Famidaily - Episode 0789 - Lagrange Point (ラグランジュポイント)

It's time at last for one of the most well known technical power houses on the Famicom.
Famidaily is my attempt to catalog all of the commercially released Famicom games.

[@SovrinnK]

Music is my #1 draw to the Famicom library, so thank you for spending so much time on the music here. This one's a classic OST up there with Megami Tensei 2 and Gimmick! among the most impressive-sounding soundtracks on the FC. It also happens to, academically-speaking, totally slap~

[@romannikonenko7325]

And don't forget Madara's top notch OST 🙂

[@SovrinnK]

@@romannikonenko7325 Yeah! Other big ones for "expanded sound" would be King of Kings, Rolling Thunder, Mappy Kids, Erika to Satou, Just Breed, and of course Akumajou Densetsu. Nes Dev has an exhaustive list of all Famicom programs with expanded audio, including FDS games that use the FM channel. It's worth listening to every single one of them to see the approaches different devs used!

[@MonkeyDCruz]

I would kill for a remake or even an official rerelease of Lagrange Point. A M2 rerelease with some QOL features like save states or rewinding would go a long way towards taking the edge off of some of the pain points in the game.

[@vidarlystadjohansen9829]

You do amazing work

[@mariusamber3237]

This game is 'hard' at times... but I'd still argue it's one of the best Famicom RPGs from 1991. Well, the music is awesome, the plot is a fun sci-fi romp and the gameplay is not bad, if somewhat unoriginal (but that's to be expected). It's not my favourite, but it's very close. Soon we'll get to my pick for the best one! Funny how most of the really good RPGs were released in the first half of the year.

[@romannikonenko7325]

There's also a pretty good game released at the end of 1991 by Natsume 🙂

[@romannikonenko7325]

For me Lagrange Point is another 5 star game and the one which is definitely more replayable than many other RPGs on a system. Weapon synthesis, changeable party members, wonderful background music and sharp effects, dramatic plot (somewhat in vein of FF2), easy-to-navigate dungeons and helpful battle NPCs in late game. Yeah, it is a bit generic if you go for a battle system or saving points but overall Lagrange Point is a pretty fun game and easily the best Konami JRPG up until Suikoden 😉

[@sjake8308]

I've been playing this one recently and while I mostly agree with you, I do think the game has a few too many wrinkles to be a genuinely 5-star game: For example, there are a couple of points where the difficulty is really unbalanced (particularly Oregi), inventory space is very limited for a game that expects the player to craft weapons, party members cannot be changed before reaching Satellite Base (so if you have a fully party before meeting Kiesa, you'll have to defeat Oregi without him) and basic attacks requiring BP was a pretty bad design choice. All that said, there are a lot of things that Lagrange Point does really well and it's a very good game overall, just not quite a 5-star one. It's a pity that this was never released outside of Japan and that Konami never revisited it.

[@romannikonenko7325]

@@sjake8308 yep, Oregi needs a little grind, that's for sure, but I was fine with 3-4 lvls+ at that point. Inventory space is average (in Mother there are only 8 slots for every party member and it was still okay'ish for me). Weaponcraft was pretty smooth, because I was using buyable lv2-3 weapons and the lv4 ones were huge upgrade for me while the lv5 metalrangs is all you need to beat the game. Satellite Base is reachable in about 5-6 hours of 20+hrs gameplay so it's not that late. BP draining attacks are annoying at first but when you get your first robot party member it's not a problem anymore with its BP exchange which is quite helpful before you get to bigger BP tanks. After beating Oregi and getting BP3000/4000 tanks the game is practically a breath 😊 P.S. Next time I'll play this (for the 4th time) I'm gonna time my progress/levels/party members for the whole game, but Pamil+Astro+Rita party was pretty powerful for all my healing (HPRestore 2,3 and 4) and buffing (Cheer, Power) needs in late game 😉

[@DragonheadSkilax]

I quite liked this game. I enjoy an RPG that lets you meet lots of party members and build your own group with throughout the story. The enemy encounter rate was heavy though. I certainly would want to collect the guidebooks and to see the whole comic in entirety.

[@thepositiver9977]

Only know this game for it's music and it's incredible!

[@darktetsuya]

man that intro music is definitely giving me serious PC88/MSX SNATCHER vibes! One I never got around to but will have to make it a point to fire up the ROM at some point!

[@absolutezeronow7928]

One of the games I was looking forward to. A great game by Konami. Too bad the US never got it.

[@HaydenTheHistorian]

That end game is absolutely brutal

[@romannikonenko7325]

Yep, you need those L5 weapons and Rita to heal you 😮

[@noaht2005]

believe it or not, this is one of two famicom carts with FM music. The other one is an unlicensed k-pop karaoke game. Seriously

[@anactualmotherbear]

A technically impressive game that I simply cannot play on my current set-up. I have an AV Famicom, yes, but my Everdrive is for the NES. God bless my GF, she just didn't know the difference, and I loved the present anyway. While it fits perfectly into the 72 to 60 pin converter I'd have to do a mod to the converter to make any sound channel boosting capable. The other option is to get the physical cart, which... is also expensive.

[@dieinfire920]

You could just emulate it. Using an everdrive isn’t the same as emulating? Like the reproduction carts are the same as downloading mp3/flac files and record them on CDs

[@anactualmotherbear]

@@dieinfire920 It's mainly the fact that I want to hear the music coming out of my tv as I am playing on my actual Famicom. Getting the N8 Pro for Famicom would have fixed this issue, but I am not greedy.

[@carlozulueta-de9hd]

Noice! 😃😎💪

[@discountfeces]

This looks great! Like Phantasy Star meets the og gundam universe with a cute look for the enemies I hope it isnt expensive.

[@RndStranger]

Unfortunately, prices have shot up in the past couple of years. I paid 1500 yen for my copy in 2020 and a quick check now puts it around 4000 yen a copy.

[@discountfeces]

@@RndStranger well that's expensive but not unobtainable. I will keep an eye out for it at Canadian sellers and/or import it

[@rooty]

What happens if you play it on an overdrive without extra chips? Do you lose a sound channel or something or is it completely scrambled

[@RndStranger]

I can't say I've tried. The game does rely on the additional IRQ channels for some visual effects, though, so you might get some weird results.

[@stripedhyenuh]

If not for the downright abusive encounter rate, especially later in the game, I'd highly recommend this game to any RPG fan. But my god the encounter rate is so atrocious that it rivals the fundamentally broken early Dragon Quest clones. The equipment combination system is cool though, it's like Vagrant Story nearly a decade early.

[@sjake8308]

I've been playing this of a while now and, while the encounter rate is high, it doesn't seem egregious for a JRPG of this period. I had also observed that the weapon crafting system is vaguely reminiscent of Vagrant Story, though thankfully it's nowhere near as complex! 😆

[@fushigiman140]

I don't like BP mechanic every action cost BP even normal attack if BP run out your attack drop to 1 damage