Ever since I saw Ancient Roman mentioned as an extremely bad JRPG that one should avoid at all costs, I’ve been very interested in it. I’ve translated the first half hour on YouTube, but I haven’t played past this since I’ve wanted to share this glorious experience, but without having to translated the whole game. And I do really want to see this tras-, er, interesting game through! So without further ado, let us being a blog style playthrough of this nightmare!

The main menu loads with a world map and the message “A New Chart of the World,” which looks like someone just found a random map picture and slapped “Ancient Roman” on it. Still no idea what the Romans have anything to do with this, but maybe we’ll find out what that or “Power of Dark Side” is supposed to mean. Maybe Darth Vader makes a cameo, we can dream.

Onwards to the opening!

The game starts by throwing a bucket of narrative on us, which boils down to:
– An ancient civilization that was peaceful blew up.
– 1,000 years pass.
– 17 years ago, Heinrouge was attacked.
– Kai (the MC) losses everything and now has to get it back.

After the text dump, the game proceeds to show us a video of all of this happening. It’s as if they made the cutscenes first, but playtesters had no idea what the hell just happened, so they were told to write a summary.

First, this place blows up:

Then 1,000 years pass.

Then this place blows up. Oddly punctual, these evil forces.

The only thing left is this… wooden doll that’s kind of creepy looking. I’m surprised the thing made of wood was the only thing that didn’t burn.

Anyway, inside the castle we meet the probably queen who is terrorized by a clock that keeps making her cry. By cry I mean leak tears.

When suddenly, a methed-out ogre comes in, steals a baby, then promptly leaves.

The mom’s expression never changes. I think the wooden doll expressed more emotions.

17 MORE years later, we get an aerial view of a fenced-off city. Suddenly, the camera rockets into the door of a building where we meet our protagonist:

BITCH.

I’m calling his character now, this name should fit him fine. And what’s up with his face in this shot? It might be hard to tell from the screenshot, but his jaw is dark and protruding, almost like he became a duck for a second.

We find out that BITCH has been screaming in his sleep (like a BITCH, my naming is already proving to be true!) and missed role call for forced labor camp fun times. Jonathan, the old man, came to check on him and nearly died from a heart attack from all of BITCH’s shouting. Turns out BITCH was crying in his sleep for his mom. Something about orcs foaming at the mouth as well, but we’ll ignore that for now.

BITCH doesn’t believe him since he doesn’t even remember his mom. Though with a face that doesn’t move and just leaks tears, I’d probably block that out too. Anyway, Kai-, er, BITCH refuses to talk about his parents anymore, then they remember they’re supposed to gather.

The, uh, old man asks to stay behind while making a jerking off motion, so BITCH decides to leave without him. Probably a good idea.

Once alone, the old man sadly laments that they’re being forced by a monster to dig a giant hole and woe is them. Enough of that, camera pans back to BITCH. But not before 9 solid seconds of watching the old man hobble to the door! …Gameplay!

Here we have our first view of the town and boy does it look bleak. It has some medieval  spires and a fort on the right, but then the budget ran out and they just made normal houses. The background is just a pre-rendered picture and not actually 3d, but that’s pretty normal for a PSX game. Though it’s clear we’re leagues from Final Fantasy levels of koala tea.

To advance the plot, we must listen to the riveting dialogue of the town NPCs:

• I don’t feel good.
• The Hergest forest is to the North. I’ve heard it’s dangerous.
• Why are we all gathered here? Did they… finally decide to kill us all!?
• Did you hear? We found a mysterious gem while digging!

Alright, 2 of those were relevent at least I guess. Not sure why someone just blurted out about the dangers of the forest, but I’m SURE we’ll be going there next~.

After appeasing the NPC gods, the boss shows up. He’s the kind of eagle-looking dude on the right coming out of the fortress. He tells everyone there’s no work tomorrow and they should all shut up and stay inside. Sounds like a vacation! Right? Nah it’s probably murder time. Now you’re free to explore, the opposite of what you’re told to do!

We meet our first additional party member, Bark! Yes that’s his name, I verified it by looking at the game files while seeing if I could translate this game. I thought Burke or something, but no. Bark. Oh well.

We catch him stealing food from the kitchen, to which he responds by running up to us and flapping his arms like a bird. We agree silently to a “man’s promise” and proceed to steal some of the food ourselves (healing items!).

Now comes the mandatory “loot the shit out of everything” part of town, where I steal-er, find a bunch of free shit! Like HP and MP restoring seeds and leather hats. I thought they were razor hats at first (レザー, or rezaa) and got excited for Mortal Kombat levels of blade hats. I was wrong, much less exciting. Most of the items aren’t even in boxes or anywhere in the environment that would LOOK like an item could be. You end up just having to click on everything. Let’s move the plot along!

In one of the dorms, you meet an unnamed girl who calls you out on being a BITCH and tells you there’s a story of a hidden hole in one of the buildings. Who knew that people forced to dig for their lives were good at digging!

