The Note

This game can be described as "King's Field meets Resident Evil" as many parts of the gameplay were inherited from both titles. It was localized exclusively for Europe, due to its obscurity even in Japan.

The game tells the story of a young male journalist named Akira, who receives a message from his female partner Angela about a group of children that needs to be rescued from a mansion located in southern Europe. The duo then go there with the mission of not only to save the kids, but also to find out what actually happened in the mansion.

I'm going to explain the mix of gameplay mechanics in this game. It's played in first person view, just like in the King's Field and Echo Night games, plus that it allows you to map up to four shortcuts to items and/or other actions via the 'record' setting. In my opinion, match/lighter + open doors + shotgun + ammo refill is the best combination since there are times where you have to act as fast as possible. For the rest of the actions, you can access them by pressing the Start button and selecting from the list.

The game starts off relatively easy, as the amount of enemies (and shots needed to kill them) are pretty low, but later on it may become a tedious task unless you know what to do, especially at the Castle of Spirits that looks like a labyrinth or something similar. In fact during Chapter 3, you also have to constantly backtrack to the room where Angela is if you want to save all the children, otherwise one of them will die and as a result, you'll miss out on a scene much later in the game. However, no matter if you success or fail at saving them all, you get the same ending, though for completion purposes I made sure to keep all of them alive.

Overall, the game looks fairly decent for 1997 standards, despite the fact it didn't get an US release and also that it received regular to negative reviews back in its era.

0:00:00 - Start

The Mansion
0:03:33 - Getting the shotgun and buying everything
0:08:02 - Meeting the woman in red
0:09:50 - 1st floor: medal #1 & mansion key #1
0:12:52 - 2nd floor: medal #2 & red stone
0:16:08 - 1st floor: firewood and stuff

The Dungeon
0:27:39 - Main area: medal puzzle
0:34:04 - Execution room
0:35:45 - Prison: meeting Dave, Toshi and Linda
0:46:41 - Back to the mansion for restock (1/3)

Castle of Spirits
0:49:35 - Entrance corridors
0:52:00 - Main area: Sleep medal & armor key
0:55:53 - Backtrack to give Angela more oil
0:59:36 - Mansion: Storage key & rope #1
1:04:17 - Trap room hallway: Sun key & Fate medal
1:07:45 - Main area: Ring key (+ backtrack to give Angela more oil)
1:15:36 - Courtyard: Mask mold (+ same backtrack)
1:23:55 - Mansion: molded mask (+ another backtrack)
1:30:57 - Trap room hallway: Cross key
1:33:49 - Underground trap
1:38:03 - Finally freed from the trap
1:41:07 - Angela is imprisoned
1:43:57 - Saving Toshi
1:48:32 - Back to the mansion for restock (2/3)

South Tower
1:50:10 - Top corridor/rooftop
1:53:00 - Western corridor: rope #2
1:57:04 - Roof area: Death medal & mirror fragment
2:02:07 - Western corridor: Lightning key
2:07:29 - Mansion: getting the lighter

The Sewers
2:11:29 - Lower section: Diamond key
2:15:13 - Upper section: draining the sewers
2:17:21 - Lower section: Water Prison key & Watercourse key
2:19:26 - Saving Dave
2:22:11 - Backtrack to the Execution room
2:24:27 - Saving Linda
2:29:29 - Angela gets captured by Necromeda
2:31:32 - Back to the mansion for restock (3/3)

Castle of Spirits II
2:34:20 - Returning to the castle's main area
2:35:14 - Entering the throne area
2:42:48 - Returning to the dungeon entrance
2:43:58 - Final bossfight vs. Necromeda

2:47:38 - Ending & credits
2:51:51 - Alternate scenes