 S tractor. A couple weeks ago on this channel I talked about improvement patches that added some fixes or quality of life improvements to certain Nintendo games, and one of them was for this game, G.O.D. or, growth or de-evolution, Mesami Yōtū Yobukōika Kikoi, which basically translates to HEED the Call to Awaken. This game got a lot of comments asking to know more about it, so I thought I'd once again dive into the strange and murky waters of unlocalized role-playing games that never left Japan. And yes you will need an English patch to play through this one, and thankfully there's a really good one available, made by the reliable folks at Dynamic Designs, so big thanks to them and their work. Growth 3D Evolution is full of surprises, it's a long game with lots of content, a strange story that goes all over the place while nicely staying together as one cohesive narrative, with some interesting quirks with the typical combat system that you're used to with lots of RPGs, but I should mention right away that it's also a game that in many ways stays firmly in December of 1996, when it was developed by Infinity and published by Imagineer, since it has a lot of the old turn-based RPG tropes that we've all been annoyed with for years and years. Now a common question about games like this is, why wasn't this ever properly localized? And I can only speculate, but the two obvious answers are that it was released way too late in the Super Nintendo lifespan, with the N64 already in full swing, and it would have taken forever and a day to translate this one, this is a very long and very text heavy game, so keep that in mind. The way the story goes, you play as Gen, a little kid who's gonna go visit his grandma in a town far away, and it's not an easy journey as you've gotta climb a friggin' mountain and get rid of all sorts of enemies in your path, and you get to the top and find this mysterious orb buried in a cave, huh, that's weird. You eventually head to the top of the mountain and uh, well that doesn't seem good. Right after that, you wake up in a bed 10 years later as part of an army fighting invading aliens. Yes that's right, it's an amnesia storyline, but the whole story isn't hinged on this, it's just part of the setup. And right as you're getting your wits about you, your compound is attacked and you gotta get the heck out of there, and you eventually head into a town where you're immediately arrested for being dressed weird, which apparently makes you an alien in disguise by default. In your jail cell, you meet a strange dude who's able to see that you've obtained some kind of weird power, it must have been that orb you stumbled across in that mountain, and then this dude somehow materializes a sword, smashes through the wall, and helps you to freedom, and it goes from there. You eventually run into other folks who help you out, like this American dude who suspiciously looks a lot like Gile, there's Mina who's a cult leader that has powerful psychic abilities, and Basil, no not that Basil, this guy's a monk who actually wants to try and learn and understand the aliens and what their real motive is. Your quest eventually turns into just finding other people who have the same power that you do, that was granted by that mysterious stone at the very beginning of the game. I really dig how the story is told here because there's so many small touches that add so much, for instance every time you save your game, it creates a new page of notes in a journal, this really added a lot for me, because it gives the game an uncommon personal touch. Notes come along in other forms too, like helping explain certain game mechanics or helping fill in the blanks in certain parts of the story. The notes are essentially a makeshift instruction manual, they're extremely useful, and again big time props to dynamic designs, because as you can see there's tons and tons of text here. The overall tone of growth and de-evolution is reminiscent of stuff like Soul Blazer and Earthbound, and I gotta be careful with the Earthbound comparison there, because I know that's really high praise, but I don't say that necessarily because of the wacky dialogue or all the goofy characters you come across, and there's plenty of that here, but it's because all of that belies some heavy stuff that this game addresses, and I don't want to spoil any of that here. All I gotta say is, uh, the game is called God for Pete's sake, so yeah, things are gonna get pretty serious. Some people might roll their eyes at that, and that's fine, but bear in mind that this game was made when themes that tackle faith and human nature were extremely rare, and I liked how it was handled in this game. In addition to all that, this game takes place in a regular, modern, everyday setting, using real locations with real historical figures occasionally showing up as well. While the story is closer to stuff like Soul Blazer and Earthbound, the combat is not. This is by and large your typical turn-based Dragon Quest style stuff with an over-the-shoulder viewpoint, and random battles that you get sucked into when walking around the world map. Thankfully, there is an auto battle option, which comes in handy for some of the more tedious parts of the game, but yeah, this is an old-school RPG all the way. You walk really slowly on the world map, there's lots of dead ends, and the game is structured in a way where you're expected to grind a lot. But thankfully, if you're not into that, there's that improvement patch I mentioned earlier called Easy Mode, and it cuts the encounter rate way, way down, and rebalances the experience and gold you earn from each battle, so you're able to enjoy the story instead of laboring through the same battles over and over. Despite the shortcomings of the combat system, there is some interesting stuff here. Yeah, there's the usual magic spells with each party member having different kinds of spells and all that, but there's also the Chakra system, which kind of works a little bit like how Espers work in Final Fantasy 6. This gives you some control on how you want each character in your party to level up and what kind of spells you want them to learn. There's seven different Chakras you can eventually find, and they all have their own separate leveling system, so you can equip and unequip for each character at any time. You can eventually combine Chakras, so you can learn even more stuff, so that's pretty cool. One other thing I gotta mention is how this game ends. Getting the quote-unquote true ending and beating each of the bosses is pretty dang frustrating because there's an exact methodology to it. Each boss has its own gimmick, and if you don't know what to do, you're pretty much stuck. But there is a helpful guide on Game Facts available if you're not opposed to using it. The boss gauntlet at the end, however, is a little bit of a downer, but it's definitely not game-breaking or anything. I should also mention very quickly that this game was remade for PlayStation as G.O.D. growth or de-evolution pure. And that one also stayed in Japan, but it looks like the English translation for that one is only partway done, at least as far as I could find. So if you wanna play this one today, you gotta stick with the Super Famicom version. So yeah, when it comes to import RPGs, growth or de-evolution is an impressive piece of work and well worth playing. The story and the overall tone this game strikes is unique. Yeah, it starts out extremely reminiscent of Earthbound with the modern setting and playing as a kid riding around on a bike and aliens invading and all that, but still, you eventually get to traverse the world riding a dolphin, you visit the Vatican of all places, you meet all sorts of crazy characters, and you get a great sense throughout your play-through of not knowing what's coming next. Plus you get some genuinely humorous moments like this old dude getting mad for you wandering into his house with his wife chiming in saying that her husband's favorite pastime is yelling at kids who wander into houses without knocking. Now I will say, I think sometimes it's easy to get carried away with expectations, especially when it comes to these recently translated Super Famicom games, but I mean, look at the space they're occupying with Final Fantasy VI, Earthbound, Lufia II, Chrono Trigger, and on and on. That's just a crazy high standard and I don't think growth or de-evolution reaches the same heights as those games, but man, if you dig JRPGs and you haven't played this one, put it near the top of your list and make sure to check this one out. It is a great time and you won't regret it. And that's all for now. I wanna thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.