WK's Top something or other... let's just say "games" and call it good list.

[Skyblade]

CT actually took the open ended sequence of the third act which Secret of Mana and FFVI had developed and finally perfected it in a way that combines the freedom to play the game at your own pace while also maintaining

I want to know how this sentence ends, Wolf.

[Wolf Kanno]

CT actually took the open ended sequence of the third act which Secret of Mana and FFVI had developed and finally perfected it in a way that combines the freedom to play the game at your own pace while also maintaining

I want to know how this sentence ends, Wolf.

Missed that when I did the quick skim. I finished it now for you. ;)

[Wolf Kanno]

So I'm going back through this list and doing a bit of editing and fixing some spelling and grammatical errors. I'm not going to bother changing the order, but I do want to expand a few entries here and there, which I'll mark as updated on the first post. If there is any entry anyone wishes I would discuss more in-depth, feel free to reply, but at this moment it will be kind of random which ones I plan to add more to. Have fun.

[Wolf Kanno]

Well since I have some spare time, I've been revisiting this list and updating a few entries I was either unhappy with the original script or simply came up with more things to say. I don't normally like resurrecting old threads, but this one has been a little personal for me as it serves as a bit of a gaming journal. Anyway, since we all have some major free time, I figured now would be a good time to plug some of these changes. I've actually been debating on adding a few entries onto this list like I've been discussing with my Blog. I really want to add Demon's Souls and possibly a few other entries I've recently played into the mix, so perhaps stay tuned. :wcanoe:

[Freya]

Look forward to it WK!

[Wolf Kanno]

#101

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A few years ago, I finally took the plunge into the SaGa franchise which I had always been interested in, but just either never had the time or means to play the series. So I jumped in by going through both Final Fantasy Legend, Romancing SaGa, and SaGa Frontier 2. While there were certainly some growing pains in these experiences, I feel I was able to come out on the other end of it and found myself another franchise I really appreciate. So the fact my timing coincided with the release of Romancing SaGa 2 was perfect, especially since I really liked the game's general premise and after playing through the experimental but kind of frustrating RS1, I feel I was able to really see this game as the triumphant "a-ha" moment it really was for the series.

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Romancing SaGa 2 begins in a bar, where a Minstrel (the mascot of the series) begins to regale the patrons with an epic poem about the Avalon Empire and the family that faced off with the Seven Heroes. Long ago in the ancient past, the world was plagued by the forces of darkness. Monsters and demons terrorized the world and nearly brought it to the edge of collapse until seven heroes rose up and stopped the encroaching darkness. They disappeared during the final struggle but swore they would return, and thus they fell into legend. In the years before the game begins, the monster populations have begun to surge and it seems a new army of darkness is rising to inflict pain and misery to the general population. Emperor Leon is investigating one of these uprisings as monsters have overtaken a local mine. He and his entourage, including his weak but scholastically inclined youngest son Gerad, are able to purge the mines of the monsters. They return home after the excursion and we meet Victor, Gerad's older brother and next in line to the throne who teases his weaker brother while the king ruminates about the trouble within his kingdom. The King is approached by a seer with an ominous fortune that disturb him. He takes Gerad with him, while leaving Victor in charge of the capital, so he can investigate another monster disturbance. When they return, they find the capital razed and Victor on the brink of death. He had failed to protect the land from Kzinssie, one of the Seven Heroes, who was leading the monster horde and had now set up shop in the town of Somon. Leon has his men find the Seer Orieve who had spoken to him earlier and the following day, he and Gerad march on Somon to avenge Victor. Instead the battle turns south and Leon is struck down by Kzinssie's Soulsteal technique. Forlorn, Gerad speaks to his father on his death bed where Leon reveals that his death had been planned and tells his son of his gambit to save both Avalon and the world. Orieve had taught Leon the forbidden technique of Inheritance, which would allow him to transfer his strength and knowledge to his heir including the Inheritance power itself, in hopes that Gerad or some future member of their house will eventually grow powerful enough to stop the monstrously powerful Seven Heroes. Receiving his father's strength, including his knowledge of how to avoid the Soulsteal that claimed his father and brother's life, Gerad returns to Somon to challenge Kzinssie and this time defeats him. Vowing to fulfill his father's will, Gerad begins a dynasty of expanding his kingdom into a mighty empire that would be able to stand against the Seven Heroes one day, up until the day the Final Ruler is born who will have the accumulated knowledge, skill, and resources of generations.

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You now begin the game proper as Gerad, now sporting his iconic Golden Armor and explore the world around you, aiding villages and other kingdoms of their troubles in exchange for their fealty to Avalon. Slowly growing the empire which can then research new magics, professions, and weapons used in the Empire's mission to defeat the legendary Seven Heroes. Completing these quests will make time pass and eventually a ruler's time frame will end, at which point the player chooses the class and gender of Gerad's heir and begin in a new era where more of the world has opened up. This cycle of moving on from heir to heir continues until you reach the time of the Final Ruler (either an Emperor or Empress which you choose and name at the game's beginning) and have the final showdown with the Seven Heroes. Throughout this time frame you will encounter said heroes and try to stop them from achieving their goals. There are other troubles going on in the world such as an succession conflict in a neighboring kingdom, a horde of pirates pillaging local towns, an island village on the verge of destruction from their local volcano, and many more. As you leap through the eras, the world will change as you witness towns grow and prosper as well as expanding your capital from a small kingdom to the center of a mighty empire that controls the whole globe. Expanding the empire allows you to gain more tribute in gold which can then be used to research new weapons and armor, or to build new structures in your capital like a university to unlock the Tactician Class, or a magic research institute to expand your spell selection. Many of the regions offer new classes that will happily join the cause and expand your fighting foray.

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RS2 is the most influential title mechanically speaking of all the SaGa titles I've played as it introduces two of the series most infamous mechanics: Life Points and Sparking (Waza) Techs. What I find interesting is that much like Persona 3's Social Link system, coming back to the source of the concept shows how intuitive it really is whereas the later installments largely kept them on as a legacy element. Characters have HP and LP, when HP is depleted to zero, a character is knocked out and loses one LP. There is only one way to restore LP in the game which involves buying an expensive potion from an NPC that unlocks later in the game. Downed allies can still be targeted in battle and will lose additional LP every time they are hit. When LP is depleted to zero, that character is permanently killed. If the Chosen Heir loses all of their LP then they will choose a successor among the party to take their place. If the whole party gets knocked out in a fight, they are all killed and the game makes you choose a new heir. Heirs are four randomly selected classes and gender, which will even include monster classes as well. LP makes so much sense in this entry as it plays up the generational aspect of the game. What I like about LP is that it balances out the fact your party's health is fully restored after battle, lending a real sense weight to failure while still being very generous in the player's favor. This gets really tough when you reach the Final Heir's era where losing all the LP for your chosen heir is a game over.

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Waza or Sparking/Glimmer in more recent translations is the mechanic concerning learning new techs. When a character attacks with their weapon or using certain moves, they may get a eureka moments that shows itself as a light-bulb above their head and unlock a new skill for themselves. Skills are dependent on the weapon the character is currently using. These skills can range from defensive parry skills, knocking opponents down to make them lose their turn, or powerful attacks that will be needed to take down the game's powerful bosses. Once a skill is learned, assuming you don't reset, it is permanent for that character, and will be placed in the Skill Books back in Avalon the following generation so it can be passed down to future characters. Even if the character permanently dies from losing all their LPs their skills will transfer to future generations. While I know a lot of people hate the idea of abilities being tied to RNG, I appreciate the fact the skills can be permanently used, but more importantly, I like how they make all battles feel more rewarding. Nothing really beats the feeling of getting into a fight with a trash mob only to have a character spark a really useful skill. Even if you've fought the fight a dozen times, that one battle now feels super rewarding.
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Course one of the many things the game doesn't tell you is how this mechanic works. While every class has the potential to spark any move in the game as long as they are using the correct weapon, certain classes have higher sparking potential than others. Obvious ones are Rangers being able to spark Bow moves more frequently, and Martial Artist sparking Melee options. Other classes can be really tricky though such as Crusaders where depending on the gender and specific character, they can either be a Club specialist or sword specialist, as well as having talent with certain magics while others are completely inept. Swords are very tricky as there are a few different Spark Classes for them, so even getting something like a sword specialist Samurai doesn't guarantee you'll unlock ever sword skill because some skills can only be acquired through a sword generalist spark type which are found with the Heavy Infantry or Desert Bandit classes. So you need to experiment a lot. Some skills also have a higher chance of sparking by using their lower tier equivalents. The power Arrow Rain skill has a higher chance of sparking if you abuse the Random Arrow attack for instance. Some skills are also tied to specific weapons, and thankfully, unlike RS1, sparking the skill with that weapon will make it permanently available to whoever is equipped with it. Many of these techs are some of the boss skills and both of the unique swords the final heirs have come with a pretty snazzy skill attached to them.

