Romancia has been translated to English

[FM-77AV]

Now it's time for you to play it.

It's the Famicom version, so you'll need NNNesterJ to play it. Or something like that.

Here's the translated rom for you doods.

Contains some nice NES music. The game kinda (more like really) sucks.

[Ascended Mermaid]

Sweet! I've been looking forward to this one! Thanks!

[Ascended Mermaid]

Yargh. Stupid barriers. How?

[FM-77AV]

Sorry. Nobody knows.

[Ascended Mermaid]

I figured it out, and a whole lot more. Highlight to view spoilers:

---

Go to the forest. You beat the crap out of everything that's in the irregular set of trees, the irregular set is about two inches wide onscreen and features a great deal of separation from the "foreground". Keep kicking butt until you get a gem; this will unlock the barrier ahead. Keep going and you will reach town.

The man in the last building on the right gives you medicine. Give this medicine to everyone in town -- this means multiple trips back to the man in that building. Talk to every ill person you've given medicine to until they repeat themselves or they no longer speak to you. Don't forget to pour medicine down the well; the water room to the left of the well recovers your HP to 15.

There's a pond in the middle; go in and press the switches in this order: Right, Left, Middle. Go to the cave and talk to the man. He's unlocked the flood gate. Go through the gate in the pond, all the way to the left and press down. You will be in a room with a fairy. Make your way to the fairy, killing everything on sight, and talk to the fairy to get the key.

Go to the graveyard; it's the second room/door from the right of the town. On the far left, you will use your key here. Birds will appear. Jump on one to get a soul. Why? Beats me. Now keep going.

One of the sick people will have given you a rope; presumably a man who tells you not to get near him as his illness is contagious. Bring this rope to the last room, where you got the medicine. You'll be able to go up the stairs to ring the church bell and get a vital item. This one opens the way to the next town.

I'm stuck in this next town; the first three houses feature hackers who will call you a cheater and make several offers to you. I would ignore these people, to complete the quest legitimately. The fourth house has a hole. It's dark though, so be sure to bring a lamp. Where's the lamp? Beats me. Talk to one of the people in the hole -- they all give you a scroll, but only one's legitimate. Which one's legitimate? To find out, go back to the first town and speak to the man in the bar after having a drink with him. He'll likely tell you the scroll you picked out isn't legit, perhaps cursed even. Get it uncursed by one of the many townspeople, and then have one of the townspeople remove it from your inventory. If you've been exploring, you will know who to go to.

I have not yet found the legitimate scroll. In the second town, there is a pit with a demon head background, you can and will get stuck in here if you don't jump. I have not found my way out of this pit, so be sure to jump over it! There's also a suspicious cave beneath another pool. What significance this bears is beyond me. To be continued...

---

End of spoilers. Hopefully this helps!

Edit: Finally figured out 2F3238 is the invisible color! Sweet!

How do you like them apples?

[FM-77AV]

Sounds way better than I expected.

I have played the real Romancia more, which is rather different from this. Tokyo Shoseki ported this, among many other Falcom games (YsIV mots, Asteka II FC, etc), and they liked to change quite a few things about the games they ported.

[Ascended Mermaid]

I'll have to get back to this one later. I really don't want to deal with the [scroll] puzzle. If anyone finds a [lamp] though, let me know. I want one!

[FM-77AV]

That's right. Tombs & Treasure. I love that game. I think it is better than the real Asteka II (which is rather different, and has very little music).

[Ascended Mermaid]

(Highlight) Spoiler: I discovered a secret area in the first town. After the pond, you will see a set of trees. Press up in the Prince Fan sized gap between the two trees to enter a secret area. Press up at the water fountain to obtain a strange yellow vial. What this does is beyond me, further experimentation to be had.

I like this, finding secrets and stuff.

[Ascended Mermaid]

(Highlight) Spoiler 3:
Don't forget to pick up the cross on top of the arch nearby the church. You can climb the arch on the end where you can't see Prince Fan.

So far, my inventory consists of medicine, soul, hourglass, cross, strange vial, and the rainbow rod.

