Translations: Ancient Magic reaches beta

What ended up really attracting me to Danzarb in the end was the way each level threw a different gameplay twist at you - whether it was a sliding puzzle, a logic problem, or a simple matter of different characters being able to access different places.

The fact that it clearly had a lot of potential almost makes it worse. Had the encounter rate been dramatically lower and the puzzle aspect a bit more developed it would've been a genuinely nice game. I still remember the storyline and certain characters vividly, which is more than I can say for many better RPGs, and yet I can't pretend it wasn't mostly tedious to play through.

I'd play those two Cyber Knight games too if it didn't have the lethal combination of ridiculous encounter rate & slow battle system. The second one especially seems really nice in every other aspect.

CK2 actually does a lot to rectify the slow battle system problem. Overall the system moves a little faster than the first game in general, but the autobattle tends to be a little better (except against bosses) and when you're outside, your backup units lay down some covering fire, softening up and occasionally even completely annihilating the enemy troupe.