Postby Kaori » Tue Jun 18, 2013 1:47 am
Metroid II: 100% item completion, but my time is still 35 minutes away from the best ending. I guess I should try saving time by skipping some of the items--I don't really need all 250 missiles, for example. But mainly I just need to be more skilled.
Final Fantasy Legend III. A bit of history: this game is a sci-fi/fantasy JRPG released for Game Boy in 1991 and should more properly be called SaGa 3, the third entry in the series that includes the SaGa Frontier games and Unlimited Saga. However, for marketing reasons it was released in the US as Final Fantasy Legend III. While all the other games in the SaGa series were headed by Akitoshi Kawazu, Kawazu did not head up this game because at the time he was working on the SaGa series's debut on Super Famicom: Romancing SaGa. As a result, the distinctive SaGa growth system, in which character growth is based on what skills you use (just like in real life!) is replaced by a generic level-based approach. Apparently there were also some significant changes made in localization, but I played the American version because that's what I own.
I've had this game for a long time and was never able to get all the way through it (usually I got stuck on a boss and wasn't willing to do the grinding to get past it, or I set the game aside for a little while and then forgot what I was supposed to do next). But I recently picked up the DS remakes of SaGa 2 and 3 and decided I really ought to beat the original SaGa 3 first before playing the remake. Largely thanks to the fast-forward button on my emulator, I was finally able to do so.
Negative points about this game include the extremely sparse plot and characterization (typical of early RPGs, NPCs mostly just tell you what you need in order to know what to do next), the monster sprites that keep getting reused over and over again, the generic level-based growth system that makes this game distinctly un-SaGa-like, and the way that players are steered into fighting the last two battles in one particular way, which ends up being a bit boring. Combat is so-so, and if you examine the time travel aspects of the plot very closely, it turns out to be full of holes. The six-class system in which you can make your humans and mutants into robots, cyborgs, beasts, or monsters is sort of interesting I guess, but I can't comment on it too much because in my entire game I didn't really try out the robot/cyborg side of things.
Good points include the boss sprites, most of which are detailed and look really great for the Game Boy platform, and the dungeons which likewise are about as creative as it’s possible to get with the platform’s limitations. But absolutely the best part about this game is that basically the whole plot revolves around your going around to assemble parts and crew members for a time-traveling fighter jet. Then you get to fly around in it. It comes when you call it with your Remote, it attacks your enemies, it occasionally acts on its own because it has a human brain, and
SPOILER: Highlight text to read: it comes to help you during the final boss battle. If you don't think that's awesome, you need to revise your definition of "awesome" to include time-traveling fighter jets.
Really looking forward to playing the remake. 魔界塔士サ・ガ万歳!
Let others believe in the God who brings men to trial and judges them. I shall cling to the God who resurrects the dead.
-St. Nikolai Velimirovich
MAL