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One of the cooler aspects about quests, and something unique to SaGa in general among SE JRPGs is how a lot of the quests have an optional way to deal with them. Early in the game, you have a massive enemy fortress you have to topple in order to liberate your continent from the Seven Heroes control. The fortress is heavily fortified and one giant maze. You can simply try to take the fortress by force, though considering how early this happens in the game, you might not be strong enough to survive the grueling war of attrition its going to put you through. If you unlocked the Thief class by this point, you can call in a favor with Thieves Guild to have one of them scout the place out, which leads them to not only find a secret entrance into the place, but they leave you a direct path to the boss room as well since taking them out will end the quest. There are a lot of little touches like this throughout the game which increases both the replay value but also makes the scenarios memorable. Unlocking the Martial Artist class was interesting for example. In the game, the Temple where they are from are local protectors of the region, but a certain monster appeared in the cave who is impervious to melee attacks, so they can no longer stop the monsters from breeding and causing problems for the local villages. Disgraced, they hire you to beat this monster for them so they can finally purge the rest of the monster nest. You must beat this monster to finish the quest, but if you choose to clear out the whole cave for the monks instead of reporting back to them after you beat the Slime, they'll feel insulted and refuse to join your cause. The Pirate class has a similar drama where you'll placate them one generation through diplomacy, only for them to rebel against you in a later generation and force you to come in and subjugate them through force, though its also possible to avoid this whole scenario if you just subjugate them from the onset. I also appreciate how some quests give a more humanistic touch to your player avatar heir. Like there is a quest in the game where your emperor falls in love with a mermaid and chooses love over their noble duty. Consequently, you need to do this quest to unlock the Nerid class. The quest that involves unlocking Dark Magic involves your heir making a terrible decision that will cost you both territory and a class in exchange for the power. In restitution, the heir will abdicate their throne. These little touches give the game some interesting ideas to chew on.

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The Seven Heroes are a bit like this as well cause your actions and neglecting certain quests can lead them to becoming even more powerful. The siblings Noel and Rocbouquet will receive a power upgrade depending on which one is killed first (tip for new players, kill Noel first since Rocbouquet can be cheesed way easier, whereas Noel is one of the tougher boss fights in the game) while Subier will become more powerful depending on whether or not you saved the Baby Narwhale, or how Dantarg will grow stronger the longer you wait around to killing him, becoming a really tough opponent if you save him for last to tackle. This combination of freedom, optional ways to tackle issues, and open flow of the game makes if one of the best open world style games I've played and I'm honestly looking forward to the next time I decide to tackle the game.

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One other area I give this game props for is having some of the best villains in the series for me. SaGa is always a bit weird with villains, preferring to give more lip service to villain of the week characters who show up in one time quests over giving screen time to the overarching villains. The Seven Heroes are an interesting and tragic group of figures who strike a nice balance of being personable on some level, but still despicable at the same time. While they are not nearly as fleshed out and as engaging as most FF villains, among the SaGa series I've played, you can tell a little more effort was put into expanding their presence within the game. One of my biggest gripe in RS1's narrative is how Saruin is sort of a non-entity among the plot. He's foretold of his return in the opening, and you do battle a few of his faceless servants towards the end, but he kind of comes across more like Cloud of Darkness or Necron of just being some token great evil that pops up out of nowhere by the games end. There isn't really a build up to him. The Seven Heroes on the other hand are fought throughout the generation, and each of them is causing trouble in different regions of the world, so they have more of a presence in the narrative. While the game has many minor villains, it never lets you forget how the Seven are the greater scope villain. Likewise, it was nice that one of the last quests you undertake in the final heirs era is one that explains who the Seven Heroes were, and why they fell to darkness. Gives them a tragic edge before you go off to face one of the most nerve wracking fights in the series behind the Egg from SaGa Frontier 2.
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Now if I was going to tell you where this game falls short, it would be the series long tradition of poor communication with he player. SaGa games are challenging for sure, its not a series where you can just level your way out of a problem, but what really makes it a frustrating franchise is the fact every entry runs on some very complex rules that the game purposely fails to communicate with you the player. I've already mentioned the fact how Classes in this game all have different spark types, and while some of it falls into common sense practice, others like how trying to spark every sword skill in the game will involve playing around with four or five different classes is not so easy to figure. Probably the two biggest offenders in the game is equipment (series tradition actually) and Global Levels which is something fans figured out and the game refuses to acknowledge despite being the most important stat in the game. Equipment is self explanatory and as I've said, its a series tradition as every entry I've played down to the Game Boy entries fail to give you any detailed knowledge of what equipment actually does. In RS2's case, the defense stat your shown only details the armors defense against Slash style damage. It fails to tell you if the equipment is good against Pierce or Blunt damage, making it impossible to figure out how to best optimize your team without an equipment guide of which there are precious few good ones online. There are accessories that protect from certain elements but will not tell you, or maybe the description says it protects from ailments, but fails to tell you which ones. The biggest flaw of the remaster on current consoles was not addressing this issue. The game pretty much just upscaled the old menu system and failed to really give you details on your party's stats and the full extent of what gear can do. Again, I would point out that every entry is guilty of this and thankfully it is not quite as detrimental as it was in SF2.
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Global Levels are the other fact at play here, and while its annoying the game never gives you a direct source to tell where they are, at least its easy to make guesswork on it based on the stats of new party members when you jump a generation. Global levels are a separate hidden level you build up as you play with your active team. They grow a bit slower because I believe they are based on a party average, so even if you have one exceptional character with a high stat in one weapon or magic type, the Global Level may be a bit lower overall. So basically as your party levels up their weapons and magic, this global level takes this average and uses it to roll the stats of the next generation you'll use. Its not based on classes so that unlocking new classes you've never used before means they will still be viable for early recruitment. Which is something I really wish the Tactics Ogre remaster had taken into account. So basically, if you use a lot of sword users in a playthrough and they level up their skills to between 8-10, the next generation sword users will also start at that level. The reason why GL is so important though is how its tied to magic. While you are free to recruit anyone of the five starting magic schools from the beginning, they will not be able to learn new spells until you build a magic research facility and evne then, the spells available are based on the Global Level, not the Mages level. It is possible to raise the GL and acquire new magic within a generation, but you'll find that you'll have to grind more for that character. Fusion Magic also doesn't unlock until both spell types reach a specific level for the first spells, and then a second level for their final spells. These levels are about 15 and 25 respectively. You'll need to reach a global level of about 30 in every magic type to unlock the final tier spells. Magic is incredibly useful by the end game when you're mostly down to fighting the Seven Heroes and spells like Reviver, Gilden Shield, and Hasten Time can spell the difference between life and death.
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Overall though, I appreciate the leap that RS2 was over its predecessor. While it may be playing a party mostly of mostly blank slates as opposed to the games sandwiched between that use established characters, it keeps the focus on the plot better by having an engaging antagonist and a clearer goal that isn't simply bookend in the plot. While I consider RS1's even mechanics a scrappy mechanic overall that discourages grinding, RS2 presents it in a way that makes more logical sense and is incredibly generous in time, making it significantly easier to see most of the scenarios on a first playthrough. RS1's skill system was an interesting step up from the GB entries, but again, it had some really counter-intuitive design. Sparking works as a nice compromise that keeps battles exciting while maintaining the series tradition of using weapon specializations for party builds. The game keeps on the dual monetary systems, but doesn't punish you for having too much with the silly Gem mechanic. I appreciate the fact the game built a real Formation system where the class of your heir can unlock special party formations that conifer extra bonuses in battle and further help your strategize. The game is overall just a more polished experience over its predecessor, and from what I've played of later entries. It still feels more polished than those.
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I feel the thing I love the most about this game was how it really dragged me back to my childhood and how I would approach old RPGs with limited graphics and such. I started writing my own scenarios for each of my heirs. Which by the way, Empress Beaver the Thief was by far one of my most successful monarchs who quelled the pirates and stopped a succession war. She also built both the Magic Research Facility and the University. Only my Crusader Empress did more in her lifetime by felling three of the Seven Heroes. This really hits you in the games ending where it will do a montage of all of your successors and detail their legacies for Avalon. So it was kind of neat for me to sort of write out my own ideas of what their journeys were like and who they were. So I really appreciate the fact it garnered a sense of using my own imagination to fill in the blanks. I play a lot of retro games, but not all of them do this for me.
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While I can't promise this game is for everyone, I do feel that fans of old school RPGs owe it to themselves to check this game out if they haven't already.
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[Fynn]

I need to restart this since I loved it immensely but put it aside for external reasons

[theundeadhero]

The whole series has always been something that looked like it might be interesting to try, just not now. Maybe someday. So far someday never came, but it might. Someday.

