This bodes well...
Dark Law: The Meaning of Death is a 1997 Japan-only (a fan translation patch does exist somewhere on the net) SNES game developed by Sakata SAS and published by ASCII Corporation. It's... well... a point and click adventure game/tactical JRPG/tabletop RPG simulation hybrid that actively hates you, but you will love it anyway.
The story is set in the kingdom of Layfall that was ravaged by a terrible war 300 years ago, only saved by the prayer and sacrifice of the pure maiden Princess Sofia. You play as a bunch of adventurers doing quests and trying to explore the ancient dungeon (in search for ancient treasures) also set there... because recently the seal on it was broken.
Eh, it probably doesn't mean anything.
On the mechanics side, the game can be divided into quests and the dungeon/fights, unsurprisingly. The quests are when the game is more interested in telling you a story with adventure game elements, the dungeon/fights are the Strategy RPG part. It would be remarkably flexible, given it's from the '90s, but the quests have a fairly strict level requirement with only minimal overlap, making the end result fairly linear with the possibility to flat-out miss large chunks of the story.
This game provides examples of:
- Alchemy Is Magic: The gameworld never establishes a hard distinction between science and magic (or religion for that matter) so for example a doctor should also be expected to be an alchemist, and a wizard taking an interest in their research is totally normal (as is said wizard having a temple dedicated to himself).
- Artificial Human: The doctor in the scenario "Sorcerer's Daughter" is obsessed with creating them. Most don't survive long.
- Big Bad: King Daruk. It doesn't stop him that he's dead since 300 years.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Nealertos. In a different game he could have been outright big bad, but not here. He's planning to replace humanity with a shape-shifting species of his own making. Unfortunately on his own could only make the process one way. The party (mostly) gets involved with this plot when he engages in some industrial espionage to get over that setback. Also, one of Daruk's men infiltrated his supporters to steal this research and using it to create the perfect body for his true master.
- Came Back Wrong: Any creature resurrected by the Gate in "Ed and Charon"
- Dark Fantasy: Well, yes. Gods range from absentee to outright evil and people die easily (
including your party). - Demonic Possession: At least 4 different and unrelated case of it. In "Ed and Charon", "Return of a Saint", "Temple of the Wizard", and finally "All Things..."
- Deus ex Machina: One of the quests ("Guide of Death") ends with you accidentally falling into the lair of the villain, almost getting killed... then a rat appears (it previously stole your cheese), disrupting his ritual and Death intervenes to add more Black Comedy, ie. he is here to collect a soul, might as well take the villain's. Yes, this Makes Sense In Context.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: Called Hybard. He's just doing his job, and would really like if other forces would just stop interfering with it already.
- Forced Transformation: Any person turned into a Writhen (or Death-Creature), and there are a lot of examples of this, for starters it happened to the whole population of the kingdom of Amugnon in the backstory (that's not a spoiler, it's in the intro). There are also several quests involving this. Trying stop it from happening ("Guide of Death"), trying to save someone to whom it happened ("The Search"), etc.. Most of these plots are King Daruk's servants tying to create a suitable body for him.
- Golden Ending: It exists, it's extremely hard to get and is still bittersweet at best.
- Golem: The Big Bad has a spirit backup in one of these, it gives him some freedom of movement until his true resurrection is complete, and also he won't be truly defeated if you don't destroy this golem too. Guess what the difference between the regular and the golden good ending is! Yep. And nobody knows how exactly trigger that fight. Knowing this game it might even be at least partially random.
- Guide Dang It!: To a ridiculous degree. The game doesn't bother to tell you basic controls, let alone more advance things like what skills the various classes learn or how to use them.
- Heroic Mime: At the start you can generate up to 4 characters (two women, and two men with set sprites - girls level up faster, guys are stronger) but you can only use 3 at max any given time (nobody forces you though, if you want to solo the game for extra challenge you can), and these characters won't speak or gain any back-story or personality outside of what you project into them whatsoever throughout the game. Heck, for your starting lead the game says they just found themselves before the Temple of Sofia with nothing but the clothes on their back and a desire to find the nearest town. Did they spontaneously generate for this quest?
- Hero of Another Story: Rokifel and his sister Meryl are fellow adventurers your party will cross paths occasionally. The funniest of these is probably during "The Search", when Rokifel, while doing something completely different, destroyed the elevator one of the sub-bosses intended to use to escape... he even threw a big rock down the shaft that lands on the head of the boss. (Your party still has to fight them though.)
