Before Final Fantasy Adventure, before Link’s Awakening there were games like Rolan’s Curse attempting to fufill the niche of top down action RPG on the Game Boy. A tall order. I like to tout the Game Boy as a mihty little system. A portable console seems to give the impression that shortcomings in games are okay, because they’re smaller. But truly gifted Game Boy developments overcome the limitations of the platform, by differentiating or innovating or just being “that good.” Where does Rolan’s Curse stand?
Rolan’s Curse is an action adventure/RPG released on the Game Boy in 1990. Unlike many games of its ilk that feature an interconnected overworld with various dungeons, Rolan’s Curse features distinct levels or chapters. Each Chapter has its own overworld and a few dungeons. This means that defeating the chapter boss and progressing the game prevents you from going back and collecting any loot you might have missed or exploring any caves you neglected to look into. This isn’t as detrimental as you might think considering the nature of power-ups in this game, and the Password system. Rolan’s Curse lacks hard battery saves so keeping a record of your passwords will allow you to mitigate losing progress. This is a pro or a con depending on your preferences, multiple save slots would have been ideal but the passwords are relatively easy and short, so there’s not much chance of error. This isn’t Faxanadu, ha ha!
Chapters are relatively compact. Most of them feature an overworld area, a town or two (usually one ‘screen’) and an optional area for some upgrades. The game itself is really quite short, at four chapters it will probably take you less than three hours to clear this game if you take your time and explore and a lot less time if you know what you’re doing. So the game needs to be up to scratch to make up for that.
And I’d say it’s a fairly average game honestly. Combat is simple and responsive, though movement is sluggish and repositioning yourself from contact damage with a monster can be trying. But enemy behaviour is intuitive and you should be able to preempt most situations like that. There’s very little reason to actually kill monsters besides some drops, there’s no real grinding to speak. So the game becomes more about exploring the available maps and finding treasure before you move on to a new chapter.
The treasure system is interesting in that there are temporary and permanent power-ups. For instance, a Fist power-up will permanently increase your attack power and you will carry this base stat over to the next chapter. Finding a weapon will increase your attack power by one point each weapon pick up, but this is transient – your attack power will reset to your base stat when you clear a chapter.
Treasure provides bonuses, natch. Here, the weapons increase your attack power for the chapter. The glove or hand increases your attack power for the rest of the game.
You can grind for Armor and Weapon drops from certain enemies, but if you explore everything you should never have to.
So you want to find items that increase your base stats and for that reason I would say that if you find a mattock in a level, keep it until you are ready to finish it since it allows you to smash breakable tiles. There are several usable items in the game, and picking one up will overwrite your old item.
Enemies vary wildly in strength, some taking a royal beating and others being a non factor altogether. Most enemies respawn after a short time, so there’s not much reason to actually fight. Without a shop system and no real inventory system it becomes more prudent to simply clear your way and keep going. Some enemies drop a weapon or a health increase (temporary of course) so you _can_ grind to a max life bar if it behooves you, but I don’t think the game is difficult enough to warrant that. Especially if you use the fire wand, which while weaker than the sword more than makes up for the shortcoming with its range. Also note that you can only hold one weapon at a time, which leads to a bit of strategy of whether you want to give up your favourite weapon for a while to get some more attack power.
Then, enemies are more obstacles than a resource in Rolan’s Curse. But they do have flavour. Lots of different levels of potency here, different movement patterns, different speeds, some fire projectiles. There’s variety here in spite of a smallish rogue’s gallery, some of the critters you’ll encounter are pretty damn cool. The bosses are predictable, sure, but they’re all big and well executed sprites. They look great! The game has perhaps the nicest villagers I’ve ever encountered, they really like to pump you up and inflate your ego! There’s a lot of flavour in the game and that goes a long way towards increasing enjoyment in spite of the game’s structural choices. Which aren’t necessarily bad, but make it very linear for this kind of game.
I need to articulate that I played Rolan’s Curse 2 before I played Rolan’s Curse. But I still really enjoyed my evening with the first game. These games share a lot, naturally, but they are so different in execution that I didn’t see the first game as a pale shadow of the second. I write about Rolan’s Curse 2 extensively in another article, but let’s just say that it doesn’t really matter if you play them in reverse order but I would recommend playing the first game first.
So Rolan’s Curse is a a decent title with some flaws, but it’s one that tried to give you a whole lot of what similar games on home consoles did. It doesn’t try to be small. It _is_ small but it works within its scope to spin a narrative. There are story scrolls between Chapters, bosses are big, there’s villages with world lore and while a lot of this flavour and content is small due to the format it isn’t pandering or looking to just due the bare minimum because it’s on a handheld platform. There’s heart here. The plot is the usual high fantasy save the realm from the big bad evil, but there’s heart nonetheless. They want to present you a world and its troubles and the people and fiends within.
One thing that interests me here is that there is a Link Cable option here. As of writing this I’m not certain of the depth of multiplayer in Rolan’s Curse but it could be really interesting. If I ever get a second copy, I’ll let you know. But if you and your bosom chum have a Game Boy each you might want to give it a spin. An okay game with some sweet sweet Game Link hook up. Rolan’s and Chill.
In the end, it’s a decent little game that – while it serves as a primer to the more scarce Rolan’s Curse 2’s story – is a fun time in its own right. Don’t expect anything too deep or groundbreaking here, but it’s a fine addition to your collection if you’re a Game Boy enthusiast.
Visually, it’s a pretty good looking game and I think the music is pretty decent?
It plays way too slow though and just having it sped up a bit would make it a lot better. The second one seems better to me because of the increased movement speed and I would try that one first if I’m going to choose.
The music is pretty solid once it gets going. I would recommend trying the sequel first, yes. Rolan’s Curse is more for checking out the history of the Game Boy, while Rolan’s Curse 2 is a solid game that will have much wider appeal. I loved this game too, but it does have its flaws, undeniably.
Indeed.
I will probably check out the music but that will probably be the extent of my exposure besides checking out the walkthrough which I already did.