Missed Classic: Dracula Hakushaku (ドラキュラ伯爵) - Lost (And Final Rating)

Written by Morpheus Kitami

Just what I've been doing for the past few months, getting chased by the Pope.

It's that time of year again where I play a horror game based off a movie and wonder why someone took something infamously horrific and turned it into something that is not. Well, kind of, since we've come back to Count Dracula, which so far has been far more horrific than any adaptation of Dracula I've ever heard of. Hopefully this time, we can put the good count to rest.

To recap since you've probably forgotten, Dracula has risen from the dead and has been spending time wandering around and remembering the old horrible things he's done in the past. Which is basically every sort of thing you'd hear on a black metal album except someone screaming Slayer while not wearing pants. More specifically, he saved a woman from being sacrificed for some reason. The woman is named Sistine, which is an odd name to have, because it means pertaining to Pope Sixtus. She apparently foresaw something which I glossed over, and Dracula is talking about a mysterious man he keeps seeing in his memories.

Incidentally, this time around I'm using automatic translations of the text, simply because I haven't got the motivation to translate massive amounts of what's probably the Japanese equivalent of Middle English. Yes, this is a terrible violation of all good principles, loses considerable nuance, but I don't think that's much of a loss at this point.

 

Right of the church is this scenic cave. Dracula refuses to go into the dark cave without a light, because he is not the lord of darkness he pretends to be. Fortunately, I have a lamp, and at first it seems like a maze, but it's actually two passageways leading to locked doors that I can't open. Instead, I head to the house on the hill, which Dracula thinks is familiar. Without any prompting, he knocks on the door and the maid answers. Dracula is dumbfounded, because he doesn't understand his purpose here. You know, I really hate it when the game steals my line.

What answer should Dracula have given here? 10 CAPs for the best wrong answer.

The maid is annoyed by this, but before she can tell Dracula to go stuff it, the lady of the house asks if it's Hans, who was coming to give her some special item. Since I'm obviously not Hans, the maid closes the door, and Dracula feels the burning desire to enter the house. Dracula wonders what kind of item would be special enough to give to a woman and she'd like receiving it.

Back at the circle, one more east is an empty pool with three stone heads in front of them. One of them controls the water in the pool. I can't do anything with the full or empty pool. Does it matter? Probably.

This surreal scene, to quote Dracula, is of an old man and a dwarf holding a large pocket watch that goes up to 14. According to Dracula, the clock only runs for the old man, and when he dies, the clock stops as well. How do you know that, Dracula? I ask him what's going on here, and he says he's just sitting here, doing nothing. That's about as accurate a metaphor for this game as anything. He doesn't say much else.

If I use that door, yes, that's a door, next to the old man, the clock advances until it hits 14, when the old man disappears and a glass bottle appears. After Dracula engages in more philosophy, I pick it up. If I go back to the pool, I can fill it up with water, but otherwise it seems entirely useless. This is the entire area. Which I almost wrote off as unsolvable Japanese adventure game logic, because why not, only to discover that the house leads to another place you can turn left and right.

Dracula's hallucinating again, because it's London and that's Alicia. You know, Dracula's sister/wife. Or rather, someone who looks like Alicia. I get what the game is doing, but sweet Christmas, playing as someone suffering from vampire dementia is a pain. She then disappears.

This causes the old woman/witch to now want to talk to Dracula more extensively. And by extensively, I mean Dracula asks who her source is, as if old women can't poison people. Apparently she does, and he's somewhere nobody will find him...because he's being chased by the Pope. I don't know if that's a metaphor or something, but that sounds about right for this game. The alchemist, The Count of Saint Germain, created an immortality spell, that's why the Pope wants to kill him. At this point, she gets annoyed with Dracula, like the rest of us.

Oh, and Saint Germain has an apprentice, Jack the Ripper. Dracula finds this plausible, since "female corpses and alchemists have had an inseparable relationship since ancient times." Because they're easier to obtain. And that's about it. I do like how Dracula, upon hearing that someone is being chased by the Pope, says, "It's not normal to be chased by the Pope." Which is probably the most sane this game has ever been.

This, unfortunately, doesn't cause any easily noticeable changes. Instead, we get more of me wandering around. I can use the strange object the game now identifies as a walking stick to try to get the stone jug out...if Dracula thought there was a reason to. I can also harass the maid for no good reason, including using the thong on her. I have no idea what the game expects me to do at this point, and I have no way of figuring it out.

And so Dracula shall wander around a circle with a witch and a scene out of Alice in Wonderland, forever.

