Clueless Gaijin Gaming: High Grenadier

This week, I take a muddled, Japanese-impaired look at one of Telenet/Renovation Game's strategy titles for the PC Engine -- High Grenadier:

No, it's not a dark Vietnam-era military drama (that would be Strung-Out Fragger.)  It's a science-fiction military strategy game, and even though it was released in 1991, it feels like a HuCard design with CD music added in at the last minute.  The game itself would easily have fit on a cartridge -- there's not much in the way of animation, no voice-overs, and the action takes place primarily on a single map screen with dense Japanese submenus that this clueless foreigner was unable to penetrate.

Here's what I was able to figure out before consigning High Grenadier to the unplayable shelf...

It's clearly a battle of our Red forces against the enemy Yellows:

There are various personalities on our team, characterized by statistics I was unable to comprehend and names I was unable to recognize or pronounce:

Consequently, my orders were random and likely nonsensical:

I did poke around long enough to initiate a series of very brief, minimally-animated and generally unsuccessful battles with the enemy:

And I witnessed some story-related animations as my forces prepared for battle, then triumphed or retreated:

And that, as far as I could discover, seems to be the extent of what this game has to offer to the clumsy American.  The object, I presume, is to engulf the yellow points on the map and win hearts and resources to the red side.  The manual doesn't show off any features I was unable to encounter on my own, but the labels and messages are entirely in Japanese, making it very difficult to tell what I was doing or what's actually going on in the game.

Even translated into English, High Grenadier wouldn't be a tremendously exciting strategy game -- it no doubt has depth and complexity I was unable to fathom, but the interface is clunky and the battles perfunctory.  There are certainly better choices available for the Western PC Engine gamer.

---

As is often the case, this is not one I can recommend for the casual import gamer.  But if the reader is interested, it may be available for purchase, on the occasions when it's in stock, at this affiliate link.