Honestly, if I spoke a lick of Japanese I would try to put together a translation team for this game. As it is I'm thinking of asking my girlfriend (fiance now I guess) to help me translate it.
You CAN get quite a bit if you're AtlasGTHing it. The story is pretty basic as far as I can tell; man wants to dominate world, man likes women, man rapes women. *shrug* It's when I can't figure out how to unlock little stuff because I'm missing out on specific story details that I get frustrated. Like how there's an extremely good archer that seems to be made out of some sort of pink slime, but I never was able to consistently recruit him... because I had no idea what the hell triggered opening up that area... because I couldn't understand it.
Problem is each time I do this Atlas thing, I keep forgetting how to set it up. I wish I could just click the dang program, then play the game and have it pick up on it. I keep forgetting the process to make it work, is there a simple way to do this?
Sorry for the necro, but I don't see any other English language discussion of this game anywhere. I've gotten hooked on this game again after it sat on my HD for years, mostly because the footprint is small enough for it to be overlooked any time I've cleaned up space.
I'd like to write a translation for this, with my limited Japanese but hours of persistence I could do it, but I have no idea how to decompress Escude's .bin format, nor what the individual files look like inside them.
There are two Japanese FAQs, decently comprehensible with machine translation:
(w)ww.foolmaker.net/game/a/maou/exm.html
atarime2.fc2web.com/index.htm
I'll try to cover as many spoilers as possible with nested tags in this summary:
Felser is a Demon Lord occupying a castle in the far east of the known land. He hates humanity for their selfishness, deceit and treachery, and goes on regular incursions into human settlements in his territory to take out his hatred on them. In the prologue, he's on one such rampage, and having his view of humanity validated with a gang rape of their own and the capture and torture of a mazoku child, he loses his temper and his Demon Sword takes control and he smashes the town, killing indiscriminately. His morality pet and buttmonkey Garefu tries to keep the atrocities under control somewhat, but Liese arrives and encourages Felser with her own hatred of humanity
(it's revealed later that he rescued her from starvation and torture while marauding a human village.)
On their return, Felser and Liese plan to broaden the scope of their sacking and looting, with ill-defined plans to conquer the humans. When an armored mazoku commander arrives to challenge him, Felser beats the warrior who turns out to be a little girl, rapes her, and brings her under his domination. In a few days, she spawns full grown children capable of fighting, and Felser seizes on this as a viable means of world conquest. Since there are many rival Demon Lords on the way to the human kingdom, he also decides to conquer them, bring them under his power, and add them to his forces.
The first en route is Goeria, a pink demon so camp gay that he offends Felser and Liese's sensibilities. Goeria identifies the Demon Sword as Maken Abram, part of a pair with Seiken Helhart, that were able to slay a legendary Demon King 1000 years ago. Goeria manages to disarm Felser with his whip, and one of his slave boys seizes the weapon. After the fight between Felser and Goeria, the mistreated slave steals off into the woods, taking the Maken with him. Continuing the invasion in the direction he believes the Demon Sword was taken, Felser comes across Chamri Plains and the Church of Nenois.
Momo is a mazoku deceived by nomadic herders into believing she is an angel and manipulated into protecting them. They turn on her when she is defeated, and Felser rapes and captures her to make her a commander and concubine. In the village of Nenois, the priesthood have been extorting the villagers for their crops, in such unreasonable quantities that Garefu, a devout worshiper of Nenois, doesn't strongly protest their conquest. The Church's barrier against evil doesn't protect the priests from being slain by Felser.
The late cardinal had sought the Maken Abram in hopes of a promotion to bishop, and was awaiting an agent from the Cathedral to retrieve it. However the sword slipped further away after the slave boy was maddened and then baked by it's power, and a pursuing mazoku decided to claim it and went on the run himself. The Cathedral's agent, Meissiah, arrives after the invasion of the church, and unperturbed by Felser's appearance the following day, questions him about the sword. Felser, detecting the blood of the Gods, decides not to make an enemy of her at that time, and claims ignorance of the sword. Meissiah may come across Felser's territory in her continued hunt for the Demon Sword, and she will pause to 'restore the balance of Nenois' by attempting to drive out the mazoku.
Next on Felser's path are the Honharth canyon and Zarunium Forest. The ruler of Honharth is a painfully shy archer prone to panic attacks that cause her to transform into a dragon.
It's revealed that she once was friends with humans until they betrayed her with a particularly humiliating prank that left her self-esteem wrecked.
The forest is territory to Benadi, an extremely quick bowman who is so lazy that the defense is left to the four fairy Nina sisters. While setting traps, Ninu finds the Maken on the corpse of a mazoku, and unaware of what it is they incorporate it into a pit trap. Felser falls into the trap, reclaims his sword, and after driving off the Ninas, continues the conquest with his weapon. Benadi also correctly identifies it, and holds Momo or Alette hostage in exchange for it. The Nina sisters get it away from Felser again and, unable to flee with the heavy Maken, teleport it to an unknown location.
