Kaeru nyo Panyo~n

"Game tagline."

- To return to my original form, I must return to my kingdom. To return to my kingdom, I must rely on these seven girls.

About
Kaeru nyo Panyo~n (also referred to as Kaeru nyo Panyon) is a horizontally auto-scrolling strategy RPG by Alicesoft. It was released in Japan on August 29, 1997. It is the second game to be directed by longtime Alicesoft staff member Purin after DALK, and shares several gameplay similarities with it as a result. It is also the first game in the Nyo Series of strategy RPGs, as well as the only one to not feature any crossover elements whatsoever.

The strange title consists of the Japanese word "kaeru" (かえる), which means "to return", with the addition of the "nyo" sound that the character Arietta ends all of her sentences with. "Panyon" refers to the species of the same name that the game's protagonist is turned into.

Designed by Purin with the intention of being a throwback to early role playing games, Kaeru nyo Panyo~n is notable for its harsh and somewhat unforgiving difficulty as well as its streamlined story. Aside from the opening movie and ending, character interaction consists only of brief exchanges between party members at the beginning and end of each stage. This encourages for the player to create their own ideas about the characters' personalities form the limited information provided by the game itself.

Notably, Kaeru nyo Panyo~n takes place on The Continent, the same setting used throughout the Rance Series. This is firmly established during the game's opening, which shows the same map of the Continent used throughout Kichikuou Rance and repeats that game's opening narration almost to verbatim before clarifying that Rance himself is not involved with the story at all. Kaeru nyo Panyo~n, along with Little Princess, Little Vampire and the original Toushin Toshi, became one of the few Alicesoft games with a similar setting to the Continent to remain canonically set on the Continent following several alterations made to the timeline of the series after the release of Rance VI. Additionally, the events of the game were revealed to have taken place during the year LP0006, making it take place roughly at the same time as the events of Rance VI. The shared setting between this Kaeru nyo Panyo~n and the Rance series was cemented in Rance IX, which featured Pitten Chao as a major supporting character.

On September 14, 2000, Kaeru nyo Panyo~n was re-released at a lowered price. On November 11, 2013 an English translation was released by 2.0 Translations.

Gameplay
Kaeru nyo Panyo~n is a horizontally auto-scrolling turn based RPG similar to other games in the Nyo series such as Alice in Kaeru nyo Land and Widenyo.

Gameplay takes place on a horizontal grid, with the player units on the left side and enemy units on the right. At the end of every turn, the screen shifts to the right by one tile, with any units positioned on the disappearing tiles being instantly defeated.

The player's goals is to successfully move the protagonist Poron Chao from the leftmost edge of each level to the rightmost one. This is complicated by Poron's general helplessness as a unit. Along with being extremely weak to enemy attacks, Poron is only capable of moving a single tile each turn, making him be in constant danger of getting instantly defeated by the game's auto-scrolling mechanic. Additionally, enemies instinctively target Poron over all other party members. The game ends when Poron is defeated, making protecting him throughout each stage a priority. Poron is capable of casting four powerful magic spells: an explosion that deals heavy damage to all enemies on screen, a haste spell that allows him to move twice in a single turn, another haste spell that allows an ally to move twice in a single turn, and a healing spell that can restore every unit's health. Poron can only use each spell a limited number of times per stage, however, forcing the player to be selective about when to use them.

Outside of Poron, the player is given control over seven female adventurers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. As Poron himself is extremely weak, the vast majority of the player's strategies will involve coordinating the seven of them to defeat all nearby enemies before they reach Poron. When one of the seven girls is defeated, they will be unavailable for the remainder of the stage. Whenever a player unit defeats and enemy unit, they obtain experience points. When enough experience points are obtained, the unit levels up. Along with giving a general increase to all stats, leveling up also allows the player to allocate additional bonus points to further increase a unit's stat of their choice.

The most notable mechanic of the game is the Class Change system. Class changing provides a large increase in a unit's stats and abilities, and overall makes them much stronger than simply leveling them up does. After reaching a certain level, each of the female adventurers unlocks the ability to class change by exchanging a certain combination of Gal Monsters, which can be captured if the player possesses a copy of the capture rope item in their inventory when defeating them in battle, to the Level God Yamane. Each class requires its own specific set of gal monsters in order to be accessed, and the highest levels of every one of them can only be reached by certain characters. A unit's class can also be reset should the player desire it to, allowing the player to experiment with which characters are best suited to each class.

