A whirlwind of confusing nonsense tied together by a genuinely pretty cool setting. The core idea of Final Fantasy Legend (or SaGa, if you prefer) is that entirely different eras of mankind co-exist, separated by floors in this giant spire in the center of the world. The higher you go, the farther along the timeline you travel, and at the absolute zenith lies paradise. That kind of imagery ties helps paint a picture of your mission more than just about any actual dialogue in the game will.
Most NPCs have two lines of dialogue for you at the max, and text boxes open as a glitchy mess with the start menu bleeding through. The presentation is not only simple but usually ugly, and the game doesn't bother to render multiple troops of the same monster. If you're fighting five skeletons, you will see one skeleton on screen with a number "5" in the corner. So it looks bad, sounds fairly average, and it's severely limited by the hardware. Does it at least play well? Honestly, that's up to interpretation. The balancing of the economic system is awful, as inns charge 1 GP per HP they replenish, but a 3-pack of potions that heal ~40 health costs 50 GP. Almost nothing in this game is nice to you, especially the encounter rate, which lead dev Akitoshi Kawazu cranked UP compared to the mainline FF series.
The combat and leveling system is all sorts of fucked too, but I guarantee that insane spreadsheet minmaxers could break this game in half. There are three major types of party member - humans, mutants, and monsters - and they all level differently. Humans need to be upgraded with expensive items and do not evolve in combat. The cheapest item costs three fights worth of coin and that's not taking into account the health you'll have to pay to regain. Mutants gain a random (yes, you read that right) amount of experience after each battle, and have four ability slots that randomly populate and repopulate with either useful stuff or total bullshit. Essentially they are a wildcard with massive health pools. Finally, we have the monsters, who level by eating the flesh of the monsters you defeat. Monsters also have an element of randomness to them, as what you eat and what you are have correlate to some ridiculous branching paths of animal development. If you play it blind, there's a good chance most things you eat will make you weaker.
So, to re-cap - your character's path to getting stronger is either expensive as hell or completely random. Nice.
The game was developed to be beaten in the duration of a single red-eye flight, and the runtime is probably 8-10 hours if you poke around everywhere like me. But honestly, nobody will blame you if you tap out early. It is impossible to tell what is coming next, and it often feels like you have to manipulate the game into being kind to you. It did kick off an entire series of SaGa RPGs that I'll eventually get to, but this did not leave a particularly good taste of what's to come.
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A whirlwind of confusing nonsense tied together by a genuinely pretty cool setting. The core idea of Final Fantasy Legend (or SaGa, if you prefer) is that entirely different eras of mankind co-exist, separated by floors in this giant spire in the center of the world. The higher you go, the farther along the timeline you travel, and at the absolute zenith lies paradise. That kind of imagery ties helps paint a picture of your mission more than just about any actual dialogue in the game will.
Most NPCs have two lines of dialogue for you at the max, and text boxes open as a glitchy mess with the start menu bleeding through. The presentation is not only simple but usually ugly, and the game doesn't bother to render multiple troops of the same monster. If you're fighting five skeletons, you will see one skeleton on screen with a number "5" in the corner. So it looks bad, sounds fairly average, and it's severely limited by the hardware. Does it at least play well? Honestly, that's up to interpretation. The balancing of the economic system is awful, as inns charge 1 GP per HP they replenish, but a 3-pack of potions that heal ~40 health costs 50 GP. Almost nothing in this game is nice to you, especially the encounter rate, which lead dev Akitoshi Kawazu cranked UP compared to the mainline FF series.
The combat and leveling system is all sorts of fucked too, but I guarantee that insane spreadsheet minmaxers could break this game in half. There are three major types of party member - humans, mutants, and monsters - and they all level differently. Humans need to be upgraded with expensive items and do not evolve in combat. The cheapest item costs three fights worth of coin and that's not taking into account the . Mutants gain a random (yes, you read that right) amount of experience after each battle, and have four ability slots that randomly populate and repopulate with either useful stuff or total bullshit. Essentially they are a wildcard with massive health pools. Finally, we have the monsters, who level by eating the flesh of the monsters you defeat. Monsters also have an element of randomness to them, as what you eat and what you are have correlate to some ridiculous branching paths of animal development. If you play it blind, there's a good chance most things you eat will make you weaker.
So, to re-cap - your character's path to getting stronger is either expensive as hell or completely random. Nice.
The game was developed to be beaten in the duration of a single red-eye flight, and the runtime is probably 8-10 hours if you poke around everywhere like me. But honestly, nobody will blame you if you tap out early. It is impossible to tell what is coming next, and it often feels like you have to manipulate the game into being kind to you. It did kick off an entire series of SaGa RPGs that I'll eventually get to, but this did not leave a particularly good taste of what's to come.
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tips
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Some really cool ideas here, but god the inventory management is so frustrating. Constantly juggling quest items, weapon backups, and healing items in 8 main slots and a few character slots is obnoxious.