In the course of these two conquests, the human suffering comes to the attention of a hero of Jikraf Ceres, who vows to crusade against Felser. If left uncaptured Ceres remains a nemesis all the way to the border of Jikraf, if caught she may be impregnated in her cell or fall in love with Felser under house arrest. Also, Felser becomes called the Demon King, and both mazoku and humans comment on the similarity of his methods and ambitions to the Demon King Garth who was slain 1000 years ago by the hero Jikraf, founder of that kingdom. The name of Roeru is dropped in cryptic references as the hero who could've challenged Felser, but something indeterminately unpleasant had happened to him.
The White Country is next, home of the snow witch Yukine who oppresses the humans with magical cold. For a decade she has been bitterly vengeful against humanity due to a perceived betrayal by a human lover. If Felser captures her, she remains a steadfastly willful and rebellious charge (though susceptible to Felser's seduction.) If Felser reveals the actual incidents that led to the fire in her castle and leaves her in peace, she's a much more willingly helpful ally (but will not bear Felser's children.)
En route to Que Kenz Cathedral, center of the Nenois religion, the Maken Abram appears miraculously where it had been secured for centuries. The Pope Goofenbeards (close enough translation, it really suits him,) a vicious-tempered and arrogant old man, swears to keep it forever, but the Knight Commander Danbose and his squire Hubert arrive to collect it for Jikraf's safe-keeping, on the pretext that since it had been stolen under Goofenbeard's nose before, the Cathedral wouldn't be qualified to hold it against a demon invasion. Danbose returns to Jikraf with it, ordering Hubert to recon Felser and 'test his strength' against him to report on it later.
Under the stress of the approaching demons, Goofenbeards reveals his habitual abuse of his agent Meissiah. If Felser has fought her personally often enough, he is familiar with her repressed emotions and, determined to distort her features with pain and fear, may choose to capture her. Goofenbeards recognizes Felser in the battle, and before he is slain, accuses him of stealing the Demon Sword in the first place. After the Cathedral is captured, Liese's teleport home goes awry, placing her, Felser and Alette along a mountain range on the way to Jikraf, beneath city-sized hovering pyramids in the sky. Back at Feelese, Felser and Garefu alter their plans to advance his army up Mt Andastare to attempt to explore and claim them.
Before leaving the Cathedral area, Garefu persuades Felser to accompany him to a festival in which villagers dress up as mazoku and heroes, so they may wander about inconspicuously and enjoy themselves in peace. At a pub they have fine food and drink (Black Muge -- oishi!! White Muge -- oishiiii!! And Rainbow Muge -- intoxicating!) Just as Felser and Garefu are taken for costumed revelers, so is the hero Otis, who is sat with them at the common table. Felser and Otis eat and drink together, getting slightly tipsy before disagreements in a rambling discussion of their perception of humanity causes them to duel. Though the fight starts somewhat friendly, they get more serious as they discover each others' power. Under Garefu's pressure Felser assents to break it up, and Otis rejoins his adventuring companions. With axeman Gert and staff chick Irema, Otis remains a foil to Felser to the end of the game and possibly beyond, either as an outright enemy or an antagonistic ally.
On the march again to Andastare, Hubert appears in Felser's path to challenge him, and though he seems to recognize Felser he says nothing, and flees when defeated. At the top of the mountain are a gang of bandits who have enslaved the mute mazoku girl Parushira, and use her as a lure girl and a sex toy. The leader Gossen, cocky about keeping a makozu under his control, arrogantly challenges Felser, but he's the type of human Liese has a murderous grudge against. The shrine to Nenois the bandits had been squatting in contains a gate that Garefu is able to control to teleport them into the pyramids above, where a mummy-wrapped mazoku had prematurely awoken from a thousand year sleep, still unaware that her pyramids had drifted low enough to be visible from the ground. A genius ditz, Faora is pretty much unaware of anything that isn't inscribed in runes on the walls of her home, and she's forgetful of the majority of that as well.
If Felser has cultivated Alette's confidence enough, she will make a controlled dragon transformation to save him after Faora uses her bandages to hurl him off the pyramids
Faora is rather casual about her conquest and rape, accepting it as the mazoku way, and proudly volunteers an informative tour of her city, Heteth.
During the conquest of Heteth, Danbose returns to Jikraf and delivers Maken Abram to King Kristo. On the way he has a shady exchange with Queen Sandrine out of earshot of her daughter, Princess Ranju. Hubert arrives soon after, pays his respect to Ranju, who he shows obvious adoration to, and reports to Danbose. Queen Sandrine nastily reminds Hubert of his station and it's distance beneath Ranju's.
Across the northwest sea is an underwater city Felser can opt to invade, protected by a whirlpool and a barrier against evil. The city is ruled by Dine, a mazoku lady who once attacked humanity, but withdrew from the world after an epiphany during a raid. After rescuing a castaway sailor, she decided instead to give refuge to humans displaced by mazoku. After her defeat, her serene goddess facade cracks to reveal a snarl of anxieties she dwells on with almost too much loving detail.