This Session: 1 hours 30 minutes

Final Time: 12 hours 20 minutes

I understand what Dracula is trying to be, trying to say. Dracula is trying to give a frame of mind to an immoral immortal whose thought processes are alien to the average player. What I don't understand is why Dracula has to have dementia and why the video game format was chosen. Because nothing seems to make any sense.

Moreso than other mediums, video games are supposed to have the protagonist's actions have logical consequences, resulting in a logical series of events. You talk to this person to find out where a key is that you can use to unlock a door. Sometimes, events don't have a logical course of events, so they cheat.

For example, in Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines, in order to get a ghoul (think vampiric manservant), you need to find out that you can make these creatures, find a person in need of "help", and then once you're done, find the person afterwards. The game does this by having the person be in a hospital, a place you're strongly suggested to go to, where there's a chatty ghoul at the front door, and once you do the first two, literally places your new ghoul in front of a story location and forces you to talk to her.

In contrast, the events of this game do not logically flow like this. Instead, it just happens and you have to wander some more to get to the next bit. Each room is a disconnected vignette whose end result does nothing to set up the next one. Every time you do something that doesn't grant you an item with a reasonable use case, you have to wander around again and find out what has changed.

So far, this issue has plagued every single Japanese adventure game I've played, and I'm not sure why. This isn't to say it doesn't happen in non-Japanese games, but I feel like there's a difference between how it happens there. I'm wandering around because usually I can't figure out the logic of some puzzle. Not looking and using everything all over again because I only used a rock three times instead of four.

Puzzles and Solvability
I've basically done my rant about this already. Grr, I would like more puzzles where I can figure out what I have to do, not where I wander around because a bit of scenery now gives me more text when I use it which eventually gets me to the next area. It isn't fun, it isn't interesting, it's just frustrating.

1

Interface and Inventory
Up until this point, I haven't had any idea what a FM Towns mouse looked like. I've always been using a joypad to play games on the system, and I've never been sure if games never allowing a mouse is an emulation issue or game developers liking joypads too much. It's the latter. As such, it's an adventure game with a d-pad instead of a mouse. It's okay. There's no action, so I didn't have to test the limits of things. Press a button to use things, press another to switch between actions and items, and the third quits to menu after confirmation.

Items are done surprisingly nice despite everything else. You have a limited number at a time, not limited in a forced sense as much as the game limiting itself. You can only use an item if it can be used on that screen, which cuts down a bit on the endless wandering around.

6

Story and Setting
As I said before, the game feels disconnected with itself. What's going on? Why does it seem like Dracula has dementia? Why are there all these random historical figures, but why is Dracula in a relationship with a fictional sister? I am willing to believe that at some point, part of this will make sense. It seemed like it was starting to as I got tired of the game part of it.

But nothing is going to make the whole, each screen feels like its own parallel world to the other screens.

3

Sound and Graphics
On one hand, these are the best backgrounds I've seen in any game using pixel art. I could look at some of these trees and buildings for hours. They're that gorgeous. This is one of the standards by which all pixel artists should be measured against.

Character art is more questionable, there's variety in characters, but some of the designs are a bit odd. Men have oddly small heads for their bodies, which makes the game look amateurish when they show up. Women are women.

Then there's the music. It's generic horror background stuff. Well, at least what I heard. I think there's ten minutes of the stuff, and the track playing throughout most of the game isn't that. The only reason it isn't maddening is that it didn't disrupt any other music I decided to play on occasion.

6

Environment and Atmosphere
The atmosphere of the game is obviously the primary draw to the game. Look at the cool vampire game has been a pretty good draw since forever. Even when it's concealed behind a difficult to learn language. I see no reason to avoid this.

But, there's generally not a lot you can actually interact with at one point. You get a nice little thinking option, but most areas don't do a lot to actually expand on what is being shown, instead having Dracula go on and on about stuff in his head.

6

Dialogue and Acting
There is a lot of it, and a lot of depth to it. There's a nice gap between characters, and each has their own idiosyncracies and quirks. To a certain extent, this is cheating, since when you literally have different words for "I" depending on whether or not the person saying it is a four-year-old or an old man, making them sound different is a lot easier than when every word has to be considered. It's still something that feels like it works more than it doesn't.

4

Putting them together, we get 1+6+3+6+6+4=26/0.6=43.3 or 43. Andy Panthro gets the closest score with 48.

I've said all I think I can say on the subject. Next time, I'll return with Innocent Until Caught, which if it is incompetent, will be a form of incompetency I can deal with more easily. Probably.