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G.O.D. stands for "Growth Or Devolution."
It is an old SNES RPG released in Japan in 1996 that never got an official release outside of Japan. There is, however, an English fan translation available. I just finished it, over the course of a week or three. My final time was 30-ish hours, and my characters' levels were in the high 50s or so by the end.
It's pretty good. I'd say it looks and sounds like Final Fantasy, circa FF6, and Chrono Trigger, has some of the quirky humor of EarthBound, and also has some whiffs of Illusion of Gaia. There is some super sad/dark shit on occasion, some religious-y themes, and some risque stuff, too, which probably kind of explain at least in part why it was never localized for the West. Most of that stuff probably could have been changed, mitigated, or omitted in an official translation, but some of it... maybe not so easily. I won't get into the specifics of the plot, for spoiler-avoidant reasons. I'll just say it gets pretty crazy and silly a lot of the time but, sometimes, it gets pretty heavy, too. (To put it another way, this game could maybe give Mother 3 a run for its money in the "sad stuff happens" department [but also in the "truly bizarre stuff happens" department].)
It plays as a pretty standard RPG of the time, with random battles (though I played it with an "easy mode" romhack patch which halved the encounter rate and also doubled the money/XP/etc. that you get from winning a battle, and it wasn't too awful, similar to the one I used for Sailor Moon: Another Story a while back). Aside from the usual magic (called "Psycho" in the English translation), and unique-to-each-character special abilities, there are also Chakras, which is another separate magic/ability system that you gain via the seven "God Stones" that you find through the course of the game and power up via the "Cosmo Stones" that you get via defeating enemies (in addition to the usual XP and gold). One cool thing it does that most other RPGs of the era didn't do is to give you a journal that you can look at when you save, which updates after most semi-major plot points. By the end of the game, it had something like 90 or so entries. And there are notes that certain characters give you at different points which explain more stuff and also provide tutorials for the Chakra system and such, which is nice.
If you care to give this game a try, I'll just give three specific hints. The first is to make sure to buy at least one bun from every shop that sells them, and probably just keep at least one of them with you rather than using them. The reason for why will become clear later on. (Some of the buns are only found via exploring, and some of them can be missed, though I managed to get all of them, with only a bit of walkthrough help toward the end.) The second (and slightly more spoiler-ish) is that while most of the Chakra combination abilities (which become available once you reach Chakra level 4) are pretty cool and useful, I would suggest just putting everyone on the combo of Power and Mind, which gives you a passive ability that gives you extra permanent stat increases when you level up. The number of stats that get bonuses increase as you find more God Stones, too. (The active abilities granted by that combo are pretty nice, too.) The third (and most spoiler-ish) is something I missed entirely, myself, which is that you should probably return the first ship you get back to the place you originally got it from, before you leave Japan (i.e. before you jump on the floating iceberg in the far north of Japan). All I got when I eventually went back to that guy later was him chewing me out and telling me he had to go get his ship back on his own and that he would have given me something nice if I'd brought it back myself. Oh well. (I don't actually know what it is he would've given, or if it's even worth the bother.)
Oh, and this is one of those games where you'll want to check every single crate, pot, dresser, nightstand, refrigerator, etc. because at least some of them will have stuff for you tostealtake.
One thing I found... problematic... about the game was that, at least in the English translation that I played, the portrayals of different cultures could get... well... stereotypical to put it mildly. Straight up racist, to put it less mildly. It wasn't so bad while you were in Japan (if you ignore Myaa Town), but once you ventured out into the wider world... whoo boy, look out. In one of the Chinese cities, some of the NPCs there spoke in a very... not great kind of way, with all the L's and R's swapped (and a few of the NPCs there who didn't talk like that looked down on the ones who did as if they were subhuman trash or whatever). In the Russian cities, most of the NPCs verre talkingk like dees. Same with "New Paris" and "New London" and the Oceania areas (e.g. in the Australia area, most of the NPCs talked like Crocodile Dundee or some shit). And then there was Harlem, NY. I'll just let you imagine how well that was handled. ¬_¬ It was all... eyebrow raising at least, though the fact that pretty much all of the various cultures (aside from Japan [mostly]) were pretty much equally caricatured made it almost less offensive, kinda, in a way.
Aside from that one questionable issue, I'd highly recommend this game, at least if you're into trying old, obscure SNES RPGs that never got an official English version.
Here is the soundtrack. It is passably generic SNES RPG music, for the most part.
