Neutopia
Neutopia is an action adventure game by Hudson Soft and released on the TurboGrafx-16 in 1989. The game is essentially a shameless ripoff of The Legend of Zelda.
I had never heard of this game growing up because I had so little interaction with the TG16. I played it because it was one of the highest ranked games for the TG16, and I was looking to expand my familiarity with the platform's library. All-in-all, it was an average game.
Contents
Status
I have beaten this game with full inventory and stats.
Review
- Overall: 4/10
- Best Version: TurboGrafx-16
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- Overall, the game is pretty fun. If I didn't know about The Legend of Zelda, I would probably even be impressed by it.
- The graphics are quite nice, especially the large boss sprites.
- The music is well composed and fitting to the game.
- The fire wand, and its changing function relative to your health is a pretty creative weapon.
- The game has a nice full ending.
Bad
- It's basically a poor-man's Legend of Zelda. Most of what was ripped off isn't as good as Zelda from several years earlier.
- Movement is a little clunky.
- The perspective makes the hit detection seem weird especially when you take damage from or hit a tall or jumping monster in an area that you shouldn't, given the perspective.
- Most of what the NPCs in the game say is useless or redundant.
- Like Zelda, you waste of lot of bombs trying to find hidden rooms, especially in the later dungeons, but, unlike Zelda, bombs are extremely rare drops.
- The wings and ring are rarely useful, and you get them as random drops even when you already have them which is wasteful.
- Items and enemy bolts stop the fire wand, which is annoying.
- Spike traps are differently colored in earlier dungeons, but are entirely hidden later on, leading to a lot of unavoidable hits.
- The strongest sword, armor, and shield are uncreatively called the "Strongest."
- The game box categorizes it as a role-playing game, but it doesn't have any of the elements traditionally found in RPGs. Instead, it's an action adventure with a fantasy theme.
Ugly
- Nothing really.
Media
Box Art
Documentation
Maps
Videos
- youtube.com/watch?v=8YG2P4JevME - Longplay.
Titles
Language | Native | Transliteration | Translation |
---|---|---|---|
English | Neutopia | ||
Japanese | ニュートピア フレイの章 | Nyutopia Furei no Sho | Neutopia: Chapter of Fury |