Original developer credits: Director Hiromichi Tanaka Director of Game/Character Design Koichi Ishii Battle Design Goro Ohashi Battle Design Yuko Sakamoto Map Design Tsukasa Fujita Map Design Kazuomi Suzuki Map Design Hiroyuki Kuwata Background Design Koji Tsuda Background Design Takaharu Matsuo Background Design Tetsuya Takahashi Background Design Takeo Ohin Background Design Hiroyuki Ikeda Character Design Shinichi Kameoka Character Design Atsuhito Sakoda Effect Design Shintaro Takai Monster Design Noriko Sasaki Monster Design Konomi Ishizuka Boss Monster Design Hiroyuki Narushima Boss Monster Design Kazuhiro Ohkawa Boss Monster Design Yuichi Shiota Program Satoru Yoshieda Program Taku Murata Program Masaaki Saito Program Yoshiyuki Miyagawa Program Satoshi Ogata Program Hidenori Suzuki Program Shun Moriya Program Kazuo Suzuki Music Hiroki Kikuta Sound Teruaki Sugawara Sound Yoshitaka Hirota Sound Kazume Mitome Sound Chiharu Minekawa Sound Hironobu Izumi Executive Producer Tetsuo Mizuno Producer Tetsuhisa Tsuruzona Character Illustration Noboteru Yuki World Map Illustration Hiroo Isono
Game introduction
What is this game? Seiken Densetsu 3 is the third game in what Western gamers know as the Mana series by Square. Final Fantasy Adventure (GBA remake known as Sword of Mana) is also known as Seiken Densetsu 1, and Secret of Mana is aka Seiken Densetsu 2, to put things into perspective. Nobody knows for sure why Square never released this excellent sequel to the popular SoM outside of Asia, but several explanations and factors include the coinciding establishment of a development team in Washington state, the release of Secret of Evermore, the release of Super Mario RPG, and the general bugginess of Seiken Densetsu 3--known from here on out at SD3. In any case, SD3 was not a game to be overlooked, and after a couple failed translation projects by others, Neil Corlett's translation team pulled through a victory against the game's text compression algorithm and delivered what would be one of the crowning achievements of the fan translation "scene." Since then, through the popularization of game piracy through ROM distribution and the maturation of successful SNES emulators, the game has attracted and maintained a significant fan following. However, to this day, it has yet to receive an official translation even though Square Enix appears to have both the means to do so and the predilection towards remaking and translating other older games.
Gameplay in SD3 is standard enough and should be familiar to anyone who's played a Mana game, especially Secret of Mana. Your party includes three characters roughly equal in power, of which you control one directly. Unlike in some other games, you can switch and probably will switch which character you are controlling quickly with the press of a button depending on the situation. The other two characters tag along by AI in towns and fight according to slightly customizable scripts. Fighting takes place in the same screen as the dungeon does, and enemies appear on the screen ready to attack you almost all the time. Sometimes enemies can be walked by and avoided without too much of a hassle. In battle the A button makes the controlled character swipe the air in front of him or her--if an enemy is in the attack range, it gets hit. However, SD3 is much more than a mindless button-mashing grindfest; since many enemy attacks can be (should be) seen and avoided and the game is moderately challenging, care must be taken while fighting or avoiding enemies.
SD3's success lies not in great new innovation (although there is some) but in solid execution of all of the elements of a game and huge replay value. The graphics are fairly nice and easy to see, a sizable step over SD2. Likewise, the music is quite good, featuring one of the best tracks on the SNES. And the plot, while certainly not too deep, certainly doesn't take itself too seriously either, never being a disruption and sometimes being pretty engaging. From whatever angle you view it, SD3 is a classic SNES RPG in the best sense of those words.
There's a time system in the game; certain enemies and townspeople appear at night, and others at day
The Characters
SD3 features 6 different playable characters of which you chose 3 to use at the start of the game. You can't sub in and out which characters you want to use, like in other games, but rather you select which 3 you'd like to play with when you begin your adventure. The first character you choose becomes the main character, and the other two join quickly enough after the introductory scenes (unique to each main character) and a few dungeons, and they stick with you for the rest of the game. The six characters are as follows:
Angela - the only child of Valda, the Queen of the Magic Kingdom of Altena, Angela has lived her life in the city and castle located in the ice fields. However, her relative neglect by the Queen and general upbringing as a princess has left her spoiled and selfish. In her introduction the Queen upon the advice of the Red Magician Koren decides to sacrifice her daughter to unlock the power of the nearby Mana Stone in an attempt to gain the power necessary to magically warm up the region like it used to be. Angela manages to escape, and she heads to the Holy City of Wendel to see the Priest of Light for advice. She's the game's dedicated attack magic specialist, learning spells of every element and having awful physical stats.
Duran - the son of a famous deceased knight in the grasslands Kingdom of Forcena, Duran is a powerful mercenary swordsman. An orphan, he lives with his little sister Wendy and his aunt Stella. In his introduction Koren and the magicians of Altena invade Forcena, and Duran is unable to stop their rampage. Enraged at his lack of strength, he heads to the Priest of Light to see how he can become stronger. He's the game's strongest per-hit attacker, with supplemental spells in the form of healing or elemental sabers, the only character in the game able to equip shields at all.
General fan translation quality is good, with nice-looking fonts and decent editing; Duran's going to find out that being the number one swordsman isn't nearly enough
Kevin - son of a human mother and the Beast King, Kevin is a misfit among both humans and beastmen, the powerful lycanthropes of the world. Although he can also change into a werewolf at night like the other beastmen, Kevin often shows a gentler nature, taking care of his best friend Karl, a wolf pup. In his introduction Deathjester uses dark magic to make Karl attack Kevin, thus unlocking Kevin's beastman prowess as he must defend himself. When he kills Karl and discovers his father was behind Deathjester's actions, he disowns his father and is thrown out of the kingdom, whereupon he seeks the Priest of Light to see how he can revive his only friend. The strongest attacker in the game, he swings twice with every attack. He only gets stronger at night when he turns into a werewolf, although his spell selection is even more limited than Duran's.
Carlie (aka Charlotte) - granddaughter of the Priest of Light, she's the only one who doesn't set out to find him. A rare (the only) half-elf, she's an orphan that was largely raised by the cleric Heath. In her introduction, Heath is sent by the Priest of Light to investigate an evil presence. This turns out to be Deathjester, who then kidnaps Heath as Carlie can only watch in hiding. She then decides she must do whatever it takes to save him. The primary healer of the game, Carlie heals for much more than either Duran or Kevin, and she gets it much much earlier in the game. She also has a set of support spells and either elemental sabers or attack magic in the form of summons depending on how you developer her to compensate for weak physical stats on the level of Angela.
Lise (aka Riesz) - the princess of the Wind Kingdom of Rolante, Lise is the captain of the realm's Amazon army. Because her mother died giving birth to her younger brother, she's become very protective of him. In her introduction, a ninja pair from the new Navarre infiltrate the fortress and turn down the protective wind barrier, allowing an army of ninjas to slaughter those inside, including her father the king. She barely escapes the assassins and decides to make her way to the Preist of Light, looking all the while for her missing brother. In battle Lise can either cast stat-up or stat-down spells depending on how she progresses. She's the character with the most balanced stats of all of the six.
Lise looks for her brother
Hawk (aka Hawkeye) - a member of the Robin Hood-esque thieves' guild based in the Sand Fortress of Navarre, Hawk is suspicious when his leader, Lord Flamekhan, suddenly declares the guild a kingdom. In his introduction, after discussing his concerns with his two friends, the son and daughter of Flamekhan, he goes to confront him, only to discover him in a meeting with a new advisor, Isabella. In a series of events, Hawk gets framed for killing his best friend, and his girlfriend gets put under a curse that will kill her if he tells her the truth, that he wasn't the killer. When another friend busts him out of jail, Hawk escapes to seek the Preist of Light so see how he can lift his girlfriend's curse. In battle Hawk dual-wields daggers, swinging twice for middling damage each every attack. He is the most versatile character, and the one with the most difference between his classes. He may be the best support character in the game, a stat-lowering Ninja, or a jack-of-all-trades knowing many special skills.
Kevin, Hawk, and Angela face off against a boss near the middle of the game; notice that spells and items must be chosen from the ring menus, and using them disrupts the game flow; only in boss battles do you see this much using the menu...on a side note, this is one of the worst of many good boss battle musics
Class System and Character Development
All characters start in their base classes. Then, at level 18, they can class change to one of their two second classes, known as the Light and Dark classes. Then near the end of the game at level 38, they can class change again into one of their four third classes. The way branching works can be easily seen in this graphic:
Each class for each character has its own color scheme for the character, techs, spells and skills, and max stats, among other smaller differences. However, all spells, skills, and techs learned from a previous class are retained when progressing to the next. How some characters play in different class paths is sometimes surprisingly different. As such, since you have three characters to choose from six and four class paths to choose from for each of your three characters, there are a lot of combinations to try: some interesting, strong, weak, whatever.
