Look Who it Was Random video

Rubbish Blazon [ラビッシュブレイズン] Game Sample - Playstation

3,866 views · Published 15 August 2014 · 39:35 · Indexed 14 November 2026

Channel: Vysethedetermined2 · 2014 · Gaming

Watch on YouTube

Ah... you gotta love Pandora Box, a little-known Japanese game development studio who came to fame by cranking out niche titles from the early 90s to the beginning of the new millennium (even though they were around since the late 80s). While their games weren't "Triple-A" hits (heck, some of them had quite a few fundamental technical flaws), they were bold enough to try different things and didn't just bank on their most profitable IPs (the only one of note being their "Oni" series). Whether they made off-beat "Space-Harrier RPG" titles like "Yam Yam" or brilliant (in theory) multi-tiered games like "Traverse" or complex titles like "Sengoku Cyber" or novel works like "Tsukikomori", Pandora Box took risks. Unfortunately, they ran into financial problems around the mid 90s from poor sales and, in a last ditch effort, took a hiatus and later formed "Pandora Max" to continue producing console games with a new mantra of offering quality games at a low price. As such, they produced a line of games for the Sony Playstation at the budget price of 1,980 yen (under twenty USD back in the day). 

Rubbish Blazon is part three of a six part compilation known as the "Pandora Max Series", preceding titles "Shisha no Yobu Tachi" and "Dragon Knights Glorious". While each game is a separate entity, they mostly share the same engine and each subsequent game makes references to other Pandora Max titles in an attempt to spurn interest and save money. For example, Rubbish Blazon has cameos of characters from both SnYT (Inn Keeper in the town of Setima) and DKG (Lilis and Puriru, etc.). Rubbish Blazon is known as a "Fantasy Comedy RPG" but is equal parts ADV and conventional JRPG. The story is whimsical and simple on the surface: the land is in need of a hero to stop emerging evil, and a young man named Alfred is chosen (against his will) to become the hero of legend by undergoing a trial and traveling the world (after his ditzy childhood friend, Ilicia, is spirited away to a mysterious dimension after wandering through a cursed forest). While Alfred looks the part, he lacks many qualities of a hero (while his rival possesses all the traits of a great hero, but he's ugly, so characters generally don't respect him much) and is humbled (slightly) during his quest in becoming a hero. There is a lot of silly dialogue and quirky humor along the way, and it's a little refreshing to see a game like this that basically parodies the old cliched "save the damsel, save the world" plot.

I have to give Pandora Max a lot of credit here: I had this game for years but never really gave it a chance until recently -- there's soooo much dialogue, the game has fairly long load times, and it's a little ugly in some ways, so I never got into it. However, I pushed myself REALLY HARD to play this game and just when I was about to give up, the game showed its true colors -- the game has more depth than you'd expect, and way more depth than you'd expect for a game sold at a $15-$20 budget. The game has save clear capabilities, a secret bonus dungeon, a host of mini-games, an item creation system, a disc-swapping system for items ala "Monster Rancher", women to impress with items found in dungeons, quizzes, a variety of music tracks, combination battle skills, and fun decisions to make that alter the scenes you witness during the adventure segments (a few of which are even time-sensitive like "Sakura Taisen")! If you can stomach the somewhat sloppy presentation of the field and battle graphics and deal with the load times, there's actually quite a lot to like here. There's also a bunch of unlockable "Omake / Bonus" data and most of it is generally pretty interesting, especially if you keep up with the characters and plot.

While the presentation isn't so great, I can at least say the anime stills in the game are fairly nice and larger and more varied than the average JRPG of the time. The game doesn't have spoken dialogue, but the music is decent as well (though it's hit and miss -- there are multiple battle themes for example; some are good and some are bad). Besides the aforementioned, the main criticism I have with the gameplay is that the encounter rate is quite high (which is pretty normal for a JRPG) and that there is a weird lag in the field inputs where actions occur almost a second after you input them. Fortunately, this is not the type of game that requires lightning fast precision. Generally, everything else is pretty serviceable.

If you're into these kinds of games, I'd get it -- it's at least worth what the developers were asking for it. PB's Max series was later re-released by the company, Shannon. This is a video showing some things in the game. Enjoy.

More from this channel