I'd still like to hear from Messr. Chainsaw.Originally Posted by DJZen
I'd still like to hear from Messr. Chainsaw.
The entire article just reeks of BS. It's clear the guy hated the game before he even put in the cartridge.
Did this guy even PLAY the game? If he had like he said he had, he would know that the Glass Sword was meant to be the most powerful weapon in the game with a single use, but instead falls under the same 50 uses as the other weapons. There is nothing special about that weapon other than the fact that it does a large amount of set damage, as opposed to the strength or agility multipliers on other weapons in the game. I, unlike that dude, have actually played the game and thoroughly enjoyed it, and have a save file right before the last boss (one of my favorite final battles in game history).If we revist the original SaGa for a moment, we'll see the trend that sets up the rest of Kawazu's career -- the game, though the player holds it in his hands, never lets us feel comfortable. There are innumerable ways to screw up so that you might wind up standing at the feet of the final boss, one step away from engaging him in conversation and beginning the final battle, and be hopelessly unable to win. This is because there's a weapon called the "Glass Sword," the only weapon that can hurt him, and you can only get it between the fourth floor of the tower and the top, where you fight a being called Ashura, who sends you back to the bottom. The next time you enter the tower, it's an all-new straight shot to the top. You can no longer find that one tiny little far-off hidden room on the way to Ashura's place. Had you forgotten to pick it up, the Glass Sword remains not yours forever, and you cannot beat the final boss. Even more interestingly, the Glass Sword, like most weapons in the game, can only be used fifty times before it vanishes forever. The charm of the game is, supposedly, that each hero can store as many weapons as he sees appropriate, and use them on enemies as he wishes. So our human party leader can be carrying a sword, a machinegun, a fire spell, a whip, and a punch. (Yes, a punch is an inventory item.) Some weapons have higher damage-dealing capabilities than others, though who's to tell, really, what's what? You use the weapons, you kill the monsters, and you move on.
First of all, the last boss is just like any other boss in the game, and like most other bosses in the history of RPGs. That is, you reduce his 5000 or so HP to 0, and you win. It's that simple. Where in the world this "you need the glass sword" to beat him comes from, I have no clue. Hell, all you need to do is beat him is have the right monster in your party and use the "Saw" ability to kill him in one hit. Or you can just spam Flare books on him until he's toast. He's not hard at all. And if you do get stuck before the fight, just use a portal to transport yourself back to the base and level up some more. It's not rocket science.
And the guy is completely out of it with the breakable weapons too. Once again, it appears he didn't actually bother to play the game, because if he did, he'd know you could buy Arcane toolsets to fix broken weapons (yes, even the glass sword). And if he doesn't like broken weapons, he shouldn't be playing SaGa games. Period. The early SaGa games revolve around GP instead of experience, so managing broken equipment is part of the expense you need to factor in when buying new stats.
I obviously don't need to refute this guy's opinions if he can't bother to understand the game he's playing.
Last edited by Lord Chainsaw; 10-05-2005 at 06:01 AM.
To hell with Battletoads and Double Dragon.
THIS is the ultimate team.
Congratulations, you have surmounted the challenge of Tim Rogers. You are now clear to encounter the final obstacle.
I spent some quality time with my emulator this morning and I'm forced to agree with Chainsaw on this one. Even the BRIEFEST of glimpses at gamefaqs shows that the guy had no idea what he was talking about. 600 HP is all you get? No, mutants and monsters can have 999 HP, and humans can even exceed that, though the game won't display it. Hooray for research.
I said I wasn't going to bother with this guy because he doesn't know what he's talking about, but I just have to take the bait.
(SPOILER)
SaGa revels in making the player feel as though his chances are running out. Final Fantasy makes a young player walk around in circles for six hours to save up enough money to buy a Silver Sword, which will make the Marsh Cave objectively 30 times easier. The Final Fantasy player feels much like a young boy being given an electric guitar; he knows that, with practice, he can one day rock the Budokan. The SaGa player, when the bus ride ends and he's home after work sitting against the balcony door with a cigarette and a bottle of beer, feels like an aging hipster who has, literally, one last chance to impress a crowd with his rock and roll. SaGa revels in making the player feel sick and lonely. In its fourth world, the post-apocalyptic one, non-player characters are set up like stick figures or finger puppets; members of a resistance group, they are raging against Suzaku, a giant malicious phoenix who eventually, over the course of four hours, devours and destoys them all one-by-one, as we learn their names. No doubt Kawazu thought this was funny. It's not funny. It's mean. The ten-year-old me wanted to wag my finger at Kawazu like I was his mother and he'd just pushed a kid down the stairs at school. It was a naughty thing to do, and the game just kept doing it, again and again. Surprises heaped on surprises until the story, which no one really cared about in the first place (we were just gaining levels on the bus, see), had contradicted itself into nothingness. So the tower goes to Heaven, and the being at the top is evil? Okay? Though he's not really the real god -- the other guy is, and he's evil too? The player's so numerically being in control of his characters progress turned out to be a sneering curse as well, like, "Yeah, you thought we'd keep giving you these hit-point upgrades, huh? Well! No! 600 is all you get! Now you're weak, and the monsters are strong! You'd best start running!"
This guy seems to be missing the entire point of the game. He's looking at the game from a Nintendo mentality as oppose to an artistic one. Yes, the game is very morbid. In his article he makes it seem as if there's just random acts of killing off characters to advance the story. There's a reason for that. I really don't want to spoil a game this incredible, but:
(SPOILER)This is a very rare game in which the gameplay actually tells the story. This isn't an RPG where there's a war going on, and the story is told in cutscenes between different dungeons on your quest to take down the evil empire. The gameplay IS the story. You don't know it throughout the game, but God is testing the best fighters on Earth for the qualities he desires in a heavenly companion. It's sort of like a really screwed up reality show. That means that every single character in the game besides the main party is actually a backdrop created by God to fit his exam. World 4 isn't mindless killing, it's God testing how paradisial candidates will deal with fire, wrath, death, and sorrow. Splendid little game, really.
And to counter his last point, yes, Ashura is the boss at the top of the Tower, and yes, he is the "ultimate evil". He questions why the boss at the top of the Tower to Heaven is evil. Then this clueless writer questions the validity of the "other guy" after Ashura, who turns out to be just a bigger evil. I already spoiled one of the best points to the game, so I'm not going to spoil anything else. Let's just say that if he decided to pay attention to the game instead of just grumble about the fact that it isn't Final Fantasy, he'd know he was completely wrong about who the last boss was.
To hell with Battletoads and Double Dragon.
THIS is the ultimate team.
having beaten all final fantasy games (except V and XI)(since XI is not beatable, and my computer crashed back in the day when i was fighting the end boss of V), I can say that I enjoyed very much all of the Game boy final fantasy games, as well as mystic quest. mystic quest is a completely different style of game, much like lufia and lufia 2. I think all in all the worst final fantasy game i ever played was final fantasy 2 (JAP not US).
Oh, and there was also a very good (though not made by or endorsed by) final fantasy game that someone cloned onto the US TI-80 series calculators, it was basically a clone of legends 1, but with a few differences.
I have Legends III and I hate it with burning passion.
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