[Wolf Kanno]

The whole series has always been something that looked like it might be interesting to try, just not now. Maybe someday. So far someday never came, but it might. Someday.

That's how I was with the series as well, but then "someday" finally came and now I can say I'm hooked. :lol:

[Wolf Kanno]

#102


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I'm going to say right now that while I'm not going to really try to re-rank my list, this entry deserves to be much higher than it is. It just had the misfortune of me playing it long after I made my list. Last year, Konami released a Castlevania Collection that contained almost every Classicvania entry barring Rondo of Blood, the arcade port of Castlevania 1, and the remake of Castlevania 1 as well. I picked it up cause finding these games is a pain in the ass and I enjoy the older entries as much as the Metroidvania style games as well. It was a nice history lesson to go through the franchise in order and I was pleasantly surprised most of the time. This game especially ended up being the highlight of the whole collection.

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Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse is a prequel to the first two Castlevania games, detailing the story of Simon's famous ancestor he was trying to live up to, Trevor Belmont (Ralph in the Japanese version), the first Belmont to ever defeat Dracula. Long ago in Wallachia, the Belmont's rose to fame for their expertise in slaying all the things that go bump in the night. Yet like a lot of times in history when a particular family grows a little too influential and popular with the people, it rubs some people the wrong way, and soon they started spreading rumors that the Belmont's were actually in league with the dark forces they hunt. The people turned on them and had them ex-communicated and exiled from their lands. Sometime later, Dracula came upon the land and began spreading terror. Some forces did try to stop him but were defeated or worse. With no other options, the local governments sent for Trevor Belmont, the last living member of the disgraced Belmont clan, to come back to Wallachia and help rid them of Dracula once and for all. Trevor begins a journey across the lands ruled by Dracula's forces to stop the Count, but over the course of his journey, he picks up some help in the form of a Pirate named Grant DeNasty, a Witch turned Monster Hunter named Sypha, and Dracula's own son Alucard.

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Dracula's Curse is an interesting game and bears a lot of similarities to another entry on this list: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Both games are the third entry in their series, both are prequels, both act as a form of "returning to basics" by largely heralding to a design reminiscent of their more successful first installment, and both also cleverly still incorporate a lot of elements from their more RPG and panned second installments. Well to honest, Dracula's Curse wasn't the actual first return to norm for the series. That would be Castlevania Adventure, but considering no one likes to count handheld entries, this one is close enough. The game returns to a level system, as opposed to the awkward open world format from Simon's Quest. Yet the devs really didn't want to lose that idea of exploration so they introduced branching level design. At certain point in the game, you are asked to take a high or low road, which will take you to a different dungeons and will radically change your overall journey depending on which way you go. This design idea would be incorporated into Rondo of Blood years later, which is the first proper sequel to Dracula's Curse if you don't count Bloodlines. With nine stages total for one journey, two possible routes, and two secret stages to recruit Sylpha and Alucard, Dracula's Curse has about twenty stages total, Castlevania 3 is significantly larger than its predecessor. The alternate stages and the framing device of the plot being Trevor's journey and infiltration into Dracula's Castle allows the game to retain the fun player-centric control of the journey that Simon's Quest tried to invoke, but also allow for the tighter designed stages that made the original game such a classic. Maybe you went through the graveyard and picked up Sypha, which allowed you to take the Ghost Ship across the bay and land midway on Dracula's bridge. Perhaps you took the underground cave system and eventually found Alucard who leads you through a hidden underground entrance into the castle? The game has so many options you almost have to play it multiple times to actually see and play everything. Hell you even get a unique ending depending on who your ally for the game is.

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This nicely segues into the game biggest change from the rest of the series. You can actually recruit allies who all have different strengths and weaknesses. You're only allowed to have one extra party member at a time so recruiting new characters usually makes the previous member leave. Sypha and Alucard are also route exclusive, which makes the TV series the more amusing when you think that those two never met in the game. Trevor plays like a carbon copy of Simon Belmont, but he's also the most well rounded of the four characters and gets the most options with sub-weapons. Grant is the first character you'll likely recruit and comes with the most mobility of the party. He's faster than Trevor, can jump twice as high as anyone else. He can climb walls and ceilings as well. His issue is that his attack range is incredibly short since he uses a knife (he throws them in the Japanese version) and he takes more damage than Trevor does. He does get to use the awesome Axe weapon though. He's great for traversing levels and there are tons of extra lives and Shot Upgrades only he can access. Hell entire stages have alternate routes that only he can get through painlessly. He might not be much of a help in boss fights but he makes clearing the masochistic level design easier. Sypha is a bit of an opposite from other characters. She gains original sub-weapons that serve as her magic. She has a Fire ball spell that works like a short range flamethrower. Its fast, but not as powerful as I would like but is very effective in certain situations like the Mummy Boss. Her second spell is an ice spell that will actually freeze enemies in place and let her use them as platforms, even cooler is that the spell will actually freeze running water in some stages, super neat. Her final, and most rare spell is a lightning spell where she fires off three homing balls of lighting that are one of the strongest attacks in the game. Great for dealing with annoying enemies that like to swoop in from awkward directions and for putting the hurt on bosses. In fact Sypha makes short work of most of the bosses in the game, even Death goes from being an annoying pain in the ass into a blip. Dracula himself is a cakewalk if you go in with the Bolt Spell. To balance this, Sypha takes more damage than most characters from attacks and her movement range is pretty poor. She is also the most dependent on sub-weapons and her normal attack is a short range staff that is weak but can actually hit things at an angle. Finally we have Alucard, most players may be imagining the badass from SotN, but in his debut entry, he's pretty terrible. His main attack is a single fireball he trows that has pitiful range and when powered up, it fires three from different angles. Again, great for awkward enemies but his attack is fairly weak unless all three fireballs connect which places him in the danger zone. His only sub-weapon he can use is the Stopwatch, which is a notoriously bad item in the early installments. He's also slightly taller than the rest of the cast making it much easier for enemies to land hits on him. Thankfully he has the next highest defense with Trevor. His real strength is his unique power to turn into a bat which allows him to fly through the stage as long as you have the hearts. Considering how obnoxious levels get, this is actually a pretty good bonus, but like Grant, he's not terribly useful in a fight. Regardless of their strengths or lack of, playing through the game with multiple characters is pretty cool and adds some extra layers to the level design.

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The level design of the game is pretty strong and incredibly masochistic. I am not sure how well I would have done playing through this game on the original NES as the collection has a save state like feature I used extensively just to save time. Even then, I really enjoyed checking out new levels even if a few had me crying when I didn't have Grant or Alucard to cheese my way through them like the bridge leading to the Doppleganger fight. The one area I will say C3 fails is with stairs. Stairs are your enemy in this game and will likely account for 73% of all your deaths. Just like how falling accounts for the same number of deaths in Dark Souls. Seriously, stairs kill in this game and a lot of the most obnoxious choke points in levels usually revolve around them. Also don't jump onto them cause like the first game, you can't register landing on a stair unless you walk down it. Say hi to the bottomeless pit for me. With that said, C3 gives me a vibe I've only felt from games like Dark Souls as I tried to conquer their sadistic levels and annoying enemies. The boss fights are also a bit more memorable in this entry with the spirit fight that summons previous bosses, cool rematch with Frankenstein's Monster, a serious upgraded fight against Medusa, the Doppleganger fight, and the first of the water serpent fights.

