes and criticals on my side and failures and misses on theirs?
On the plus side, the game's random battles are nearly as easy to avoid as Dragon Warrior; stopping for one or two frames along the way can prevent any unwanted meanies from popping up. If I'm walking around China and I suddenly get attacked, it's because I want to capture the enemy general that attacks me (At this point in my planning, I'm only expecting to catch Han Zhong, Hua Xiong, and Pang Tong this way, the freebies in the game are powerful enough).
As far as level gaining is concerned, for a TAS there's not much to be gained from it. The only generals whose armies are influenced by your level are the Five Tigers (basically your main characters), Zhu Ge Liang (your main tactician), and Jiang Wei, a tactician apprentice you meet at the very end of the game that can give you the tactics that Liang doesn't want to learn (An Sha chiefly among them--the instant kill tactic. I plan to ENJOY this tactic quite a bit :) :)). The only other benefit to leveling is that you gain a new tactic practically every level, however, most tactics are not helpful, especially in a TAS (last I checked, NO ONE has any idea what the tactics Cheng Nei and Jie Ce actually DO).
http://www.twistedeye.net/DestEm.fcm
Here's the link to the WIP. I conquer Chapter One, the Yellow Scarves, and start battle six. I'm not sure what precisely the rom is called yet (y'know, the whole [!] [b1] business) because it came with a pack of poorly named roms, but I know that it is the official english version like the game I played for years as a kid, and it works pretty well, so it shouldn't be a problem. Even if it's not precisely the preferred rom, it should be close enough to not desync, hopefully.
And when you're loading the movie, look at its stats ;D (Oh and can someone help me hexedit my author info in there? I ended continuing the movie that I'd forgotten to put 'Twisted Eye' in)
All comments welcome, if anyone thinks that this game might not be a good enough game to TAS or if I don't look like I'm doing a great job, let me know, I'd love to hear it before I get too far in hehe. If you want to know WHY I do something I do, just ask
