JRPGs

Anyone remember Secret of Evermore? I played that game to death in the 90's and I've run it roughly every five years since then. My last one was about 6 years ago but I haven't felt the need to play it again.

It got a rebalancing patch in like 2016 that might be worth checking out for people. That was my last run with it. I think the original version is better TBH, but the rebalancing patch does make alchemy a lot more useful by combining formulas into groups like Secret of Mana does (so you level up several of them by using one).

Not gonna replay it or anything, but I got a big hit of nostalgia this morning thinking about the game and the alchemy formulas / interesting worlds that it takes you through.

joz123 said:

SoE was good but Illusion of Gaia was my favorite. I liked the different areas and the idea of the main character being 2 different people.

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Oh yeah, Will being able to turn into Freedan in dungeons was awesome (and then at the end, Shadow was alright).

My mom loved Illusion of Gaia in particular on the SNES and got it for me after a rental.

I emulated Soul Blazer and Terranigma later to complete that trilogy. I think my favorite from a gameplay perspective was actually Soul Blazer, with Illusion being my favorite on story/nostalgic feels. Terranigma fell short for me which is funny because most people regard it as the best of the trilogy by far. I mean, it was good, no problems with it. Just didn't grab me like the other two.

Szeth said:

Did you guys play Brain Lord on snes? Not quite jrpg but this tangent made me think of it.

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Brain Lord is on my "unplayed SNES RPG" list that I go through about one every 4 years or something. I actually thought about playing it next the last time I looked at that list. I really liked Enix's weird SNES offerings like Paladin's Quest and EVO: Search for Eden. I think they might have been behind 7th Saga too.

Vorph said:

Dunno, I'm not that far along, but I saw posts on reddit claiming that recruiting Cressida (and Deneb) was as bad as ever. Or worse.

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Deneb was a slog, but not as many dragons needed and the Relic grind is about the same as the glass pumpkin one was. Upside is the dragons can all be nabbed early and auctioning them is useful for both money and crafting. Getting Cressida is still bullshit incarnate, though. Deneb is at least actually worth the grind, especially if you change her into a shaman. Biggest change is that they severely ramped up Palace of the Dead so that anything past floor 44 is pretty much post game only content through their new level cap system. That annoys me, because I used to run that place to the bottom right before the final run through Hanging Gardens and now I have to wait it seems until Coda 1 is done.

Overall, the new retune is great. Couple bumps, if you play a Caster Denam, especially the Vyce duel early on (change him to a ninja for this). Ninjas are still god tier. Spears still largely out shine most other weapon types (and Dragoons are now amazing with them). Divine Knights are still insanely hard to obtain (at least a non shit one) for their abilities. My biggest pet peeve is that you can't buy mana items anymore (outside of the low yield fruit of the adept) but every fucking fight even the lowliest hall trash just pops one or two like they are candy. On the upside, nearly all classes are viable, aside from maybe Berserker (too frail), Warrior (no rampart aura and no standout traits), and Knight (once you get the white knights, you will never use them). Magic damage was retuned, along with archery, so that Aloser does not break the entire fucking game and AE generic nuking is a viable strategy. Thievery was thankfully removed. Farming specific Relics in POTD was made way less tedious. And the XP system drastically cuts down on the grind.

An A- remake for an all time great game.

Rajaah said:

I think it's actually a White Mage. Just noticed that the other two characters on the upper wall are both defending (looks like a Samurai? and Dragoon). That could be a WM defending.

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Still, the actual battle arena in the shot isn't one I recognize from the game and now I'm super-intrigued to know either A) If that's a secret I missed or B) If that's cut content, what area was it supposed to be?

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Thats the fort where you rescue Mustadio.

Hateyou said:

7th Saga was actually pretty terrible. It was one I always wanted but couldn’t find to buy back in the day. I eventually emulated it and even with fast forward the grind sucked.

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I think enjoyment of 7th Saga is dependent on which character you pick. Some of the characters are really bad. One friend of mine swears by Lejes (the necromancer guy) but I've seen him at the bottom of a few rankings online. Kamil is the averaged-out well-rounded character but he's so damn boring. Lux the robot is tanky but also requires a lot of grinding.