On the final approach to Jikraf, Felser can hear some history from one of the castle's former staff.
There was apparently a conspiracy between Sandrine and Danbose before the former king Jerome was killed. The hero Roeru was blamed unjustly, and had to flee from execution. Neither know what happened to him after that, but a flashback reveals more. Roeru was Jikraf's most famous hero, and had such great influence in the court despite eschewing knighthood that King Jerome permitted him his daughter Nasha's hand in marriage. Roeru had such clout he could openly disrespect Lady Sandrine and her husband Kristo could do nothing but apologize for her rudeness. On a return from a successful demon hunt with his companions Garefu and Nasema (that name is probably wrong, but he never becomes relevant outside the flashback,) Roeru learns from Ranju (not yet princess) and Hubert (not yet a knight) that Nasha has been abducted and taken to the Dukedom of Soferdo. He charges to the throne room to speak with King Jerome and finds him dead on the floor. Sandrine and Kristo arrive immediately after, demanding to know what happened, and holding him responsible.
But Danbose had actually slain the king at Sandrine's persuasion, to gain rank and power under Jerome's brother, Kristo. Nasha had been sold to Nenois radicals who wished the Jikraf blood for a sacrifice to revive Garth, which they believed would upset the balance severely enough to provoke Nenois' return to the world. Hubert was ordered to keep quiet and not do anything as Nasha was taken, which he was severely conflicted about, but when the kidnappers mistakenly grabbed Ranju and Nasha gave herself up to save her cousin, Hubert complied to keep Ranju safe.
Now framed for regicide, Roeru flees to rescue his fiance Nasha. On the way to Soferdo (where Feelese is now,) he stops at the Cathedral, demands to see the Maken Abram and due to his reputation is permitted without question. Since word of Jerome's death hadn't traveled as quickly as Roeru, he is able to grab the Demon Sword under Goofenbeard's nose and walk out.
At Soferdo, Roeru finds blue-robed priests of the Cathedral along with the red-robed radical sect, and interrogates them about their complicity with Nasha's abduction. Goofenbeards had an agreement with Kristo to turn a blind eye to the sacrifice ritual, since they knew that it would backfire, possibly destroying the radicals but certainly removing an heir that could obstruct Kristo from claiming the crown. But Roeru was too late, and finds Nasha after the ritual, bloodsoaked by dozens of dead radical priests. She morphs into a Body Horror before his eyes and throws herself out a window. The head priest Lendl appears and confronts Roeru, and they both learn of Kristo's betrayals. Roeru informs Lendl that Jikraf's lineage has the blood of the mazoku as well as the gods, and demonstrates by summoning all the power of the Demon Sword. Grief-stricken and embittered, he forsakes his humanity to become a Demon Lord, and slays Lendl and all remaining priests.
His friend Garefu regretfully promises to stay with him and find some way to restore his humanity.
Garefu didn't actually become mazoku; he used magic to change his form so he could continue to advise Felser without drawing hostility. Unfortunately there are limits to his ability, so all the hair that's been snatched from his head will never grow back.
Marching on the castle, Felser has his final confrontations with Ceres, who may be captured and imprisoned, with Hubert, who apologizes to Felser before suicidally facing him in battle, and with Otis who guards the courtyard inside the gates, but if defeated will be teleported away with Gert by Irema. At this point, the final end route is determined;
if Liese, she decides her hatred of humans is too much to live with the knowledge that Felser was one and leaves, but driven by her love she returns to demand he defeat and subjugate her.
If Alette's ending, Ceres will be freed by a mysterious voiceless mazoku as Meissiah is attempting to rescue her. If the Harem ending, the same voiceless mazoku appears briefly to Felser, then disappears.
In the throne room, Kristo reveals so much of his influence in events that even Dabose wets himself.
He manipulated Sandrine, ambitious for queenhood, into removing Jerome and Nasha, and framing Roeru to remove the last of their influence from the court, and because he hated Roeru for rejecting the knighthood which Kristo was head of at the time. He planned for Soferdo's ritual to fail just enough to leave him means to revive Garth himself, he planned to get Maken Abram from the Cathedral so he could use it with Seiken Helhart to kill Garth to secure his political hold and legacy. He didn't plan on another Demon King appearing to follow in Garth's footsteps, but he conveniently held the swords that destroyed the last one.
Kristo draws the Sacred Sword to kill Felser, but it rejects his hold and falls heavily from his hand. Enraged, Kristo orders the assembled knights to attack, but uncertain of his authority after the treachery he's confessed, they have to be bribed with the promise of a fiefdom. After his defeat, Kristo staggers from the throne room, and laughing defiantly, throws Seiken Helhart out the window before Felser can slay him.
Otis and companions have been deposited in a storage room off the courtyard by Irema's desperate teleport. They find the Steward, Genard, who brings Otis the Sacred Sword according to the late King's instruction. As mazoku troops are beating down the door, they decide to fall back to the Landless Island west of Jikraf, and teleport out with Genard's help.
