For years the Demon Tower has beckoned you and, today, on your fifteenth birthday, you have come of age. Do you follow in your father's footsteps and enter the Tower or live a peaceful life in the town of Monsbaia - it's time to choose. And so the story begins in Azure Dreams. Play the role of an apprentice monster tamer searching a magical tower for demon eggs to collect and grow. Once collected, these eggs can be sold for profit or raised into friendly helpers that'll aid you in your exploration of the higher reaches of the tower. With a flexible story system, that allows you to build a prosperous town using earned funds, and a random map generator that makes each foray into the tower a new experience, Azure Dreams will keep fans absorbed for hours in a game that combining traditional RPG elements with monster raising and city building.

An often overlooked gamebyfrom Missouri United States20 Jul 2006Azure Dreams is a little gem from Konami that seems weird and strange when you examine the box, in fact I would never have played it if it were not for my wife who picked it out on a dead saturday night at blockbuster. It appeared and went with little fanfare, and kind of like Harvest Moon, appears and disappears in quasi-obscurity developing a small following for those who venture a risk on it.It stars you as a young lad who doesn't talk very much, seeking fame and fortune in the monster tower.

Much like old computer rpgs, the actual adventuring takes place all in one tower. This may draw off some as it seems to involve the monotonous tasks of; going down, climbing out, going to where you were before - maybe making it a little further, repeat. This is actually not as dull as it sounds, the 'monster tower' is rendered on the fly, once you hit the 3rd floor, things start looking very different and steady maps are a thing of the past. Also, you can gain levels (and therefore life) in the tower, but when you leave, it's back to one.

Jun 28, 2007  » Azure Dreams » how do you get out of the monster tower. If you have a MANOEVA, you can let it transform into another monster and use an.

Yes, yes I know. It's strange. It takes some getting used to. Good news is that your monsters keep their levels always, and you can make progress after securing some good armor and swords.

There is also the Pokemonish aspect of raising your monsters which you find. Yes you guessed it, in the Monster Tower. It's not an imitator of the craze, but there are different monsters to 'evolve' and level up, and much like Pokemon, the monster tower and it's monsters are about all the game knows or cares about. (what life?) Money is made through the items you find and keep (you can walk in the tower with only 5 and leave with only 20) and sometimes. Just sometimes. You'll find one of those rare eggs to take home.

Your mission as the young lad is to climb the tower as your dead father did before you, and maybe help your mom get a better house.Praise:It's all in one place, but it's always something new! The tower will always have different treasure, but the enemy types per floor can be depended on for attack strategies to be developed.Be the toast of the town as well as the tower!

The people will treat you different depending on your current success in the tower. There is also quite a bit of renovations to undertake in the city. The many buildings you create(with that hard earned gold from selling monster eggs and spare items)range from mini-gamish to helping you meet the ladies. Did I mention the ladies?Ladies!

The memory card save info seems to consider it part of the quest if you can make a girl (or all of them) fall in love with you. They all have different personalities and some are downright funny.

Nothing serious, but like the town, they are there for a little diversion.Here eggy-eggy. They are difficult to find, but not so hard you'll be pulling your hair out. It always made it fun to see if you could walk away with an egg on your way home.Gripes:Um.

What's the point? Other than climbing the tower, this game's not much on story. Other than finding out what happened to your father, there is not much to impact (besides saving a girl's life or two).I know what I want to renovate. The stores in Azure Dreams are largely a joke.

Only one or two are any good, and the weapon shop and monster shop never sell anything worthwhile. I know they say all the other hunters cleaned them out, but come on! If you want a good weapon or sheild, don't look to buy one - you gotta find that sucker.A pain since losing it means finding another, hope you kept a spare at home.Help! I need a crystal!

This game has the unusual feature of only being able to exit the tower in certain ways. One is to feed your pet a fruit that will kill it and take you home. The better option is the wind crystal, which will warp you home at any time. Now here's the catch. You have to find one. This is quite a struggle to the budding young explorer, and you will want to scour the floors until you find one to keep safe. If you die, you exit the tower, and the game automatically saves it, meaning whatever good sword you took in there with you - didn't come back with you.

