Sometimes a bad game is just a bad game.

And it’s nothing to hold a grudge about. 

Arabian Nights: Sabaku no Seirei-ō is one such game. Usually, when I play a game I didn’t enjoy, I develop a burning hatred for it. Seeing Lufia at the bottom of my games list soothes me. It is almost as though despising the existence of this piece of so called entertainment is now a core tenet of my personality. Sometimes that fire dies, but not always. Regardless, it’s a goddamn stupid mentality. 

I don’t know if being sick again for the second time in two months broke me, or if there’s something about Arabian Nights that opened my eyes, but sometimes things that suck just suck. 

But what about Arabian Nights sucks? The random encounter rate is the worst in the genre. Battles are so frequent that it makes exploration a chore, and you feel punished for playing. And it really takes something special to make me point out the encounter rate. I’ve skimmed it in other games with notorious encounter rates, but you can’t in AN. It is the prevailing mechanic of note. And it’s so bad that it makes other aspects of the battle system pointless. 

There are two other things that, in theory, are worth talking about in combat, but I barely dabbled in them. The main thing is that you can use cards to change the element of the battlefield, sorta like Chrono Cross. A wood card will either restore your HP or do an elemental attack at the end of your turn, depending on the level of the card played. You gain a card whenever you’re not full up, so if you want, use them at your leisure. Enemies also have access to cards, so don’t expect to get the full rewards out of them. But because the encounter rate is so high, you’re rarely gonna use any cards. You’re gonna turn on the auto battle function and hold down the fast forward button. And this works great until you run into a green naga or an enemy team uses a card that negates all your physical damage. So the game presents a problem, gives you a bypass, but makes it dangerous to use. Do you see why this game wasn’t well received? And it’s not like battles are short bursts, either. Even jumping 2000 FPS, they can still go upwards of ten seconds. It’s just not a fun game. There’s also a summon system, but it suffers from the same problems. 

Between the battles and the bland dungeons that are either mazes or Sylph Co. tile puzzles, it’s hella unfun. 

And it’s not like the story is worth digging into. You play as Shukran, a girl who stumbles upon a ring that holds Ifrit, the King of the Djinns. Shukran becomes his master because Ifrit was tasked to grant 1000 wishes by the man who sealed him eons ago. And wouldn’t ya know it, he’s at wish 999! All Ifrit has to do is bring peace to the world and stop the Deevs, who seem to be bugs. Along the way, we learn an old ally of Ifrit is aligned with the Deevs, so they need to seek counsel with the rest of the elemental djinns, fully restore Ifrit’s sealed powers, and have some pointless dude named Harty join them. So it’s just a collection quest with some exposition at the start and the very end that leaves me empty. So…Pokemon without the fun. 

But what did Harty bring to the story? We met his whys, but we never experienced the results. His battle skills don’t affect bosses, and the auto battle won’t use them. He brings nothing to the story. And that’s all that can be said about him. 

Ifrit’s special skills are magic and are unlocked by finding magical crystals. They’re flashy and work well, but fall off late game. You can beat up your enemies with bunnies, so the game does have some cool bits. 

Shukran is a summoner, but there’s no point in using the summons for reasons already stated earlier. It’s all so confusing. 

But there’s one more reason to malign the encounter rate. It makes the game too easy. You’re in so many fights that you’re over leveled. Bosses are a breeze, and there’s no tension in the game. There is a mod to lower the rates, which might make the game more interesting. 

But you still have to suffer through the soundtrack. It’s the worst on the console! As you’d expect, there are Arabian sounding tracks, but for some reason, there’s also a lot of jazz fusion mixes, even in the same songs. Shukran’s overworld theme is the worst song I’ve ever heard, even worse than Grandia’s Biran Plateau. And there are a few other tracks that are just annoying to hear. It’s more baffling decisions, and I’m understanding how bad games get made. 

But, hey, sprites look good. It turns out that making some four squares big adds a lot of detail to the world and makes the game pop. And those portraits! Too bad dungeons are bad, all mountains are the same, and enemies are palette swaps. 

I liked that you can see Shukran in different clothes, but they’re for short lived, optional scenes, so whatever… 

The best thing about Arabian Nights is that it’s short. The best ending takes less than fifteen hours, and it’s an easy task if you explore. Just make sure to free all the other djinns. But are the extra endings worth seeing? No. For several reasons. 

If you lower the encounter rate, Arabian Nights is so milktoast of a game that it’s barely worth playing. But with this disaster of a design choice, it’s totally unplayable. At best, it’s just boring. I enjoyed some of the things, but AN was just forgettable. 

21/50; Might have given me the flu again.