What follows next depends on the end route; Otis may be slain, mind-controlled, or allied with, Celes and/or Meissiah may be claimed or killed, and Andios will always be pathetic. Alette's dragon form will get an encore in her ending. Liese will leave during Momo's ending. Garth may be successfully revived, and Felser will get to tap into his inner monstrosity to fight him.
The Ultimate Battle: Abram. Around the land, four sanctuaries were built with replicas of Abram or Helhart, to fortify the central seal at St. Avad's Lake, which holds beings banished to the Third World. Touching all four in sequence, as Felser unwittingly does, would let loose Garth, but touching only two is enough to wake Abram and open a door for him. So to reach the post-epilogue game, two of the ruins at minimum have to be visited; all four have to be visited in the Harem ending to unlock it for all later playthroughs. Abram wakes up, maddened by humanities ugliness and no more satisfied with mazoku domination, and decides to wipe everything out.
I'm not totally clear about this, but it seems Abram and Helhart were brothers, both sons of Nenois. They made swords of opposing natures, so naturally fought each other with them. Nenois was killed, possibly by accident during their fight, and to atone they had their souls imbued into their swords, which were handed to Jikraf to defeat Garth. Abram was already an angry guy, and being sealed on the side of the chaotic Third World just made him crazier and angrier. Helhart was possibly sealed in the First World, wherever it was it was certainly a mellower home than Abram's. Helhart wanted to relieve Abram by bringing him into his own sword, and this is why her permitted Felser in the end to wield him. And they lived happily ever after.
Jesus, by the time I realized how long this was going to be, I was already committed to finishing it. Hope someone found it interesting.
Sorry for the necro, but I don't see any other English language discussion of this game anywhere. I've gotten hooked on this game again after it sat on my HD for years, mostly because the footprint is small enough for it to be overlooked any time I've cleaned up space.
I'd like to write a translation for this, with my limited Japanese but hours of persistence I could do it, but I have no idea how to decompress Escude's .bin format, nor what the individual files look like inside them.
There are two Japanese FAQs, decently comprehensible with machine translation:
(w)ww.foolmaker.net/game/a/maou/exm.html
atarime2.fc2web.com/index.htm
I'll try to cover as many spoilers as possible with nested tags in this summary:
Felser is a Demon Lord occupying a castle in the far east of the known land. He hates humanity for their selfishness, deceit and treachery, and goes on regular incursions into human settlements in his territory to take out his hatred on them. In the prologue, he's on one such rampage, and having his view of humanity validated with a gang rape of their own and the capture and torture of a mazoku child, he loses his temper and his Demon Sword takes control and he smashes the town, killing indiscriminately. His morality pet and buttmonkey Garefu tries to keep the atrocities under control somewhat, but Liese arrives and encourages Felser with her own hatred of humanity
(it's revealed later that he rescued her from starvation and torture while marauding a human village.)
On their return, Felser and Liese plan to broaden the scope of their sacking and looting, with ill-defined plans to conquer the humans. When an armored mazoku commander arrives to challenge him, Felser beats the warrior who turns out to be a little girl, rapes her, and brings her under his domination. In a few days, she spawns full grown children capable of fighting, and Felser seizes on this as a viable means of world conquest. Since there are many rival Demon Lords on the way to the human kingdom, he also decides to conquer them, bring them under his power, and add them to his forces.
The first en route is Goeria, a pink demon so camp gay that he offends Felser and Liese's sensibilities. Goeria identifies the Demon Sword as Maken Abram, part of a pair with Seiken Helhart, that were able to slay a legendary Demon King 1000 years ago. Goeria manages to disarm Felser with his whip, and one of his slave boys seizes the weapon. After the fight between Felser and Goeria, the mistreated slave steals off into the woods, taking the Maken with him. Continuing the invasion in the direction he believes the Demon Sword was taken, Felser comes across Chamri Plains and the Church of Nenois.
Momo is a mazoku deceived by nomadic herders into believing she is an angel and manipulated into protecting them. They turn on her when she is defeated, and Felser rapes and captures her to make her a commander and concubine. In the village of Nenois, the priesthood have been extorting the villagers for their crops, in such unreasonable quantities that Garefu, a devout worshiper of Nenois, doesn't strongly protest their conquest. The Church's barrier against evil doesn't protect the priests from being slain by Felser.
The late cardinal had sought the Maken Abram in hopes of a promotion to bishop, and was awaiting an agent from the Cathedral to retrieve it. However the sword slipped further away after the slave boy was maddened and then baked by it's power, and a pursuing mazoku decided to claim it and went on the run himself. The Cathedral's agent, Meissiah, arrives after the invasion of the church, and unperturbed by Felser's appearance the following day, questions him about the sword. Felser, detecting the blood of the Gods, decides not to make an enemy of her at that time, and claims ignorance of the sword. Meissiah may come across Felser's territory in her continued hunt for the Demon Sword, and she will pause to 'restore the balance of Nenois' by attempting to drive out the mazoku.
