Treasure Hunter G

Treasure Hunter G marked Sting Entertainment's initial venture into RPGs - pivoting around segmented, AP-driven tactics with the option to move/attack diagonally. Other components, both in-battle and out, further prove that this is far from the usual SRPG. Its creative weapon functions (e.g. spear attacks that also hit those directly behind the user) are backed by concepts not normally found in the genre, including DnD-esque item throws, tile-trapping, variable AP consumption (influenced by enemy proximity), random teleports and knockbacks. No less distinctive is their economy. Money is earned not via battles but by collecting/selling loot salvaged from environmental objects; interesting (and thematically sound) if not particularly exciting, a quality that also applies to its shops (purchasing items on display rather than from a menu) and puzzles (centered on riddles). They also craft detailed towns and interiors much like their publisher - but in general, combat is the prevailing feature here. With the help of preset fights a la Chrono Trigger (i.e. mob-activated & fixed ambushes taking place on the current map), these battles fuse the concise nature of encounter-based strategy with the design variety of their mission-based brethren, somewhere between Arc the Lad and Tactics Ogre.

On the other hand, its story and characters are hardly memorable, despite the amount of cutscenes and despite some truly strange moments - and, given their myriad variations in layouts, encounters are potentially hit or miss (with boss fights leaning towards the latter end).

Treasure Hunter G, developed by Sting (known for Utawarerumono, those shitty Evolution games on Dreamcast, the Dept. Heaven series, etc), was Squaresoft’s last published game for the Super Famicom, released in May of ‘96. Fun fact: FFVII would be released eight months later. As Square's last published game for the SFC, Treasure Hunter G feels like more of a solemn walk back to the bleachers than a victory lap.

G stars four party characters: Sniff, Monch, Sneed, and Chuck – keep in mind those are just the names I gave them. Sniff and Monch are siblings who resent their father for going on badass adventures all the time. Sneed is a woman with mysterious powers that get unlocked over the course of the game, and Chuck is Sneed’s monkey sidekick or something. The objective of the game is securing seven “out of place artifacts” (Oparts) your dad mentions in his old journal you conveniently find, and it kind of unfolds from there. There are some fairy guardians that are getting trapped in crystals by an Evil Force to resurrect the Forces of Chaos. You get the picture. The locales are what you would expect from a JRPG. Cozy towns, caves and ruins, forests, islands, all that jazz. There are some cute ideas – you can find frogs by cutting grass, which can then be sold or used as tokens in a frog-themed casino, and some of them have special properties that make them offensive items in battles. One part requires you to find medicine to heal a whale so he can take you to an island, and the scene that plays while you’re on top of the whale is quite pretty. Moments like that give the game some of its own charm, but they aren't frequent enough to make G's overall presentation noteworthy. There is, however, a clever twist near the end that neatly wraps things up. The game is far from uninspired, but it could have put in some more effort to stand out.


Perhaps the strongest aspect of Treasure Hunter G is its battle system. At first I wanted to compare it to grid-based SRPGs, but eventually I realized it’s more like Mystery Dungeon combat, isolated from all the roguelike elements. Battles take place on a grid, and each action you take consumes a certain number of Action Points (AP). This number depends on the color of the tile, which ranges from colorless to blue to yellow to read. If you’re on a colorless tile each action you take only consumes one AP; blue 2, yellow 4, red 6. As you progress the "grid level" increases and makes each colored tile require more AP (level 2 is 3:6:9, for example). The color of tiles usually depends on how close you are to an enemy, with weak-medium enemies surrounded by yellow tile and strong enemies surrounded by red. Each character wields weapons that have different attack ranges. Sniff attacks the tile in front of him with a sword, Monch attacks both in front and behind him with a spear, Sneed attacks one tile in front (but often deals elemental damage with her wand), and Chuck throws a boomerang that extends two tiles ahead of him. On top of that, both Sniff and Monch can use axes that deal more damage at the cost of pushing the enemy back a tile or two, though this can sometimes be used strategically. Magic can also be casted, which ranges from healing, buffs, and offense, to more creative spells like laying mines and warp tiles. Items can either be consumed or tossed for damage, which further drives home the Mystery Dungeon influence. You can come up with some pretty cool positioning and strategy once you get a hang of everything. The difficulty isn’t particularly high – it’s what you would expect from most Square RPGs of the era – but it felt more involved than mashing the A button to plow through weak enemies. Like most JRPGs, it takes a while to work your way into the challenging parts that let the combat speak for itself. To my knowledge Treasure Hunter G's flavor of combat hasn’t been tried since, which is a shame because it could really shine with just a bit of tweaking. Like the Junctioning of Final Fantasy VIII, it deserves another chance. It's also worth mentioning G has on-field monsters like Chrono Trigger or Earthbound in lieu of random encounters, which is always a welcome touch.


Initially I thought the graphics were pre-rendered until I decided that was probably just the style of the sprites, but then I read up on the game some more and found out the graphics really are pre-rendered. I wouldn’t say these are the worst pre-rendered graphics on the SFC, but they’re leagues away from the same kind of charm and timelessness of games like the Donkey Kong Country trilogy and Super Mario RPG. The color depth is somewhat impressive but it has the same issue I’ve noticed in a lot of latter-day Super Famicom RPGs where everything looks sort of washed out. On top of that, the sprites for the main character look noticeably amateurish, especially compared to the rest of the cast. I would take the simple elegance of, say, Chrono Trigger, over this any day. There’s not much to say about the soundtrack. It’s what you would imagine any other 16-bit JRPG to sound like, with a few gems sprinkled among mostly forgettable tunes. Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata, who composed music for most of the Tactics Ogres games and later Final Fantasy XII, were part of the sound team, yet I couldn’t really hear much of their influence.


If you're in the mood for a unique JRPG then Treasure Hunter G might do the trick. It takes a while to find its groove, but it wound up being fairly enjoyable. You can complete it in 20 hours or so, keeping it from becoming too much of a slog. I wish more RPGs aimed for the 20-30 hour mark. Anyway, the SNES/SFC has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to JRPGs, and Treasure Hunter G can't keep up with the upper echelon of the game library. That said, it's worth checking out if you're a fan of the genre.