Between each stage, the player is given access to a town, where they are able to heal their units and save at an inn, buy stat-increasing items and pre-captured gal monsters at a store, and raise a character's stats by tempering their equipment at a blacksmith. After a town section is completed, the player is given a choice between two stages, each of which branches off into its own pathway that features choosing between two more stages. While there are a total of 21 stages, the player is only able to play through six of them per playthrough. Only one specific path of six stages leads to the game's true ending, which features an additional two stages to play through, with all others leading to unique bad endings.

Story
The Kingdom of Parancho is a small country located near the southeastern corner of the Continent. Unlike the rest of the world, which is plagued by chaos and war, Parancho enjoys a state of relative peace, with happy citizens who are neither particularly poor nor wealthy, lush greenery, fresh water and a kind and benevolent king, Peperon Chao. As he grows older, however, Peperon has been forced to step down from his position as king and declare one of his two sons to be his successor. His older son, Pitten Chao, is a profoundly charismatic man blessed with outstanding martial ability who already serves as the Supreme Commander of their nation's army, while his younger son, Poron Chao, is a mild-mannered and studious young man with a talent for civic management.

Unable to choose between his beloved sons, Peperon instead devises a test to determine which of the two will be a worthier successor. He orders each of them to set out into the world, find a rare item and bring it back to him, stating that whichever of the two brings back the rarer item will be declared king. While Pitten boldly sets out to the north to find his item, Poron, who believes that Pitten will make a better king than he will, reluctantly sets out to the west, hoping to find a moderately rare item and return home quickly.

Due to having never spent any time outside of his kingdom, Poron quickly becomes lost while wandering across the Continent. He eventually ends up at the border between the Human Realm and the Monster Realm. Just as Poron is about to give up his search and attempt to make his way home empty handed, however, he is approached by a mysterious old man, who offers him a mysterious potion that he claims will allow him to find an extremely rare item if he drinks it. Poron's naivety causes him to blindly trust the old man and take the potion, which causes his body to transform into a strange creature from another world known as a panyon. The mysterious old man disappears before Poron is able to question him, leaving him alone in a monster-infested forest in his strange new form.

Before he is able to fully ponder the circumstances of his situation, Poron hears a cry for help from nearby, and immediately rushes in the direction of the screams. The cries lead Poron to a group of seven young female adventurers being surrounded by a group of Lady Killers, a Guy Monster that women are incapable of harming. Without hesitation, Poron instructs the girls to escape while he fights off the Lady Killers, which they reluctantly agree to do. After a grueling battle, Poron defeats the Lady Killers and quickly loses consciousness.

Poron awakens in a small shack on the outskirts of the forest surrounded by the seven girls, who inform him that they nursed him back to health after he saved them. Poron tells the girls the story of his transformation and, believing that Parancho's court mage Nikopelli is the only person capable of reversing it, sets off to return to his homeland to find him. The girls, concerned for Poron's safety wandering across the entire Continent by himself, demand that he allow them to come with him to serve as his bodyguards. While Poron is hesitant at first, he eventually relents that, in his transformed state, he is incapable of fending for himself effectively, and allows them to travel at his side.

As soon as the group sets out, however, Poron realizes that he has no idea where Parancho's location is relative to where he currently is, forcing the eight to blindly wander from one end of the continent to the other in hopes of somehow finding their way home.

Meanwhile, Pitten, who has already returned to Parancho, seems to be conspiring something from the shadows...

Walkthrough/CGs
The game has a branching level system where you pick a single level per tier and then go on to the next tier once you complete that level. In order to actually the game you need to pick a specific level in each tier. The order is

A-C-D-J-N-Q
Once you complete Q you will gain access to another few levels that will rap up the plot of the game. Make sure to have gotten all your class/Gal Monster stuff taken care of after Q as you will not have access to a shop once you complete the next level for the rest of the game.

There are five ways to get cgs in this game, and this is how to get them all-

Beat Levels-
Every level in the game gives a cg upon completion, except maps R,S and T. They tell you how to beat the game instead. So the quickest way to get all the cgs is to save at each tier and beat each level, save, then reload to before the level you just beat. Do this for every level at that tier then beat the level needed for the true end last.

Bad Ends-
Every one of your female companions has a bad end. Save for two of these which are gotten by beating U and P, these are all gotten by losing the right character for the cg and then beating the right map. The game will then bad end you, offer you a chance to save and then load a game. If you don't save, you don't get to keep the cg, so make sure to do that.