Next on Felser's path are the Honharth canyon and Zarunium Forest. The ruler of Honharth is a painfully shy archer prone to panic attacks that cause her to transform into a dragon.
It's revealed that she once was friends with humans until they betrayed her with a particularly humiliating prank that left her self-esteem wrecked.
The forest is territory to Benadi, an extremely quick bowman who is so lazy that the defense is left to the four fairy Nina sisters. While setting traps, Ninu finds the Maken on the corpse of a mazoku, and unaware of what it is they incorporate it into a pit trap. Felser falls into the trap, reclaims his sword, and after driving off the Ninas, continues the conquest with his weapon. Benadi also correctly identifies it, and holds Momo or Alette hostage in exchange for it. The Nina sisters get it away from Felser again and, unable to flee with the heavy Maken, teleport it to an unknown location.
In the course of these two conquests, the human suffering comes to the attention of a hero of Jikraf Ceres, who vows to crusade against Felser. If left uncaptured Ceres remains a nemesis all the way to the border of Jikraf, if caught she may be impregnated in her cell or fall in love with Felser under house arrest. Also, Felser becomes called the Demon King, and both mazoku and humans comment on the similarity of his methods and ambitions to the Demon King Garth who was slain 1000 years ago by the hero Jikraf, founder of that kingdom. The name of Roeru is dropped in cryptic references as the hero who could've challenged Felser, but something indeterminately unpleasant had happened to him.
The White Country is next, home of the snow witch Yukine who oppresses the humans with magical cold. For a decade she has been bitterly vengeful against humanity due to a perceived betrayal by a human lover. If Felser captures her, she remains a steadfastly willful and rebellious charge (though susceptible to Felser's seduction.) If Felser reveals the actual incidents that led to the fire in her castle and leaves her in peace, she's a much more willingly helpful ally (but will not bear Felser's children.)
En route to Que Kenz Cathedral, center of the Nenois religion, the Maken Abram appears miraculously where it had been secured for centuries. The Pope Goofenbeards (close enough translation, it really suits him,) a vicious-tempered and arrogant old man, swears to keep it forever, but the Knight Commander Danbose and his squire Hubert arrive to collect it for Jikraf's safe-keeping, on the pretext that since it had been stolen under Goofenbeard's nose before, the Cathedral wouldn't be qualified to hold it against a demon invasion. Danbose returns to Jikraf with it, ordering Hubert to recon Felser and 'test his strength' against him to report on it later.
Under the stress of the approaching demons, Goofenbeards reveals his habitual abuse of his agent Meissiah. If Felser has fought her personally often enough, he is familiar with her repressed emotions and, determined to distort her features with pain and fear, may choose to capture her. Goofenbeards recognizes Felser in the battle, and before he is slain, accuses him of stealing the Demon Sword in the first place. After the Cathedral is captured, Liese's teleport home goes awry, placing her, Felser and Alette along a mountain range on the way to Jikraf, beneath city-sized hovering pyramids in the sky. Back at Feelese, Felser and Garefu alter their plans to advance his army up Mt Andastare to attempt to explore and claim them.
Before leaving the Cathedral area, Garefu persuades Felser to accompany him to a festival in which villagers dress up as mazoku and heroes, so they may wander about inconspicuously and enjoy themselves in peace. At a pub they have fine food and drink (Black Muge -- oishi!! White Muge -- oishiiii!! And Rainbow Muge -- intoxicating!) Just as Felser and Garefu are taken for costumed revelers, so is the hero Otis, who is sat with them at the common table. Felser and Otis eat and drink together, getting slightly tipsy before disagreements in a rambling discussion of their perception of humanity causes them to duel. Though the fight starts somewhat friendly, they get more serious as they discover each others' power. Under Garefu's pressure Felser assents to break it up, and Otis rejoins his adventuring companions. With axeman Gert and staff chick Irema, Otis remains a foil to Felser to the end of the game and possibly beyond, either as an outright enemy or an antagonistic ally.
On the march again to Andastare, Hubert appears in Felser's path to challenge him, and though he seems to recognize Felser he says nothing, and flees when defeated. At the top of the mountain are a gang of bandits who have enslaved the mute mazoku girl Parushira, and use her as a lure girl and a sex toy. The leader Gossen, cocky about keeping a makozu under his control, arrogantly challenges Felser, but he's the type of human Liese has a murderous grudge against. The shrine to Nenois the bandits had been squatting in contains a gate that Garefu is able to control to teleport them into the pyramids above, where a mummy-wrapped mazoku had prematurely awoken from a thousand year sleep, still unaware that her pyramids had drifted low enough to be visible from the ground. A genius ditz, Faora is pretty much unaware of anything that isn't inscribed in runes on the walls of her home, and she's forgetful of the majority of that as well.
If Felser has cultivated Alette's confidence enough, she will make a controlled dragon transformation to save him after Faora uses her bandages to hurl him off the pyramids
Faora is rather casual about her conquest and rape, accepting it as the mazoku way, and proudly volunteers an informative tour of her city, Heteth.
During the conquest of Heteth, Danbose returns to Jikraf and delivers Maken Abram to King Kristo. On the way he has a shady exchange with Queen Sandrine out of earshot of her daughter, Princess Ranju. Hubert arrives soon after, pays his respect to Ranju, who he shows obvious adoration to, and reports to Danbose. Queen Sandrine nastily reminds Hubert of his station and it's distance beneath Ranju's.
Across the northwest sea is an underwater city Felser can opt to invade, protected by a whirlpool and a barrier against evil. The city is ruled by Dine, a mazoku lady who once attacked humanity, but withdrew from the world after an epiphany during a raid. After rescuing a castaway sailor, she decided instead to give refuge to humans displaced by mazoku. After her defeat, her serene goddess facade cracks to reveal a snarl of anxieties she dwells on with almost too much loving detail.
On the final approach to Jikraf, Felser can hear some history from one of the castle's former staff.
There was apparently a conspiracy between Sandrine and Danbose before the former king Jerome was killed. The hero Roeru was blamed unjustly, and had to flee from execution. Neither know what happened to him after that, but a flashback reveals more. Roeru was Jikraf's most famous hero, and had such great influence in the court despite eschewing knighthood that King Jerome permitted him his daughter Nasha's hand in marriage. Roeru had such clout he could openly disrespect Lady Sandrine and her husband Kristo could do nothing but apologize for her rudeness. On a return from a successful demon hunt with his companions Garefu and Nasema (that name is probably wrong, but he never becomes relevant outside the flashback,) Roeru learns from Ranju (not yet princess) and Hubert (not yet a knight) that Nasha has been abducted and taken to the Dukedom of Soferdo. He charges to the throne room to speak with King Jerome and finds him dead on the floor. Sandrine and Kristo arrive immediately after, demanding to know what happened, and holding him responsible.
But Danbose had actually slain the king at Sandrine's persuasion, to gain rank and power under Jerome's brother, Kristo. Nasha had been sold to Nenois radicals who wished the Jikraf blood for a sacrifice to revive Garth, which they believed would upset the balance severely enough to provoke Nenois' return to the world. Hubert was ordered to keep quiet and not do anything as Nasha was taken, which he was severely conflicted about, but when the kidnappers mistakenly grabbed Ranju and Nasha gave herself up to save her cousin, Hubert complied to keep Ranju safe.
Now framed for regicide, Roeru flees to rescue his fiance Nasha. On the way to Soferdo (where Feelese is now,) he stops at the Cathedral, demands to see the Maken Abram and due to his reputation is permitted without question. Since word of Jerome's death hadn't traveled as quickly as Roeru, he is able to grab the Demon Sword under Goofenbeard's nose and walk out.
At Soferdo, Roeru finds blue-robed priests of the Cathedral along with the red-robed radical sect, and interrogates them about their complicity with Nasha's abduction. Goofenbeards had an agreement with Kristo to turn a blind eye to the sacrifice ritual, since they knew that it would backfire, possibly destroying the radicals but certainly removing an heir that could obstruct Kristo from claiming the crown. But Roeru was too late, and finds Nasha after the ritual, bloodsoaked by dozens of dead radical priests. She morphs into a Body Horror before his eyes and throws herself out a window. The head priest Lendl appears and confronts Roeru, and they both learn of Kristo's betrayals. Roeru informs Lendl that Jikraf's lineage has the blood of the mazoku as well as the gods, and demonstrates by summoning all the power of the Demon Sword. Grief-stricken and embittered, he forsakes his humanity to become a Demon Lord, and slays Lendl and all remaining priests.
His friend Garefu regretfully promises to stay with him and find some way to restore his humanity.
Garefu didn't actually become mazoku; he used magic to change his form so he could continue to advise Felser without drawing hostility. Unfortunately there are limits to his ability, so all the hair that's been snatched from his head will never grow back.
Marching on the castle, Felser has his final confrontations with Ceres, who may be captured and imprisoned, with Hubert, who apologizes to Felser before suicidally facing him in battle, and with Otis who guards the courtyard inside the gates, but if defeated will be teleported away with Gert by Irema. At this point, the final end route is determined;
if Liese, she decides her hatred of humans is too much to live with the knowledge that Felser was one and leaves, but driven by her love she returns to demand he defeat and subjugate her.
If Alette's ending, Ceres will be freed by a mysterious voiceless mazoku as Meissiah is attempting to rescue her. If the Harem ending, the same voiceless mazoku appears briefly to Felser, then disappears.
In the throne room, Kristo reveals so much of his influence in events that even Dabose wets himself.
He manipulated Sandrine, ambitious for queenhood, into removing Jerome and Nasha, and framing Roeru to remove the last of their influence from the court, and because he hated Roeru for rejecting the knighthood which Kristo was head of at the time. He planned for Soferdo's ritual to fail just enough to leave him means to revive Garth himself, he planned to get Maken Abram from the Cathedral so he could use it with Seiken Helhart to kill Garth to secure his political hold and legacy. He didn't plan on another Demon King appearing to follow in Garth's footsteps, but he conveniently held the swords that destroyed the last one.