I first heard of this game a while back via "SNES drunk," and I'll embed his (very mildly spoiler-ish) review here:
It is an old SNES RPG released in Japan in 1996 that never got an official release outside of Japan. There is, however, an English fan translation available. I just finished it, over the course of a week or three. My final time was 30-ish hours, and my characters' levels were in the high 50s or so by the end.
It's pretty good. I'd say it looks and sounds like Final Fantasy, circa FF6, and Chrono Trigger, has some of the quirky humor of EarthBound, and also has some whiffs of Illusion of Gaia. There is some super sad/dark shit on occasion, some religious-y themes, and some risque stuff, too, which probably kind of explain at least in part why it was never localized for the West. Most of that stuff probably could have been changed, mitigated, or omitted in an official translation, but some of it... maybe not so easily. I won't get into the specifics of the plot, for spoiler-avoidant reasons. I'll just say it gets pretty crazy and silly a lot of the time but, sometimes, it gets pretty heavy, too. (To put it another way, this game could maybe give Mother 3 a run for its money in the "sad stuff happens" department [but also in the "truly bizarre stuff happens" department].)
It plays as a pretty standard RPG of the time, with random battles (though I played it with an "easy mode" romhack patch which halved the encounter rate and also doubled the money/XP/etc. that you get from winning a battle, and it wasn't too awful, similar to the one I used for Sailor Moon: Another Story a while back). Aside from the usual magic (called "Psycho" in the English translation), and unique-to-each-character special abilities, there are also Chakras, which is another separate magic/ability system that you gain via the seven "God Stones" that you find through the course of the game and power up via the "Cosmo Stones" that you get via defeating enemies (in addition to the usual XP and gold). One cool thing it does that most other RPGs of the era didn't do is to give you a journal that you can look at when you save, which updates after most semi-major plot points. By the end of the game, it had something like 90 or so entries. And there are notes that certain characters give you at different points which explain more stuff and also provide tutorials for the Chakra system and such, which is nice.
If you care to give this game a try, I'll just give three specific hints. The first is to make sure to buy at least one bun from every shop that sells them, and probably just keep at least one of them with you rather than using them. The reason for why will become clear later on. (Some of the buns are only found via exploring, and some of them can be missed, though I managed to get all of them, with only a bit of walkthrough help toward the end.) The second (and slightly more spoiler-ish) is that while most of the Chakra combination abilities (which become available once you reach Chakra level 4) are pretty cool and useful, I would suggest just putting everyone on the combo of Power and Mind, which gives you a passive ability that gives you extra permanent stat increases when you level up. The number of stats that get bonuses increase as you find more God Stones, too. (The active abilities granted by that combo are pretty nice, too.) The third (and most spoiler-ish) is something I missed entirely, myself, which is that you should probably return the first ship you get back to the place you originally got it from, before you leave Japan (i.e. before you jump on the floating iceberg in the far north of Japan). All I got when I eventually went back to that guy later was him chewing me out and telling me he had to go get his ship back on his own and that he would have given me something nice if I'd brought it back myself. Oh well. (I don't actually know what it is he would've given, or if it's even worth the bother.)
Oh, and this is one of those games where you'll want to check every single crate, pot, dresser, nightstand, refrigerator, etc. because at least some of them will have stuff for you to
One thing I found... problematic... about the game was that, at least in the English translation that I played, the portrayals of different cultures could get... well... stereotypical to put it mildly. Straight up racist, to put it less mildly. It wasn't so bad while you were in Japan (if you ignore Myaa Town), but once you ventured out into the wider world... whoo boy, look out. In one of the Chinese cities, some of the NPCs there spoke in a very... not great kind of way, with all the L's and R's swapped (and a few of the NPCs there who didn't talk like that looked down on the ones who did as if they were subhuman trash or whatever). In the Russian cities, most of the NPCs verre talkingk like dees. Same with "New Paris" and "New London" and the Oceania areas (e.g. in the Australia area, most of the NPCs talked like Crocodile Dundee or some shit). And then there was Harlem, NY. I'll just let you imagine how well that was handled. ¬_¬ It was all... eyebrow raising at least, though the fact that pretty much all of the various cultures (aside from Japan [mostly]) were pretty much equally caricatured made it almost less offensive, kinda, in a way.
Aside from that one questionable issue, I'd highly recommend this game, at least if you're into trying old, obscure SNES RPGs that never got an official English version.
Here is the soundtrack. It is passably generic SNES RPG music, for the most part.
I first heard of this game a while back via "SNES drunk," and I'll embed his (very mildly spoiler-ish) review here:
