Other Life: Azure Dreams
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Other Life: Azure Dreams is a 1999 Game Boy Color port of the PlayStation game, Azure Dreams. The port was praised by fans as having smoother game mechanics than the original game.
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[edit] Story
The story of the gameboy game is pretty much the same as the playstation versions, where you start off in Monsbaiya as Koh, a boy who has just turned 15, and now can climb the Tower of Monstrosity. On his first adventure in the tower he meets Kewne, a small (and annoying) blue dragon. Kewne says he knew Koh's father Guy, who was the greatest monster tamer ever, and so Koh climbs the tower looking for Guy, collecting and hatching eggs, battling monsters and talking to holograms of some ancient woman.
[edit] Gameplay
The game plays much like the playstation version, where each time you move, everything else get's a move as well,(Except monsters with double speed, which get two moves for your one, stupid souviners...) You find weapons lying through the tower (Swords and Sticks, nothing more...) and shields, which add power to your own attacks. Alongside Koh fight up to two 'familiars', monsters you have tamed. These monsters become increasingly more important as you climb the tower, seeing as no matter how hard you try, Koh is weak, and can't fight, also, each time you leave the tower, your level resets to 1, where as your monsters retain their level. Fighting involves walking up to monsters and pressing A, it's a really easy system to master, either that or you can sit back and press select, which skips your move, allowing your monsters to attack (They can attack on your move, but they get in the way when they do.)As in the playstation version, there are three ways to leave the tower. 1)Koh dies, and you go home losing all your items, except your monsters. 2) You can use an olimseed, it sacrifices one of your monsters to teleport you home with all your items. (Something I found out while messing around, on a non-boss fight, you can throw olimseeds at monsters, and they go away, also if I remeber, Kewne complains about them the first time you find one.) 3)The ever loved Wind Gem, it teleports you home with no downsides. (It can also be used to kill monsters, but make sure you keep one with you at all times.) When you leave the tower with a Wind Gem or Olimseed, you keep all your items, which can get annoying to carry around, so you can either go to you mother and open your safe, placing valuable items (Like ovaseeds) in it, or you can sell them at on of the many shops around the town. If you try entering the tower with more then five items, some pixies say you can't because you have to much stuff, so sell it. Also alike with the playstation version is the ability to beautify Monsbaiya, although the gameboy's version is not as versitle. Pretty much, you give Nico (I think that's her name, the one with green hair) money, either 1000 or 10000 gold, and she'll eventually turn the desert into a garden. You can also increase the size of your house by paying 10000 and then 50000 to the builder.
[edit] The Tower
The game has a random map generator for the tower, making each time you go up (or down) the tower different. Each floor (except some floors and boss fights) is filled with treaseures, weapons, eggs and monsters. At first, you fight nothing but wumps and catawupms (wump=bouncy ball, catawump=bouncy ball with horns) but the higher you get, the stronger the monsters get.At level 20 you have your first boss fight, which can seem tough, seeing as how Gance, the first boss, is a tad overpowered, so you will have to take multiple tripls up the tower, and chances are that Koh will never kill Gance, the game is made so you can only spen a certain amount of time on each level, when that time runs out, there's an earthquake and you go up a floor, (yes, the logic behind htat is questionable, I know.) This stops your from really being able to use Koh on the higher levels, unless you wait for the earthquake on every single level, which can get annoying. Lying over the tower are seeds, which can be either helpful or not helpful simply put. There are seeds like Feroseeds, which increase the users attack, and there are also things like Levaseeds, which decrease your level, (I always thought they were useless, your supposed to use them on enemies, or yourself if you want, but using them on enemies is useless unless you have alot, 1 level doesn't make that much difference for enemies.) When you beat S-Gance on level 29, you go to level 30, talk to some guy, beat him, then get the ultimate egg and go home. The ultimate egg is a waste of time, it just levels up Kewne alot, and gives you acess to level 31, the floor in the sky. You go there, then you can go to the basement levels of the tower, there is 99 of them...
[edit] Monsters
(I'll probably put a completed monster book up here when I get one.) The whole point Koh's life as a monster tamer is to tame monsters, (duh,) which can be bought at a shop or hatched from an egg. When you find an egg in the tower,it gets added to your items, you then have to warm it to get the monster inside. Normally you don't know what the egg will turn out as, but the item Truespecs can show you, and most monsters turned into eggs by Ovaseeds will retain their monster name as an egg. All of your monsters have MP and HP, Monster Power abd Hit Points. At the start of the game, your going to need to find alot of Vit Seeds, which revorer a monsters MP by 50. When a monster runs out of MP, it falls on the ground and stays there, when a monster runs out og HP, it gets returned to your pack, and you can't bring it out again unless you heal it with a Viviray. When you find a monster egg in the tower and hatch it, the monster comes out at level 1, so it's usually not much use on the higher levels, so you have some choices. 1)Leave it in our pack and take it home, 2)Send it home, there is a send back option on all your monsters, they will be in your monster room (It's not called that, I just call it that, it's more like a stable.) 3)Use a wind gem to go home so you can start on level 1 again and train it or 4)Fuse it with another monster. Fusing is always fun, it pretty much just sitcks two monsters abilities together, allowing you to make better mosnters, and also sometimes it changes the monster into a better one, (with the exception of Kewne, who can never change or get Olimseeded...why...) either that or if the two monsters have differnent elements, it can change elements. There are four elements, but generally, you can only get three of them, there is Wind, Water, Fire and Darkness. Only three monsters I have so far are Darkness, Hykewne, (A grey spikey Kewne which can't talk, thank god,) Dark Kewne, (Same as Hykewne, but weaker,) and Maisoul, the final boss (Yes, when you finish the game you get the ultimate monster, and he got wumped in my game.) All monsters have special powers they can use, depending on their species and element it changes, from super powered fireballs to healing winds to Darkling.(There is one evil power, it's good...so good...) (I'll continue later)
