March 8th, 2018:

	Slow night at our place last night.  Mrs IPX took her mom to a 
medical appointment then came home to bed, our daughter decided she 
wanted to go to bed early (!), and our cat decided she wanted to nap.  
Being rather drained from the workday (and lingering sinus infection), I 
did what I'd normally do in this situation:  break out the video games.

I was in a classic RPG mood, and thought, "Hey, I haven't played Sorcerian 
in a long time.  Why don't I play that?".  I've been a fan of the game 
since the mid 90s, having bought Sierra Online's PC port and enjoying it.  
I'd seen the game reviewed and advertised in import gaming magazines 
previously, and always secretly coveted the game.  It had been released 
for a number of popular platforms (in Japan), each port being a bit 
different.

I own Sorcerian for several platforms: PC, Sega Genesis, PC Engine CD, and 
MSX.  My favourite of the bunch is the MSX version, as a number of 
expansion disks were available, extending the game once you've played the 
original to death.  The PC Engine CD version has the best music, the PC 
version is "passable" in comparison, and the Genesis version is the 
weakest of the bunch.

Unfortunately, the Genesis version was the only one I had readily at hand, 
so I popped it into my machine.  The character creation process can be an 
arduous task when you're not fluent in Japanese, but I know enough to 
muddle my way through things.  After carefully crafting and training a few 
characters, I selected my party of four adventurers and took them out on 
their first adventure... and promptly got them all killed.  I forgot this 
game can be a tad unforgiving for those of us who blindly charge into 
things, and my party was wiped out as a result.

So, rather than go back to town to assemble a party from my other 
characters I'd created, I went to bed.  I'd started playing at 8:30pm, and 
it was now 11pm and time for bed.

I might try again tonight, taking a more careful approach.

Sorcerian is a side-scrolling action RPG title. You create characters, 
assemble a party of four, then choose a scenario to play.  Each scenario 
has an objective (usually kill off a boss), and you really need to tailor 
your party to each objective.  It plays FAST, and the controls are 
terrible in each version of the game I've played, meaning you'll get 
wiped out if you rush in blindly, mashing buttons and moving about without 
thinking.

My description does the game a disservice, for a better description, see 
the great write-up on the game at Hardcore Gaming 101 [1].

Anyhow, my head is killing me, so that's it for now.


References:
[1] https://hg101.kontek.net/sorcerian/sorcerian.htm