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The game also has a pretty stellar soundtrack and gives us a track on par with Bloody Tears in the form of Beginning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78706bv98S8), but honestly the whole score is pretty good and holds up to the series long standing track record of good music. The graphics go back to a style similar to the first game with more orange and blues, but they added some cool effects and made places like the Clock Tower have some really good wow factor to them as well.

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I wasn't really sure what to expect going into this game, but I didn't expect I was going to love it as much as I did. You can even go back to the thread I talked about playing it (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/172761-Castlevania-Collection). I went through the game three times and kept playing it on the side while I was still playing the others. I really don't replay games that quickly after finishing it. I mean I thoroughly enjoyed FF Type-0 but I just couldn't bring myself to play through it second time so close after finishing it. Yet here I am replaying some old NES relic like I was addicted to it. That's why I knew it had to make it onto this list. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised. Fact is, this may be the most influential and important entry in the series. I know some of you may pipe in about Symphony of the Night, but even SotN is inspired by this game since it serves simultaneously as sequel to both Rondo of Blood and this game. I feel that was part of the issue with the entries I played afterwards, Super Castlevania IV has its moments, but its obvious the game was just them re-imagining the first Castlevania and showing off all the tech for the Super Nintendo. Bloodlines was weird, but in a good way and at least got the high difficulty curve back, but neither game feel like a true successor to this entry, not until you get to Rondo of Blood which brought back multi-path stages and interchangeable party members. I was also not surprised this entry was chosen for the Castlevania TV series on Netflix, in addition to actually just having a cast, it has one of the better backstories of the original entries until you hit SotN. It has been very interesting to see this games profile rise in the last few years among fans. If you haven't had the chance to, I recommend checking out this gem of an entry.
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[Wolf Kanno]

#103

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To continue the trend of remembering back when Konami was a beloved game developer and not the butt of every pachinko machine joke, let's go back to 1999, when Konami decided they wanted in on all of that survival horror money Capcom was making with Resident Evil. I was never a fan of RE, I don't find zombies interesting and especially in today's market, I feel they are a bit overused. The original RE1 was goofy fun, but hardly a game I felt I needed in my gaming collection, or one I wanted to bother playing through its sequels. Silent Hill looked more pedestrian by comparison to the gory head shots and B-Movie antics of RE, but I kind of liked the slower pace and heavier focus on narrative and puzzles. It took me years to get around to playing the first game, and I was honestly surprised. I really felt starting with the later entries would have made this game feel lackluster in comparison, but instead I simply could see how well it was actually designed.

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The original Silent Hill is the story of Harry Mason, a widower whose only family is his adopted daughter Cheryl. One night, while driving through the back woods in good old Lovecraft country New England with his daughter. He sees a teenage girl on the road and swerves to avoid her, only to crash the car and be knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, he finds his daughter Cheryl is missing and that he is in the mysterious town of Silent Hill, a former vacation spot with a darker history than most places. The town is deserted and filled with a mysterious fog, and strange creatures out for his blood within it. He desperately searches the town for his missing daughter who continues to leave clues for him to follow. Clues to a girl named Alessa and a strange cult that rules the town from the shadows waiting for the day their dark god will be reborn anew. The town is mostly abandoned except for a police woman named Cybil who followed Harry into the town after discovering his wrecked car. A strange religious woman who keeps pushing Harry to find the demon who is turning the town into a nightmare. Dr. Kaufman, the head of the town hospital who is worried about the sorry state of the town. Finally there is Lisa, a nurse trapped in the nightmare world version of the hospital. Harry must explore the haunted town and uncover its mysteries in order to save his daughter and finally wake from the nightmare once and for all.

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Silent Hill was born in the intervening time between Resident Evil's release in 96 and the SH's eventual release in 99. Konami saw the huge success of Capcom's juggernaut franchise and wanted in on that action, so they built a team to try and make it happen. Unfortunately, all of their A-teams were busy working on other projects so Team Silent ended up being filled with all the employees who simply kept failing within the company or were kicked out of other teams for poor performance. The Konami heads wanted them to make a Resident Evil clone, which is why the game is very close to design to Capcom's franchise, but as time went on, the exec became more and more convinced the title wasn't going to live up to RE and soon stopped controlling the project, finally letting the team do whatever they wanted since Konami assumed the game would flop regardless. This move of giving the team more creative control allowed them to steer the title into a different direction from a RE clone and instead they decided to make an Western Style horror game based off of works like Stephen King, Twin Peaks, and David Lynch films. This Japanese take on foreign style of horror ended up creating a really unique experience, and I feel that's a large part of why the Team Silent entries are often cited as the most successful entries because the Japanese sensibilities adds a lot of restraint to Western Horrors more over the top nature.

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While Silent Hill 2 gets most of the series glory, I feel SH1 is still the most well known. I'm sure with the exception of a few details, most people could probably recount the plot summary I gave. Harry's story is the most well known of the all the protagonist simply because the game has been around forever and simply because the game has had the most lip service of any entry in the franchise. Even the lukewarm film is nothing but an adaption of this game's plot. For me, I love the fact that Silent Hill took a lot of the elements I hated from Resident Evil and worked them in a way that actually made sense. Combat is a chore in this game thanks to cumbersome tank controls and slow ass animations, but unlike RE1, it makes sense here cause Harry isn't some special forces agent, he's a 9 to 5 stiff who has never held a gun in his life. The puzzles in RE1 always felt incredibly obtuse and have long been a bit o a joke among RE fans for their impracticality. In SH1 though, they exist as games by a malevolent force screwing with you and serve to raise the tension of the narrative. It doesn't change the fact that SH1 can be a pain in the ass to play, but here it feels a bit more immersive in its cumbersome nature whereas in RE1, I always felt these aspects destroyed immersion when Chris Redfield, who is built like a brick house, is struggling to fight off a single zombie. Whereas Harry, who has only ever seen a gym when he passes it every morning to get his coffee reacts pretty well to some average person using a heavy metal pipe to swipe away monstrous ash children who keep swarming him. I still hate the nature of the control scheme cause I've always hated tank controls, but here it works.

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Yet, I feel what works the best for me is Silent Hill's nature as a more of a psychological horror piece with some Lovecraftian undertones. Though I prefer how SH2 showcases the fact that Silent Hill was a smurfed up place long before the events of Silent Hill, I like the idea of an evil location that just attracts dark forces to it. Silent Hill's horror works better for me because it's not so much "jump scare" focus, rather its designed to make you feel uncomfortable and oppressed. The Dark World scenarios are not any more dangerous than the fog world places, but they do feel more claustrophobic and unsettling. To me, that's the best horror can do for me. I have a surprisingly high tolerance for horror I've learned, so for me, the best kind of horror is the type I still dwell on long after the credits roll or the book is finished. That's what Silent Hill does better than other horror games I've played. It stays with me and I think is because the game's have always tried to focus on more fundamental human fears and needs. Harry's journey as a parent trying to find his lost daughter is unsettling for anyone who has had to look after a child. The game feeds on the fear of being lost, and some of the game's camera work is designed to illicit the feeling of being watched. The opening section of the game where Harry is exploring the back alleys' has this awesome camera work that gives the impression someone is watching him from above on the rooftops, and it helps just add to the creepy factor of the game.

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I also feel the fugly low polygon graphics of the PS1 only help to add to the eeriness of game. It's interesting how the PS2 entries and Origins play around with filters to give the setting a more aged film grade look as though they were trying to recapture that dirty look from the PS1 era. It works too cause watching videos of the more recent entries, the cleaner graphics detract from the experience despite technically looking better. Course nothing gets the atmosphere spot on like Akira Yamaoka's creepy industrial inspired soundtrack. It leans much heavier on the eerie factor than later entries that incorporate a bit more rock and jazz used for character moments, but the soundtrack is completely unsettling. To give an example, the final boss theme uses the sound of a dentist drill to create the effect of Harry's radio going completely crazy while fighting a dark god. Hell SH honestly has some good audio design in general as Yamaoka effectively uses both his unsettling score with bouts of silence to really unnerve the player. You never known which is worse, wandering the halls of the Nightmare World listening to score that can best be described as listening to an untuned piano being violated by steel pipes, only to walk into a room that takes the form of a classroom with no one in there but a single desk in the center of the room and in complete silence outside of Harry's footsteps and grunts. I feel where Silent Hill has always excelled is in its superb execution of atmosphere.

