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chuckroThe Diluvius* appeared in the sky, flooding the world's past, present and future. Monsters emerged from the water, heralding the world's destruction. The only hope is a group of children sent back from the far future. They must assemble the lost components of the legendary Stethelos and use them to travel through time and dimensions, changing history for the better.
*Pureland Water Entity, to us old-school types.
Like the DS remake of SaGa 2, this is a remake of a Game Boy game, originally released in the US as Final Fantasy Legend 3, and my favorite in the series. The reason for that being the original was the least "SaGa-ish" game in the series, more closely resembling Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (and having a normal leveling system, non-breakable weapons, MP, jumping and block-pushing, etc.). This remake brings the systems much more in-line with the series standards.
The names are completely different from the Game Boy original--or, more specifically, they're more accurate to the original Japanese names. Though I suspect a professional release would have not named a character "Milfie", and there were still a few Japanese text boxes that appeared during battle combos, the fan translation is splendidly done. Everything, including the sidequest and monster notes, is translated, and I couldn't find any glitches or issues.
The updated system is standard SaGa (sparking abilities, randomly-increased stats, breakable weapons) but the big gimmick here is the "Gears of Time" item, which lets you easily form combos, similar to the Threads of Fate in SaGa 2 DS (Side note: I got particularly annoyed by the random stat increases when it took something like three dungeons before Polnaref, who had only been using magic to that point, actually increased his Magic stat.) Of course, then in the middle of the first boss battle when I felt that using the Gears of Time was actually necessary...I couldn't figure out how to work them. (Turns out you need to press Y while the characters are acting, not while you're choosing their actions.) The graphics, battle engine and visible/chainable enemy encounters are all straight out of the SaGa 2 DS remake.
The game gives you the option of an "easy" mode that makes the weapons and magic infinite-use. (There are shops in the Stethelos and towns that recharge used-up weapons regardless, though it costs money. So you can use the best weapons in normal mode, you just need to grind cash to recharge them.) This particularly makes for an easier game because higher-level techniques for various weapons cost more "uses", so you can just start spamming them as soon as you unlock them. Also, healing spells are also infinite-use, so as long as you can survive a battle, you can fully heal after it. (Shockingly, I played the game on easy mode.) It breaks the game's difficulty to some degree, but you still need to do some grinding (for sufficient stats to deal damage and survive hits, and to spark critical techs), and there are still several bosses who can totally wreck your day.
You can input passwords for free items/access to quests, and the DS wireless connection can be used to trade them. Even if you input them all right away, nothing they give you is game-breaking. It's just a nice little bonus.
The original game had a free-roaming world map; this has a dotted-line "only some paths are accessible" map (mostly--the Stethelos can manuver freely, but you can still only enter set destinations). The fact that you can't visit everywhere in each time period actually closes some plot holes from the original: Dr. Pulsar, for instance, is mentioned to exist in the Present time (and his lab is just "somewhere you don't visit"), where in the original he came out of nowhere in the Future. They also allow you to return to some places that you couldn't in the original, like returning to the home world from the Otherworld (Pureland).
Races are changed, particularly the robots: They match the FFL2 robots more, getting different stats from their equipment; and Cyborgs are just a watered-down version of that. Robot, Cyborg and Beastman seem to be single races that gain stats just like Humans, rather than a series of upgradable monsters. Monsters can no longer use magic. Also, Human and Esper are distinct, so you can make your party 100% of either. You can get abilities from monsters you turn into and "inherit" them when you turn into a different race, so I had a character who kept Regenerating and Immune Mind when she turned into a Beastman, and kept them for the rest of the game.
Because of the weapon specializations--which means it's much easier to raise certain stats as certain races--it's actually beneficial to switch your characters off. Become mutants to raise Magic (which also affects your magic defense), then Beasts for Agility; that sort of thing. The trade-off is that you want to limit your characters to a a small set of weapons/magic each, so they can unlock techs that can be used with higher levels of that weapon type.
Another thing I noticed is that status ailments have more prominence in some respects (enemies seem to use them more, at least until you get the Stethelos' fusion engine and can turn your Dark or Light stones into enough Ribbons for the entire party, at which point a status attack becomes a free turn), but less in others (your ability to use talents / items / spells to inflict them is significantly less, as you only have abilities in Monster form and only higher-level weapon techs seem to inflict ailments). Given how much Stone-causing abilities trivialized the second half of the original game, I can't really fault them here.