Personally I had a ball with Esuna, the spellcaster. She's pretty OP and needs lower levels than the others for a lot of stuff. I hear Wilme (the alien monk) is also quite good, as is the dwarf.

With Esuna, eventually I got Valsu (the priest) and then I was basically unkillable for the rest. That was my second run at the game. The first was a Kamil/Lux run and it went really poorly in comparison.

Phazael said:

Thats the fort where you rescue Mustadio.

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Nope, can confirm that it isn't that fort (Zaland Fort City). Zaland is much brighter, the place in the cover screenshot is all dark.

It's hilarious that Tactics Ogre has a character named "Aloser". I actually remember her from when I played it in like 1998. Good archer.

Fogel said:

Paladin's Quest was definitely under rated, loved that game. It could be a little grindy but wasn't as bad as 7th Saga as Hateyou mentioned, and you had a ton of characters to pick from.

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Paladin's Quest was one of my favorite games ever. I love the pastel color scheme and the soundtrack. It manages to successfully feel extremely alien in a way that I don't see much. Probably comparable to a Phantasy Star game. Felt like a legit, real, extraterrestrial world.

There were so many characters and some of them were really memorable. You'd get the two main characters (dude and chick) and then choose the other two characters at any given time from the pool of possible mercs. I always ended up going with Mouth and Nail. Mouth is basically the Fusoya of the game and good at all spell fields. Nail is unique as this super-powerful robot with like 5x the HP that anyone else has, much better stats, etc. Except he can't level up or heal, so when he eventually gets grinded down to zero HP, that's it. Very interesting idea for a character. Sometimes I was able to get him all the way to the final boss fight with enough HP left for it. Later I found out that there are a couple of other super-powerful characters that are really hard to find (one a caster, one a meleer) that are much better than Mouth/Nail for the final parts of the game. So that might have made it a lot easier, I don't know.

I think I played through PQ four times which was a lot for a non-FF/DQ game. The first couple times were rentals and I failed to beat the final boss. Then the third time I owned the game and was able to spend enough time on it to actually see the credits. Then emulated it a few years later co-playing with my childhood friend Mike who died from an illness just a few years after that. So a lot of good memories around PQ. Unfortunately I don't think too many people know about it.

Rajaah said:

Nope, can confirm that it isn't that fort (Zaland Fort City). Zaland is much brighter, the place in the cover screenshot is all dark.

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Thats just a shitty screen cap (or maybe mid casting lighting from an animation, the test shots had characters with summons ect you ordinarily could not have). Thats the reverse angle of the front rim of the fort exterior.

I have a lot of fond memories of FFT, despite my strong opinion that Tactics Ogre was the superior game on every level. It was just too stupidly easy to break that game on every level and you would get god tier story characters super late in the game with no Job Points making parts a slog. Art and music for the time was really great and considering the exact development team worked on both games, its hardly surprising both are masterpieces.

My favorite NPC (and first ever waifu crush) was Agrias. Great fucking character in the game (seriously, give her Excalibur and she is on Orlandu's level due to her stat growth and higher speed) and good back story. The characters were not as fleshed out as Tactics Ogre, but a good chunk of them had interesting story threads. Main story was somewhat bland, compared to Tactics Ogre, however, especially with no path deviations. The gameboy spin offs set in the same world as FF12 are ok, but just not as engrossing as either FFT or TO.

As for key cock block moments in FFT, that Velius fight in Chapter 3 might be the biggest one in RPG history. Velius and his four uber nuke pals were a major difficulty spike full of chain ressing from out of nowhere, with the same point of no return save right before it. It is probably the most difficult fight in the game for a full group, under any circumstances, outside of trying to get the Zodiac Summon learned. Fortunately years of old computer games (and Tactics Ogre) had prepared me to keep extra save files, but I did literally have to back out and grind the fuck out my group the first time I hit that wall. It is actually easier if you dont level grind and get MP break or similar skills on some guys, but its still a major fuck you fight unless you have a kitted out math mage. I know people who had to start the game over completely, though.

