Defenders of Oasis (Game Gear) review "The Gamegear was practically devoid of any RPG’s except for around 20 some, about a fifth of which came stateside. Defenders of Oasis was a RPG that happened to get lucky and find a publisher that brought it to the states. There are no idiosyncrasies that lift Defenders of Oasis above and beyond other turn based RPGS that were out at the time. It’s simply just a game that’s both brief and entertaining. Definitely worthy of your time. "

The Gamegear was practically devoid of any RPG’s except for around 20 some, about a fifth of which came stateside. Defenders of Oasis was a RPG that happened to get lucky and find a publisher that brought it to the states. There are no idiosyncrasies that lift Defenders of Oasis above and beyond other turn based RPGS that were out at the time. It’s simply just a game that’s both brief and entertaining. Definitely worthy of your time.

There was once an vile wizard named Ahriman, an omnipresent evil that once terrorized the land. One day, a man named Jamseed brought forth three rings. He used them on Ahiman and successfully sealed him away for exactly 1000 years. After 1000 years, he was released and began his reign of terror on the lands for the second time in history. This time, a man entitled “Prince” (The artist formerly known as “The Prince”) was destined to do away with Ahriman’s horrible intentions. To do this, he’d have to hunt out the three rings.

I forgot to mention the princess is no where to be found. The irony.

Three others you on your quest to get the princess back and repress the evil. They don’t join you immediately, but you’ll end up getting them in the course of the game. One is the sneaky and elusive thief, Agmar. In the midst of a battle he’s able to hide for a few turns. After those turns are up, he'll be able to assault the enemy and inflict massive amounts of damage. Another support character is the Genie. The Genie is the only individual in the whole game that has the ability to cast spells. These spells can either damage the enemy or heal your other characters. The final character is named Saleem. She can dance in the middle of battle to inflict damage upon all enemies. This is a rather fruity ability, but it’ll come into use later in the game when you face hordes of enemies.

You’ll travel in and out of dungeons, sewers, castles, and other such areas to make your way to Ahriman. Most of these areas will have healing wells or some other kind of healing mechanism in the middle of them incase your characters happens to succumb to death or just get weak. Some make you prepare ahead of time and buy items or your whole party will slowly be killed by the random encounters or status ailments. They’re either two types of dungeons. Some dungeons are straightforward to go through, but others take longer by forcing you to switch levers and such in order to proceed. One rather straightforward dungeon that comes to mind only took a matter of minutes to complete. That’s a heinously short time for a RPG dungeon.

Defenders of Oasis is a very short game that’ll take only a few hours to complete. It doesn’t bring anything original to the table, but that’s all right, since Gamegear fans don’t really have much of a selection anyway. They can’t quite be picky about what’s brought over from Japan. Defenders of Oasis will be over before it manages to get stale or make you put it down. Somewhat like this review. Buy Defenders of Oasis somewhere if you own a Gamegear, it’ll entertain you for a while.

Community review by Sclem (February 22, 2005) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.