Abalaburn - The Battle Legend of Asterica is a little known 3D fighting/adventure video game developed by Tamsoftnote in 1998 for the PlayStation. It is noted for its surprisingly well fleshed out main characters and high quality graphics, but also criticized for its clunky and easily abusable gameplay.
The story is about the legend of Lemuria who grants the wishes of anyone who finds him after finding eight crystals around the world. Eight people, Blood, Ariel, Kleude, Rose, Bian, Pooly, Nate and Aquila/Yura, all have some sort of hardship and wish to seek him out to resolve it. However, the journey isn't as simple as it sounds.
The most notable thing about the game was its Story mode, which functions more like an action game with fighting game elements used for battles. Movement is similar to Mega Man Legends, with the controls for using special moves modified to fit the top down style. Players traverse around each continent trying to find the keys (usually held by monsters with yellow sparkles on top of them, but sometimes requires finding specific items to traverse), and fight a boss or two midway through each world after the first with the mechanic used in arcade mode before fighting with the other characters that weren't at the end of each continent. There's also minor platforming elements sprinkled in here and there. Arcade mode is similar to Battle Arena Toshinden.
Abalaburn has the following tropes:
- Abandoned Mine: Gunrock, due to its recent attack, is desolate.
- Absurdly High Level Cap: The average level most characters will finish the game with is level 40, with level 35 required to unlock stage 12 and face Baal a second time. The maximum level is 255.
- Artificial Stupidity: The opponents in the arcade mode gameplay are very dimwitted and prefer to block (which can be easily countered by a throw) most of the time. The only exceptions to this are Kleude, Bian, Pooly and Baal.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The introduction English text in the opening and the beginning of each character story mode is very poorly translated and awkwardly worded.
- Curtains Match the Window: The game has loads of it. The only characters not to fit are Kleude, his brother (blond with green eyes), Nate and Baal (white hair with golden eyes).
- Downer Ending: Nate's ending. He killed his girlfriend, unaware that she has been turned into a robot from the project she was working on, was rejected by Lemuria to stop the army because he was Abyss/Baal's son and seen as evil, and cracked from all of it ready to destroy the army while the rest of the seven characters already have their wishes crushed due to how the wishing deal works.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The eight main characters have to fight tooth and nail and stop Abyss just to be able to resolve their own issues that they have been unable to solve themselves.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Playing as Mary in arcade mode will automatically cause the game to freeze just before the match starts. Due to this, it is not advised to load up a complete data of Rose and play the 1P mode.
- Guide Dang It!: Getting some of the medals and secret characters especially Baal's true form can be pretty hard to figure out, and the game doesn't ever hint on how to get any of them.
- New Game Plus: Loading up a complete game lets you play the game all over again with your previous level, medals and equipment intact. It can be useful if you miss out on a medal.
- Optional Boss: Getting to level 35 and having all five of the blue medals before defeating Abyss gets another cutscene and battle with Baal, who absorbs Abyss' power and reveals she was Abyss split into two all along.
- Secret Character: Getting all the medals of a specific colour in story mode unlocks Baal (white moon medal), Lemuria (yellow sun medal), Leon (red fire medal), Abyss (purple dragon medal) and (if you also get to at least level 35) Baal's true form (blue moon medal). Mary (Rose's sister) can be unlocked by just completing story mode as her.
- Shifting Sand Land: Heat Desert, including lava that will damage you without grabbing an item near the end of it.
- Ship Level: The tutorial segment of Adina Island starts off in a ship before departing when the combat segment ends.
- Tank Controls: This game uses one in story mode with controls similar to Mega Man Legends, where pressing the side button causes the character to run sideways and the shoulder buttons are used to turn.
- Video Game Tutorial: Present for most of Adina Island and one near the end of Holy Valley, which can't be disabled even for repeat playthroughs.
- Wutai: Holy Valley is mostly an oriental village in its second half.
