Hong Gildong-jeon

Synopsis:

A+'s development debut was at times hailed as the first Korean RPG, during the temporal collective amnesia regarding the 80s home computer generation. In more recent times, this claim had to be corrected to "first Korean colored RPG for MS-DOS PCs", which sounds much less impressive. However, it can also be labeled as the first to follow the JRPG route a la Dragon Quest, because previous games all either stemmed from Western influences or were action RPGs. As one of the many games based on the story of Hong Gildong and thanks to its screentexts kept completely in Han'geul (it even sacrificed the full VGA color palette for a higher resolution to make it more readable, though everything other than the text was just upscaled) in a time when even the wave of Taiwan-localizations had just started to catch some current, it caught a bit of attention. A+ sold 7,000 copies of the game3, which wasn't that bad for a Korean game in 1993, but even then most reviews weren't that favorable because of a number of flaws. First and foremost stands the obfuscated design, that often leaves players not knowing what they are even expected to do. Then there's the overly simple and boring combat system, especially due to the lack of a party, which really limits the tactical depth. The rest is done by a fair share of bugs and glitches, as well as some more incomprehensible decisions like having an option to throw away items permanently while pretty much everything picked up except weapons and armor is quest-related.

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