Whenever a character levels up, you can choose which stat out of strength, vitality, agility, intelligence, spirit, or luck to raise one point. The game places some restrictions on what stats you can raise, however. For example, you're not allowed to raise one single stat many times in a row (or too many in general in the last several times), so if you've raised strength the last two times, that option is going to be greyed out. As it is, you'll be forced to raise at least three different types of stats for all of your characters, especially if you hit the max stats in an area or two for a class. Upon class change, any stats not maxed out in the previous class are raised to the previous class's maximum, so every once in awhile neglected stats will be raised as well. Thus, the question of which stat to raise for certain characters is quite complex: what other characters you're using, what classes they're all in, what stage of the game you're in, and your particular playstyle all determine what's the right decision to make come level up time.
Guess what Duran's good at
One Game, Three Scenarios
Although SD3 doesn't have true branching paths or scenarios, the game is a little different depending on who you choose as your main character. Depending on if you choose Angela/Duran, Kevin/Carlie, or Lise/Hawk as the main character, a certain sequence of events in the middle of the game as well as the last few dungeons and bosses will be different, with corresponding plot to follow. It's not hard too hard to figure out why there are three pairs of two for deciding this--the answer is within the character section above. As such, SD3, with the number of characters and classes to choose from really deserves at least three plays through, just to see some of the many situations the game as to offer.
Summary and Miscellany
Despite what SD3 does well, it does have a couple notable failings. One is that the game is relatively buggy compared to most games: for example, critical hits don't work as they should (they're extremely rare as it is) and Kevin's werewolf form gains a little strength (as if a stat up were cast on it) once it is hit once on a screen, to name the two most glaring ones. Another is that special attacks, items, and magic pause the flow of the game to allow for the animation. But it's not as if you're required to play with spell-happy Angela, and again, most regular enemies aren't non-stop spamming magic. Another "failing" is that unlike Secret of Mana, which had multicontroller support that allowed the second and third characters to be controlled by other people, SD3 only allows for two inputs.
SD3 does not strive for complexity, and neither does it try for simplicity. Unabashedly, it churns out the same kind of gameplay that other games in the genre do. At one point in the game the goal is to find all eight guardian spirits to help you, one for each element: fire, water, wind, earth, tree, moon, light, and dark, each of which can be found in its corresponding elemental dungeon (with a few differences here and there in premise, and punctuated by other little quests). This filler material clearly isn't the epitome of inventiveness, but what it does do is allow the player to enjoy without distraction the meat and bones of the game--exploring dungeons and fighting enemies with your personal favorite or quirkily-designed team. It's the rare game that makes level grinding enjoyable at all. And it's a rare game I strongly recommend that I don't have much to say about.
Carlie, Duran, and Kevin make their way past a few baddies
That's it for this week. Eventually I'm going to stop writing these things when school kicks into full swing, but expect at least a few more. Please add comments at will, as usual. And here's a poll out of curiosity, mostly to those who've played the game (also a secret ninja way of seeing how many people who have played the games I'm reviewing read the bottom of these posts):
Poll: Favorite SD3 character? (Vote): Angela (Vote): Duran (Vote): Kevin (Vote): Carlie (Vote): Lise (Vote): Hawk
Japanese PSX release box art; shown are the protagonist Denim and his sister Kachua
Platform: Super Famicom (Japanese SNES), PSX (port), SAT (port) Genre: TRPG Developer: Quest Publisher: Artdink (JP PSX), River Hill Software (JP SAT), Atlus (US PSX) Japanese Release Date: 10/06/95 (SNES), 12/13/96 (SAT), 09/25/97 (PSX), second release collection 12/02/99 (PSX) US Release Date: ??/??/98 (PSX)
Other games by same core designers: Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen (SNES, as Quest), Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX, as Square), Vagrant Story (PSX, as Square), Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA, as Square Enix), Final Fantasy XII (PS2, as Square Enix, sharing less developers); note: not Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (N64) or Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis (GBA)
Developer Credits (only the highest-up roles, from GameFAQs page, credit Y0u, odino, HarkenSlash, PaperLink, chantel1127, and Apples190) + Show Spoiler +
Character Designer Akihiko Yoshida Art Director Hiroshi Minagawa CG Designer Kazutaka Matsuda CG Designer Ryouichi Nakamura Main System Programmer Tatsuya Azeyagi Battle Mode Programmer Nobuo Morioka Game Designer Yasumi Matsuno Additional Programming Katsuyuki Ito Music Composer Hitoshi Sakimoto [in addition to games listed above, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (BoF5) among others] Music Composer Masaharu Iwata [also worked on the games listed above]
What is this game?
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is acclaimed director Yasumi Matsuno's greatest masterpiece, the game all other TRPGs must be inevitably compared to and the godfather of the isometric-view TRPG. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together--from here on, referred to as "TO" or "TO:LUCT" and not to be confused with the GBA game--ranked number seven (#7) on the 2006 Famitsu readers' poll of Top 100 Games of All Time, the second-highest game that isn't a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. The core gameplay, while not without a couple smallish balance issues, is much more balanced than similar titles, and it focuses more on pure, clean TRPG battling rather than developing overpowered special abilities. Yet due to a delayed and small release in the West, it remains criminally overshadowed by its blood brother, Final Fantasy Tactics, which for reference holds a respectable yet much lower spot of number eighty-four in Famitsu's poll. TO was the second game released in the Ogre Battle Saga, which spans several games in different continents of the same world within the same decade of time, yet it is episode seven in the chronology. (OB: tMotBQ is episode five, OB64: PoLC is episode six, and TO: tKoL is a gaiden--a side story--to TO:LUCT.) Battles are a time-based character-by-character affair, taking place in discrete maps, which may be fortress gates, forests, snowfields, temples, and the like, shown in an isometric 3/4 perspective view:
Mildain, an "exile" of Zenobia owns a soldier in the first tutorial battle of the Japanese version
TO, like FFT, explores a deeply political plot, filled with a bloody power struggle between rival factions, corrupt leaders, ethnic cleansing, backstabbing, foreign interests, and a troubled young man who happens to have both a sister and a best friend. However, unlike FFT, it doesn't fall into a quagmire of black and white good/evil crap focusing on Zodiac stones and demons from the underworld taking over people's souls--TO keeps its focus on the interactions of the people of a troubled Valeria, a large island in the Ogre Battle world away from the larger powers of Zenobia, Palatina, and Lodis. After years of fighting, King Dolgare finally united the island under his mostly benevolent reign, only to leave no successor to the throne upon his death. In the ensuing power struggle, new names rose to prominence as the old order broke into pieces, fracturing the island into regions dominated by the three regional ethnic groups. However, two superpowers in Lodis and Zenobia also have their personal interests in the island's affairs, and their involvement sparks the beginning of the story. It begins when Denim Powell, our protagonist and a member of the minority Walstanians oppressed by the Gargastans, receives the aid of five exiled Zenobians in freeing the captured Duke Ronway, the leader of the Walstanians. Fortunately, TO has a pretty good interface as well as two features progressive for the time: back-scrolling of text (in case you missed a line) and an in-game encyclopedia to help you track the major players of the scene that also lets you view previously-seen scenes.
Opening cutscene and first events that don't really explain much yet
The game, which takes place only a few years after the events of episode five, features a few familiar faces. More relevantly, TO also keeps with the series by proving three different endings (with different character subendings within the three), as well as branching story paths. A decision at the end of Chapter 1 leads you to either the Chapter 2 Law or Chapter 2 Chaos path, and a decision at the end of Chapter 2 leads you to either the Chapter 3 Chaos or Chapter 3 Neutral paths. After Chapter 3, all paths merge back into a common concluding Chapter 4--however, the available characters will be different depending on the path you take, and there are other smaller differences.
Basics of the battle system
Forget everything else the game does well or decently--the battles are where TO shines the brightest. They're considerably more difficult than in FFT, for example, yet they're not so difficult to be wholly frustrating. In battle each character acts and moves separately on the map whenever it is his or her turn to act. This is determined by the game's time: characters go based on their speed and not in a "player phase" or "enemy phase", which works well in this game, where your characters' deaths are permanent and battles are unforgiving. A character can do an action--a direct attack with equipped direct weapon like a sword (or punch with fist for minimal damage or use a shield to knock back an enemy), an indirect attack with an equipped bow (or throw a rock for minimal damage), a special attack (available only to monsters and a few special characters), or magic (of healing, attack, or support type; magic isn't available to most character classes, and most spellcasters are limited to a specific subset of magic)--move around, both, or neither (just wait). If a character just waits, that person's turn will come up faster than if they do something else; if a character just moves or acts and does not move, their turn comes up faster than if they do both. At this point, it'd be best to examine some actual game footage:
Tutorial battle number 1 in which the very powerful and CPU-controlled Zenobians (they leave after the tutorial is over) explain some features of the battle system; normally, you have direct control over all of your team's characters--except maybe one or two in the early chapters; you can turn off the extra messages you see here; also, our friends Canopus, Lans Hamilton, and Warren are back, although only Canopus joins your army for real
Note first that the guest characters on your team for that fight in the video are in much higher levels than the enemies--Denim's (who's renamed to something else in the video) mostly there for the ride. You can see this in the experience reports, as characters gain much more experience fighting enemies in higher levels and much lower from characters in lower levels. 100 experience always gets a character to the next level, whereupon the experience resets to 0. Killing an enemy in 1 higher level than you nets you 76-80 experience points towards the 100, so level discrepancies while playing the real game can be alleviated quickly. As you can see in the video, characters are limited by their movement range and obstacles. And any time a character is attacked directly, the target will counterattack the attacker if it is possible--as such, you can expect to take a lot of damage. Before you attack, you can see the projected damage and hit rate numbers on the screen, two useful things in deciding if you really want to follow through with your intended action. Also, like in many other games, the objective of a map is often to defeat the leader: if this happens, you win right then.
