Released in Japan only by Konami in 1991, Lagrange Point is a science fantasy JRPG set on a human colony ship in space (located at the Lagrangian points between Earth and the Sun). Communications are lost between colonies, so a search team is sent in to investigate.

You play as Gene, a surviving member of the search team that was attacked by robots upon arrival. You awake in the medical center and the dying words of your team leader is to “find Stolte“, although noone seems to know who that is. So you begin your search for this mysterious person inside a ship that is swarming with deadly enemies.

Lagrange Point is a party-based RPG and characters join your group from time to time. There’s room for three different members in your party, other than yourself (making four in total). You can also have secondary characters (such as scientists) tag along, but they don’t get involved in combat and don’t take up a character slot.

Outside of safe areas you can be attacked at any time while walking around or driving. These battles take the form of turn-based, menu-driven encounters. You can either issue commands manually, or choose ‘auto battle’ to let the game slug it out for you.

Winning battles awards you with experience, but to gain money from them you need to report to a nearby Central Processing office and claim your reward for killing the enemies in your last set of battles. There are a variety of shops where you can buy weapons, armour and healing items.

Taking connecting flights in spaceships is a common occurance, plus: you can drive vehicles on the shattered roads inside colony ships. In the latter you’re at the risk of attack by monsters; in the former: you sometimes need oxygen and a spacesuit to make a connection safely.

Overall, Lagrange Point is an absorbing level-grinder with some interesting gameplay. It’s a little clunky at times (in particular the inventory screen which doesn’t indicate what goes where), and the combat isn’t the best (I auto-ed through most of it), but the process of making progress is quite captivating.

Lagrange Point was one of only two games ever released with Konami‘s VRC7 Sound Generator chip inside the cartridge, which allowed for improved music and sound effects. And the music in the game is very good (the battle jingle I liked a lot).

Lagrange Point was fan-translated into English by Aeon Genesis in 2014 and that is the version I’m showing here. It’s worth playing if you like obscure Famicom JRPGs.

More: Lagrange Point on Wikipedia
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