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The other element I really did enjoy about SH1 and this became more apparent as I got further along in SH3, was how much I enjoyed exploring the town. In fact, it's rather surprising how big the town was in the original compared to later installments. It has a lot of literal broken bridges to limit where you can go, but it was really interesting to explore the town, especially since doing so was the only way to get the Good+ ending and to finally figure out what was going on with Kaufman. I feel that's what is so amazing about this game is how it turns its weaknesses into strengths, the most famous of course being the fog element the series is known for was the design team trying to compensate for the PS1's terrible draw distance, but even how effective the cast is used to to cover the game's lonely and claustrophobic gameplay. I really liked the game's side characters. While most of them wear their motives on their sleeves, it was still interesting to discover what Kaufman's role was in the story, to run into Cybil and ultimately save her from the town's influence, to Lisa, dear god Lisa is one of the most tragic figures in this game behind Alessa herself. Despite the small cast, you do find yourself a bit endeared to them on some level, likely because the lonely atmosphere of the game always makes it a bit welcoming to encounter another person and not some weird flesh creature trying to tear you a new asshole. It made the story beats impactful and made their final conclusions all the more cathartic.

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Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the original Silent Hill. While it won't surpass its superior sequel for me, it ended up being a pretty fun game that hit all the beats I wanted. While it may be the clunkiest entry just due to technology limitations and the teams own inexperience, I still feel the core of the game is fairly strong and still worth playing through.
fwan7k3nOzg

[Wolf Kanno]

#104
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It took me way too long to get around to this entry. Made only weird because I've already played a good chunk of the franchise by this point, but until a few years ago, I had never made a serious attempt to check out this classic and I feel a bit bummed about that. It has been nice to see the remake revive both interest in this entry as well as the franchise as a whole. For those wondering though, this assessment will be based off the original 16-bit version. I haven't had a chance to pick up the remake and have only played a bit of the demo. I say this now, because some of my comments really only apply to the original.
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Long, long ago, the world was plunged in darkness, until the Mana Goddess used the Mana Sword to fell eight God-Beasts and sealed them away in megalithic Mana Stones. She then used her power to create the world and transformed into the magnificent Mana Tree and fell asleep. The Mana Sword still by her side in the Holy Land. Time passed and the story fell into legend. Races emerged from the created world and built nations in time using the power of Mana. Though the God-Beasts slept, darkness still roamed the land in one form or another. When the story begins, Mana is slowly disappearing as the Mana Tree begins to fade. Three kingdoms begin to wage war on their neighbors, the Magic Kingdom of Altena attacks the Grassland Kingdom of Forcena, the Desert nation of Navarre attacks the Wind Kingdom of Rolante, and the Beast Tribe of Ferolia attacking the holy land of Wendel. Six souls from each of these lands will find themselves caught up in the wars and uncover the dark forces plotting to use the Mana Stones to break the seal on the Holy Land where the Mana Tree stands and take her power for themselves. Concerned, the Mana Goddess sends out some Faries to find the Chosen One, who will save Mana. Unfortunately, the dwindling power of Mana makes the journey difficult and only one survives long enough to find anyone, and they are not their first pick...
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Angela is the magically talent-less Princess of Altena, whose lonely childhood has made her grow into a childish and vain woman who shirks her magic studies. When her mother the Queen and her advisor Koren tell her they plan to sacrifice her life in order to channel the power of the Mana Stones to increase their Queendom's waning power, she is forced to flee the queendom and travels to Wendel to gain advice about the strange behavior of her mother and learn to channel her emerging magical talent.




Duran is the son of the former Golden Knight Loki, who perished in a triumphant duel against the Dragon Lord fifteen years ago while defending his king. Now fully grown, Duran is Forcena's most talented swordsman. One night, while keeping watch, the castle is attacked by Koren, who single handily defeats the king's guard with his magic including Duran. Humiliated and thirsting for revenge, Duran learns from a local fortune teller that he may find a power that will allow him to surpass Koren in Wendel and thus he leaves in the dead of night to get his revenge for his wounded pride.


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Hawkeye is an orphan in the city of Navarre who was adopted by the Thieves Guild, their leader Flamekahn has been joined by a mysterious woman named Isabelle and disband the guild to transform Navarre into their own kingdom and militarize the Thieves Guild members to wage war on Rolante. Disturbed by the new attitude, Hawkeye and his friends Eagle and Jessica follow Isabelle to discover what she's really after, Instead they see a bit too much and Eagle is killed, Hawkeye is blamed for his death, and Jessica is cursed so she will die if Hawkeye tells a soul what he saw. He escapes with the help of his Neko friends and travels to Wendel in hopes of finding a means to break the curse on Jessica.




Rietsz is the Princess of the Kingdom of Rolante, the Castle that Never Fell. She leads the amazonian guards and is well respected by all. Her greatest treasure being her little brother Elliot whose birth cost the life of their dear mother. One day, Elliot fails to show up for practice, instead he meets two desert magicians named Bill and Ben ho perform tricks and promise the young boy they can revive his mother if he takes them to the chamber that generates the wind storm that protects the castle. Elliot believes them and takes them there, and they deactivate the spell allowing their ninja forces to attack the castle after dispersing a sleeping agent to neutralize the forces. Rietsz finally finds her brother and tries to protect him, but he is kidnapped by the two scheming charlatans and finds herself in a life or death battle. With her father dead, her kingdom in ruins, and her brother kidnapped, Rietsz choose to leave the lands after restoring the wind and head to Wendel to seek advice.


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Kevin is a half-beastman and son of the Beast King of Ferolia. An outcast to both his beastmen and humans whom he shares blood with, Kevin grows up in a lonely world until he befriends and wolf pup he names Karl. His father Glauser is approached by a mysterious clown known as the Deathjester, who offers the Beast King a chance to avenge his people whom were persecuted in the past by humans. Gauser is initially not interested, but uses Deathjester's power for a certain end. On a full moon knight, Kevin is attacked by Karl who is consumed with dark power and turns vicious. Kevin tries his best not to hurt his friend but his beastmen blood activates and Kevin transforms into a werewolf and slaughters Karl. Grief stricken, Kevin buries Karl and returns home where he overhears a conversation between his father and Deathjester, revealing that Deathjester had used his power to make Karl evil in order to force Kevin to awaken his beastman heritage. Enraged, he attacks his father and is soundly defeated by him. Hurt and afraid to return home, he encounters Deathjester again who tells him the Priest of Light in Wendel may have the power to revive Karl. So Kevin leaves to find a way to save his only friend.




Charlotte is the granddaughter of the Priest of Light. Though she is unaware of the tragic circumstances of her parents, she still dreams of them. When she overhears her grandfather and her friend Heath discussing the ominous omens that have struck Wendel and Astoria, the Priest orders Heath to investigate. Worried he may fall into danger, Charlotte tries to go after him but her grandfather bars her from doing so and locks her within the temple for her protection. With the help of one of the servants, she is able to escape the temple but instead of landing in Astoria she lands outside the magic barrier her grandfather erected to keep Wendel safe. She eventually tracks down Heath in the Rabite forest where he is attacked by Beastmen hoping to invade Wendel. Though the beastmen get repelled, Deathjester appears and strikes down Heath. Taking a peculiar interest in him, Deathjester takes Heath with him and leaves Charlotte alone now desperately trying to find him.