Characters and classes
In TO most of your army for most of the game is comprised of generic soldier types, and the rest are special plot characters. Each unit is in a certain character class, such as Soldier, Knight, Wizard, Exorcist, Berserker, Dragoon, etc. These can be changed at will between battles if the character meets the requirements. Generally there's a stat requirement plus an alignment disposition: for example, to be a Knight a male human must be Lawful or Neutral, with 45+ Strength, 44+ Vitality, and 46+ Dexterity. And there are twelve character classes for males, eight for human females, just like that. Different classes give different stat growths, slightly different native attack resistances (apart from the basic stats), and movement types. There's no learning of skills in TO, but the differences in stat growths is still very significant. Stats are the only thing that you carry from class to class--a Knight that switches to a Ninja is still going to be slow and powerful with a Knight's stats, although subsequent levels will give him more Agility than if he had stayed a Knight. And for the record, Ninjas can attack twice and move 6 panels instead of an ordinary character's 5, but they're extremely fragile and weaker than all other physical classes, so they're not broken in this game.
However, some characters cannot change class. Whereas some of the special plot characters are nothing more than generics with a name, unique portrait, and slightly raised stats compared to their counterparts of the same class, other plot characters are in unique classes and cannot be switched from them. Some bosses are unique classes as well. And there are many monster and demi-human classes that cannot switch: a Medusa is always going to be a Medusa. There are around 100 different character classes in the game, although some of them are just palette swaps with different stats compared to others and many others are special characters on both your side and the enemy's (like one class for each of them).
Guess what? It's the character creation quiz that determines your starting stats! (again)
Other curiosities of battle (warning: rambling ensues)
Terrain Each character in the game has an innate element: wind, earth, water, or fire. Each tile that doesn't have an object on it, be it high grass, normal grass, soil, road, castle, ice, water, etc. can be stood on, and each, similar to most TRPGs (except here we're talking on a micro scale), gives different attack and defense modifiers. For example, soil is a good terrain to stand on, giving +30 attack and +25 defense modifiers. And since it's an earthy terrain type, earth element characters get +2/+2 on it, while wind element characters get -2/-2 on it. On the other hand, volcanic ash provides very tricky footing, giving +10 attack and +20 defense modifiers, (+3/+3 for fire and -3/-3 for water types). These numbers are quite significant: it's not a straight +30 to your attack but rather something entirely different in the game's mechanics. As such, terrain types are very important to consider in a fight, adding strategic depth to the game.
Height and arrows There are two projectile types in the game: arcing and non-arcing. The former is the bow attack type, and the latter is the crossbow attack type. Although a bow may advertise that it can attack for 5 panels away, you can actually select any panel on the entire map to target. It'll just only hit whatever is in range. If an enemy is 5 panels away but 3 panels higher than you, there's no way you're hitting that enemy even though it's in your target range, as your arrow will arc down before it gets to the target. You might even hit your own character who's in the way of the arrow by accident. However, with a crossbow the arcing doesn't begin until 6 or so panels, so you should be able to hit that target (the disadvantage of no arcing is that if there's an object in the way, the bolt will hit the object instead of arcing above the obstacle; also, you can hit any of your guys who are in the way as well). But if a character with a bow is standing at the top of a nearby hill, 15 panels above the surroundings, she might be able to hit a target 11 panels from the target even though her bow is only supposed to hit 5 panels away. Because of this, high ground advantage plays a major role in the game. In fact, many of the stages in the game have you attacking an enemy force that includes archers on top of a fortress wall, in perfect position to rain down arrows from afar, probably outranging your spellcasters.
Your army is way down off the screen, and the rest of the enemies have yet to arrive; as this is early in the game you won't be seeing the rain of arrows yet
Direction The direction a character faces in is also an important factor of battle. If a character is attacked from behind, the attack has a 50% more chance of hitting than if it came from the front. Likewise, an attack from the side has a 25% more chance of hitting than if it came from the front. So what might seem like a good idea would be to keep a tight wall formation to engage the enemy head-on so you can't be attacked from behind or the sides.
Magic However, a lot of the magic in the game, including most of the offensive magic, can be targeted as much as 7 panels away, and with an area of effect of up to 13 squares (one center and all panels 1-2 away from the center). Thus, keeping such a tight formation can get you wrecked by enemy Wizards who can abuse how clumped your guys are. Then again, you might have a Cleric with Heal+ who would be able to heal with an area of effect range. As mentioned by Warren in the gameplay video, characters start with 0 MP at the beginning of battle and gradually gain more as time wears on at a rate fast enough to cast but one basic spell a turn. Characters can equip 0, 1, 2, or 3 spells depending on their class.
Levels In general, the enemy forces will be of the same level as the highest level of any unit in your army, no matter what your levels are, up to a certain point, although the enemy leaders are at fixed levels, generally 1 or 2 higher than you. So if Denim is at level 11 (say he killed last stage's leader, who was at level 11, and so broke from the pack) and the rest of your guys are at level 10, the enemy units are going to be at level 11. This provides a great opportunity for your level 10 guys to get kills on the level 11 enemies and thus keep up in levels.
Equipment As noted in the tutorial, equipment has both weight and attack/defense/whatever. Extra weight slows down your character, which means their hit rate and evade decreases and their turn comes up slightly slower, on the order of 5% slower for one piece of heavy armor as compared to nothing. Thus, in TO equipment choices aren't all about getting the strongest gear. You need to decide what you prioritize the most, be it direct attack power, indirect attack power, defense, magic defense, speed, consumable items (like heal items), etc. Should you equip both a dagger and a short bow (one-handed) on an archer, or is it better to go with a stronger and heavier two-handed bow? Should you weigh down your slower characters with heavy equipment to create a tank character or try to balance them by giving them light gear? How many strong direct attackers do you need? How many healers? All of these questions are related, and are good ones, as the game is pretty balanced. And as new character classes open up and you recruit new special characters, you'll find your army composition remaining dynamic.
Denim, the protagonist here named "Taalo", has no magic, as he's in the basic Soldier class--equipped magic would appear in that nice white space in the lower-right; also, note that he does have four equipment slots like everybody else in the game
Miscellany and Summary
TO has a fair share of secret or optional stages, some of which may be only opened up by reading about them in that encyclopedia thing. One long sidequest is Hell Gate, a 100-floor dungeon where you fight, uh, 100 battles or decide to leave. However, although you do get some powerful spells, equipment, and techniques in there, you don't gain any experience there, or else you'd come out way overleveled. Also, some of the special characters can only be recruited in sidequests.
There's a training mode in the game that most people hate and whine about having to do. Training is just a mock fight you set up for your characters that works like a normal battle except nobody dies permanently. Nevertheless, you do get experience for actions as normal and for "kills" as normal. So you control your own guys to beat on each other until you get to the desired level and then end the training whenever you want. However, if you manage your normal battles fine, you don't need training at all. Yes, it's a little tedious to do if you want to do it, but it's not necessary--the last few times I played through the game I didn't use it at all. In any case, it doesn't even take that long usually: say half your army is level 15 and the other half is level 14. In that situation, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes literally (3-4 minutes) to get everyone to level 15.
Tactics Ogre really does require more strategical and on-the-fly tactical decisions to play than other games in the genre, providing deep, challenging, engaging TRPG battles like few others do. It provides you options where another game might provide you Orlandu. It's in the number of party builds and options available, as well as the paradoxically pure, simplistic gameplay (that operates on complex rules) that it can be rightly called the Starcraft of TRPGs. It's a game that has proven distasteful to some yet revered by others. It may not have the plot of Vagrant Story or the character development of Final Fantasy Tactics, to name other games by the developers, but TO:LUCT in its core is a genre-defining, excellent gaming experience.
This concludes this week's review. I felt a bit tired and out of the mood, so I hope it didn't show in my writing. Pictures and other media are hard to come by for this game, so sorry about the low quality and little relatedness of some pictures. Maybe I should be searching for the Japanese name in Google, but I didn't bother trying. Happy gaming, and please stop by and add comments.