Also, the series' insistance that HP-drain attacks should ignore defense causes me no end of annoyance, because it's harder than usual to get those attacks for yourself, but plenty of enemies have them.
Lots of sidequests have been added, along with lots of intraparty discussion and some actual characterization for your party. (Many of those sidequests only unlock via the password system, or in a New Game+, or when playing on Hard Mode.) Many of them involve traveling through time, stopping problems before they happen or setting up events for the future, which makes much better use of the time-travelling mechanic than the original ever did. The documentation is great, especially since you can have a lot of quests active at once, but they all also have multiple endings with varying rewards, and which ending is "best" (particularly the ones that unlock the secret ending) isn't intuitive. Unless you plan on playing through them all repeatedly on New Game+, a guide is pretty much necessary.
Plot changes/clarifications, something that will only make sense to fans of the original: The Stethelos (the Talon) was supposedly built in ancient times by the god Sol, who separated the 19 components of it and sealed them away. At least, that's what Volage (Borgin) told everyone--Wanderer later claims differently. The Muon (Float) spell explicitly summons a floating rock, and the Summon (Dive) spell creates a bubble. A new character called "Wanderer" appears to Cronus (Cronos) and tells him where to find the components in the Present. A sidequest allows the characters to fix the problems created in history they caused by telling Elder Gil where to found Dharm. (Which fixes one of the timey-whimy problems of the original: All of their actions change history, they aren't part of any stable time loops.) Similarly, a sidequest lets the characters deal with the ramifications of moving Freyja (Lara) through time to save her from monsters.
Rather than blowing up the Shrine, Dr. Pulsar just activates a device that opens it and lets the Stethelos out. After the fight with Maitreya, Dior (Dion) is explictly given an artificial body. Fenrir isn't working for Ragna (Xagor), he actually wants to usurp him; and he only knew about the sacred swords after somebody tipped him off. There's a legend about Stethelos being in the Otherworld many years before, occupied by the four crewmen and fighting against Ragna--but then Sol took it back to the home world. Charles (Shar) doesn't say anything about Tablets or curses, he just wants you to defeat the monster in the ruins for general purposes; and then he joins you right away.
The Stethelos Mk. II is explicitly said to use different technology from the original, removing the fridge horror that the original had a human mind that was locked in the shrine and then blown up. When Dior rejoins the party, he delivers the exposition that Sol and Ragna were originally one god and that Ragna is trying to merge them again. Volage is very suspicious when he turns up in Kommando, knowing things he probably shouldn't and implying a different story about Jupiter and Nemesis than what Nemesis reported (and it's clear in the ending that his story doesn't match Jupiter's, either). Also, he givies the explosives to Dior, rather than Dr. Borges having installed them. Similarly, Dior "barely survives" being blown up, rather than being cloned back to life from tissue samples. In the ending, Volage Tells Dune to destroy the Stethelos. Dune askes about the time machine Volage used to get to the Future, but Dr. Quasar and Borges know nothing about it.
In the bonus ending, the party travels back to the Present, and confronts Volage with the holes in his story. Volage reveals that he's Wanderer, and has engineered most of the plot of the game specifically to get the party to kill Ragna after he'd merged with Sol. Sol and Ragna had originally been one god, who split when they created two worlds and each kept one, but because they weren't whole, the worlds were imperfect and the dimensional rift appeared between them. If either of them defeated and absorbed the other, they'd use that power to make their respective world perfect and destroy the other; and in both cases this would destroy the rift that game Wanderer his power. So he needed them both gone at the same time. The party defeats Wanderer and returns to the Present, but worries that he's not gone, just watching the world to see what happens.
This plugs a bunch of plot holes in the original (see my LP for my attempts to fanwank them), but leaves some big ones: Most notably, the party goes back to the Present at the end, and changes history from that point on. Does the future they left still exist? Does the Diluvius exist in the Present after it's destroyed from the Otherworld side (where time passes differently)? Have the created a new timeline, or just overwritten everything they just did? Argh, time-travel headaches.
Overall: I loved this in a lot of ways and hated it in others. Mostly, I loved the story and sidequest additions and the addition of an easy mode that turned this more into a game I enjoyed playing. But I still hate the "random stat-ups / random new techs" levelling system of the SaGa series, and the massive unbalancing and frustration it can cause. If you have fond memories of the original or like the series in general, give it a go.
