A
Final Fantasy style
RPG for the
Game Gear. Take your characters through the world, completing
quest after quest, and meeting
complication after complication, until you can finally fight the big
bad guy, completing the game.
Story:
The story begins with the Prince of Shanadar, in his castle. The Prince wakes up, and prepares for the visit of the Princess from the nation of Mohamood. He visits the castle library, learning some important history of the kingdom - the story of the evil wizard Ahriman, and his defeat at the hands of the hero Jamseed. Jamseed's primary weapon? A genie, of course.
Entering the town, the Prince finds the Princess, saves her from some sleazy ruffians who are harassing her, and goes back to the castle. The end of a long day. His sleep is interrupted, however, when the evil Empire attacks, and he is told to escape with the princess - the beginning of a series of adventures, ending with the characters, of course, saving the world.
The entire story is set in an Arabia-esque environment, with deserts, turbans, and other stereotypes of that setting. An unusual setting for this type of game, it adds a lot to the game.
Characters:
This synopsis only covers the characters that actually fight, as it has been a long time since I played this game.
The Prince - The main protagonist of the tale, we never get his full name. He's slow but strong, a standard fighter character. He has the special ability...of running away.
The Genie - The magic user of the game, he is, naturally, vital to the completion. Doesn't gain abilities in the same fashion as the other players - experience points do not affect him. Instead, special items can be used to increase his powers.
Saleem - faster, but less powerful, than the Prince. Has the special ability Dance, which lets him attack multiple enemies at once. Otherwise, he is just a standard fighter.
Agmar - a thief. Very, very fast, quite strong, but easy to kill. His special move is Hide, which lets him disappear for a move, and then Assault a target, dealing more damage than normal. The combination of Hide and Assault works very similarly to Kain's Jump attack in Final Fantasy IV.
Gameplay:
As mentioned earlier, this is a standard RPG of the Final Fantasy type, with turn-based battles, two-dimensional, overhead maps, experience points, hit points, magic points and other trademarks of the genre. One major difference between this game and others, though, lies in the Save system - rather than saving anywhere on the World Map, or at Inns and Houses, like most other games, the game saves automatically wherever you die.
Comments:
Not the best of the genre, certainly, with several drawbacks. First, the save system is usually nice (you never forget to save), but can be a problem if you miss something, and cannot go back for it. Second, the story leaves much to be desired - though this is hardly the only game to have this problem. Finally, because it is/was generally played on the Game Gear, with the small screen that entails, it can often be hard to see important features such as doorways.
Still, Defenders of Oasis was my second-favorite game for the GG, edged out only by Columns, and the one that I played the most. I never managed to beat it, though I tried very hard for a very long time - the game was just LONG (it didn't help that my GG broke). If you are looking for a pretty fun RPG of the older style, I recommend that you check it out.