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Romancing SaGa 3
Romancing SaGa 3 was never released in the US, it was fan-translated by Mana Sword and was actually one of the earlier jrpgs the emulation community brought over. Visually it’s very similar to Final Fantasy 6, though the battle system is closer to the earlier SaGa games (released as the Final Fantasy Legend series on the Game Boy).
The game has the problem of many "wide open sandbox" rpgs: The beef gate problem. In theory, from the very beginning, you can go anywhere and do any quest or any dungeon. In practice, however, there is pretty much a defined path to take, they just don't tell you what it is and expect you to guess it based on the difficulty of the monsters you meet. I tried doing an optional dungeon that holds my main character's best weapon, and the random enemies were easy, but the boss guarding the weapon wiped me out completely. Ain't that a sweet little fake-out? (Apparently in some dungeons, the enemies scale to your HP level, but the bosses don’t. Which means you can enter levels you aren't really supposed to be at yet and get totally trashed by the boss, or trudge your way through something you missed early on and be shocked at how easy the boss is.)
In theory you could get through the intro section, rush straight to the main plot and four non-optional dungeons, and the final dungeon...except that it would kick your ass four ways from Tuesday. The game is actually fairly linear, it just doesn’t tell you that.
Also, there's a dash function, but (and the game isn't clear on telling you this, but it's not clear on telling you much of anything) if you dash in dungeons, it gives the random monsters the ability to become semi-invisible, and any battle you get into while dashing makes your formation set to normal, which loses out on formation benefits. So really, you’re supposed to use the slower walking speed everywhere.
Add to that the fact that the SaGa games use non-standard levelling systems that randomly grant you stat-ups, HP increases and new abilities; and are generally on the hard side for RPGs; and you have a recipe for frustration if you try to play this game "normally". (In theory, you improve on what you use, so strength improves if you attack with axes and magic power if you cast spells, etc.; and you stop getting gains if you fight enemies that are really weak compared to your power level. In actual play, it means you can’t build up powerful one-shot abilities to only use on bosses; and the game designers’ idea of “too weak for you” may be very different from your own.)
There are upsides to this: The ability to “spark” new techniques during battles is kinda cool, it just doesn’t happen quickly enough or often enough. The fact that your HP restores after every battle (if you run out, you start losing LP, and running out of LP means you’re permanently dead, like in the other later SaGa games) makes the lack of money to buy items and healing spells (or MP to cast them with) much less of an issue, and is easy to deal with. And there are a fair number of special techniques, many of which are damn cool.
I started my play through of this game a couple of months ago, lost track of it, briefly came back to it and did a bunch more quests, and now it's been another month because it feels like a chore. While some of the earlier quests are kinda interesting, the later dungeons hit an impressive combination of slow-moving and repetitive but easy (when you've used either cheats or extreme grinding to make the first half of the game playable), which means that you don't feel like your time is accomplishing anything in terms of plot advancement or character advancement. So I’ll admit, I didn’t actually seal the Abyss Gates myself, I just read the Let's Play and downloaded a save to play the final boss battle.
The translation is fine, but minimalistic. Not to knock fan-translators, because I generally think they’re awesome, but even if this game had boring, simplistic dialogue in Japanese, couldn’t you do something? Character motivations become a matter of guessing (based on two or three lines after the prologue), personalities are barely existent, and the fact that there are three dozen characters who can join and leave your party at pretty much any time (most of them without much if any plot attached to them) means that for story purposes, the characters are interchangeable and you’re pretty much left with the overarching plot.
And the overarching plot, because of the fake wide open sandbox, is unfortunately also kinda minimalist. Sara and Shonen are apparently the two most important characters, but you never need to see them between the intro and the final dungeon. There are various corrupt organizations and warring factions, but each one gets about ten minutes worth of screen time and then never does anything again. Nothing interconnects because in theory (though not in reality) you could do things in any order.
On the plus side, if you die against the final boss, you’re treated to an awesome scene of him destroying the world. Of course, he also destroys the world if you win, but in that case it’s resurrected by the power of the Holy Child. Then you get a montage of scenes of all the characters and some notable NPCs, a review of your characters final stats, and the end credits (in Japanese) with characters demonstrating the various combo moves.
...Oh, yes, the combo moves. If you play the game normally, you might not even know they’re there. Because in order for your characters to learn and use them, you need to be playing in “commander mode”, which is activated by your main character being in the 6th (non-fighting) party slot. A setup you’d never do normally because a character in that slot doesn’t improve their skills, and your main character is the only one who you know will always be with you. One of the FAQ writers didn’t know it was there until the final boss (as one scenario forces you to use it)!
What it really comes down to is, if you’re serious hardcore and like jrpgs more for the system and less for the plot, you might like this. (Basically, if you were the person who played Final Fantasy Legend “honestly” without using a game genie or exploiting the poor random number generator on the Game Boy, this might be for you.) Sit down with a FAQ to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, and then enjoy your 40-80 hours of game. I’m pretty much done at 10, thanks.
