Ghost Lion (1992) NES Review

Ghost Lion is an unusual little creature. It’s not a game that’s a fondly remembered classic, but it’s not one that’s notorious for how terrible it is either. If it’s known for anything, it’s the downright puzzling cover art the game received for its US release.

BEHOLD!

I’m envious of anyone who’s never seen the cover of Ghost Lion before. It’s a piece that’s highly evocative of a bygone era. That’s my way of saying that you can practically smell the hairspray and wood panelling of the 1980’s wafting off of this work of art. I only wish I could go back in time and relive the excitement and confusion I felt upon seeing it for the first time.

Now that we’ve gotten the most famous thing about Ghost Lion out of the way, let’s dish about this strange game’s origins. Ghost Lion is actually based off of a live-action film: White Lion Legend – Beyond the Pyramid. The movie is entirely in English as it was a Japanese/American co-production, but it never came out in the west, so approximately six people have seen it. If you’re interested in becoming one of the elite few who have sat through this thing and have nearly two hours to kill, the full movie’s been sitting on Youtube for some time now.

With that being said, the game has almost nothing to do with the movie besides a few borrowed character concepts, making the connection pretty dang loose. Sorry to disappoint.

The game opens with protagonist Maria’s village being attacked by the titular pussycat. Apparently he lashes out against this village because humans are greedy or something? Who knows. Anyway, one brave warrior manages to scare it off, and all is well…until Maria’s parents decide to boom off and chase the lion to research it, leaving her in the dust. Maria doesn’t let this shoddy parenting get her down though, and she sets off on an adventure of her own to find her parents and uncover the secrets of the Ghost Lion. You too can experience the thrills of child neglect AND smacking a ghost lion across the face, all on one nifty little cartridge! It’s everything I never knew I wanted in a game, and so much more!

Every aspect of Ghost Lion makes it feel like a game that would have never made it to the west in the NES’s lifespan, and yet, this kitty somehow managed to claw its way stateside. The player character is a girl. It’s based off of a pre-existing property that Americans have zero clue about. It’s also a traditional turn based JRPG, of which there weren’t many localized back then. This thing must’ve slipped through some kind of wormhole to come out in English. Was the multi-dimensional trip worth it?

Let’s start with the good bits. The game’s world feels as though it leapt straight off the pages of fairy tale as seen through the eyes of 1980’s Japan, with witch and pixie filled locales having a technicolor, dreamy quality to them. Presentation-wise, Ghost Lion reminds me a lot of StarTropics a few years before that game came to be. I’d say the graphics were the game’s strongest suit. Aside from the obnoxiously repetitive battle theme, the music is pretty great, too. Audio and visual-wise, it’s a lovely little package, wrapped up in an aesthetically pleasing bow.

There’s a lot about Ghost Lion that’s genuinely unique. For example, rather than levelling up through traditional grindy means, you grow in strength by finding “Hope” in random treasure chests scattered throughout the land. One Hope fragment equals one level up, so sniffing these out is imperative to progressing in the game. It makes for a JRPG experience unlike any other – one that puts a huge emphasis on thorough exploration above all else, which is unique today, let alone in the 90’s. Something else cool is the ability to summon spirits in battle – items scattered around the land like rapiers, crystals and huge slugs (??) hold the spirits of powerful allies within them, and provide the ability to build your own party to suit your needs on the fly. Need a support summon? No problem. Confident brute force is enough to see you through? Done and done! Even if your summons die, you can re-summon them at full health right away, provided you have enough MP (or “Dreams”) to do so. The summons you find at the start of the game never fall out of vogue either, meaning you can chop and change your party however you like. It’s awesome.

So, that about wraps up the good. Let’s talk about the bad.

Because levelling up is so strictly controlled by the game’s design and there’s simply no way to “overlevel”, battles are consistently tough as nails throughout the entire experience. It’s not the difficulty that makes this design choice a rough one, but it’s instead the fact that said choice makes random encounters feel utterly pointless. Since there’s no EXP to gain from fighting, the only reason to battle is to bank Rubies, the game’s currency. You’ll have Rubies out the wazoo after awhile though, meaning the only thing keeping battles relevant starts to lose its relevancy. Coincidentally, that’s around the same time the fights start to get even more difficult and unavoidable. Not only are these fights tough, but they’re LONG. It wasn’t uncommon to spend upwards of five minutes on one battle in the second half of the game.

The cherry on top of this sundae of tedium is that fleeing from battle never works, so the smartest option is to just muscle your way through, putting you back to square one: slogging through fights that feel like they never end. Couple that with the typical high encounter rate that every 80’s JRPG seemed to have, and you’ll finding yourself wishing you were doing just about anything else. I’ve got an iron stomach for old school RPG fare, but even I couldn’t hack this one after awhile; by the time I had trudged my way to the end of the game, I found myself groaning out of sheer boredom at the start of every battle I wandered into. Knowing I wasn’t even levelling for my troubles REALLY dragged Ghost Lion down. My wife asked if I was okay on more than one occasion. It was pretty painful stuff.

If there had been more useful, expensive items to buy scattered throughout the world, the whole “battling is totally useless” angle could have been mitigated and kept the game feeling fresh. But aside from the extremely scarce weapon purchase or boat ride, there’s shit all to spend your hard earned cash on – by the end of the game, I had almost 30,000 Rubies and nowhere to put ’em.

This whole system is a concept that begs to be revisited; with a scrutinizing team keeping an eye out for ironing out the kinks in the balancing department, I think that Ghost Lion could have easily been one of the NES greats. It would likely be heralded as a highly innovative title, and would incessantly appear on those clickbaity “If You Don’t Play These 20 Underrated NES Games Right Now You Will Literally Die” lists. More than being angering or annoying, it’s frustrating to be faced with such a brilliant idea being carried out with such poor execution.

Ghost Lion is short for an RPG – similar to the first Dragon Quest, it can be cleared between 4-10 hours. Even with that short length in mind, I can’t recommend it to most people when the bulk of that will be spent in those awful, awful battles. Have I mentioned how awful those battles are? Because they’re pretty awful. Ghost Lion’s strengths are too heavily dampened by the constant weight of dull, pointless combat hanging around its neck – only the hardest of the hardcore RPG or NES fanatics will glean some enjoyment out of the full package; everyone else should just let this big cat roam free.

Initial interest rating: 10 out of 10

Final rating: