Mo Shen Fa Shi/Demogorgon Monk (Famicom, Waixing Computer Science & Technology, ???)

Unlicensed games are a mixed bag. Some are good, some fairly decent and others are cornerstones of many internet gaming reviewers clame to fame. Most of the games covered are usually either cheaply made American/British action games with terrible controls, awful graphics and bad hit detection. However, there is very little discussion of the Chinese bootlegged and unlicensed RPG scene, despite there being quite a few games of this type around, mostly because of the language barrier. As a result few if any of these games get noticed or receive anything beyond the vaguest mention.

Today's subject is one of these games. "Mo Shen Fa Shi", as the transliteration of the title supposedly goes, is a very simple turn based RPG based on the Journey to the West. It was made by Waixing Computer Science & Technology, who'se known games include rip offs of other titles like Super Contra 7, or games which steal sprites and assets from other games en masse. It's possible this game does so too, but there is no information about it online except the fact it was produced by Waixing.

There are no ulterior motives in posting this particular screenshot at all.

The game itself at first seems to be a regular turn based RPG. However, there are some notable differences. For one, there are no "inns" or anything similar in this game. Instead the characters regain health and magic after each fight automatically, to a certain extent. This is not a problem later on but becomes one towards the one of the game.

Another difference is that there is little to do in the game other then talking to people and fighting enemies. Despite not knowing Chinese one can force one's way through the game by simply fighting the boss characters visible on the screen and talking to people. There is little chance of not knowing where to go as you can only go into areas that you have to go to next. Otherwise the game simply notes the area as being somewhere you can go by displaying a name, but will not allow you to go inside, even if there is seemingly nothing preventing your entry. In addition, NPCs and defeated boss characters will not repeat dialogue that they've already said, so one can check quite easily if he missed a necessary conversation by simply attempting to talk to them again. There is little need to really know what they say in depth as the conversation usually amounts to an event flag which opens up a previously inaccessible area.

The only other thing one can really do in this game besides random encounters is walking around the stage picking up items from treasure chests and opening closed passages. The former is done by bumping into the chest while holding b and pressing the direction button. It seems really impressise and hard to replicate exactly. The latter is done by going around the area, touching an object that looks like a keyhole, floating around in the middle of nowhere, and press B which magically makes what resemble stone pillars blocking your path disappear. There is little else beyond buying some health items and upgrades.

One notable thing about the game is that it is set on one map, which is however divided into three areas. Once the player gets teleported to the other side of the river, there is no way to go back to the starting area. It is at this point where the game becomes more imbalanced. There are two boss characters here, both of whom use an attack that hurts the entire party for 200 or 300 dammage respectively. Progress having been much smoother before, one has to start going around and grind the enemies in this area, far tougher then those in the first area. It's here that the auto healing function stops being much of an asset, as there is only a certain amount of health and magic that regenerates after a fight and if you keep running into the skeletons, you will probably keep on losing energy rather then getting any back.

After you move on from this area, you are in the final part of the game. Confusingly, there are several caves and towns here which, despite looking like the other towns, are not locations at all, but just part of the background. Here you will face off against the tiger boss, who can hit your whole party for 500 dammage. The problem being that, even if you have all four characters maxed out to level 30 and all using their elemental summon spells to attack the guy, you can't survive long enough to beat him if he gets to use his group attack even twice. So you have to hit him with normal weapons, hope to god his A.I. decides to just attack one of your characters normally, so you can hit him with your highest level spells twice.

This all while basically all of the enemies here are way stronger then you and can take up to 7 attacks in the 900 dammage range to go down, and 90 % of enemies here come at you in pairs. You really wish you could spend all that XP your counter isn't even displaying anymore after it reaches 9999 and all the gold you're getting to get stronger weapons, armour etc. But there is nothing of the sort here, nothing to make these battles any less of a pain. This is probably the biggest flaw in the game as there is nothing to really work towards, no special weapon that you spend hours grinding to be able to buy and kill off a boss that's giving you trouble, nothing to decrease the amount of dammage you take, or decrease the cost of your spells, give you more spells etc. When you've beaten the Tiger, Elephant and Bird bosses which all have the same annoying powers as Tiger, you have to go into one of the seemingly inaccessible towns from the side, make your way through a forest like area, down a specific path to end up in a dark temple interior, talk to a buddha statue, then coverse with two guys on opposite sides of the temple and you win.

You are rewarded with some chinese text which seems to be a list of staff and then the game resets to the title screen. Not exactly thrilling but then again, one should probably not expect any epic lengthy ending from a game like this. The experience overall is entertaining, though less engaging then a proper, professionally developed RPG.