I can't wait to figure out what all of these weird items are for. I know what to do with the scroll, but I just haven't found the right one yet.

[Ascended Mermaid]

Spoiler 4:
The cross is apparently cursed, as it doesn't do ANYTHING if you use it and disappears after one use. So go to Romancia, the second town. In the cave beneath the pool, at the far left beneath the stairs, is a symbol. Press up here and Prince Fan will undo the curse on the cross. The cross can be used 5-10 different times before disappearing on you. It kills all of the enemies on the screen when used. It may have other uses, I will look into this.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say I'll be saving this item for later. I've exposed enough secrets for now. If anyone has anything to add to these spoilers, let me know. I may compile all this into a FAQ in the future.

[Ascended Mermaid]

I've tried the dos version on Falcom's page, but I never got the music to work. With nothing to jam to, I really can't focus on a game. I beat the caves and called it quits. It seems really fun, though. Starting v5.25 of the Romancia FAQ.

[Ascended Mermaid]

FAQ, as of May 25th. Copy and paste it to view it:

Romancia (Famicom) FAQ v5.25

--------------------------------
	Intro:
--------------------------------
You're Prince Fan, presumably an adventurous young fellow. People like to put Prince Fan on fetch quests and give him items he doesn't know how to use. It 
is my job to teach you, fellow Prince Fan, how to move, use your equipment and get through the various areas of the game.

	Controls:
Left/Right:	Prince Fan will walk left or right, climb stairs (sometimes you have to jump on the stairs first) and small cliffs.
Up:		Prince Fan will jump, talk to people, enter doors/areas, and climb ladders.
Down:		Prince Fan will go down ladders, drop down secret areas, and drop to the highest stair.
B:		Hold B to shoot a sword, or just press it to whack enemies in short-range combat.
A:		Prince Fan will use the selected item.
Select:		Not used, as far as I know.
Start:		This allows you to pause the game. Select an item with left or right, and unpause to have it ready.

In the water:	Press up, down, left, or right, to swim in that direction. All other controls still apply!


--------------------------------
	The beginning:
--------------------------------
Nothing much out here. This is where you go when you die, normally. Talk to the two old men on your right. They will recover your HP and give you swords to 
shoot. Save these swords for later, you'll need them! Continue to the right, where you'll enter a forest.


--------------------------------
	The forest:
--------------------------------
Lots of flying foes, crawling foes and jumping foes here. Use only short-ranged attacks by tapping the B button, so to save your swords for what's to come. 
Continue to the right until you see four trees in a row hiding in the background. This area is noticably different as the leaves up above also separate. 
Kill a bunch of enemies under this area; using a turbo button for B is recommended, as you DON'T want to fire off one of your swords. Enemies may drop items 
like hearts and more swords -- DON'T ATTACK THESE, as they'll go away! When you're done killing enemies, a blue orb will drop onto Prince Fan. This means 
you may continue to a small cave on your right.

The cave:
If you haven't been following my instructions, you will see a message that the monsters' curse prevents you from going any further. However, I have faith 
that you are listening to me, so continue through the cave. More enemies here, very few that fly, but lots that will jump around and climb the narrow rocky 
passages. Whack them off as you need to. Continue on til you reach the cliff.


--------------------------------
	The cliff:
--------------------------------
Jump on the clouds, avoiding the jumping fish. When you're on the lowest cloud, jump off the edge and make your way to the right. If you fall in the water, 
I assume you'll be okay, since Prince Fan is able to swim. Continue right, and you'll face a nasty boss. Avoid the fangs he fires at you, stay at the left 
side of the screen and SHOOT YOUR SWORDS. You've been waiting for me to tell you that, right? Keep shooting your swords, but don't jump -- you'll miss if 
you jump! You can damage him quite a bit if he's walking quite a ways to the right -- your sword will trail him and continue to shave off his precious 
invisible HPs. Once he's dead, you'll get another pretty orb. Continue to the right, and you'll reach town.


--------------------------------
	Romancia:
--------------------------------
There's a LOT to do here, so pay attention!