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Trials of Mana, better known as Seiken Densetsu 3, is a pretty interesting title overall. In a lot of ways, it was the Mana team getting a chance to build a game to utilize a lot of the features that got stripped out of Secret of Mana such as branching story paths and multiple endings. The player gets to choose their three member party at the outset of the game. Each character has their own intro sequence and ending , though teaming up characters with story connections fills in a lot of holes in their plots as you'll get the other side of the story in many cases. The final boss and main villain will also change depending on who your lead character is. If you choose Angela or Duran, then they have to face off with the mysterious Darkshine Knight and Koren who are trying to revive the power of the Dragon Lord who gave him their magical powers in exchange for a piece of their souls. If you choose Hakweye or Rietsz you face Isabelle and Jagon who are trying to use the Mana Stones to revive the Dark Prince, Ruler of Mavolia. If you choose either Kevin and Charlotte you face off with Deathjester, a servant of the Dark Priest who was banished from Wendel. What is actually kind of neat about the game's narrative for me is that even if you don't choose certain characters, all three plot lines are still valid. The three party members you didn't choose will still show up in places in the early game, and even appear during certain climatic moments when your party journeys into places dealing with their plots. So Duran will still encounter Isabelle, Rietsz will still have to fight Luger the Beastman captain, and Charlotte is still going to have to deal with the Altena's Magic Golems. The main narrative puts the chosen main character to track down the eight Mana Spirits in hopes of reaching the Holy Land and using the Mana Sword to restore the seals on the Mana Stones. Following basic RPG formula, the party ultimately fail, their token villain ends up wiping out the other villain factiosn to be main villain, and the Mana Stones shatter alowing the Eight God-Beasts to be revived. The second half of the game is the battle to take down the beasts in almost any order they like.
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The big thing to take away here from it's predecessors is player freedom and replayability. The first half of the game is fairly linear, but the second half is incredibly open ended until the final dungeons open up. The player has six different scenarios to play through and multiple party builds. I haven't even mentioned the Class system which further expands player options and party builds. This all especially works when you realize how short this game is. My playthrough hit around 25 hours and that involved a bit more grinding than I meant to do. So even just dropping the game clock down to an average of twenty hours, that still means playing through all six characters scenarios still gives this game about a 120 hours of overall game time which is about three times as much as Secret of Mana. The game also improves on a lot of battle mechanics from SoM while trading off other features. Trials of Mana may play like SoM but the feel of the games are very different from each other.
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Trials of Mana biggest improvements over SoM is a few QoL changes such as an expanded and better developed inventory system, the removal of charged attacks and replacement with limit break style Tech Attacks, and overall better challenge brought on by the class system. While SoM is hardly an easy game, it's not as difficult as classic Trials of Mana where player choice can find you with a party build that lacks things like healing or debuff magic. So you can actually make this game as hard or as easy as you like if you know how to build your team right. What the game drops from SoM are things like the Power Meter which gave the original a more methodical approach to combat as you would have to sometimes wait for your character to reach full strength before you swing their weapon again. Likewise weapon variety is gone as well. the six characters all use unique equipment and the environments are no longer interactive so you lose out of going all Indiana Jones swinging with a whip or using as Ax to break down heavy barriers. It's a little sad to see these features go, but I feel the trade-off works. Another change is magic, it's not nearly as powerful as it was in the SoM without the right build for it and you can no longer chain cast spells and stun lock bosses for a good chunk of their health like you use to. Goes a long way into showing why boss battles are more brutal in this entry. Enemies also now have counters for certain magic spells and techs being used on them, forcing ou to adopt different strategies instead of trying to vainly heal through it. Also new to the game is the option to choose your party stats at level up.It was nice to have control over your character's development and it made stat gains feel more impactful. Helping this situation is how abilities and skills are attached to stats, so even if you were to upgrade Kevin or Duran to a class that can use magic, if you've been neglecting their INT and PIE stats, you'll likely not get access to their spells right away.

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The Class system is actually a pretty neat feature. Once the party reaches Lv. 18, which is about the time they'll reach the midpoint of the game, they can go to any of the Mana Stones and have their character choose a Light or Dark class to transform into. These classes offer better stats for your characters, access to new equipment, and new spells and skills to expand their playstyles. Duran is a pretty straightforward melee grunt in the beginning but going Light class will transform him into a Knight and give him access to Shields and healing magic. Going Dark class turns him into a Gladiator who uses two-handed swords and has access to elemental weapon enchantments. Once the characters reach Lv.38 they can travel to the Mana Holy land and use an item dropped by late game monsters to transform into a different class though the classes available depend on your previous choices. So Knight Duran can go Light/Light and become a Lord or Light/Dark and become a Paladin. Whereas Gladiator Duran can go Dark/Dark and become a Duelist, while Dark/Light will become a Swordmaster. These unlock additional skills, spells, and Techs as well, so careful party planning is advised. Overall, each character has six classes to choose from marking 36 classes in total which further expands the game's high replayability options.

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One area that Mana titles have always succeeded for me is in their gorgeous graphics and excellent music. Moving to a 36 Mbit cartridge allowed the devs to do some real cool touches on the game's art direction and graphics. It looks less flat than Secret of Mana and gas more texture and shading added to them. Not that SoM looks bad, but Trials obtained more of the storybook style that Koichi Isshii wanted. The God Beasts get special mention as the Mana team crafted some pretty snazzy looking monster designs and pulled off a few more tricks to add a cinematic flair to the game like Muspell's animated arms, or Dangaard's battle on top of Flammie in the sky with perspective changes and everything. The game is still visually impressive even today and even makes some later entries look poor in comparison. Course with the visuals we have to talk about the musical score. Trials of Mana was the second, and last OST Hiroki Kikuta composed for the Mana series. The other was Secret of Mana, and I feel it shows how well his scores were received that many of the composers who followed him have still tried to emulate his style. Whereas Kikuta was a bit of a control freak with Secret's score, he allowed to have a sound engineer help him with Trials which gave him the time to compose three times more tracks than even Mana. Trials's OST is pretty damn solid. I still think SoM has better tracks overall like Fear of the Heavens, but it's counterpart in Trials, Where Angels Fear to Tread is a worthy successor. The score is really good and I feel my preference for the other is more nostalgia than anything but I feel Kikuta still nailed it overall with this score and I'm disappointed he left Square after this title because I would have been happy to have him as the series composer or just working on more Squenix OSTs in general.

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If I have any real problems with Trials of Mana it comes down to a few minor gripes. The main menu system for instance is visually interesting, but completely non-user friendly involving too many obtuse design options. I'm grateful the remake opted for a more traditional one. The game is also quite buggy. Maybe not as buggy as FFVI or Romancing SaGa 1, but it's pretty bad. Switching characters in battle tends to reset characters battle A.I. making them just kind of stand around and take hits. Kevin's werewolf form will also do the same thing once he finishes transforming if he's either not controlled by the player or close enough to an enemy to register them. The better graphics takes a toll on loading, so the original game sort of has to deal with the magic queue issue from FFXII where a characters magic or techs can be held up having too much going on in battle. It's not apparent in the beginning when you're limited, but by endgame it becomes an issue you'll either exploit or get decimated by. Item drops become a bigger pain in the ass by endgame as well when you're hunting for class change seeds and Final Weapon/Armor seeds. Seeds can be taken to planters found in inns to grow items. Most of it is just consumable nonsense, but the final classes and gear are locked behind them. Thankfully class changing seeds are not an issue unless you're trying to gauge the system and unlock them as early as possible at which point your options a re a bit limited. Most of the enemies in the final two dungeons only drop these two types of seeds so getting them isn't actually as much of a pain at first. The real issue is the final equipment because each character will have at least four pieces of gear they can get from these seeds and the algorithm gets really annoying when you've unlocked all but one of them. So there is some heavy farming that goes on towards the end. None of this is helped by the extra step of having to leave the dungeon and visit an inn to find out what you have. What truly makes this annoying is that there is a weird algorithm for what you get that is designed to kind of screw players who try to save scum their way around the issue, even with save states. It's still a pain, but at least drop rates are better than SoM. These are nagging issues, but not enough to tank this pretty awesome game. One other issue is that not all of the stats work the way they are suppose to. Stats like Luck and Dexterity don't work the way they do, but it's not as big of a deal as it seems since most spells and skills are attached to stats so while dexterity is useless to most of the cast, Hawkeye still needs them for some of his class skills.

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Overall, I feel Trials of Mana is a pretty solid game and shows more of the pedigree of Square's staff in the 90s. I was also happy to fill in a major gap in my RPG list. My only regret is that it took me so long to get around to it because I could see this game being ranked much higher as a favorite if I had grown up with it. Hopefully the remake will help to spurn on the franchise more cause I've really been digging SE finally revisiting and trying to revive their old IPs I grew up with.
yYbKMy4KAD4

[Karifean]

The remake has kinda made me more interested in playing the original myself. It does feel pretty amazing how much replay value this little 20 hour gem of an ARPG has though.