You might want to have a backup save. However, the crystals become noticably easier the more you play, and are never really that rare.Graphics: 6The characters have a nice anime style to them, the opening movie shows more flash and bang than is in the actual game though. The spells you cast from your familiar monsters and from crystals are nothing to wow you. The trippy backgrounds on some of the floors is cool though.Gameplay: 6There is a little learning curve of moving on a 8 way directional turn based comabt game.

You can always use the wind crystals because the enemies won't sneak up on you since you get your turn before they do. One move for you, one move for them. It's alot faster than it sounds, and once you get used to the camera it's tolerable.

Some of techniques, throwing items for instance - requires pressing two buttons, which if done incorrectly, will cause you to do the wrong thing, and if you happen to be next to a nasty monster with little life, probably dead. On the plus side, your monsters have several AI options, all work pretty well depending on which you pick (hardly any getting stuck or lost).Sound: 7It has an arabian feeling to some of it, some of that tower music will stay in your head for awhile, none of it obnoxious.Story: 5Err. Your dad was a great monster hunter.

Um, why not be a monster hunter and see what happened. Or at least go corpse counting.Originality: 8This game takes what is does and remains pretty refreshing. The odd style of 3D turn combat and multitudes of wild items make the monster tower never boring.

It may be the only place on the block, but at least you want to go back in time and time again (I wudda made it to the elevator if it were'nt for that U-Boat! One more time.)Challenge: 7Once you get used to that back to square one level thing you do each time you leave, it becomes essential to realize you won't make it to the high floors without some help. There is no 'instant teleporter' back to where you were before. Those monsters you get WILL have to be used, and by building their non-wavering levels, you can make some progress. Some of the challenge comes from not just figuring out how to get to the next floor without meeting a pack of big monsters, but in finding the infrequent sand needed to upgrade your sword and sheild.

Yes, those are permanent too, and woe befall you should you die and lose them.Replay: 9The tower is fun! You'll spend hours watching out for hidden traps (aahh monster lair!!), getting one of the rare items and relish in getting a new egg and then trying to discover what is in it (they come unmarked, just like those.ahem. plain brown bags you get shipments in the mail from.)Overall (Mr.

T's bottom line): I pity the fool who passes up this game without a good look! It'll make a wonderful addition to an adventurer's library for months of gameplay!

Azure Dreams for Game Boy, supporting a full color palette on Game Boy Color, is the game that introduced me to the roguelike genre and with all the time I’ve spent enjoying it as a player I wanted to step back and review it from a game designer’s perspective. Developed by KCE Nagoya and released by Konami to the US handheld market in 2000, the title served as an adaptation of a PlayStation title of the same name. Some features from its predecessor, such as building a relationship with one of the town’s girls, were removed and other content, like more tameable monsters, was added.

StoryThe plot revolves around the quest of the player character, Kou, to find out what happened to his father who never returned from the nearby Monster Tower one night. Set in the town of Monsbaiya the player will raise monster familiars to help him climb the tower himself. The story conveys the player’s objective adequately and does not interrupt the gameplay very often. It is relatively simple so players looking for a more in-depth narrative may not be satisfied.Treasure hunters come from afar seeking the tower's riches.

GraphicsThe sprites in-game all look very well crafted especially the in-battle and status sprites for each monster. When you talk to NPCs some will have close up character portraits that are animated and very detailed.

On the other hand, some floors of the Monster Tower have sprite colors that can blend with monster sprites on occasion, which can be a little inconvenient, but Kou’s sprite is always recognizable even in a very visually busy screen.An example of the more detailed battle sprites. SoundThe quality of the music and sound effects in the game is fantastic and there is a surprising variety with unique tracks for each shop, every set of 10 floors in the Monster Tower, and the town itself. However, most of the time you will be listening to a loop of the same track for whatever set of 10 floors you’re in at the Monster Tower.