~a fun, humorous adventure packing several doses of awesome
Japanese box art
Platform: Playstation 2 Genre: RPG, action-based battles Developer: tri-Ace Publisher: Square Enix Japanese Release Date: 01/27/05 US Release Date: 09/06/05
Other games by tri-Ace: Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria (PS2), Star Ocean: Till the End of time (PS2), Valkyrie Profile (PSX, port on PSP subtitled “Lenneth”), Star Ocean: The Second Story (PSX), Star Ocean (SNES, JP only); also, before the team broke off from Namco, Tales of Phantasia (SNES, JP only)
Director Naoki Akiyama Planning Kentaro Arakawa Planning Shinya Ukawa Planning Kentaro Takemoto Scenario Masatoshi Mitori Producer Yoshinori Yamagishi Executive Producer Koji Yamashita Executive Producer Yosuke Saito Event Direction Kazuki Yahashitani Programming Takaaki Hoshiyama Programming Teruki Okushi Programming Natsuki Nishimura Programming Shogo Yoshino Programming Hirohumi Tsuda Character Design Takeshi Jonoo Character Design Hiroshi Konishi Character Creation Yasuhiro Akimoto Character Creation Kunihiro Kanada Character Creation Naruhiro Kishimoto Character Creation Tomoaki Sato World Design Yasuhisa Fukuma World Design Emi Noto World Design Kenishi Yamahashi Character Motion Design Franki Pun In Shek Character Motion Design Yuichiro Endo Character Motion Design Yuki Hosokawa Character Motion Design Takami Kubo Character Motion Design Toyotake Ishida Character Motion Design Yudai Niwa Character Motion Design Tomonori Nakata Character Motion Design Takuya Saito Character Motion Design Yukiko Matsuse Character Motion Design Ong Boon Siong Wilson Script Kenji tokita Script Yoshinobu Oyama Script Shintaro Sano Script Takuro Sato Script Masato Takai Script Toshifumi Nakae Technical Programming Yoshiharu Gotanda Technical Programming Tatsuya Shoji Supervisor Masaki Norimoto Supervisor Kenji Goshima Planning Support Akira Nakamura Planning Support Masayasu Nishida Planning Support Takashi Sato Script Support Ryosuke Yokono Script Support Akiyuki Tomiyama Script Support Takuma Hori Effect Creation Support Yasuhiko Shibuya Effect Creation Support Mariko Kamiya Effect Creation Support Nana Kaneda Effect Creation Support Tatsuro Torikai Effect Creation Support Kenichi Kaneko Character Motion Design Support Yasuhiko Shibuya Character Motion Design Support Masaaki Yamashima Character Motion Design Support Kaoiri Shibuya Character Motion Design Support Yasuhito Shinchi Character Motion Design Support Rie Izumi Character Motion Design Support Yui Nishio System Supervisor Chikaaki Tokuhiro System Supervisor Takeshi Kitamura Movie Production Kenichi Kanekura Movie Production Yukinori Masuda Movie Production Ryoi Shirakawa Movie Production Kenichi Someya Movie Production Kanako Fukumoto Movie Production Naoki Hamada Sound Programming Hiroya Hatsushiba Sound Design Director Yusabuto Shimojo Game Composition Masatoshi Mitori Production Producer Yurika Dennis Production Supervisor Gerard Jakubowicz Director Steve Kramer Director Ezra Weisz ADR Engineer David Anglero ADR Editor Alex Gordon ADR Editor Samuel Perales Jr. Recording Staff Yasuyuki Abe Recording Staff Miki Umezu Recording Staff Kazunori Hashimoto Motion Capture Producer Masashi Sakamoto Motion Capture Director Sakura Munakata Motion Design Ken Hatsuumi Motion Design Keisuke Matsumoto Motion Design Koji Hayashi Motion Design Go Sakuyama Motion Design Nobuyoshi Ishii Motion Actor Masanori Tomita Motion Actor Hiromi Shinjo Motion Actor Shoji Nitta Motion Actor Emiko Saito Motion Actor Sawako Akimoto Recording Engineer Atsushi Kobayashi Recording Engineer Norkiko Mihara End Theme Tekuteku Aruka Music Arrangement Noriyuki Iwadare Vocal Yuka Imaizumi Music Composer Motoi Sakuraba - only the original versions of a few tracks used repeatedly in different tri-Ace games in the postgame optional dungeons Music Noriyuki Iwadare [Langrisser series, Grandia series, Lunar series, etc.] Translator Philip D. Gibbon Translator Noriko Iwahara
The intro movie which again nothing much like the actual game; that man isn't the main character, by the way
What is this game?
Often overlooked in favor of games by more famous developers or even more famous games by the same developer, Radiata Stories is a light-hearted yet engaging action RPG full of pleasant surprises. Radiata Stories was developed by tri-Ace between two maximalist, heavy-handed epic installments in their two running series in Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile as something of a break. But Radiata Stories offers much more than a simple cleansing of palette for a gamer needing a break between more "serious" titles; make no mistake--there's no break in quality here in what shapes out to be an outstanding game in its own ways. Presented as something of a storybook fairy tale, Radiata Stories features colorful graphics that value attractiveness and expressiveness over the realistic, all set to playful, often jazzy tunes composed by a surprisingly versatile Iwadare in a style and quality you might not expect from him. The fantasy medieval setting filled with humans, dwarves, light elves, dark elves, green goblins, black goblins, orcs, and more may sound like it's all too familiar, but Radiata Stories seems to unfailingly breathe new life into anything it touches.
Compared to VP2 and SO3, Radiata Stories has a battle system that is relatively simple, providing cleaner, faster play. For example, in battle you can only control Jack directly, and his only attacks are a a combo string of various moves that you put together before battle and two specialized moves that cost Volty Points; however, with four weapon types to choose from and about fifty moves in all for Jack, there's some variety yet. Also, Jack can issue commands to his allies in battle, such as "Be Bait", "Everyone Go Nuts", "Attack Enemy", and "Cure Friend", so in reality, when commands are combined with a unique Link system that offers specialized attack formations, the player has a substantial amount of indirect control over allies. Radiata Stories also offers the Game Over screen a lot less than other Tri-Ace games; expect moderately easy difficulty in a game less concerned with making you die (which is often a good thing) and more concerned with the superb environment and interaction between characters. Of course, many RPGs fall into the ridiculously easy category--that Radiata Stories is not, and some gamers do find themselves dying plenty enough. Fortunately, Radiata Stories is both well-translated and decently-voice acted--this combined with clever dialog and many memorable lines provides many legitimate laugh-out-loud moments. Unlike other games which can become desperately self-referential or maybe even overly zany like Earthbound (Mother), Radiata Stories' over-the-top yet grounded humor is well...funny.
One of many must-see scenes from the game: Jack's brigade encounters some Goblins early in the game as they're escorting a dwarf and some cargo
Jack Russell and the Plot
Jack, unlike 90% of RPG protagonists, isn't lame. He's not an honorable hero type, a loner, an emo with psychological issues, a prick, or your typical rogue. Although his late father was a hero in the Radiata Knights, Jack doesn't quite hold the same sensibilities. Instead, he's happy-go-lucky, brash, determined, cheerful, and not overly bright. While other RPG heroes inspect objects to look for hidden loot, Jack kicks objects (with the X button) irreverently. He can kick other people, too, if the mood strikes; after pissing somebody off by kicking them one too many times, he'll engage in a duel with them. But that's out of character--knocking (with Jack, more like banging) on doors just a little too loudly is more like it. No matter what happens, he's simply one of the most likeable characters around in all of gaming.
Despite Jack's demeanor, there are darker things afoot in the world--or rather, Radiata and the surrounding countryside including various farming villiages and fairy towns--, pieces falling into place and a conflict that must inevitably follow through. Friction between the different peoples around Radiata is mounting, a deadly disease seems to be recurring yet again, and the very balance of the world is shifting. These darker moments are interspersed throughout the game in a fashion that some have called schizophrenic, but they're merely reminders that the world is not all right, and our unlikely (or likely) hero in Jack, the same guy who is normally so cheerful, ends up in the middle of it all, the catalyst of greater forces. The actual story of the game is delivered with--although it may seem odd given the rest of the game--restraint and a good sense of pacing. Believe it or not, the plot isn't as superficial as it looks in the beginning, and surprisingly, Radiata Stories delivers a pretty good coming-of-age story with integrity about a guy who many have great expectations for, finding out how to make it his own way. How the game manages to both over-the-top funny and yet subtle at other times is something special that isn't quite emulated by any other game.
From left to right: Ridley, Jack, and Ganz (and head of some random), some of the main characters and members of the Rose Crochon Brigade
Other Characters
There are 177 usable characters in the game, from knights, farmers, townspeople, warrior guildsmen, bandit guildsmen, priests including martial arts monks, mages (of the human sort), light elves, dark elves, dwarves, green goblins, dark goblins, orcs, to the secret postgame character sort. Yes, 177. They are all playable, and you can use them in battle, unlike Suikoden's 108, some of which just operate the elevator in the castle or something. In battle, they all have their own unique set of attacks (generally 2-4) which may include combo strings that they use, each with different windup, attack damage multipliers, range, knockback, etc. They also have their own different tendencies towards passiveness and aggressiveness and, of course, different stats growths, starting stats, and equipment. However, stats may be misleading--some are quite strong statistically yet are passive and have sucky attacks (or attack really slow), so they're not actually that good; others look mediocre but have amazing attacks. Generally, a commander of Theater Vancoor, the warrior guild, is going to be stronger than an average farmer, but there's no way to know for sure except to try them out.