*Pureland Water Entity, to us old-school types.
Like the DS remake of SaGa 2, this is a remake of a Game Boy game, originally released in the US as Final Fantasy Legend 3, and my favorite in the series. The reason for that being the original was the least "SaGa-ish" game in the series, more closely resembling Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (and having a normal leveling system, non-breakable weapons, MP, jumping and block-pushing, etc.). This remake brings the systems much more in-line with the series standards.
The names are completely different from the Game Boy original--or, more specifically, they're more accurate to the original Japanese names. Though I suspect a professional release would have not named a character "Milfie", and there were still a few Japanese text boxes that appeared during battle combos, the fan translation is splendidly done. Everything, including the sidequest and monster notes, is translated, and I couldn't find any glitches or issues.
The updated system is standard SaGa (sparking abilities, randomly-increased stats, breakable weapons) but the big gimmick here is the "Gears of Time" item, which lets you easily form combos, similar to the Threads of Fate in SaGa 2 DS (Side note: I got particularly annoyed by the random stat increases when it took something like three dungeons before Polnaref, who had only been using magic to that point, actually increased his Magic stat.) Of course, then in the middle of the first boss battle when I felt that using the Gears of Time was actually necessary...I couldn't figure out how to work them. (Turns out you need to press Y while the characters are acting, not while you're choosing their actions.) The graphics, battle engine and visible/chainable enemy encounters are all straight out of the SaGa 2 DS remake.
The game gives you the option of an "easy" mode that makes the weapons and magic infinite-use. (There are shops in the Stethelos and towns that recharge used-up weapons regardless, though it costs money. So you can use the best weapons in normal mode, you just need to grind cash to recharge them.) This particularly makes for an easier game because higher-level techniques for various weapons cost more "uses", so you can just start spamming them as soon as you unlock them. Also, healing spells are also infinite-use, so as long as you can survive a battle, you can fully heal after it. (Shockingly, I played the game on easy mode.) It breaks the game's difficulty to some degree, but you still need to do some grinding (for sufficient stats to deal damage and survive hits, and to spark critical techs), and there are still several bosses who can totally wreck your day.
You can input passwords for free items/access to quests, and the DS wireless connection can be used to trade them. Even if you input them all right away, nothing they give you is game-breaking. It's just a nice little bonus.
The original game had a free-roaming world map; this has a dotted-line "only some paths are accessible" map (mostly--the Stethelos can manuver freely, but you can still only enter set destinations). The fact that you can't visit everywhere in each time period actually closes some plot holes from the original: Dr. Pulsar, for instance, is mentioned to exist in the Present time (and his lab is just "somewhere you don't visit"), where in the original he came out of nowhere in the Future. They also allow you to return to some places that you couldn't in the original, like returning to the home world from the Otherworld (Pureland).
Races are changed, particularly the robots: They match the FFL2 robots more, getting different stats from their equipment; and Cyborgs are just a watered-down version of that. Robot, Cyborg and Beastman seem to be single races that gain stats just like Humans, rather than a series of upgradable monsters. Monsters can no longer use magic. Also, Human and Esper are distinct, so you can make your party 100% of either. You can get abilities from monsters you turn into and "inherit" them when you turn into a different race, so I had a character who kept Regenerating and Immune Mind when she turned into a Beastman, and kept them for the rest of the game.
Because of the weapon specializations--which means it's much easier to raise certain stats as certain races--it's actually beneficial to switch your characters off. Become mutants to raise Magic (which also affects your magic defense), then Beasts for Agility; that sort of thing. The trade-off is that you want to limit your characters to a a small set of weapons/magic each, so they can unlock techs that can be used with higher levels of that weapon type.
Another thing I noticed is that status ailments have more prominence in some respects (enemies seem to use them more, at least until you get the Stethelos' fusion engine and can turn your Dark or Light stones into enough Ribbons for the entire party, at which point a status attack becomes a free turn), but less in others (your ability to use talents / items / spells to inflict them is significantly less, as you only have abilities in Monster form and only higher-level weapon techs seem to inflict ailments). Given how much Stone-causing abilities trivialized the second half of the original game, I can't really fault them here.
Also, the series' insistance that HP-drain attacks should ignore defense causes me no end of annoyance, because it's harder than usual to get those attacks for yourself, but plenty of enemies have them.
Lots of sidequests have been added, along with lots of intraparty discussion and some actual characterization for your party. (Many of those sidequests only unlock via the password system, or in a New Game+, or when playing on Hard Mode.) Many of them involve traveling through time, stopping problems before they happen or setting up events for the future, which makes much better use of the time-travelling mechanic than the original ever did. The documentation is great, especially since you can have a lot of quests active at once, but they all also have multiple endings with varying rewards, and which ending is "best" (particularly the ones that unlock the secret ending) isn't intuitive. Unless you plan on playing through them all repeatedly on New Game+, a guide is pretty much necessary.
Plot changes/clarifications, something that will only make sense to fans of the original: The Stethelos (the Talon) was supposedly built in ancient times by the god Sol, who separated the 19 components of it and sealed them away. At least, that's what Volage (Borgin) told everyone--Wanderer later claims differently. The Muon (Float) spell explicitly summons a floating rock, and the Summon (Dive) spell creates a bubble. A new character called "Wanderer" appears to Cronus (Cronos) and tells him where to find the components in the Present. A sidequest allows the characters to fix the problems created in history they caused by telling Elder Gil where to found Dharm. (Which fixes one of the timey-whimy problems of the original: All of their actions change history, they aren't part of any stable time loops.) Similarly, a sidequest lets the characters deal with the ramifications of moving Freyja (Lara) through time to save her from monsters.
Rather than blowing up the Shrine, Dr. Pulsar just activates a device that opens it and lets the Stethelos out. After the fight with Maitreya, Dior (Dion) is explictly given an artificial body. Fenrir isn't working for Ragna (Xagor), he actually wants to usurp him; and he only knew about the sacred swords after somebody tipped him off. There's a legend about Stethelos being in the Otherworld many years before, occupied by the four crewmen and fighting against Ragna--but then Sol took it back to the home world. Charles (Shar) doesn't say anything about Tablets or curses, he just wants you to defeat the monster in the ruins for general purposes; and then he joins you right away.
The Stethelos Mk. II is explicitly said to use different technology from the original, removing the fridge horror that the original had a human mind that was locked in the shrine and then blown up. When Dior rejoins the party, he delivers the exposition that Sol and Ragna were originally one god and that Ragna is trying to merge them again. Volage is very suspicious when he turns up in Kommando, knowing things he probably shouldn't and implying a different story about Jupiter and Nemesis than what Nemesis reported (and it's clear in the ending that his story doesn't match Jupiter's, either). Also, he givies the explosives to Dior, rather than Dr. Borges having installed them. Similarly, Dior "barely survives" being blown up, rather than being cloned back to life from tissue samples. In the ending, Volage Tells Dune to destroy the Stethelos. Dune askes about the time machine Volage used to get to the Future, but Dr. Quasar and Borges know nothing about it.
In the bonus ending, the party travels back to the Present, and confronts Volage with the holes in his story. Volage reveals that he's Wanderer, and has engineered most of the plot of the game specifically to get the party to kill Ragna after he'd merged with Sol. Sol and Ragna had originally been one god, who split when they created two worlds and each kept one, but because they weren't whole, the worlds were imperfect and the dimensional rift appeared between them. If either of them defeated and absorbed the other, they'd use that power to make their respective world perfect and destroy the other; and in both cases this would destroy the rift that game Wanderer his power. So he needed them both gone at the same time. The party defeats Wanderer and returns to the Present, but worries that he's not gone, just watching the world to see what happens.
This plugs a bunch of plot holes in the original (see my LP for my attempts to fanwank them), but leaves some big ones: Most notably, the party goes back to the Present at the end, and changes history from that point on. Does the future they left still exist? Does the Diluvius exist in the Present after it's destroyed from the Otherworld side (where time passes differently)? Have the created a new timeline, or just overwritten everything they just did? Argh, time-travel headaches.
Overall: I loved this in a lot of ways and hated it in others. Mostly, I loved the story and sidequest additions and the addition of an easy mode that turned this more into a game I enjoyed playing. But I still hate the "random stat-ups / random new techs" levelling system of the SaGa series, and the massive unbalancing and frustration it can cause. If you have fond memories of the original or like the series in general, give it a go.
