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chuckroA full-remake of SaGa 3, originally released in the US as Final Fantasy Legend 3, which was one of my childhood favorites. (I even did a Let’s Play of the original.)
My old review still covers everything pretty thoroughly. I think the fan translation may have been slightly tweaked (I downloaded a fresh copy of the patched rom, and I’m seeing even fewer random Japanese bits). I realized in this playthrough that you can feed meat or parts to characters when it deliberately won’t cause a change, but still get Abilities from those. And once you have six abilities, you can choose which ones to keep, which means you can trade out weaknesses. Keeping effects like “Weapon Boosted” or “Immune Mind” on my characters turned out of be quite helpful, even though my final party was Cyborg-Mutant-Mutant-Human. (I rotated both Mutants through Beast form to get them some extra HP and agility boosts, but the technique attack bonus wasn’t nearly as useful as using Magic, especially in Easy mode where magic doesn’t run out. And Beasts don’t get Talents in this version of the game.)
It also only occurred to me in this play-through that the four Mystic Swords almost correspond to the four different sword weapon types (they use Sword, Greatsword and Katana; the last one really should have been a Blade), which means there’s more incentive to have a balanced party focusing on different weapon types in the endgame. Of course, my mutants wielding Ancient Magic books were doing twice the damage to the last few bosses that the Cyborg and Human were doing with mystic swords, so…maybe not.
I completed about half of the sidequests, but I also didn’t use an FAQ, so I probably missed triggering a few: There are plenty of sidequests that are chained together so if you get the wrong ending to one, you can’t do the others. There’s also an invisible “time points” counter that unlocks new sidequests, and each ending to the earlier ones is worth more or fewer time points. I believe it’s possible to get the secret ending on a first play-through (I think I did it on my last play, actually) but you need to follow a guide carefully to max your time points unless you want to do a New Game Plus.
Overall: This version of the game is much more of a “reimagining” than the DS remake of SaGa 2—that one keeps the maps, puzzles and a lot of the items essentially the same, to the point you can rely on old walkthroughs if you don’t mind missing the new material. This has no such luxuries. I love it the same way I love the Sword of Mana remake of Final Fantasy Adventure, as a different game retelling the same basic plot.
My old review still covers everything pretty thoroughly. I think the fan translation may have been slightly tweaked (I downloaded a fresh copy of the patched rom, and I’m seeing even fewer random Japanese bits). I realized in this playthrough that you can feed meat or parts to characters when it deliberately won’t cause a change, but still get Abilities from those. And once you have six abilities, you can choose which ones to keep, which means you can trade out weaknesses. Keeping effects like “Weapon Boosted” or “Immune Mind” on my characters turned out of be quite helpful, even though my final party was Cyborg-Mutant-Mutant-Human. (I rotated both Mutants through Beast form to get them some extra HP and agility boosts, but the technique attack bonus wasn’t nearly as useful as using Magic, especially in Easy mode where magic doesn’t run out. And Beasts don’t get Talents in this version of the game.)
It also only occurred to me in this play-through that the four Mystic Swords almost correspond to the four different sword weapon types (they use Sword, Greatsword and Katana; the last one really should have been a Blade), which means there’s more incentive to have a balanced party focusing on different weapon types in the endgame. Of course, my mutants wielding Ancient Magic books were doing twice the damage to the last few bosses that the Cyborg and Human were doing with mystic swords, so…maybe not.
I completed about half of the sidequests, but I also didn’t use an FAQ, so I probably missed triggering a few: There are plenty of sidequests that are chained together so if you get the wrong ending to one, you can’t do the others. There’s also an invisible “time points” counter that unlocks new sidequests, and each ending to the earlier ones is worth more or fewer time points. I believe it’s possible to get the secret ending on a first play-through (I think I did it on my last play, actually) but you need to follow a guide carefully to max your time points unless you want to do a New Game Plus.
Overall: This version of the game is much more of a “reimagining” than the DS remake of SaGa 2—that one keeps the maps, puzzles and a lot of the items essentially the same, to the point you can rely on old walkthroughs if you don’t mind missing the new material. This has no such luxuries. I love it the same way I love the Sword of Mana remake of Final Fantasy Adventure, as a different game retelling the same basic plot.
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Date: 2022-04-30 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-30 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 05:13 pm (UTC)1) The Abernic RG350 or RG351. Both come fully-loaded and ready to play. The RG3650 is older, generally cheaper (~$80-90 on eBay) and I prefer the interface, though I get the impression that's not everybody's opinion. The 351 has a bit more power and can kinda-mostly manage N64; it's more expensive ($100-120 on eBay) and I don't love the UI.
2) The Retroid Pocket 2+ ($100 direct from the manufacturer). This definitely has enough power for N64 and PSP, and it's running Android which gives it a lot of flexibility, but you need to load in your own roms and it requires a bunch of manual setup.
3) If you wait a couple of months, I'll inevitably buy one or two more and then decide I don't need to keep one of my existing ones so I'll give it to you. You don't know what you'll get, but it'll be very cost-effective.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-02 03:13 am (UTC)