Long time ago, humans lived in a paradise, the Garden of Eden. But the brave and audacious members of the Fire Clan were banned from Eden, and had to seek shelter on the Earth. They built their own paradise - the land they later called Jipang. However, the evil demon lord Masakado wanted to destroy Jipang, and the Fire Clan fought and defeated him. Now, many years later, a young thief named Ziria learns that he is a descendant of the Fire Clan. He must now find the other members, and prevent the resurrection of Masakado by his followers.
Loosely based on the Japanese folk tale of the ninja Jiraiya, Tengai Makyō: Ziria was the first role-playing game released on a CD ROM; thanks to the medium’s greater storage capacity, the game was able to include full-screen anime-style cutscenes with voice-overs. It is the first entry in the Tengai Makyō series, and is generally considered the first RPG with significant humorous content. The game’s setting parodies many aspects of feudal Japan, containing comical and sometimes deliberately stereotypical portrayals of characters and plenty of supernatural elements.
Basic gameplay mechanics follow a template introduced in early Dragon Quest and Phantasy Star games. The player navigates Ziria and other characters who eventually join him on a top-down overworld, visiting towns to rest and buy supplies, and facing randomly appearing enemies in round-based combat viewed from first-person perspective. Each character uses his or her own unique weapon and equipment types. Magic spells cannot be bought or learned automatically when leveling up; they must be sought out in specific locations, often those not required to visit in order to advance the story.
The game’s overworld is fairly vast, divided into provinces, each containing several towns and other locations. It is possible to teleport instantly from the world map to any previously visited province.The game emphasizes overworld exploration; dungeons tend to be smaller and less maze-like than in many other contemporary role-playing games. In towns, the player can gamble and deposit money in banks; this money is preserved if the party is annihilated in combat and transported back to the town, with the money it was carrying cut in half. When a character levels up, his or her hit points (HP) and magic points (MP) are fully restored.
