Last updated on September 9th, 2023 at 02:27 pm
Mangguk Jeon’gi: Ichyeojin Nara-ui Iyagi is a Role-Playing game, developed and published by Mirinae Entertainment, which was released in Korea in 1995.
By 1995, Korea was finally able to deliver a number of decent RPGs, and Mirinae jumped onto the bandwagon as well. The Romance of Forgotten Kingdom was their first non-shooter that actually worked out well.
The story about an amnesiac prince and an evil force trying to take over the throne is stereotypical enough, but the game could convince with its unique scetting based on Korean mythology and history. It builds upon the Hong Gildong story, but rather than retelling it, it takes it as a premise for its world, and deals with the fate of Hong Gildong’s descendants in the realm of Yulgok.
The battle system can be described as a variation on the TBA system known from Final Fantasy, but instead of having to wait for the characters’ turn, the state of the action time bar here determines the strengths of attacks (although some spells take recovery time after their execution), which can get a little hectic. It also features a simplistic job system. The game is balanced for grindless playthroughs (with some odd flaws like enemies that can’t even hurt the party), but a bit too linear. It was fairly successful in its time, but unlike the Astonishia Story and War of Genesis series, it didn’t become a true hit.
This can probably be explained by the number of bugs and glitches that plague the game. It is even possible to skip a main quest and a story-relevant party character (whose lines still appear in the following cutscenes) altogether because of this. The game is also quite short for an RPG and fairly linear, although it offers two branching paths at the later course of the game, as well as two different endings, accordingly.
In cooperation with their publishing partner Pantech, Mirinae also offered a network client for the game, which allowed players to chat and exchange items from their save states. Additional online features were promised as well fo later updates, but there is no documentation as to whether they actually happened.
Mangguk Jeon’gi was never released outside of Korea, but there is an English fan translation of the game.
The Romance of Forgotten Kingdom – PC-DOS (December 20th, 1995)
OTHERS MIRINAE ENTERTAINMENT VIDEO GAMES