I hope you're ready for localization whiplash when playing the remake =P

[Wolf Kanno]

The remake has kinda made me more interested in playing the original myself. It does feel pretty amazing how much replay value this little 20 hour gem of an ARPG has though.

I hope you're ready for localization whiplash when playing the remake =P

I played through the demo, so I'm well aware a lot of things have changed. Hell, I knew they were going to be called Benevodons before the game was officially ported/remade simply because that's how they are referenced in Children of Mana and Heroes of Mana. I just think God-Beasts sound cooler, and a little perplexed they didn't just stick with Mana Beast because the Japanese term they use for the eight of them is the same one as the final boss in SoM.

If I can ever get a disposable income again after this pandemic, I'm looking forward to playing through the Remake, because the demo really impressed me.

[Wolf Kanno]

#105

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Yes, I'm going to cheat again and list two games together, but part of my issue here is that I can't quite decide which one I actually like better. Since neither title is exceptionally long, and the overall gameplay structures are similar, I felt I could get away with doing a double feature here instead of writing two smaller entries. You know it actually surprises me when you think about how many of the SaGa entries actually made it to the West. At this point in time, only the Game Boy remakes and two mobile titles from the early 2010s have failed to make it over here. Made even more surprising when you realize the Legend titles did fairly well here back in the day. At least good enough that Square managed to release all three entries here.

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Makai Toushi SaGa (roughly translated as Warrior in the Tower of the Demon World ~ Sa·Ga) takes place in a world with a mysterious tower at the center of it, and legends and myths pertaining to great treasure and wonders that await at the top for anyone who manages to reach it. Many have tried, but all have failed. The player party chooses to climb the tower where they discover it actually serves as a something of a Norse Yggdrasil in that the higher floors contain entire worlds with various problems ranging from an oceanic world where two rival dragons are in conflict, to a sky world ruled by a wicked monarch, and even a post apocalypse Tokyo that is being oppressed by Suzaku. As the heroes travel to these worlds and smaller pocket ones with some really disturbing implications, they uncover that these evils of the various worlds are the works of a demon king named Ashura who resides near the top of the tower, but is he the true mastermind after all?

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Let's start with a little history lesson. After Final Fantasy II was a success, Square started to look at ways to expand their influence on the gaming market. While most of the core FF team were tasked with working on Final Fantasy III, the Square execs thought it would be nice to try and dabble in the new handheld market Nintendo was pushing with their recent Game Boy system. Nintendo had actually asked developers to make games for the system after the smash success of Tetris. Not wanting to make a puzzle game, the lead designers of Akioshi Kawazu (Final Fantasy II battle system) and Koichi Ishii (Mana series) opted to make an RPG instead. What is interesting to note is that the two developed the game with travel in mind. The first entry can be beaten under ten hours and was designed that way on purpose so an average player could beat it on a plane trip from Japan to Hawaii which is roughly that time. The encounter rate was also raised in this game so that players on commute would be able to have at least a few battles during their travels.

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Kawazu became very invested in the game, being deeply involved with the main scenario and gameplay mechanics. Kawazu largely poured his own interests into the game that would spawn his franchise. He likes deep character customization that doesn't follow typical tabletop D&D conventions that most other RPGs use, and he prefers more challenging gameplay with mechanics that are not always telegraphed to the player. Hell, half the fun of his titles is just trying to figure out the hidden rules to his games. To compensate for the game's short nature, he purposely made the game a fair bit tougher than Final Fantasy. He also implemented a scaled down version of FFII's battle system but added other features for different classes to give the game better variety. Nobuo Uematsu was tasked with music, and initially struggled with the hardware, he eventually found his stride and many of his musical pieces can still be heard in later series arrangements. The game proved to be a real success and soon the team was tasked to build a sequel. Square also optioned to have the game brought over to the West in order to capitalize on the success of the first Final Fantasy in the western market. The game was re-titled The Final Fantasy Legend and also proved to be a success there as well.

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Like the original Final Fantasy, the player is tasked with building a four member team based on three classes of either a Human, Esper (Mutant), or a choice of four different Monsters. You may also choose the gender of the humans and espers but it doesn't actually affect anything but their sprite. All three races have their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as unique ways to build them. Humans can carry and use most armor and weapons. They raise their stats by purchasing and using steroi...er magic "stat potions" to permanently raise their HP, Strength or Agility. Their weakness is their inability to use magic and being very expensive, making them weak in the early game but ultimately being one of the strongest classes by the end. Espers are the only class that can use both magic and use equipment, but their magic uses equipment slots so they are far more limited than humans in this capacity. They grow using a simplified version of FFII's battle mechanics where stats are raised based on what they use in battle. Unfortunately, their spell selection also works this way with them learning a random spell and sometimes pulling a MegaTen where they try to change useful spells to useless ones. As you can imagine, Espers can both be really powerful, and really weak depending on how their growth goes. Monsters are probably the most unique element of the game. They transform into stronger monsters based on eating the meat of fallen monsters. It does have a complex algorithm to it, but surprisingly, monsters tend to be early game breakers as it doesn't take much to game the system get something significantly powerful. In fact it's possible to get a mid-tier monster that can carry your party for half the game in the starting world if you know what you're doing.

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The other infamous aspect of the game is that SaGa introduces breakable weapons, which are the bane of less confident players, and not a really big deal for others. Generally speaking, especially if you're playing the North American version since they increased the number of uses, you're likely to get access to something more powerful before you run out of a weapon use. The only exceptions come from late game gear that is incredibly powerful but has limited uses to compensate and if you're the type to farm a lot, especially if you were silly enough to make a full human team that needs stat potions. Oddly enough, the game mechanics sort of detract you from seriously trying to power-level because outside of Espers and money, there isn't much point. If you are using a guide for monsters, then you're not really going to farm much for monster meat because it will hit a plateau at a certain point and you won't need to bother with monster meat until nearly the end of the game to gain access to the highest tier monsters. Likewise, Espers gain stats more often from battling stronger opponents, so sticking to one area too long isn't going to do anything but dwindle your resources. Money is probably the only reason to bother fighting all the time, but even then, I'd argue that it's only really important in the early game when you need to power humans up so they're not dead weight, and close to the endgame when you need to actually bother twinking them to godhood, and even then money won't be much of an issue by that point. Overall, it's an element of the game I see often criticized but I think too much of it really stems from players resorting to the usual "this is too useful to use! I must be conservative" mentality. That might make sense when you start getting really good stuff, but then becomes a moot point when almost every treasure chest is just handing you awesome equipment and no you have to start dropping gear to make room for it in your inventory. A lot of gear actually becomes obsolete fairly quickly, so just use everything with no regards. It makes the game more fun and that's honestly how it's meant to be played.

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Traveling the tower itself is pretty interesting with the game having four major worlds and lots of mini-zones to screw with you. The worlds are based on the four classic elements and guarded by one of the Four Heavenly Beasts. Even more amusing is how the worlds kind of have their own gimmicks like the starting world of Earth involving a quest to collect the armor of a great warrior to summon Byakko who guards the entrance to the world. Seriyu's world has you riding floating islands and eventually diving underwater to storm his palace. There is even a bit of a puzzle to figure out where his brother is. Byakko's world is a bit more story driven with your party joining a resistance to overthrow the tyrant and dealing with a tale of two sisters. Suzaku's world feels like a MegaTen setting with your party riding a motorcycle in a destroyed city while trying to collect the computer gear needed to disable Suzaku's force field. The big surprise comes with the game's final boss. Like BoF2 before it, it actually amazes me that this game made it here considering the reputation of Nintendo of America's censorship policy. This game is dark, like easily one of the darkest entries in the SaGa franchise in general. Things like the room with the dead family or how often major characters get killed in this game, not to mention the final boss just feel like stuff that should have caused more outcry in 1990.