***THE CASTLE:***
Keep going to the right, ignoring the fake-out of a wall. Talk to the king until he replenishes your swords. He's a generous one, no? Remember this place if 
you need to recharge your swords!

For places you should just skip since you'll be reading my FAQ anyway, I'll write the dialogue here. I'll mark important areas for you. Following the castle 
is a series of three houses.

Shed 1:
Man "The water has dried and this paradise has become a wasteland. Is there nothing that can be done?"

Shed 2:
Man "The souls of 6 young men who died in Azorba are said to be trapped in the cemetery."
Good to know, right? Continue on...

***SHED 3:***
Man "I am happy to take anything thou dost not need off thy hands."
If you keep talking to him, he will. Remember this for later, as you will undoubtedly obtain cursed items and useless items.

***RED BRICK HOUSE:***
There's poisonous water here, which will kill you. This will be much more helpful in the future, believe me.

***TWO FLOOR WOODEN HOUSE:***
Man "Thou mustn't go up to the 2nd floor. Thou wilt become ill."
Aha! Someone's sick in this house! REMEMBER THIS HOUSE FOR LATER. Continue on...

***THE WELL:***
You will see a man next to a well. Apparently the well is dirty. Oh well.

***WHITE HOUSE W/CHIMNEY:***
For two gold coins, this kind old man will repair your shield by 1 point. It's so hard to make money, though! Maybe later...

***RED BRICK HOUSE W/CROSS:***
Oho! Another sick person! Whatever shall we do?

***TWO FLOOR WHITE HOUSE W/TOWERS:***
Her daughter's sick! Poor thing! Too bad there isn't a hero out there who could possibly save her... or is there?

***LONG WOODEN HOUSE; BAR:***
Apparently you can buy a drink for 5 coins. Too bad you don't have 5 coins... the King's scribe is also here, and he wants to talk your ears off if you 
decide to drink with him. Continue on...

Hmmm... there's a little pond, with three switches at the bottom. Swim down and press them in the following order: Right, Left, Middle. What? Nothing 
happened? Fear not, and head right.

***CAVE ROOM:***
He'll let you know that the dam door is open. Okay, so go back to the pond on your left, swim down and go through the dam door. Continue to your left and 
push down...

The cave:
Yes, here's another cave, and it's pretty straight-forward. Continue to the right, killing everything in your way. Go up and to the left, jump over the gap, 
and continue left to the fairy. Swim down and talk to her. She'll present you with a [KEY]! Go all the way to the right, through the fake wall and swim up.

Now that you're outside, jump to the right and you will see a set of four trees. Stand yourself in the center of the four trees (in the Prince Fan sized 
gap) and press up.

***GREEK GARDENS:***
Prepare for beautiful music! Walk to the right, and press up at the fountain for a [FOUNTAIN DRINK]. Continue to the big tree on the right and press up to 
get a [FRUIT OF THE LIFE TREE]. This will revive you up to 5 times whenever you die! Now leave this peaceful place through the left.

Continue to the right into a building with a red cross.

***RED CROSS:***
Yep, more sick people here. Remember this one, especially!

***GRAVEYARD:***
Continue to the left here and unlock the door with your [KEY]. BIRDS! Jump on a bird to recieve a [SOUL]. Now leave this grim area, stage right.

***THE ARCH:***
This isn't really its own screen. Just keep in mind you can climb the arch when Prince Fan's hiding behind it.

***THE CHURCH:***
This kind old fellow will provide you with [MEDICINE]. Continue speaking with him to discover he has no rope to ring the churchbell with. 

Return to the RED BRICK HOUSE W/CROSS with the [MEDICINE] to recieve the [ROPE]!
Return to THE CHURCH with the [ROPE] to gain permission to take the [CROSS] from THE ARCH.
Return to THE CHURCH for more [MEDICINE]!
Climb the ladder in THE CHURCH, jump and ring the churchbell to recieve the [RAINBOW ROD]!
Return to the RED BRICK HOUSE W/CROSS with the [CROSS] to recieve the [ROBE]!