It doesn’t detract from the gameplay but can feel too repetitive if you do not enjoy that particular track. GameplayThe majority of the game is spent in the Monster Tower, which plays as a graphical roguelike. For every action you take every monster on the floor also performs an action, usually movement or attacking.

Ice lakes basin colorado map. You can issue specific commands to the monsters in your possession via menus or leave them to their own devices after selecting one of 5 preset AI tendencies. Navigating the menus themselves can feel a bit convoluted at first as it is not particularly intuitive. Fortunately, combat rarely requires the use of them.Each floor is randomly generated and the monsters, items, and traps you encounter will be different on every attempt at climbing the tower (with the exception of boss floors). If Kou dies you lose every item you were carrying, with the exception of familiars, so leaving the tower to store items is something to consider with the risk increasing the higher you climb.Beginning to explore the tower.Your monsters will end up doing the bulk of the fighting as your Kou’s level resets every time you enter the tower. You can collect and upgrade equipment for Kou but your monsters will outscale him quickly.

A simple rock-paper-scissors element system is present for the monsters’ combat and functions as follows:Water-Fire-Wind-WaterThere is also a dark element which is not weak to any of the other elements. The tower has seasons for each of the three main elements which influence how likely you are to encounter enemies of a certain element. These seasons can only be changed by the use of an item. A monster’s sprite, barring a few exceptions, will be colored in correlation with its elemental attribute making it easy to recognize its strengths and weaknesses.

Certain items can give Kou an elemental attribute on his attack. The arguably rarest item in the game, the Ova Seed, turns any monster you throw it at into an egg you can hatch.Acquiring new monsters is largely dependent on luck as you need to find monster eggs in the tower to hatch into loyal familiars.

Finding eggs is no problem as they usually spawn in abundance but finding one for the specific monster you want may take a while. Having an excess of monsters is no problem however, as you can always sell any extra eggs or familiars to the monster shop in town. The shop also sells a preset selection of eggs that improves as you progress. The arguably rarest item in the game, the Ova Seed, turns any monster you throw it at (excluding bosses) into an egg you can hatch. At a later point in the game you gain the ability to fuse monsters with each other to transfer skills and abilities, change from one element to another, and in some cases even create a new species of monster. Leveling monsters will cause them to learn new active skills and passive abilities.

Certain species will evolve to a stronger form in a vein similar to Pokemon.Climbing the Monster Tower’s 30 floors from the beginning every attempt may become a bit repetitive for players not fond of roguelikes, but it is short enough that someone looking for a monster raising RPG is unlikely to be overwhelmed by monotony. Combat is fast paced and floors can be cleared very quickly after a few excursions. Completing the main tower unlocks a 100 floor basement featuring much stronger monsters. Conveniently these floors allow the player to warp to any basement level that has been reached previously.

One thing to note is that while the floors are randomly generated, the same map layouts will be seen often. Despite this somewhat repetitive staple of roguelikes Azure Dreams delivers a sizable amount of content for a cartridge compatible with the original Game Boy hardware. MultiplayerMultiplayer is a simple affair that allows you to trade monsters with another copy of the game via link cable. Replay ValueRandomly generated floors add some replay value but most comes from collecting all of the different monsters to fill your bestiary.

There are also some sidequests that have to do with beautifying the town. All in all a relatively large number of things to do after completing the main story for a Game Boy title.Spend all your hard earned cash to pretend you don't live in a desert. In ConclusionI believe Azure Dreams is a very impressive Game Boy title, although without the veil of nostalgia I can see it has many flaws telling of its age.

Nevertheless it will always be the title I think of first when it comes to roguelikes and I would suggest Azure Dreams to anyone who is a fan of the genre. Fans of monster raising RPGs may also enjoy the monster-centric mechanics present.Don't worry, he's talking about the magic collar for familiars.