Aside from the few characters you do get automatically, you're going to have to recruit the rest. Some you simply talk to, and they'll be willing to become Jack's friend. Others are looking for a certain item and would be much obliged if you gave one to them. Yet others won't join unless you do some kind of favor for them or talk to them at a specific time. Some, being close to one or another one of your recruits, will only join if you've recruited someone else--or, in the case of guild leaders and such, you recruit every single person in their guild. Other recruiting processes take multiple steps or have even more unique conditions. Some characters also require you to best them in a one-on-one duel before they'll join. As a nice feature, the game keeps a nice little Friends List where you can look at short bios of everyone you've recruited, with a picture of your friend: for some characters who wear helmets habitually, this is the only time you see their faces.
A great, refreshing thing about fighting people is that whatever stats they have when you fight them is the exact same stats they have when they join you in battle. Radiata Stories doesn't do the whole omg you have 5000 HP when I fought you but only 400 like a mere mortal when you're on my team. They use the same attacks, same AI, etc. It's just natural.
Damage numbers are all over the place
Day and Night
Radiata Stories also features a time system wherein each minute of real time spent in the game not in a battle translates to something like 15 minutes on the game's clock, but it takes it a level past most games do. Each of the characters in the game including the hundred plus non-recruitable ones follows a daily schedule in all days that aren't dictated otherwise by the plot. For example, Adina's daily schedule taken from A Darkstar Ripclaw's FAQ (you can't see this in the game directly):+ Show Spoiler +
3:40-4:05am (Travels to Olacion Order Chapel) 4:05-5:45am (Olacion Order Chapel) 5:45-5:55am (Travels to Anastasia's Room) 5:55-8:00am (Anastasia's Room) 8:00-10:15am (Travels to San Patty Accessories) 10:15-12:00pm (San Patty Accessories) 12:00-12:45pm (Travels to Belmont General Store) 12:45-1:50pm (Belmont General Store) 1:50-3:30pm (Travels to Anastasia's Room) 3:30-6:00pm (Anastasia's Room) 6:00-7:00pm (Travels to Adina's House) 7:20-7:50pm (Travels to Morfinn's Clinic 2nd Floor) 7:50-9:50pm (Morfinn's Clinic 2nd Floor) 9:50-10:30pm (Travel's to Adina's House)
10:20pm-7:30am (Trainee's Room) 7:30-8:35am (Travels to Training Facility) 8:35-1:10pm (Training Facility) 1:10-2:50pm (Travels to Men's Toilet) 2:50-4:15pm (Men's Toilet) 4:15-5:55pm (Travels to Training Facility) 5:55-9:15pm (Training Facility) 9:15-10:20pm (Travels to Trainee's Room)
So in any given day, all of the characters in the game are walking around, doing their own routine. They often have different things to say throughout the day, and some can only be recruited at certain times. Also, where somebody goes is often a clue in how to recruit them--if you follow Adina around, you'll see who else she works with besides Anastasia and why she goes to Morfinn's Clinic after work. All town and field musics in the game actually have two versions, one thicker version with more instrumentation for the daytime hours and one thinner-scored version for the nighttime hours.
Missions
Radiata Stories doesn't cook up some half-baked reason for you being in some dungeon in the middle of nowhere (to get X item which is required for Y to foil the plans of Z). Instead, the majority of time in the game isn't spent doing anything central to the main plot at all, which frees the plot from being unnecessarily complex. You can either spend it just wandering around talking to people or looking at the nice environments, or you can sign up to do missions, for which you're rewarded money. It's kind of like FFXII's marks, except that the missions don't send you to areas you've already been in, the objective isn't always to destroy some monster, and they're overall not as lame.
Plot events and plot-related dungeons are interspersed throughout the game, with triggers to begin each. Sometimes it's a certain number of days that must pass, while other times it may be that one of the missions or a certain number of missions is required first. As such, there's often a sense that Jack is being pulled out of his ordinary life to deal with the harsher realities of the world around--he's not artificially and unrealistically the initiator of every single event in the entire world as is common in other RPGs, although Jack certainly becomes a major player.
Nice-looking scenery as you go about your day
Miscellany and Summary
There is actually a complete branch in the game about halfway through. Thus, it's not possible to recruit all 177 characters in one game, although you can do it within two plays. Some argue that one plot branch seems like more of the "canon" one, while the other is more of a "what if?" scenario, and that might be a realistic interpretation of the two. In any case, the endings are different, as are the events that play out to the end, although some of the areas are shared between the two. It's interesting to have two different looks at the same general sequence of events depending on which route you take. Again, I supply to you two tracks from the game that are indicative of the game's style, for educational and demonstrative purposes only. They can be found here and here. Again, they will be taken down upon request.
If you didn't bother, do bother and watch the second YouTube video on this page, as it's a good indication of what the game is like.
Radiata Stories is a great game that simply does many things that other games probably should. And it does them well. Running around in the world, testing out new characters, and watching some truly pro cutscenes are all fun parts of a game that really deserves to be recognized more. It's a game that sits well while playing and sits pleasantly as a game that's been beaten, one that may be more palatable than other games by the same developer to those weaker of heart but with its own unique magic all the same. There's nothing to disappoint here except a lack of a difficult challenge and the relative lack of depth in the battle system--however, neither would fit in place in this game anyway. As such, Radiata Stories is the premiere light-hearted RPG adventure, the best of its kind.
This wraps up this week's review. No poll this time. I decided not to add X out of Y rankings for plot/battles/music/etc. despite last week's poll indicating some desire for such for a few reasons: (1) all the games reviewed I think are great (2) there's a huge range of years between the games, so what's 7/10 graphics on a two-year-old or a ten-year-old game supposed to mean? (3) such numbers artificially separate the elements that comprise a game when in reality games aren't equal to the sum of their parts.
Platform: SNES Genre: RPG, turn-based battles Developer: Neverland Publisher: Taito (JP), Natsume (US), Nintendo (EU) Japanese Release Date: 02/24/95 ? US Release Date: ??/??/96 ? EU Release Date: ??/??/96 ?
note: 02/23/95 is what is listed some places online for US release date, but the US game itself says copyright 1996; also, finding nice pictures for an older game is difficult, so I apologize for the small picture size (the box art looks like typical terrible SNES box art, so here's the title screen)
Other games by Neverland: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, Chaos Seed, Energy Breaker, Lufia: The Legend Returns, CIMA: The Enemy, Shining Force Neo, Shining Force Exa among others notably - not Lufia: The Ruins of Lore, not all other Shining games; there's been significant staff turnaround, and Lufia II is probably their most famous title anyway
Developer Credits: (incomplete; from GameFAQs page, credit ClaudeLv250, ky907, a0me, odino, and lufiaguy) + Show Spoiler +
Scenario Composer Masahide Miyata Main Programmer Akihiro Suzuki Battle Programmer Takuya Nagami Camp Programmer Kiyochika Watanabe Monster Designer Tomonari Matsumoto Dungeon Designer Samichi Sugiura Character Designer Ryu Kurugami City Designer Takehito Suzuki Music Composer Yasunori Shiono Map Constuctor Takashi Miyasaka Casino Programmer Asuka Shiranui XLION Engineer Naoyuki Ukeda Program Director Makoto Takada
What is this game?
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is--despite the release date fiasco at the top of the page--a popular cult hit SNES RPG, a game featuring many puzzles in its dungeons. It's the prequel of Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, set 99 (or is it 100?) years before the original in your typical roughly-medeival fantasy setting of towns, castles, caves, dungeons, towers, and the like. Our protagonist this time is a red-haired swordsman by the name of Maxim, the direct ancestor of the hero of the original Lufia game. Thankfully, despite Maxim being a cliché heroic, sword-wielding protagonist, he and the other characters of the game are outfitted with surprisingly (for an SNES game) lively dialog sprinkled with enough humor such that doing one good deed after another in a path to saving the world doesn't actually feel too old. Two examples picked for no particular reason:
"I thought the idea was to put the knife into the wedding cake and not into monsters!" "Fool! I'm the oldest and strongest of jellies!"
In Lufia II there are seven playable characters, although a maximum of four is in your party at all times. The plot determines which characters you use at which point in the game, and thus your party composition changes fairly frequently, similar to a game like FF2/4j. Like in games of the time, each character has six equipment slots, and different equipment can be equipped by everyone, some people, or just one person, creating good deal of flexibility in how to arrange the goods among characters. Lufia II is also one of the few SNES RPGs that progressively don't have random regular enemy encounters in dungeons (yes, there still are random encounters on the world map). But no, it's not implemented by having static enemies: more on that later.
Intro cutscene--the actual plot as a whole isn't that interesting, especially the villians, so this isn't an indication of the game's quality
Dungeon Exploration
There are two things you'll instantly notice when walking around: (1) Maxim moves pretty fast across the screen and (2) movement is tile-based, the second of which is central to interacting with both enemies and puzzles. In dungeons, enemies appear on the screen and walk around as you do; in fact, they only move whenever you move or take another action (e.g. swinging sword, which cuts grass or just wastes an action, which can be useful). Generally, enemies move one tile every time you move one tile or take an action, although some enemies move less frequently, and others yet move a scary two tiles to your one. As is familiar to players of modern RPGs, if you run into an enemy, you're taken into a fight with it. Also, how you collide with the enemy determines who gets first strike, or if the battle begins normally.
This is good: keke......................................This is bad: T_T
However, there are also other field actions that Maxim can do, like shoot arrows, set bombs, shoot a grappling hook, etc. Some of these can be used to hit enemies and stun them temporarily, which helps you a lot when 10 enemies are chasing you in the same room. However, they are also used extensively in the puzzles scattered throughout dungeons.
'Sup guys (some rooms are more crowded, most are less)
Puzzles
Puzzles in Lufia II may be as simple as pushing a column onto a button in the middle of a room to make a door open, and they may be as difficult as this: Move blocks around until the 2x2 square is in front of Maxim...guess what's your reward!
They are truly the mainstay of this great game, bringing fresh life into an otherwise decent but not outstanding RPG. Many of them are required to be completed to finish the game, while others are off in the sides of a room, often with a piece of shiny new equipment to reward you for your efforts. Some are quite easy, while the hardest may take several minutes or perhaps even longer; however, none are difficult enough to be ultimately frustrating. The game contains every puzzle type in the book and then some more. Many puzzles are intuitive, like needing to move blocks a certain way to be able to reach the switch for the door. But even the other ones, even without any text descriptions, become quickly clear in objective and rules as you fail the first time. Others yet build on prior knowledge of the game's workings. Just know that the game gives you infinite tries, and there's always the room reset button to clear you of your latest embarassment.
It may look unfamiliar, but you'll solve it in 15 seconds as you quickly figure out what's going on
IP System
Equipment in Lufia II does not necessarily just grant boosts to stats. Many pieces of equipment, especially those found in dungeons, allow the wearers the use of IP skills in battle. IP skills are special abilities or actions that are more potent than most regular attacks and spells. IP skills may be as bland as a special attack for 1.5x damage and Ice element or as situational as a mirror that reflects enemy attacks for a very short period of time. Others may give healing or stat boosting options to character who has no magic at all. In any case, some equipment as them, and others don't; also, some weaker equipment may have useful skills that will make you want to equip them even when you have statistically stronger other equipment. And in other cases, you may hang on to a weapon just because its IP skill is an attack that does exceptional damage against lizards, for example.
To use IP skills, you must use up some of your IP gauge, a third bar in battle in addition to a character's HP and MP. Whenever a character takes damage, the bar increases by a little. The more damage a character takes, the more the bar increases, except when a character dies completely in which case the bar resets to zero. Of course, better skills use up more if not all of the meter. Thus, IP skills add strategic depth and planning to the game beyond the ordinary magic skillset seen in most games.
What a useful Guy
Capsule Monsters
Throughout the world, there are seven capsule monsters. They're useful creatures that you can feed and put into your party for battle, although you're limited to only using one. There is a capsule monster for each element in the game: fire, water, wind, earth, dark, light, physical. Each has a different set of attacks that they choose from randomly--you can't control them directly, but they're all still marginally to somewhat useful compared to your real party members. Each has four tiers and then a secret fifth special tier of development, gaining stronger and stronger attacks as they progress. To make them grow, you must feed them equipment and sometimes items. However, they're picky eaters and will only grow from stronger equipment (generally rare stuff you're no longer using) and the best of items. Keep in mind that doing this is all optional, and for the record, the first Pokémon games were released the year after Lufia II. All in all, the capsule monsters are a somewhat interesting distraction, an alternative old equipment sink other than the sell screen in a shop.
The Ancient Cave
Somewhere in the middle of the game, an optional dungeon opens up for you to explore. However, it's no ordinary dungeon: it's a 100 floor randomly-generated dungeon. Like all of the dungeons in Lufia III and I think some SMT game and others, each floor of this dungeon and this dungeon alone in Lufia II has objects, chests, and enemies scattered randomly about. Each time you enter, all of the rooms will be different. The only thing that's certain is that each floor will always have a staircase leading down--that is, except for the final floor. When you go into the Ancient Cave, you lose all of your levels, equipment, items, and spells. In fact, the Ancient Cave can be thought of as a stand-alone separate game. You'll have to grind your way through enemies, avoiding the most dangerous ones but fighting the rest so you'll be strong enough to handle the next level, all the while frantically looking for chests for weapons and armor to equip yourself with and spells (especially healing spells!). Recovery items and MP are usually in short supply, yet if you become a master of the dungeon, you'll have a good shot of making it all the way to the bottom. Typical end levels after fighting through hours of this dungeon to the end go up to the low 90's. It's a long and fun adventure of its own, and often a cruel, cruel world much more challenging than the main game.
Miscellany and Summary
Spells in this game aren't learned upon level-ups but rather bought from stores for individual characters to use. Because the game really isn't too difficult (and that's my only real complaint with the game), you probably won't be level grinding any. Thus, you'll be short of cash and will have to make smart decisions about who to buy equipment and spells for. Note that only some characters can use certain spells, and others can use no spells at all. Maxim, for example, stereotypically is an above-average fighter with above-average stats and a spell selection that includes a decent amount of healing and just some attack magic. Also, Lufia II is unique in that spells can be targeted on all enemies, some enemies, one enemy, all allies, some allies, or one ally. Maybe you want to increase the attack of Maxim, Guy, and Dekar, but not Selan. Well, you can--you can literally choose whatever combination like that you want.
After you beat the game once, this unlocks a New Game+ mode, in which you gain extra money and experience (IIRC) for each fight, thus making the game a lot easier. It's meant to let you breeze through the game again. After you beat this mode, you unlock Gift Mode. This allows you to choose your exact party to play the Ancient Cave with. Normally in the course of the game you must use the characters you have in your party as dictated by the plot. However, Gift Mode allows you to choose a better optimized party, an all-male team, a duo, or solo challenge: whatever combination you'd like.
As stated previously, Lufia II's nothing but a solid game made even better with good puzzle and dungeon design. As you can see, the graphics are pretty good, a couple upgrades up if not more from the original Lufia title, the kind of nice-looking 16-bit graphics you expect from the late SNES era. For once, you see that I don't highlight the music composer's name in the developer credits list. Nevertheless, don't be alarmed--the tracks are also pretty good for the most part and they fit the situations well . In fact, there's little that can go wrong by playing Lufia II: it's a rare game that's good and appeals to most everyone (who plays RPGs).
This concludes this week's post. Happy gaming, and here's a bonus poll to send you off. As always, especially with the "Other" option, please leave comments below.
Poll: Should I change the review format any? (Vote): Score games with numbers, like music - 8/10, plot 6/10 (Vote): Make more well-defined sections (Vote): I like it the way it is (Vote): Other
edit: changed the intro movie to the English version (I think, didn't watch it myself). Also, just to note, Lufia & the Fortress of Doom (Lufia 1) is a solid if primitive-looking SNES game in its own right. It's one of the harder games on the SNES, requiring some level grinding. Also, Lufia: The Legend Returns is surprisingly good for a Game Boy Color game. The battle system is pretty interesting in that you field 9 characters (out of like 15 available or so by the end of the game) in a fight in a 3x3 grid, and position determines stat boosts and other things. Only one character in each column can act in each turn, so the way you place your characters and distribute equipment is quite interesting.
~the end of an era, to challenge the gods themselves--the best RPG of the PS2's final years
Platform: Playstation 2 Genre: RPG, action-based battles Developer: tri-Ace Publisher: Square Enix Japanese Release Date: 06/22/06 US Release Date: 09/26/06 EU Release Date: 09/14/07 (upcoming)
Previous games by tri-Ace: Radiata Stories (PS2), Star Ocean: Till the End of time (PS2), Valkyrie Profile (PSX, port on PSP subtitled "Lenneth"), Star Ocean: The Second Story (PSX), Star Ocean (SNES, JP only); also, before the team broke off from Namco, Tales of Phantasia (SNES, JP only)
Developer Credits: (from GameFAQs page, credit EmperorBrandon, Kouli, MasterDabura, skytraveler, irishrpgfan, The_Mana_Legend, Ubersuntzu, and Setis) + Show Spoiler +
Music Composer Motoi Sakuraba [aside from all the above tri-Ace games except Radiata Stories: Tales of Symphonia among other Tales games, Camelot Software Planning's games, Baten Kaitos, etc.] Game Designer Masaki Norimoto Planning Takashi Sato Planning Masahiro Nishida Lead Programmer Shigeru Ueki Battle Programmer Yuichiro Kitao Lead R&D Programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda Sound Yusaburo Shimojo Art Director Eiko Sawamura FMV Director Kenichi Kanckura Director Takayuki Suguro
Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria is a highly strategic, challenging, and deep console RPG, showcasing the technical limits of the PS2 as well as the talented developers' own growing maturity. Loosely based upon the untamed world of Norse Mythology, Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria--from here on out, referred to as VP2--is the prequel to the original Valkyrie Profile, a classic which still sells well over a hundred dollars on eBay. Like all other games by the same developer, VP2 is a traditional console RPG with a largely linear progression aside from the several optional dungeons scattered throughout, filled with towns to explore, townspeople to talk to, the occasional witty comment, shops, dungeons, threats of world destruction, and the like. Also like other games by tri-Ace, it features an action-based battle system, this time an improvement of the original VP's four-character timed button presses that takes the series into the 3D fighting arena, requiring sharp tactical play.
In VP2, you control a dainty but resolute princess of Dipan in Alicia, a girl whose body, due to a grave mishap of an ancient rite of rebirth, also houses the soul of the Valkyrie Silmeria, youngest of the three goddess sisters who must gather the souls of the brave and virtuous to prepare an army for the inevitable Ragnarok, the end of the world and battle between the gods and giants. However, Silmeria isn't all too pleased with her duties under Odin, and she guides and has been training Alicia since childbirth along a path to defy the gods themselves. King Barbarossa of Dipan, as well, also seeks to oppose Odin, the All-Father who in this retelling of Norse Mythology may be tyrannical as well as wise. The play is set for a conflict that will literally decide the fate of Midgard.
Intro movie (although the rest of the game isn't really like this)--guess what the voices are
Einherjar System
Like in VP, throughout the course of the game you collect the souls of dead warriors, called Einherjar, who become your party members to use as you please, materialized into flesh and blood before every battle to aid you. However, whereas VP focused on the tragic deaths of these people, VP2 focuses on bringing them back to life and the second lives you grant them. This is how VP2 balances having a cast of 52 playable characters--40 of them are Einherjar who have no bearing on the main plot of the game, whereas the rest (although some only are playable in the post-game dungeon or near the end of the game) are living people who the plot revolves around.
In battle, Einherjar are used indistinguishably from plot characters, except that plot characters are more likely to have unique attacks within their attack sets--in any case, plot characters are not necessarily any stronger (actually, often weaker) than the best Einherjar. The game allows you to use any combination of your characters to form a four-person team: even Alicia can be left out of the party.
Dungeon Exploration
In VP2, "Profile" refers not only to the view with which we examine the protagonist's character, but also the mode of dungeon and town exploration. That's right: VP2's dungeons are still explored as a 2D puzzle platformer, even though the graphics in this installment are 3D. You can exit rooms sometimes into the screen, out of the screen, or to the left or right, and dungeons may be very convoluted--thankfully to some, the game provides a map of areas you've already been in before. Enemies can be seen on the screen in dungeons in a typical fashion where different enemies have different patterns of chasing after you. Touching them or hitting them results in initiating combat in a separate screen from the dungeon; if you bump into one you're likely to get ambushed for your first turn of battle, but you'll start the battle normally if you initiate combat yourself. There are two things you can do other than run around and swing the sword: jump and shoot photons.
Photons provide the puzzle element to the platforming. Alicia can shoot these projectiles that when striking a certain object like a pillar or an enemy, freezes them for several seconds. Photons bounce three times off of walls before fizzling out. However, if a photon hits an already frozen object or enemy, that object and Alicia will swap places on the map. To progress through dungeons or get to treasure chests or unlockable Einheriar, you'll be required to take full advantage of this swapping. By the end of the game, you'll be photon-swapping enemies from one area to another side of the screen, jumping, shooting in mid-air, swapping with frozen enemies, swapping again with enemies that are falling where you used to be, and so on…perhaps all within a single "puzzle." Of course, due to the organic nature of the system, each puzzle--more like, how do you get to the other side of the room or that high ledge--can be solved in a variety of ways, some much easier to execute than others.
Also of note is the Sealstone system, which quickly becomes intuitive as you play but is difficult to explain. Sealstones are found in dungeons, and they have various effects like boosting your attack power by 25%, turning your attacks into ice element, making your indirect attacks stronger at the expense of your movement speed, etc. Some of them have positive effects, while others have negative effects, and yet others have neutral or mixed effects. You can pick them up at your will, although there are certain restrictions. While you are carrying them, the effects are active on your characters; however, if you place them on a pedestal, they'll instead go into effect on all enemies in the area. As such, sealstones become integral to planning boss strategies--in a rudimentary example, maybe you want to turn your characters into fire attribute while turning the boss into ice, thus making you both deal more damage to each other.
Battle System
The battle system, the heart of the game, is too detailed to describe here. Perhaps the most important attribute is this: button-mashing or fighting without abandon will get you totally destroyed, whereas with skill and planning you can finish many battles without taking a single hit. This discrepancy in results between good and bad play is what distinguishes it from much weaker games, where it's painfully obvious what you need to do at all times. However, some highlights are still in order.
Rufus's Three-way Attack (erm, I don't use Rufus, but I think that's what the attack is) consumed 6 AP
The first thing you notice is that enemies don't move unless you do. That is, you can plan everything out before you decide to execute it, as time stops while you're not moving or doing an action. You can move all characters together in a group or split them up--in either case, they only move as you control them, unlike in other action RPGs. Also, you can see enemies' attack ranges in front of them; if you step into them and it's been long enough since an enemy's last attack, it'll attack you. Different attacks have different attack ranges as well as patterns (a fan, circle, line, etc.). Also, some enemy combinations may have leaders, and killing the leader wins you the fight instantly, which you may be rewarded for if you do so quickly.
The entire party shares one AP bar that has 100 max. Actions such as casting spells from the menu or attacking deplete it, while running around or getting hit by an enemy (both of which take time) raise it. You can also execute a dash that uses 15 AP; this can be used to jump over enemy attack ranges to get near them without getting hit first yourself. Using items also uses 15 AP--also, note that after using an item or a spell, there's a recovery time before you're able to access your menu again, a time that mussed be passed by walking, attacking, getting attacked, etc., so you must ration item usage well.
Each character is assigned to a different face button on the PS2 controller. Once you're close enough, you initiate an attack chain by hitting a character's button. Each character can select up to three attacks (limited by weapon, some stronger weapons may only allow one or two attacks) before battle to use. Once you select an attack, the character goes to attack, and you can start hitting other characters' buttons at any time during the chain, having them go to attack as well. You can have each character attack as many times as they have attacks equipped, although soon the game will allow you to overattack with characters.
The attacks actually work similar to those in fighting games--they have different startup and recovery times, damage multipliers, AP costs, and directions they swipe in. Some moves even launch or ground bounce the enemy; if you hit an enemy lying on the ground you get some AP back, and if you hit an enemy in the air you get extra experience. Also, there's a second meter, a Heat gauge that goes up as you hit the enemy but returns to zero once a chain is finished; however, if you end a chain with 100 Heat, then you'll be able to chain on some Soul Crushes at the end. Of course, some weapons don't allow Soul Crushes, so that's another consideration when picking weapons. Each character starts with 3 different attacks and eventually learns 10 total by leveling up. Seeing as there's about 130 different attacks scattered among 52 characters, there's a lot more differences between characters than simply stats, equipment selection, and spell selection.
Another interesting aspect is that each enemy has multiple hittable body parts, each with a separate HP bar and defense values, along with the total HP of the enemy. An enemy may have 5000 HP, but one of its claws may have 1500, its head 2500, and its body 3000, among others. Damage you deal does damage into the total HP as well as the body parts HP--if you kill the claw by moving around the enemy and using attacks that hit in that certain area rather than sweep too low or high, then the claw dies. And then its dual claw attack will only hit once. Or if you kill a lizard mans feet, you'll debilitate its movement. Of course, if you can manage to kill a "vital" part like a body or head, that's an instant KO even without doing the enemy's full HP in damage. Also, different body parts drop different items when they're destroyed, and these accessories can be equipped or combined in predetermined recipes in stores to yield strong equipment.
A very easy first boss with an overpowered party, Japanese version By the way, you can change the camera view not to be retarded like that.
Miscellany and Summary
Skills are learned in VP2 from combinations of equipment. Instead of a equipment housing a skill, most pieces of equipment have a rune associated with them. Each character can equip nine things on a grid, and connecting runes yield learnable skills. For example, equipment with the blue runes Head, Arm, Activation, and Resistance let you learn Free Item, a skill that costs 3 CP and lets you use items without the 15 AP cost. However, each character has a limited amount of CP with which to equip skills (and there are many skills to learn), which when learned are selectable by that character only.