Bear in mind everytime you deliver [MEDICINE], you must return to THE CHURCH to get more! Bring [MEDICINE] to the following areas for various prizes:
***TWO FLOOR WOODEN HOUSE:***		The ill person in bed will reward you with a ring.
***THE WELL:***				[MEDICINE] will remove the poison from THE WELL, which means you can heal in the waters of the RED BRICK HOUSE.
***TWO FLOOR WHITE HOUSE W/TOWERS:***	She'll award you with 30 coins!
***RED CROSS:***			The ill person in bed will reward you with a ring.

Return to the RED CROSS and the old coot will offer to recover you. 1 HP per coin. Continue on...

You will see an old man on a cloud. Leave him alone. Talk to him once and he'll offer to kill you. Talk to him twice and he really will kill you. Continue 
on, equip the [RAINBOW ROD] and talk to a man on the bridge. Say goodbye to the town of Romancia and hello to a more deadly locale.


--------------------------------
	Azorba:
--------------------------------
Lots of enemies here, so beware! I'm not sure whether or not this is different from the original, but the first three houses have characters with the names 
of hackers and translators which make various offers and accuse Prince Fan of cheating.

In the first house, you can get an [HOURGLASS].

In the second house, you can sell [MEDICINE] for 10 coins, a [LAMP] or a [KEY] for 30 coins.

The hacker in the third house is a little unusual, as he states that you don't require his assistance yet.

Continue on to house 4. The man in here mentions that their elder is locked up in the basement of this fortress, and that you'll want to try entering the 
back of the castle to find the princess. If you drop down through the hole in the floor, you'll end up in the darkness. Without a lamp, you can't see 
anything down here. There are various people down here who will give you a [SCROLL]. Which one's the right one, though? Choose carefully! I assume they're 
all cursed, so return to Romancia and talk to the old man in the CAVE ROOM. He'll undo the curses for you. You can also go to the BAR and pay 5 coins for a 
drink. Do so and talk to the scribe. He'll tell you whether or not your [SCROLL] is the real deal. If it's a fake, select it and go to SHED 3 to have it 
removed, as you can only carry one [SCROLL] at a time. Continuing on in Azorba...

You'll come across a set of stairs, beneath which is a symbol. Go around from the top and then through the cave beneath you to get to the symbol, and then 
press up. This breaks the curse on your [CROSS]. Breaking the curse will allow you to use the [CROSS] to kill every enemy currently in view. It can only be 
used a few times, however, so save it up for now. Continue on...

You will see a cliff with fake walls, followed by a pit. It is very hard to get out of this pit, so avoid it at all costs. Jump over it and get to the other 
side; there's also a fake wall on the right cliff if you miss your jump.

The pit:
DON'T KILL ALL OF THE ENEMIES IF YOU FALL IN. It's impossible to get out if you kill all of the enemies. Instead, use your [HOURGLASS]. It helps if you 
freeze an enemy near the platforms, so they can hit you and send you onto a platform. Make it to the right cliff, climb up and keep pressing up at random 
areas until you find the exit! This will take you back on top of the left cliff.

There's a house here I can't seem to enter, followed by the castle of Azorba. Enter either door and continue through. Deep inside you'll find a dark tunnel. 
There's a series of ladders if you can't see, so press down when you reach a dead end. It zigzags, making a z pattern. When you reach the end, it'll tell 
you that the area is protected by a curse, likely the same one on any of the scrolls you've picked up. Hopefully you've picked up the right one. If so, you 
may continue... I haven't yet, so this is where my game ends. X)

Had to make a lot of modifications as it pasted incorrectly. Anyways, it should be fine to copy and paste it to notepad or any other friendly text viewing software.

[FM-77AV]

You made all that already? You must really like this game.

[Ascended Mermaid]

Heh, you should see what else I do with my spare time. If you thought I "talked a mile a minute", imagine how much I write when I get into my creative writing sessions. Anyway, that's what I'm up to lately; no time for Romancia. I've dawdled too much.

[Ascended Mermaid]

Change the values of addresses 0153 to 1E for Max Health, 0154 to 0F for Max Swords, 0155 to 1E for Max Gold, 0156 to 0F for Max Staves, 0157 to 1E for Max Shields, and 0158 to 1E for Max Rings.

