Tao

Pax Softnica’s other and less-known modern-era RPG pre-supposes the coming of Nostradamus’ famous prophecy: In July 1999, a Great King of Terror descends from the sky, in this game in the form of a meteor, from which emerges the demon king Histar. To stop Histar, the nameless protagonist from the village where the meteor landed sets out to gather religious artifacts across the globe.

This RPG has several unconventional designs compared to its Famicom peers. The dialogue screen with RPG is the same screen used for battle, just without the health bars. The commands displayed in this screen contains actions you would typically find in a Japanese-style adventure game such as search, use and take. In battles which are not turn-based, your only offensive command is attack, which means winning a battle necessitates repeatedly selecting the attack command. The game does not make your progression stats explicit unless you open the Status screen. There appears to be no safe area as you can get random encounters with demons in the middle of towns.