Lennus: Quest of the Unknown Paladin

In 1993 Enix delivered a game called Paladin's Quest to the Super NES. It conspicuously lacked any paladins, but had plenty of aliens, robots, and bizarre plantlife. In Japan the game was called Lennus - Memories of an Ancient Machine. That change of title was not the worst part of the localization.

In either language, the hero's name, Chezni, is goofy and he's a silent protagonist anyway, so I'm renaming him(and the other nameable character) in honor of recently discovered dwarf planets.


"When potential for magic was found within him, he left his home to attend the magic school."


And madcap escapades. Don't forget the madcap escapades.


Students at a magic school? No one's ever done a story about students at a magic school before!


"Just because you seem to have some type of natural gift for magic doesn't mean you're anything special. If you're supposed to be so good at magic, why don't you prove it?"


"They say that there's some fantastic treasure in the Tower of Gabnid! Why don't you and Duke go and get it."


Meet Duke, my first ally(?).


"The world's a really strange place when an honor student like you asks us aout the Great Gabnid! There are all kinds of legends about Gabnid, but since he lived 10,000 years ago, we don't know the truth about him."

Duke is the worst person in the world.


Here's a glimpse of how obnoxious this translation is going to get. In this case, at least, it's not too much of a stretch to guess that this is a "home door" that will teleport me back to the last town I've visited.


Worst... Person... In... the...


"Lennus has a total of ten races living on it. Five on Naskuot, and five on Saskuot. Though it's said that there were far more long ago. Me? I'm a Guud. I was born here in the town of Ratsurk."


"Lennus has a Land Hemisphere and a Sea Hemisphere. The Land Hemisphere has two large continents. The northern one is Naskuot. The southern one is Saskuot. The magic school is in Naskuot."


"Legend has it that the entrance was sealed in order to keep that secret locked away. I wonder what that secret might be?"


Even though this is increasingly sounding like a bad idea, YES, Duke, I'll come with you, if it will shut you up.

"I have to take care of some business in the neighboring town of Ratsurk."


"Magic is produced by the actions of the spirits. Therefore, if you want to learn a new spell, you need to read the spirit writings."


"You sound like an idiot! Where did you hear such superstitious nonsense? Your own HP are used to cast magic."


Neat place. Very colorful. And they have a giant walkie-talkie!


"...there is supposed to be a really beautiful spiritualist called Haumea! The Master often goes to Ratsurk to recieve private magic lessons from her! I wonder why she does not attend the magic school? She is supposed to be our age. I wonder if she's shy or if she would like me? She's so cute that the Master is hogging her for himself. I feel cheated!"

(I'm guessing that it's supposed to say that the Master gives her private lessons, not the other way around...)


Um, you guys do know about this big thing balancing on a needle over here, right? Just checking.


Time for this adventure to get started. First, though, in light of what I've learned about magic, I'm going to put myself in the back of the line. Besides, if Duke wants to go into the tower so badly, he can be the meat shield.

A few steps into the Tower of Gabnid, and I get into my first battle!


Another bizarre feature of this game is the battle interface. The control pad is used to choose commands in a cross layout. It's quite fast when you get used to it.


Ready? Fight!


Duke attacks for six. Nice effort, Duke.


My FireS("S" for "single target") spell is more impressive. And as I cast fire spells, my power in that element will become stronger, so I want to use magic as much as I can without putting my HP at risk.


Experience and money work exactly how you'd expect them to.

The blue thing is a treasure chest. It contains SOG... I mean, fifty gold pieces.


Going up...


I encounter more easily-dispatched monsters as I climb the tower.


It's a short climb. At the top is a console of some kind.


Yeah, right. What am I, stupid? This button is obviously going to ruin my life. I'd have to be a complete idiot to press it.


We explored the tower and found a big machine. No one said anything about pushing any buttons. End of dare. Nothing more remains to be said.


Oh, bugger it!

Potentially even worse than the translation: that font is unforgivable. All the letters seem to be random different sizes...

Duke is the worst person in the world.



This is probably bad.

No problem, I'll just use my magic! Eat flame, monster!


Um... Taste my blade!


Behold the might of my left hand!


Please enjoy this head butt!



Ah.

Excuse me, I think it's more accurate to say that I was fatally murdered to death.




"The darkness is getting gradually lighter. The morning sun shines on Quaoar. From out of nowhere, a wind is blowing. Quaoar has awakened."