- Invisible to Normals: Hybard should be only be perceivable by the people he's there to collect, he's sort of bemused by the fact the party can see him too.
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: What are you even doing except doing errands for the townsfolk and occasionally trying to loot the dungeon? Well, you need to puzzle that out for yourself using the info you learn throughout the game. No, not all quests are even plot relevant, you thought it will be that easy?
- Merlin and Nimue: Nealertos and Antoniana. Inverted. The teacher student relationship is intact and she is in love with him, but Nealertos is evil, or more precisely one of the many Demonic Possession victims, Antoniana tries to save him and ends up deflecting on the main character's side then dying dramatically to save him from himself.
- Multiple Endings: The game has six different endings depending on how much of the scenarios and the dungeon you completed and if you won the last battle or not. Outside of two, all of them are bad endings
- Non-Human Undead: The scenario "Ed and Charon" features or mentions several, including a Charon turning into a zombie dog.
- Orphan's Plot Trinket: Lefia's pendant, the Golden Heart, which she has had since she was found left before the Temple of Princess Sofia as a baby 13 years ago.
- Pixel Hunt: The "interaction areas" aren't that small, however the interactable things, like switches, don't stand out one bit (lot of brown on brown) and most quests have a lot of things you can interact with.
- Random Number God: Character progression is incredibly luck-reliant (and this is a game where character states can go down if you're unlucky), as are loot drops and most treasure chests. Start praying.
- Save Scumming: Theoretically the game is beatable without doing this, but if you want to see the rarer classes and loot it's highly encouraged. What you need to remember is that your save game will include the current RNG seed... so without hitting the "Shuffle Luck" button in the options menu after reloading you will get the same result you wanted to avoid again.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: A somewhat unintentional one in "Death-Creature". A girl gets scared to death by a Wolf Man-like creature and asks the party to investigate, then it's revealed that the hunter in these woods dresses up in costume like that while hunting. Which he finds incredibly funny. However... your party will deduce by the end that the timeline doesn't match, and then there is The Stinger. The party might come back here later in "The Search" in which you'll uncover that the monster is real, but mostly just serves as a cover (and experiment) for one of Daruk's men's "body creating" project. Is this a Double Subversion?
- Sealed Evil in a Can: This world is positively littered with cans, most Demonic Possession examples are also this. The most prominent is the Big Bad being imprisoned in the depths of the dungeon on which the seal is broken at the start of the game by his servants. Thankfully, he happens to be a ghost then... so he really needs new body.
- Sidequest Sidestory: Questionable how side these are but the game's scenarios tend to build on one another like this:
- "Death-Creature" -> "Guide of Death"
- "Death-Creature" (if you also found a specific item) -> "The Search"
- "King of the Pit" -> "Sorcerer's Daughter" -> "Temple of the Wizard"
- Solve the Soup Cans: Several puzzles are really obtuse, mostly because objects you can interact with aren't properly highlighted. At least one you can solve in a way that literally makes the scenario un-winnable. Also at one point in a scenario you need to interact with the scenery (ie. make the characters gaze upon the vast sea)... who would think of that?
- Treasure Map: You can find one of these in the background of one of the quests ("King of the Pit") but it's probably nothing. Actually it can lead to a totally optional and somewhat soup can-u treasure hunt in which you can find a fairly good sword.
- Useless Useful Non-Combat Abilities: Classes learn a lot of skills, some non combat ones too. These range from essential (especially for the dungeon) like "Restore Lute" (restores HP), or "Unlock" (shows the combination of closed doors, without it... well you can try to brute force up to 5 digits in a reflex challenge), to occasionally useful like "Jumping" (outright needed for the Treasure Map side-side quest), and apparently useless... as in so far nobody figured out what you could gain from knowing "Swimming"... Outside of it apparently being a prerequisite for the "Crusader" job.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The party will eventually deduce that the Gate's weakness in "Ed and Charon" is water. Not even holy or anything, just regular water.
- Whole-Plot Reference: "Ed and Charon" is a simplified, shortened (kid never reaches the point where he tries to resurrect people), and slightly more hopeful Pet Sematary.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: It's not hard to sympathise with King Daruk given his kingdom was hit by famine and his subjects were suffering and no one god or human cared to help them... and then when he finally found someone it turned out to be an evil corrupting entity.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The fan translation renders old documents (most dating back to the war 300 years ago) in this style to emphasize, well, how old they are.