Anyway, this a theory of mine. Each of the bad end cgs have distinct enough backgrounds that I came up with the theory that to get a bad end you need to lose a character on the right map type. Lets take for example Wendy, the long blue haired girl. Her bad end cg is her in some sunny grassy spot surrounded by some goons. I was able to get her bad end consistently by losing her in the map squares that show some tress and the sky. In fact, while randomly trying for cgs I never succeeded, but by using this theory I was able to get all the cgs in about 8 maps(the last character took some testing). I can't guarantee this will work, since I couldn't find anything verifying this, but anyway to get bad ends lose the characters in:

Arisa- H(Big White Building)

Carrot- N(Stairs icon)

Charme- K(cave)

Raira- G(Trees and River)

Wendy- L and O(Sky and some trees)

Watch Opening/Visit Alice-
CG's in this game work by having you save after seeing them to get them into the gallery. So for the two cgs from the opening scene and the one from Alice's house, you need to see them and then save. If you skip the opening you don't unlock these until you sit there for the whole thing and then save your game from a new game.

Gal Monsters-
Every Gal Monster has a cg when you give only them to Yamane, your level god. You either give them as you get them, then leave and come back for the cg, or save at town, enter a dungeon and give Yamane the new Gal monster, then Suspend. Reload your town save and you will have the Gal still in your inventory and have the cg.

RareStones-
Rarestones are a fairly rare drop from monsters. Every 10 gives you a cg and some bonus stat points you can give to whoever you want. In a normal run you will only get around 15 of these, and you need 50 to get them all. This is what Completion mode is for. upon beating the game you can enter Completion mode, where you can set the level of the enemies and go through random maps. There are two unique bosses to completion mode but to see them you need to grind to do a lot of it. You start with access to floor 15, but the bosses show up on floor 100 and 334, with a single floor unlocking as you complete the previous highest floor. Beating the floor 334 boss(Gunagan) will get you a cg that does not enter the gallery.

Classes
In Kaeru nyo Panyo~n, characters initially have the non-combatant class. Your characters can become much more powerful by being given a class. To choose a class, you must go to your level god and select the class you want to give to any given heroine. However, you cannot give your characters classes for free, a toll is needed for each time you want to give someone a class. You need to give specific Gal Monsters to your Level God. If you give him an invalid combination of gal monsters, you get nothing and you still lose them. Furthermore, you aren't told the valid combinations of gal monsters from the start and you're limited by the number of gal monsters that appear in combat, as well as the number of capture ropes you have in stock. Luckily, you retain one use of the Amazon and Witch class change from one of your level god's retired clients. You may choose your starting class starting at level 5 and all subsequent at the next multiple of 5.

Each character can only access one of the seven final classes. A character cannot switch class paths once she begins a path, so make sure you start each character on the correct path if you wish to reach her final class.

You can choose to power up a character through the alchemist. You can only upgrade the primary stats of the class the character is in. Warriors can upgrade their attack, guardians their defense, and magicians their magic. Monks do not have any equipment, so they cannot upgrade their parameters through the alchemist.

The paths and the combinations of gal monsters you need to give in order to get uses of class change are:

Warrior
The warrior is an offensive class, they get the highest attack and nothing else.

Amazon: KyanKyan + Geckon

Ramil: KyanKyan + Geckon + Frog Girl

Leda: ZashikiWarashi + Hebi-san + Handy + Mighty Witch

Valkyrie (Raira): Geckon + Frog Girl + Bee Girl + Valkyrie

Athena (Arisa): KyanKyan + ZashikiWarashi + Geckon + Handy

Guardian
The guardian is a defensive class. After an enemy attacks there is a 50% chance a guardian will counterattack if you are standing next to the attacker. Changing to a guardian class will reduce the characters movement speed by 1, but every class up will increase their movement by 1, in the end having more movement then they started with.

Guardia: Magisco + Goldfish Tamer

Lord: Magisco + Goldfish Tamer + Bee Girl

Diana: Magisco + Bee Girl + Mighty Witch + Valkyrie

Princess (Arietta): Goldfish Tamer + Frog Girl + ZashikiWarashi + Hebi-san

Walkure (Elaine): KyanKyan + Geckon + Bee Girl + Mighty Witch

Magician
The magician is a magic class. It uses that magic stat for damage and can attack at range. They gain one more range per class up.

Witch: KyanKyan + Magisco

Rangda: Frog Girl + Bee Girl + ZashikiWarashi

Minerva: Goldfish Tamer + Frog Girl + Magician + Handy

Artemis (Wendy): Magisco + Goldfish Tamer + Hebi-san + Magician

Siren (Carrot): Goldfish Tamer + Hebi-san + Magician + Mighty Witch

Fighter
The Fighter is a hand-to-hand class. Attacking an enemy will give a 50% chance to ignoring enemy defense. Have the highest move of the classes, as well as accuracy.

Kali: Goldfish Tamer + Geckon

Excel: KyanKyan + Magisco + Bee Girl

Saras: KyanKyan + Geckon + Magician + Valkyrie

Ishtar (Charme): Magisco + Handy + Mighty Witch + Valkyrie