Wow, what did I do last night?


Oh yeah. Um, mistakes were made...


At least we still have our giant walkie-talkie.


"The school of magic is destroyed! All the pupils are dead! Quaoar, you must have done this! You broke the forbidden seal! You released the horrible Dal Gren! The ancient machine, Dal Gren, will lead Lennus to total destruction! Now there is nothing I can do. You activated Dal Gren, now you must stop it. I beg of you, Quaoar, stop Dal Gren, before Lennus is destroyed; you must stop it."


Fanfare... And title. Hey, let's switch to Japanese for a second.



Heck, if they hadn't changed the title they could have left all this stuff in.

That's it for part one. Stay tuned for more wondrous misadventures.

Hey, this game! I rented it for SNES many years ago, but never played very far. I remember enjoying the bright colored world at least. Looking forward to seeing more of this game with your LP

This game looks like an easter egg coloring kit and makes no sense at all. But I like it for some reason.

There is so much to dislike about Paladins Quest. Most notably being the atrocious visuals... but I am still intrigued.

Also:

Does that wreckage remind anyone else of a Gremlin, with a little halo?

This game looks likes some kind of pastel nightmare. Looking forward to reading, though.

I have to say that I'm impressed by the giant scary monster face. It is suitably giant and scary.

It does now!

Ah, Paladin's Quest. I rented that a few times back in the day. The translation's laughable, using HP for spells is terrible by its lonesome, the gameplay's very much a B-grade Dragon Quest wannabe, and you'll probably never wanna see a pastel color or celebrate Easter again after playing long enough. @_@

Still, I can't help but love the alien feel of the world and its enemy designs. Also, headbutting monsters to death. After Scott Pilgrim, I imagine them exploding into showers of G now. =D

There is a sequel, fittingly named Lennus II that never made it over either...and it's equally if not more bizarre than the first game.

Yeah, I know! I found out after seeing sprite rips from it. It's been fan translated too, though I haven't played it yet because I'm enjoying having a fat merchant get conked to death by robed green men with sticks and sleep magic. =P

I thought I had played this but I guess I was thinking of Lagoon. Well, I guess it's a good thing it slipped by. I've heard... bad... things? Maybe?

But then!

Just look at this game. Look at it!

The colors.

Every single part of that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Yeah, seriously. What kind of fucktards seal up a world-destroying Eldritch abomination with a hand-activated control panel in a three floor tower on magical school grounds that any double dog dared kid with halfway mediocre combat skills could fight their way up, anyway?

...Oh right. RPG fucktards. ^^; And Hogwarts fucktards.

man, fuck Duke

And then task an elementary school student with the annihilation of said world-devestating robo-monster.

I know this is a trope of every RPG ever, but I find it funny that this "Master" explicitly states that there's nothing he can do about it, then expects this kid to go fix it. He doesn't even get the stardard perk of be the "chosen one" or having some hereditary power.

I've never seen this game before BTW.

EDIT: Ninja'd

Lennus is defined by its two predominating moral principles: Never back down from a dare, and always fix something if you messed it up. Already some pretty heavy contradictions have begun to arise.

So if Quaoar wasn't a silent protagonist, he could dare the old man to stop Dal Gren.

But then the old man, with his greater wisdom and experience, would double dog dare Quaoar to do it.

I played this game very briefly once. So briefly that I never made it out of that first house. The graphics just put me off too much, I'm sorry to say (I expected all other content to be of similar quality). I can't decide if I love or hate the pastel look, but the map tiles are really freaking me out. I can't isolate it, but there's something really weird about them. Maybe kinda' PC-game-ish? I'm kinda' enjoying being disturbed by them. At any rate, that would be that, but the big monster scene actually impressed me as well, so my curiosity's piqued. But, that JP Lennus logo.... There's no way I could ever read that if I didn't know what I was looking for.

Man, I remember asking for this game for Christmas because of Paladins seeming cool after FFIV! And then being scared from playing RPGs that weren't from Squaresoft or at least a company I really liked (see: Nintendo and Earthbound). Still, unlike most other crappy JRPGs this left a distinct impression, and I actually kinda liked it when I gave it another chance when I was older (not that I made much progress), so I'm interested to see how this goes.

L

ENNUS

Heh, then Quaoar would respond with the unbeatable triple dog dare, which would force the old man to give it a shot...
Alas, not being able to speak just because you're the main character sucks