I managed to figure out a LOT, made a lot of updates to my FAQ. It won't see a public release until many alterations are made, and the game is complete. Suddenly I can't get Nestopia to start, since rebooting so I could connect to the internet. Wonder why that is... =\

Anyway, I'm working on the ladder maze. It's pretty hectic, enormous and confusing. =\ Maybe I'll just draw an ASCII map, that seems to be the way to go.

C'mon computer. I can has Romancia!

Edit: Here's a BIG hint. Killing enemies and having that dude take items out of your inventory removes your "gold rings". You want to keep those for several reasons, especially if you're just starting out. Take care of the enemy killing quests first. Upon completion of any quest, you get "gold rings". If you run out of quests AND "gold rings", you're screwed. So absolutely do NOT kill enemies. Make sure you have a [SOUL] and [SPRING WATER] when you go to Heaven. Without the [SOUL], you can't return to Earth. The [SPRING WATER] turns into an item which kills enemies and turns them into "gold rings", which means you can reap more benefits in Heaven, and you won't have to worry about not being able to kill enemies. Plus, "gold rings" are nifty in that they provide extra chances to complete the game.

Also: Got Nestopia to work, and I beat Romancia. That final battle was totally epic, with me and my infinite hearts. X) It took me 15 minutes to figure out why I wasn't hurting him; I was *missing* the weak point(s)! Go figure. The maze was next to impossible, but I may do a FAQ on the later part of the maze. There was totally no way to differentiate between the ladders or the maze rooms. I just got by on pure luck -- and a rewind button, for those nasty dead-ends. I tried to make a map but that quickly backfired due to the maze being one of little sense.

[Ascended Mermaid]

If you have Nestopia, you can has a video of my most recent playthrough:
www.sendspace.com/file/34l5jy

It's RARed, because I'm nice like that. X)

You may as well stop the video when I get to the ladder maze, though. That's as far as I got on this run. Also, it may benefit you to set it to fast-forward. Enjoy!

[Ascended Mermaid]

WOO! Finished the maze map! I just HOPE TO GOD it's not random like the maze which follows... but I've tried it a few times so it seems to be the end-all solution!



The maze which comes after is alot easier, although tricky, and a little more random. I tried to use my old solution for part 2 and it didn't work. Everything was 100% backwards. I'll work on a video for part 2 solutions in a while, but it won't likely be uploaded until tomorrow.

[Ascended Mermaid]

Ugh. Sorry, I don't have a video of the final part of the game. For some reason, Nestopia got a whiny on me and decided it couldn't record videos during the Ladder Maze and Castle Maze. However, I have completed my FAQ, v5.30. All I have left to do is make a final revision. Changes will include moving useless information such as town data (What all the houses are in left-to-right order) to "Locales" at the bottom of my FAQ. I also need to figure out how many GOLD RINGS are required to get specific prizes from the wise men in Heaven, document all the townspeople and test this FAQ on the untranslated version to note any extras added by the hackers -- which likely includes the hackers in the first three buildings of Azorba. Why didn't they just put their names in the credits like everyone else? Oh well. I could update the strategies to include the hackers, as one provides money to players who carry a lamp, medicine, or a key. For the most part I avoided them due to the thought I'd be cheating if I included them. Look for it on GameFAQs sometime tomorrow.

[Ascended Mermaid]

I uploaded the FAQ to GameFAQs. Annoying how I had to manually insert all of the damned line-breaks myself. I thought word wrap took care of that automatically. So instead of v5.30, they get v5.31... hopefully it'll be up on their site by tomorrow. If it doesn't make it, does anyone care to contribute a little file space?

Edit: As far as v5.30 is concerned...

Notes: File is over margin, 1010 characters wide

This is my first ever FAQ (With the exception of a previous attempt to create a FAQ for Crystalis. Shame.) and just may be the first English FAQ (as far as I know) for Romancia (NES/Famicom). Hopefully the game will achieve more recognition. I'd like to think my FAQ won't go to waste.