In this surprisingly open underground passage, there’s a bright gold treasure chest and a wooden sealed box. Guess which one has an item!

The treasure chest is empty. I have no idea why. My hope is that we can come back later in the game and find something cool or maybe something in new game+, but I highly, highly doubt this game thought that far ahead.

Whoever dug this tunnel to try and escape failed miserably and dug a hole directly to the boss’ room. Even worse, the boss has no idea there’s a giant hole in his house. Everyone in this game is really bad at their jobs. Hiding behind the bookcase, we overhear the boss reporting to an edgy-looking superior. They’ve reportedly found the “Dark Energy Katamari,” a plot device of untold power that’ll let the demon king rule the world because why not, of course it will.

Anyway, now that the excavation is over, everyone can go home, right? Nah, it’s mass murder time! BITCH runs back and tells everyone the news.

Everyone’s in a panic, so the old man decides this is a good time to tell a story. He used to be a servant at Heinrouge castle 17 years ago. While there, he saw a lot of people with better jobs passing through, like heroes who could use their spirit to do cool things, aka magic! And BITCH can do magic too apparently, he just never tried or something. So the old man tells BITCH he must escape, but BITCH won’t let his friends and wannabe main characters die. So, quite un-BITCHlike, he suggests that they kill everyone and fight their way out! Bark, having arm muscles larger than the old man’s torso, readily agrees to the plan.

Before they can depart, the girl from earlier walks in and timidly asks if she can fight to. Needless to say, every guy in the room instantly goes “OH NO A GIRL CAN’T FIGHT” and all that. The old man is the most against it, but she tells him to shut the hell up and he gives in. The others shrug it off as her being stubborn and let her join the party. Her name is Michelia.

We venture outside to see the chaos has already started, mainly the two NPCs in the room and the old man slapping goblins. Good luck! Thankfully Bark gave us a knife and some trash can lids (no joke) to equip, so we’re ready to fight!

And here we have the glory that is Ancient Roman’s battle scenes. I’m not even sure where to begin. Everyone looks like a skinny and lanky nightmare. The arena is just a box with repeating textures everywhere. That bee is accidentally named “Fuck Bee.” It’s written as “fukku bii” for “Hook Bee,” but since the ‘hu’ sound is written as ‘fu’ in Japanese, it doesn’t come out well.

So that’s “Fuck Bee.”

The game literally pauses when it tries to load sound effects in battle. The above screenshot takes a full second, then his swing hits. This happens for EVERY attack by EVERY character, resulting in a stuttering, headache-inducing slog. They also use the same sound effect for nearly every attack, so have fun listening to the same thing over and over and over…

When an enemy dies, it just kind of gets sucked into a tornado and flies away. I don’t know why, but at least it explains why the bodies are gone after fights…

At the end of the battle, our party holds up the knives and trashcans, er wait, the powerful fantasy weapons I don’t even own while someone slams a synth keyboard in an excuse for a victory song. And to top it all off, if anyone levels up, the game lags loading that sound clip too. Efficiency!

While the old man and the NPCs are fighting the small fries, our party confronts the boss. After exchanging no dialogue of real merit worth translating, the fight begins!

Being the first boss fight, the game doesn’t make this much of a challenge. I started the fight with the above health values and had no problems. He only has one attack from what I can tell that does ~18-24 damage. He only attacked twice before he died, so maybe he would do more. Man, why didn’t these guys revolt sooner?

After the fight, we just leave the boss’ corpse on the ground and Michelia realizes the old man is probably in trouble. We left the old man with bad hips to hold off the goblins.

We find the old man on the ground, not in the fashion of being stabbed to death, but more like he’s napping on the ground.

 

Whoever they hired for these scenes has no idea faces are a thing that move. He looks so at peace, like “I’m dying, fucking finally.”

Also this cutscene is fully voice acted for some reason, the first time outside of battle anyone has had a voice. I guess that’s a thing to… look forward to.

This.

This walk. This is the walk BITCH does when he sees his dying old man father figure. This whole seems looks like a Robot Chicken sketch with how awkward and wrong everyone is moving. I can’t wait to see more.

For his dying words, the old man parts such wisdom as “for the love of god, use some shampoo next time you shower!” That and Michelia has a ring on her necklace that we have to take to the village of Mell, wherever that is. Probably passed THE FOREST TO THE NORTH!? Probably.

Our heroes give the most half-assed burial I’ve ever seen while the guys look proud and smug with their job well done. Michelia looks rightfully disappointed. They didn’t even dig a hole, they just piled dirt on him. Maybe if we come back to this village, his head and an arm will be sticking out from wind blowing the dirt or animals digging.

Bark is ready to go into action, but Michelia is rightfully hesitant after seeing how they’d bury her if she dies on the journey. BITCH manages to convince her though and they’re journey to Mell starts now!

Or next time!