#28: Lagoon

Nice waterfall I guess?

I recognized the name Lagoon but I couldn't really remember why. I was thinking it was an action-adventure game where you saved townspeople by opening chests but that would be game 72 on the list, Soul Blazer. I'm sure I rented Lagoon as a kid but I guess it really didn't stick with me. It turns out Lagoon actually is an action-adventure game, but not a memorable one. The game started with me forced to wander around town trying to find a plot hook. The town was full of buildings with doors. Some doors I could open. Others I couldn't. There was no way to tell which was which which was pretty frustrating. Ultimately by visiting, in order, mayor's house, church, cave entrance, church, mayor's house, church, weapon shop I was finally able to get started.

Huzzah!

I opened this treasure chest and it locked up the game and played a huge, unskippable fanfare. Doo da dooooooo! You found 10 gold. The mayor gave me 300 gold to start my adventure which was enough money to buy every single thing in the store. 10 gold is not interesting. It certainly didn't deserve a fanfare.

ARGH! GO UP! AND AROUND!

I eventually made it to the end of the stupid cave and found the dude I was sent in to rescue. He was injured and took a healing potion I found in a chest to similar huge fanfare. I gather he wasn't going to move until I gave him one, so it's a good thing I found that chest first... Otherwise I would have had to backtrack the stupid cave, then come back here. Once the guy started moving it turned into an escort quest. I had to go back through the whole cave with this idiot following me. Idiot-boy moved very slowly (I guess for flavour because he was injured?) and would try to take the shortest path to me. Even if that path included a little impassable crack. Then he'd just stand there looking stupid until I walked back up to him and showed him the right way to go.

WHY WON'T YOU DIE?!?

I got frustrated with the escort quest so I tried to get my friend killed. Nope. The enemies would just walk right through him without doing any damage to him at all. He would appear to be invincible. Why did he need my help if he can't take any damage? Just walk home on your own, loser. So I took off to the exit without him... But then it wouldn't let me go into doors unless he was beside me, so even if I cleared a straight line path to the door I then had to wait for him to catch up before proceeding.

Slow escort quest coupled with wonky controls coupled with a pretty bad combat system meant I just walked away from the game rather than finish the escort quest. I don't remember getting this bitter at the game as a kid so it's quite possible that World of Warcraft managed to jade my perception of escort quests. 

The combat system was annoying in that my sword was only a couple pixels long and I'd only hit the enemy if I managed to line it up mid-swing with an enemy. My health bar regenerated and theirs didn't so I ended up just charging into every enemy and mashed the attack button until they died. I'd be full by the time I got to the next enemy so I didn't care how much damage I took. This is bad game design, I think. I want combat to be interesting and then to have consequences for failure. Oh well.

Also frustrating... I was going up levels but I only found out by checking the status screen. No dings. No messages. Nothing. Opening a chest with 10 gold in it was worth a fanfare and a pause. Leveling up? Nothing at all. That's the wrong way to design a game. People like to level up. Tell them when they did!

That said, if I didn't have a lot of action-adventure experience this probably wouldn't have been so bad. And it was the first such game on the system. Well, it came out in the same month as Super Castlevania IV... Lagoon should probably be happy it's earlier in the alphabet since I suspect it would get a worse rating in the other order...

Rating: C