If the game was too easy for you the first time, because you spent a lot of time getting useful skills, equipment, and such, each successive time you play through the game until it caps at the 51st time, the enemies get boosts to stats: 1.2x HP, 1.5x Atk, 1.2x Hit, 1.2x Rdm, Avd, Rst after the first time, up to 15.9x HP, 26x Atk, 6.1x Hit, 1.3x Rdm, Avd, Rst for those of you who are really really dedicated and also Japanese. Boss strategies that work the first time may not work the second, as the game becomes less forgiving. You'll have to rely more on sneaky tactics like getting hit intentionally by weaker enemies to recover AP instead of getting clobbered by the strongest enemy around as well as extreme powergaming in min/maxing (more like just maxing). There's also an extensive postgame dungeon that gets harder each time you beat it as well, up to 10 times.
The music in this game has more orchestral, subdued tracks than the original VP, which was filled with a lot of nice metal-like tracks. Sakuraba back in the 80's released a progressive rock album (no vocals), so that's his background, I suppose. I think the music here is not quite as good as usual for him, which still translates into pretty damn good as far as game music goes. For example here is the regular battle music (sh! I'll take it down if I'm asked to) for reference.
All in all, the game is fairly solidly crafted, with a great battle system, graphics, music, etc. The puzzles, fighting, and planning all require some reasonable thought, and there are many ways to design your team--all of which may change from one fight to the next as you decide you need different strengths. Tri-Ace has delivered real depth of gameplay, something fresh in a world of A button mashing, a commonplace scenario even in turn-based RPGs. The only real disappointment is the plot, which really turns out to be mediocre or slightly better--it's worse than the original VP here. And that's not much of a disappointment at all to detract from a stellar game.
This concludes my second review in what's shaping to be probably a weekly column. Time for a poll, for kicks:
Poll: Did you read the whole thing? (Vote): Yes. (Vote): Mostly. (Vote): A little. (Vote): No.
Translation Derrick Sobodash (system text, Initial path, some Light and Independent, all secrets) Eddie Stemkowski (most of Light path) Hsing “DragonMasterX” Chen (some Imperial, all of Chaos, most of Independent) Benjamin Whitting (some of Imperial) ElfShadow (some of Light and Imperial) Haruka (Epilogues)
Editing and Localization John “MK” Grathwohl (testing and editing to reflect who is speaking) Derrick Sobodash (style, formatting, second-pass editing) Tyson Anderson (editing of the entire game) Eric H. Krieger (editing of Initial path)
Graphics Derrick Sobodash (logos, new ending, all fonts used, window colors)
Instruction Manual Derrick Sobodash Original Developer Credits
Executive Producer Mitsuo Shibutani
Programmers Kazuhisa Mitani Kouichi Fujiwara
Planning and Scenario Fuuma Yatou Masayuki Suzuki Hiroaki Hori Akira Hazuki
Der Langrisser is an excellent strategy RPG set in your typical medieval-styled fantasy world, a game in the somewhat known Langrisser series, an extensive remake of Langrisser II. Langrisser I was released in the US as Warsong on the Genesis; the rest of the games are pretty much Japan-only and also released on Sega consoles. As for the title of this remake, the Japanese just think German is cool or something (e.g. Xenosaga's subtitles like Der Wille zur Macht); don't think too much about it. The English translations for this game has been going on and off for 10 years, with different people starting and dropping projects, until one team finally pulled through and finished the translation just recently. For those of you not familiar with the scene, by "translation patch" I mean something you take with a nifty utility to merge with an original Japanese ROM or cart, resulting in a completely translated game with all of the Japanese translated by hand into English and hacked into the original so that it plays like it had an official translation shipped offshores.
Der Langrisser follows many conventions of the genre that you're probably familiar with. On any given turn, you can select each one of your units to move to anywhere within its movement range--mounted units can move farther than foot units on the road, but both are slowed down by water or mountains, while air units have no mobility restrictions--and upon finishing movement, can initiate combat with an adjacent enemy unit. Terrain plays a factor also in giving defense bonuses: a fort or a forest provides better cover than a field. After you move all your units or elect to end your turn, it's the enemy's turn to be controlled by the CPU for all of their actions. The outcome of a battle is determined by whose units have better stats, what terrain and unit type considerations there are, and a little bit of variance due to luck. Standard TRPG rules apply: infantry > pike > cavalry > infantry in a classic weapon triangle, archers > flying, sea units get bonuses in water, priest units > monster and undead type, etc.; a weaker pike unit will still beat a horse unit, although if the cavalry is far superior they'll come out on top. Some characters can also cast healing, offensive, support, or summon magic for their turns. In one scenario you may have a winning condition like killing all enemies or killing a certain enemy; when a scenario is won you advance to the next. When you begin the game, there's even a character creation quiz that will determine the main character's stats, first class, magic, etc., something along the lines of the Ogre Battle series.
In this game, you follow and control the actions of a young traveling swordsman by the name of Erwin. The lands of El Sallia are again torn by war, with an ambitious Kaiser Bernhardt seeking to unite all under his rule. But inevitably, in his search for power, the cursed sword Alhazzard, with the power over demons, and the sword of light Langrisser will again be centerpieces in the ages-old struggle between the Descendants of Light, the demon hordes, and this time, a powerful man with his own vision of the future. What will Erwin's role be in the ensuing conflict? The following video shows the introduction of the game after a minute or so:
Der Langrisser may at first just seem another mediocre game in the genre, but it's how it implements those standard components with features of its own that make it the worthwhile title it is.
Branching storyline
Unlike the other games in the Langrisser series, Der Langrisser features a full branching storyline. Langrisser II, in fact, which Der Langrisser is based on, is fairly close to what the Light path is. Which path you go down is determined by Erwin's answers to questions and on-field actions. There are four separate main branches: Light, Imperial, Independent, and Dark, each with a different ending, and each with different levels and enemies to subdue. For example, in the popular Independent path, Erwin's ideals lead him to making enemies of the forces of Light, the Kaiser himself and his legendary generals, and the demon hordes. Each path has a different set of playable characters--some may even be former teammates. In the Imperial path, you get to use many of the Imperial generals that you'd be fighting in another path. To give you an idea of the extent of the branching, which includes sub branches of some of the larger paths, the first branch occurs after scenario 7, each path is 21 scenarios long (except for a couple optional secret ones), and there are 78 scenarios in the game.
The game's plot is surprisingly interesting, albeit not exactly a true masterpiece. However, the branching paths allow for different vantage points with which to see the characters interact. How the game reveals the underlying motivations of many of the characters differs by the differing paths. One great thing about the game is that nobody is purely evil, and many antagonists prove to be the most noble of foes, fighting only for their ideals. In fact, the goal of almost everyone, including Erwin on his various paths, is lasting peace. Ironically--and the game explores the irony--all factions must wage war to end war their own way.
Many characters have such things to say before handing your ass to you
Character selection and development
There are 18 playable characters in the game spread amongst the different paths, and each path only gives you 8 at the most. There's also a branching character development scheme in this game and the rest of the series--for example, Liana's character progression paths look like this:
You get experience in this game for killing enemies, and after ten levels in one class, you get the two options for your next class. If she's a Paladin and hits level 10, she can either go to Saint or Mage; Priest goes to High Priest or Sage. She starts as a Sister, which has healing spells. There are mage type, priest type, flying type, lord type, swordman type, water type, cavalry type, and other kinds of classes. Each class gives the character different stat bonuses, spells (some have no magic), movement range, troops, etc. Generally, the classes with lots of helpful magic suck more in actual combat. It's actually fairly well balanced. As you can see, Liana has the option with staying with healing magic. However, going to Cleric and down to ArchMage will give her a couple decent heal spells and a good summon as well as ArchMage's great area effect attack magic in Meteor.
All characters have their own unique set of possible routes--most have more physical classes than Liana, who as the main female lead gets more spellcasting options. There are about 60 different classes, but there's a good deal of overlap among the characters. Thus, you can balance your party however you want: certain playstyles may value offensive magic more and send more people to become mage classes--of course, several units don't have a single mage class. Each character can equip a weapon and armor/accessory; equipment selection is also determined by class. Combining this flexible character development system with the branching storyline gives you a lot of options when playing this game. Two more sample class progressions for reference: + Show Spoiler +
Commander/Troop System
Before each scenario, as in other Langrisser games, you have to buy ordinary troops with your money for each commander. So in Der Langrisser, you control not only the commanders (the plot characters with the branching development paths detailed above) but ordinary generic troops under each commander. This allows for more flexibility in battle strategy, and more epic, large-scale battles, as generics are expendable. Which troops each character can buy, however, depends on the character's class--each new class gives a different set of troop types to choose from. Lords can buy either basic infantry or basic pikemen, while the mounted Silver Knight can buy troopers on horses. However, as your characters progress, multiple types of troops often become available, so you can place your characters and buy troops pre-battle according to the scenario at hand. Each commander is limited to 3 to 6 troops to buy for each scenario, the number depending on the class path.
Each commander has his or her own command range, the area in which the commander's commander stat bonuses apply to hired troops. Troops in the command range of the commander gain a stat bonus dependant on that commander's class. For example, a High Lord gives +3 Atk/+4 Def to all troops within a range of 3. This applies to enemy commanders as well, of course.
At the start of a turn, all troops adjacent to their commander will gain 3 HP; this is useful free healing without the