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Moving on, obviously the game turned out to be a smash success for Square and so Kawazu was asked to work on a sequel while the main FF team worked on FFIV. -insert joke about the team giving him this series as an excuse to stay away from Final Fantasy after FFII's reception- and so Kawazu started work on SaGa 2. SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu, or Sa・Ga 2 ~ The Treasure Legend roughly, is an original story that simply keeps a lot of conventions from the original but has no real connection to the first game a la Final Fantasy. There isn't a whole lot of detail on this game's development other than Kawazu's desire to refine a lot of the ideas from the first game, as well as a slight change up with the music. Uematsu returned for his final SaGa soundtrack, but newcomer Kenji Ito joined the team as well to help out, and this game marks the beginning of his long history with the SaGa franchise as he's often associated as the series main composer.

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The game takes place in a world where after the Old Gods created the known world, they left behind a statue of Isis that was broken into 77 pieces. These pieces, called MAGI, grant extraordinary power to anyone who possesses a piece and as you can guess, a lot of bad people are trying to collect them. The player created MC is awaken by their archeologist dad who bears a striking resemblance to another famous 80s archeologist of film. And people think SE only stole Star Wars plot lines from George Lucas.... Anyway, Dad tells their child that he is leaving to find a treasure and to take care of his mother. He hands them a piece of MAGI that has the power to sense other MAGI shards near it, and then departs out the second story window of their house because he's quirky like that. Years later, the MC has come of age and tells their Mom that they are going to find Dad and his connection to the MAGI. As they say their farewells to their professor and classmates, three of them volunteer to join them on their journey and thus the story begins proper with the party discovering that their world is one of many connected by a strange crystal tree like thing that is never quite explained very well. They soon travel the worlds and discover that a force known as the New Gods have been trying to amass MAGI for their own purposes and are being stopped by a multi-world organization known as the Guardians who are trying to keep MAGI from falling into the wrong hands. The game has a pretty interesting twist toward the end much like the first game, though it's less meta than that one.

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As you can tell from the description, SaGa 2 is a more jovial experience than the first title. Filled with a bit more humor than the first entry. That's not to say it doesn't have it's fair share of drama as well but overall the game comes across as the most lighthearted entry in the franchise. This is also projected in the worlds you visit which are just as quirky as the first game. One world has you navigating a Giant's village, another one has you enter a dragon race that monsters try to jump, there is even an Edo era Japanese world that plays out like a 60's Samurai detective drama. Instead of the Four Heavenly Beasts, the New Gods re based off various deities from different pantheons including Ashura from Shinto, Odin from Norse, Venus from Roman, and Apollo from Greek. The settings are more fun and some of them even require you to visit a few extra worlds to resolve the conflict in one of them. The game also gets hit a bit harder with censorship than the first one did, with the most obvious and hilarious being the Edo story arc which originally involves a tale about smuggled opium, now being changed to...wait for it...those evil banana's the kids keep getting hooked on. Damn zinc addicted kids. Anyway, this game is both funnier, has quirkier NPCs to interact with, and world's that are more fanciful than tragic. It's like Kawazu and his team were told to cool it after the first entry.

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Gameplay has been both expanded and refined compared to the first one. SaGa 1 had some quirky mechanics, but a major gripe with it is how unbalanced it was with monsters and humans being stupidly broken, and Espers being a crap-shoot on if they were going to be useful or not. Kawazu's team fixed a few of these complaints, and then kind of accidentally messed up again as well with the new race. Humans no longer level up through items, instead they use the same system as the Espers but the mechanics were streamlined and easier to figure out with stats being directly connected to what weapons you use with Bows and Rapiers raising agility, swords and axes raising strength, and spells and magic weapons raising magic. Humans can even use magic now, though they can only use them through tomes and magic weapons, whereas Espers can actually learn magic. Speaking of, learning magic sticks to the RNG issue of the first game, but now the game will only replace the last spell in your Esper's inventory and the player has the ability to rearrange spells meaning you can choose which ones to drop or keep. Even more useful is that Espers start with a powerful elemental spell now, though if you're foolish enough to lose it, it's lost forever. Monsters have also been retooled and now have triple the amount of options from the first game. The mechanics for monster changes are far more complex in this entry, almost staggering actually. Even with a table, you're still probably going to need a calculator and some basic math skills to figure out what you'll actually wind up with. The tiers have also been re-balanced so there isn't as much of a discrepancy between monsters of the same tier, making it more difficult to break the game with monsters, but also giving the player more options on monster builds. The newest addition to the game are Robots. This class sort of takes on the attributes of Humans from the first game. All of their stats are based on what equipment you give them following the description above, but robots cannot use magic and have no magic stat to protect them from spells. Items given to them lose half of their uses even if unequipped from them, so you have to be really careful before you give them an item. On the brighside, monsters can regenerate uses by staying at an inn, so you can build them around using powerful weapons if you want. Even better, they are glitched when it comes to martial art moves and can gain crazy high stats if you give them a martial art move with only a single use left. So as I said, they balanced all the returning classes but the new one winds up being the game breaker.
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The game also introduces guest party members which include your Dad (his weapons include a whip and revolver) as well as a samurai, a kung-fu kid, a detective, and your actual professor who is a powerful monster mage. This is nice to check out some cool items you may have never thought of using, and half of them have really high stats and end up caring you for parts of the game. Another new addition are a few new weapon types such as guns, artillery, and off the wall weapons like coins. Another new mechanic is the MAGI system. The MAGI you collect in the game can be equipped by your party to raise their stats or to grant them new abilities like the Aegis Shield MAGI that works like a magic barrier for the whole party when used in combat, or the Masemune MAGI that is a powerful unbreakable sword attack that does neutral and consistent damage. There is honestly way more variety and balance in the game leaving it a more fun experience overall. It only really gets difficult by the end game which is kind of par the course for the whole franchise, but the game just feels more satisfying to play.
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With Uematsu and Kenji Ito helming the music, the two managed to come up with some really killer tracks for the tiny Game Boy system. Tracks like Prologue, which is more or less the Main Theme in minor key is surprisingly haunting even on the GB's limited sound system. He even manages to pull a few heart breaking tracks like Wipe your Tears Away and Requiem which help add the eerieness of the original game. Battle themes are still pretty strong especially Furious Battle, the final boss theme and ultimately show Uematsu's growing skill as a musician. Honestly the music combined with the scenario really show how absolutely odd ball the original SaGa was but it works really well. It's honestly one of Uematsu's most underrated OSTs if you ask me. Course most fans of the FF Legend series probably remember SaGa 2's score a bit better. Tracks like Burning Blood are well known in the remix scene and it has gotten quite a few arrangments on official albums. Other tracks like Heartful Tears and Wandering Shadows gives a real taste of the kind of tracks we would see in FFIII and RS1. The OST is bit more bouncy and has a few more blood pumping tracks than SaGa 1 which is likely why it's more popular with gamers.Overall both games have pretty excellent scores that show off the strengths of both the composers.
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Between the two, I feel the second entry is a bit more accessible with more customization options, better difficulty curve, more personable NPCs and a heavier emphasis on plot than the first game, but I feel the first entry is such a unique experience that it's difficult to really say forget about it. The real shame for me is that Squenix has never saw it fit to release the remakes in the West. SaGa 1 got an FFOrigins style remake for the Wonderswan, and while it was later ported to mobile, it has stayed a Japanese exclusive. The graphics and music were upgraded to 16-bit level and it featured a few QoL changes such a bestiary, bug fixes and the ability to see a monster transformation results before committing to it. The real shame is SaGa 2, which was given a full 3D remake on the DS similar to the ones doen for FFIII and IV. This remake featured artwork from The World Ends with You team, and has a ton of new features like extra story parts, a new relationship system that coincides with a new combo system. An arena mode, and extra sidequests and QoL changes. The revamped soundtrack is also awesome and it's a damn shame the game stayed in Japan, though I guess there is always emulation. Maybe with the franchises recent resurgance in the West, SE might consider porting it along with SaGa 3's remake in the West as virtual console type deal for the Switch or 3DS. If you get the opportunity to, I'd definitely check out these two games. They are surprisingly fun and deep experiences despite being early Game Boy titles. Since I couldn't find any good trailers for the games, I'll end with a peak of what the SaGa 2 remake looks like.
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[Wolf Kanno]

Did another update or two for anyone interested.

[Fynn]

Oh shit it’s been literal years. Post it!

[Loony BoB]

I believe he did, the opening post of the thread was edited :) The changes are noted in it.