The game has the problem of many "wide open sandbox" rpgs: The beef gate problem. In theory, from the very beginning, you can go anywhere and do any quest or any dungeon. In practice, however, there is pretty much a defined path to take, they just don't tell you what it is and expect you to guess it based on the difficulty of the monsters you meet. I tried doing an optional dungeon that holds my main character's best weapon, and the random enemies were easy, but the boss guarding the weapon wiped me out completely. Ain't that a sweet little fake-out? (Apparently in some dungeons, the enemies scale to your HP level, but the bosses don’t. Which means you can enter levels you aren't really supposed to be at yet and get totally trashed by the boss, or trudge your way through something you missed early on and be shocked at how easy the boss is.)
In theory you could get through the intro section, rush straight to the main plot and four non-optional dungeons, and the final dungeon...except that it would kick your ass four ways from Tuesday. The game is actually fairly linear, it just doesn’t tell you that.
Also, there's a dash function, but (and the game isn't clear on telling you this, but it's not clear on telling you much of anything) if you dash in dungeons, it gives the random monsters the ability to become semi-invisible, and any battle you get into while dashing makes your formation set to normal, which loses out on formation benefits. So really, you’re supposed to use the slower walking speed everywhere.
Add to that the fact that the SaGa games use non-standard levelling systems that randomly grant you stat-ups, HP increases and new abilities; and are generally on the hard side for RPGs; and you have a recipe for frustration if you try to play this game "normally". (In theory, you improve on what you use, so strength improves if you attack with axes and magic power if you cast spells, etc.; and you stop getting gains if you fight enemies that are really weak compared to your power level. In actual play, it means you can’t build up powerful one-shot abilities to only use on bosses; and the game designers’ idea of “too weak for you” may be very different from your own.)
There are upsides to this: The ability to “spark” new techniques during battles is kinda cool, it just doesn’t happen quickly enough or often enough. The fact that your HP restores after every battle (if you run out, you start losing LP, and running out of LP means you’re permanently dead, like in the other later SaGa games) makes the lack of money to buy items and healing spells (or MP to cast them with) much less of an issue, and is easy to deal with. And there are a fair number of special techniques, many of which are damn cool.
I started my play through of this game a couple of months ago, lost track of it, briefly came back to it and did a bunch more quests, and now it's been another month because it feels like a chore. While some of the earlier quests are kinda interesting, the later dungeons hit an impressive combination of slow-moving and repetitive but easy (when you've used either cheats or extreme grinding to make the first half of the game playable), which means that you don't feel like your time is accomplishing anything in terms of plot advancement or character advancement. So I’ll admit, I didn’t actually seal the Abyss Gates myself, I just read the Let's Play and downloaded a save to play the final boss battle.
The translation is fine, but minimalistic. Not to knock fan-translators, because I generally think they’re awesome, but even if this game had boring, simplistic dialogue in Japanese, couldn’t you do something? Character motivations become a matter of guessing (based on two or three lines after the prologue), personalities are barely existent, and the fact that there are three dozen characters who can join and leave your party at pretty much any time (most of them without much if any plot attached to them) means that for story purposes, the characters are interchangeable and you’re pretty much left with the overarching plot.
And the overarching plot, because of the fake wide open sandbox, is unfortunately also kinda minimalist. Sara and Shonen are apparently the two most important characters, but you never need to see them between the intro and the final dungeon. There are various corrupt organizations and warring factions, but each one gets about ten minutes worth of screen time and then never does anything again. Nothing interconnects because in theory (though not in reality) you could do things in any order.
On the plus side, if you die against the final boss, you’re treated to an awesome scene of him destroying the world. Of course, he also destroys the world if you win, but in that case it’s resurrected by the power of the Holy Child. Then you get a montage of scenes of all the characters and some notable NPCs, a review of your characters final stats, and the end credits (in Japanese) with characters demonstrating the various combo moves.
...Oh, yes, the combo moves. If you play the game normally, you might not even know they’re there. Because in order for your characters to learn and use them, you need to be playing in “commander mode”, which is activated by your main character being in the 6th (non-fighting) party slot. A setup you’d never do normally because a character in that slot doesn’t improve their skills, and your main character is the only one who you know will always be with you. One of the FAQ writers didn’t know it was there until the final boss (as one scenario forces you to use it)!
What it really comes down to is, if you’re serious hardcore and like jrpgs more for the system and less for the plot, you might like this. (Basically, if you were the person who played Final Fantasy Legend “honestly” without using a game genie or exploiting the poor random number generator on the Game Boy, this might be for you.) Sit down with a FAQ to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, and then enjoy your 40-80 hours of game. I’m pretty much done at 10, thanks.