Kristo draws the Sacred Sword to kill Felser, but it rejects his hold and falls heavily from his hand. Enraged, Kristo orders the assembled knights to attack, but uncertain of his authority after the treachery he's confessed, they have to be bribed with the promise of a fiefdom. After his defeat, Kristo staggers from the throne room, and laughing defiantly, throws Seiken Helhart out the window before Felser can slay him.
Otis and companions have been deposited in a storage room off the courtyard by Irema's desperate teleport. They find the Steward, Genard, who brings Otis the Sacred Sword according to the late King's instruction. As mazoku troops are beating down the door, they decide to fall back to the Landless Island west of Jikraf, and teleport out with Genard's help.
What follows next depends on the end route; Otis may be slain, mind-controlled, or allied with, Celes and/or Meissiah may be claimed or killed, and Andios will always be pathetic. Alette's dragon form will get an encore in her ending. Liese will leave during Momo's ending. Garth may be successfully revived, and Felser will get to tap into his inner monstrosity to fight him.
The Ultimate Battle: Abram. Around the land, four sanctuaries were built with replicas of Abram or Helhart, to fortify the central seal at St. Avad's Lake, which holds beings banished to the Third World. Touching all four in sequence, as Felser unwittingly does, would let loose Garth, but touching only two is enough to wake Abram and open a door for him. So to reach the post-epilogue game, two of the ruins at minimum have to be visited; all four have to be visited in the Harem ending to unlock it for all later playthroughs. Abram wakes up, maddened by humanities ugliness and no more satisfied with mazoku domination, and decides to wipe everything out.
I'm not totally clear about this, but it seems Abram and Helhart were brothers, both sons of Nenois. They made swords of opposing natures, so naturally fought each other with them. Nenois was killed, possibly by accident during their fight, and to atone they had their souls imbued into their swords, which were handed to Jikraf to defeat Garth. Abram was already an angry guy, and being sealed on the side of the chaotic Third World just made him crazier and angrier. Helhart was possibly sealed in the First World, wherever it was it was certainly a mellower home than Abram's. Helhart wanted to relieve Abram by bringing him into his own sword, and this is why her permitted Felser in the end to wield him. And they lived happily ever after.
Jesus, by the time I realized how long this was going to be, I was already committed to finishing it. Hope someone found it interesting.
Does anybody know if they ever fixed the True Final Boss so the game wouldn't crash as soon as you saw him? I would have 100% completed this game if not for that, and have always wondered but been too lazy to do the research.
Does anybody know if they ever fixed the True Final Boss so the game wouldn't crash as soon as you saw him? I would have 100% completed this game if not for that, and have always wondered but been too lazy to do the research.
I've never had or heard of this issue, so I can only guess, but it looks like the polarized bg image is missing or corrupt in gfx.bin. Maybe a problem with your installation or original dl, but maybe try the 5.0 patch and see if that refreshes the file?
sorry for necroing this thread wanted to update it with a working link since this game is almost impossible to find, link here
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for anyone that downloads it here are the instructions to get it setup, just use a program like daemon tools lite to mount the disk 1 cue that comes extracted from one of the winrar files, during the install it should give you a message at a set progress, which means it wants the second disk to be put in which is when you mount the second disk cue file using the program above or another one that works and it should finish installing once installed use daemon tool lite again or another program like it to mount the em_update cue file that comes from the extraction of the rar files which should update the game after that you should be able to play and enjoy the game again sorry for necroing this thread hopefully this turns out useful for those who may want to download this but ether can,t find a link or found one but can,t download it because it's in a massive number of parts.
[050427] 英雄×魔王 サウンドトラック (flac+cue) (something to do with soundtrack?)
[050527] 英雄×魔王 (bin+cue) (actual game, on two disks)
Update Patch
英雄×魔王 ver1.10 Update (bin+cue)
which update do I apply first? the 1.10 one or the nameless one?
edit, worked it out, nameless patch goes last.
now I just need to work out the combat system.
none of the popups are translating for me, so I might need a little help here.
as for the opening, you have a dream about a village, so you decide to attack it? but the hero recently passed through and warded the place so you can't, but you break the ward and attack anyway, killing the men who were going to rape a woman for helping a baby demon? then you get possessed by your own sword, and kill her?
then some hired guards attack, and you get a tutoral on special attacks that went clean over my head.
then you lose your shit even more, and totally trash the place, then "Leeds" shows up, chokes the mayor, fries his daughter, pulls some hair, then leaves?
Also, for some reason it won't let me use my main guy to attack (against Peach near the start of the game) so I have to choose between my other generals, but they all keep losing.
[050427] 英雄×魔王 サウンドトラック (flac+cue) (something to do with soundtrack?)
