Win 9X dos final fantasy clone on pc

[Doggi]

I remember downloading and playing a final fantasy like with my brother on a WIN 98 computer on 2004-2005,not that we knew it was a FF clone since we were stupid kids back then. The gameplay used the old FF battle system,turn based combat,blue background white text menus,and the very first thing that happened when you opened the game was two anime characters talking,one red the other blue,not that the game had anime art cutscenes anywhere else or if it did we never reached it.and i also opened a dos screen thing accidentaly with the files in the game folder that had sound options in it,not that we even had speakers,if that helps. So you pretty much started the game and ran around in top down view,invited the other cutscene character to your party,and then went to slay a giant in some cave. Then you could invite either a demon guy who tossed fire in your party. Then came the quest in the forest,and the water guy party member,after that,the flying fortress,and after that some alien looking guys came picking trouble until you kicked them in the bum and they ran away. Got some sweet armor from that. After that,a friendly fortress (?) with even better armor in a random chest,and a not-so friendly fortress with bone dragons,it seemed,and then we stopped playing for some reason,likely because we got curbstomped. the battle sprites were larger than the overworld ones but low quality,with the victory dance being pretty much two sprites switching fistpumps like yeyey,we won or something. I hope it wasnt some one-off indie game cause we were kinda dumb and downloaded it from some random site. and pressing tab brought up an unreadable smear of a world map,if that was what it was. and there was a guy who could let you switch out your partymembers in every town,if you spoke to the villagers they described them as a "dangerous person" or something.

[MrFlibble]

Hi!

From what I know, there are quite a few console style/jRPG games on DOS/Windows that came out about the time period you describe. Many of them indeed are indie developments -- I believe that some people were disappointed that there weren't many official console type RPGs on PC, and went on to develop their own.

Since you found a DOS sound device setup programme in the game folder, it is reasonable to assume that it was either a DOS binary (but possibly written to work in Windows environments), or a combo of both DOS and Windows binaries. I know several DOS titles like this (haven't played much of any of those so can't really check on the details):
Mysterious Song
The Wrath of Sona
Aspetra
Avalon
Contention's Spawn

A good deal of jRPGs for DOS were produced in South Korea, but then I guess you'd remember that it was not in English. Anyway, you can find some on this list:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/korea/ ... etitle.htm

But, there are also games created by game making software -- here I am not sure if there was a DOS/Windows version of the programme. Wikipedia liss some with DOS game makers also apparent, so maybe this would be worth a try:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-play ... n_software

[Doggi]

Unfortunately,none of these are the game i remember. The opening had several screens worth of text exposition i think,overlayed on some good anime art,which was never repeated in the entire game. The charater selection didnt even have portraits,no portraits anywhere at all.the battle system didnt use overworld sprites,yet they were still pixelated and low quality,largely scaled up. Seems i still have some digging to do,but thank you a lot anyways.

[MrFlibble]

I remembered one more place worth taking a look, a website dedicated to games written in BASIC/QBASIC:
http://www.petesqbsite.com/downloads/rpg.shtml

Any detail you can remember that might help identify the game? like character names, or maybe some unusual item? There are people who write reviews of games online, who might have played that game too.

BTW, there's a dedicated RPG community called RPG Codex which might be worth signing up at and asking them too. They certainly play a lot of RPGs, and not only the well-known ones.

[darkrevenge16]

I know it's not a dos game and barely fits the story's description, but the "final fantasy clone" reference remembered me from... Septerra Core?

[Doggi]

I know it's not a dos game and barely fits the story's description, but the "final fantasy clone" reference remembered me from... Septerra Core?

It requires triple the space the old dinosaur computer had available. No,it was some 8-20 megabyte game i think.

[MrFlibble]

I know this might not be very useful since you'd have to look through lists of obscure titles, but I gather that QBASIC/QuickBASIC were/are quite popular for "indie" RPG development. You might want to look at RPG projects listed at these sites:
http://www.petesqbsite.com/downloads/rpg.shtml
https://qb45.org/files.php?cat=5

Oh, and maybe looking through games made with Allegro library is also worth it:
https://www.allegro.cc/depot/rpg/listing