Planet Laika is a PlayStation role playing game (RPG) that was seemingly left in Japan. Nope, not anymore. Fans have translated this RPG and made it accessible to English gamers. What you can expect here is very similar to Resident Evil (pre-rendered backgrounds, polygon characters) mixed with Final Fantasy style dialogue branching story. The combat though… um, what the hell is that?
Planet Laika is grounded in reality
Developed by Quintet and Zeque for the original Sony PlayStation, Planet Laika was forgotten in Japan for decades. I am going to guess because of the combat engine, more on that in a minute.
Being released in 1999 is not in its favor if the North American market was of interest. Considering new hardware was on the way, Planet Laika would never leave Japan, at least officially. Fans fixed that with this English patch.
Characters feature dog heads. The reality part is that this is probably a nod towards Soviet space dog, Laika.You are on a mission to Mars. That is about all I know about the story. You will have to read the rest of this article to decide if this is on your play list or not.
It gets weirder
Laika, the main character of this game, suffers from multiple personalities. Three of them to be exact. Ernest, Yolanda, and Spacer, each featuring a different body onscreen, so you know which you are playing as at that time.
This multiple personality situation comes into play within the game. Talking to various characters allows Laika to absorb certain color orbs. Absorb enough of one color and you can transform into that personality, each with their own attributes. This could be rather interesting as it forces you to explore, to talk to every character, to save up for certain personalities.
Then there are the battles
Final Fantasy features turn based battles (depending on which entry you play). Resident Evil was more action based (I know it is not an RPG). With Planet Laika, you get a hybrid Pong and Space Invaders turned on its side battle engine.
I am not sure how else to describe what you do when you encounter an enemy. It is weird.
Head over to ROMHacking.net and grab the patch file. As with many titles, the publishers, and rights holders, have not released the original to the public. That means no linking the game file.