[050527] 英雄×魔王 (bin+cue) (actual game, on two disks)
Update Patch
英雄×魔王 ver1.10 Update (bin+cue)
which update do I apply first? the 1.10 one or the nameless one?
edit, worked it out, nameless patch goes last.
now I just need to work out the combat system.
none of the popups are translating for me, so I might need a little help here.
as for the opening, you have a dream about a village, so you decide to attack it? but the hero recently passed through and warded the place so you can't, but you break the ward and attack anyway, killing the men who were going to rape a woman for helping a baby demon? then you get possessed by your own sword, and kill her?
then some hired guards attack, and you get a tutoral on special attacks that went clean over my head.
then you lose your shit even more, and totally trash the place, then "Leeds" shows up, chokes the mayor, fries his daughter, pulls some hair, then leaves?
Also, for some reason it won't let me use my main guy to attack (against Peach near the start of the game) so I have to choose between my other generals, but they all keep losing.
You need enough fear to deploy your troops (those circles from the top left part of the screen). The main character needs 3 of them to deploy.
Also the combat system is like rock-paper-scissors. Melee (sword) is strong against Ranged (Bow), which is strong against Magic (spell circle), which is good against Melee.
Pretty much the demon king decides to go to town just for a visit. That is until he sees the woman getting raped and the merchants/townfolks decide to insult him (because they think he can't cross the border). He then proceeds to kick their collective behinds to oblivion.
The sword makes him lose control and pretty much burn the town to the ground (making the premonition in his dream to come true). He then decides to redeclare war on humans because he sees them as weak, pathetic, and backstabbing.
those look like Mana to me fear is the bar that fills up when you burn settlements.
No idea what fear is for, but I'm getting 3 things of mana per turn.
is there any way to get more?
I think i just made my game unbeatable.
I can't build up my army, because the pope sends a win or die attack at my base every single turn, (plus a hero slowly counting down) and theres no way i can kill the pope with out popping more doods.
edit:
ok, this game is outright cheating now.
if i we both have the same dudes, one mage and one archer, no matter which way i turn my rotator thing, it he will ALWAYS turn his so my guy is weak against his guy.
every time.
Like he knows which one i'm going to use.
It's like playing a game against Gary Oak.
anyone know how to cheat this? CE isn't working and i can't beat this guy fairly.
those look like Mana to me fear is the bar that fills up when you burn settlements.
No idea what fear is for, but I'm getting 3 things of mana per turn.
is there any way to get more?
I think i just made my game unbeatable.
I can't build up my army, because the pope sends a win or die attack at my base every single turn, (plus a hero slowly counting down) and theres no way i can kill the pope with out popping more doods.
edit:
ok, this game is outright cheating now.
if i we both have the same dudes, one mage and one archer, no matter which way i turn my rotator thing, it he will ALWAYS turn his so my guy is weak against his guy.
every time.
Like he knows which one i'm going to use.
It's like playing a game against Gary Oak.
anyone know how to cheat this? CE isn't working and i can't beat this guy fairly.
so what's the deal with the grey girl who looks like Liese?
she doesn't have a proper cg scene (beyond a line of what looks like "that was close, I almost got raped by her" and she seems to have the exact same level/stats as Liese.
playing on NG+, I now see that the grey picture, and lack of CG, are both signs of a "clone chracter"
that is, one you carry over from your previous save, but haven't unlocked yet, (so you can use them for fights, but not have any story/sex scenes with them until you find them for real)
also, how many times do you have to beat the hero girls (both swordswoman and cleric) to capture them? I beat the game without collecting either.
edit: on my second playthrough, I took the road at the start that doesn't lead to the catgirl (low path after fighting the gay pink demon) and I found a brown version of her.
Is this just a "generic female demon" template, like the massive teeth dude in the cape that you can recruit like, three diffrent coloured versions of?
also, does anyone have a 100% save of this (full CG gallery, ect)
Just at the end of Celia's route, fighting the final boss, Gath, with like, 5 action points and three guys.
he keeps wrecking my shit.
he can heal himself like 75 freaking hp with a single special attack, and his X5 version can kill every member of my party.
the game gives you Celia for this fight (with the magic sword!) but she goes down in like 1 hit anyway, and he's mostly a magic boss, so she's worthless.
anyone got any tips? this is the end of my NG+, i'd port over to ++ and come back at a higher level if I could, but thats apparantly not an option.
jesus christ, how is he wrecking my shit so hard at level 20?
Those demon girls are generic commanders. You can use them to produce troops but you don't even get a scene. There are a couple different colored ones.
Meisha you have to beat 2 times with your main char before you can capture her at the cathedral. Ceres you have to beat 1x main, 1x with one of your girls and 2 times with your main. foolmaker.net/game/a/maou/exm.html lists the locations in which Ceres will appear in which order.
,) a vicious-tempered and arrogant old man, swears to keep it forever, but the Knight Commander Danbose and his squire Hubert arrive to collect it for Jikraf's safe-keeping, on the pretext that since it had been stolen under Goofenbeard's nose before, the Cathedral wouldn't be qualified to hold it against a demon invasion. Danbose returns to Jikraf with it, ordering Hubert to recon Felser and 'test his strength' against him to report on it later.