I don't know why no one is able to make a decent tactics RPG in the modern era on par with these. The demand is clearly there. A couple games (Arbiter's Mark, Divinity Original Sin) have sort of gotten close. But you would think a major studio with good writing chops could manage to recreate that level of quality in the 30-40 years since these games first came out.

I forgot that it got a Japan-only sequel too. I played all the way through Lennus 2 back in the 2000's somewhere on emulator and it's worth its salt. Takes a lot of PQ's good aspects and refines them.

Phazael said:

Thats just a shitty screen cap (or maybe mid casting lighting from an animation, the test shots had characters with summons ect you ordinarily could not have). Thats the reverse angle of the front rim of the fort exterior.

I have a lot of fond memories of FFT, despite my strong opinion that Tactics Ogre was the superior game on every level. It was just too stupidly easy to break that game on every level and you would get god tier story characters super late in the game with no Job Points making parts a slog. Art and music for the time was really great and considering the exact development team worked on both games, its hardly surprising both are masterpieces.

My favorite NPC (and first ever waifu crush) was Agrias. Great fucking character in the game (seriously, give her Excalibur and she is on Orlandu's level due to her stat growth and higher speed) and good back story. The characters were not as fleshed out as Tactics Ogre, but a good chunk of them had interesting story threads. Main story was somewhat bland, compared to Tactics Ogre, however, especially with no path deviations. The gameboy spin offs set in the same world as FF12 are ok, but just not as engrossing as either FFT or TO.

As for key cock block moments in FFT, that Velius fight in Chapter 3 might be the biggest one in RPG history. Velius and his four uber nuke pals were a major difficulty spike full of chain ressing from out of nowhere, with the same point of no return save right before it. It is probably the most difficult fight in the game for a full group, under any circumstances, outside of trying to get the Zodiac Summon learned. Fortunately years of old computer games (and Tactics Ogre) had prepared me to keep extra save files, but I did literally have to back out and grind the fuck out my group the first time I hit that wall. It is actually easier if you dont level grind and get MP break or similar skills on some guys, but its still a major fuck you fight unless you have a kitted out math mage. I know people who had to start the game over completely, though.

I don't know why no one is able to make a decent tactics RPG in the modern era on par with these. The demand is clearly there. A couple games (Arbiter's Mark, Divinity Original Sin) have sort of gotten close. But you would think a major studio with good writing chops could manage to recreate that level of quality in the 30-40 years since these games first came out.

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Not trying to like one-up you or anything like that, but I think you're wrong on a couple things here.


Zaland Fort City versus the cover screenshot. The different colors aren't the only thing that separates these. Zaland doesn't have battlements on the wall. However, they do have similar steps (center-left of Zaland, bottom right of cover shot). But it isn't the same place. The mystery of where the cover art picture was supposed to be continues to be a mystery. I think it's Fort Besselat or Bethla Garrison, whichever fortress area you see on the map but end up never going to.

Also these games came out 20-25 years ago, not 30-40.

Anyway not trying to one-up you and I just assumed you hadn't had your coffee yet.

Is FF12 Revenant Wings any good? That's one that I totally missed out on. I think I've played every non-MMO Final Fantasy game AND spinoff outside of Crystal Chronicles and Revenant Wings. Maybe I'll try to finish off the series eventually.

Tactics Ogre came out in 1995. So I guess not quite 30 years. First game in the series is 30+ at this point.

As for Revenent Wings, its basically sort of like the Vincent spinoff. You might like it, but many did not and it was not well received. Very popular with its niche crowd, though.

PS- I guess you are right. That screen shot might be from a test map that did not make the final product, which was common back then. The original Tactics Ogre back art and instructions had similar screencaps (and said maps were later worked into the 2010 remake as levels in POTD iirc). The only map with that tile set and color that I can think of was the dam level with the two switches, but the walkway looks incorrect for that.

Phazael said:

PS- I guess you are right. That screen shot might be from a test map that did not make the final product, which was common back then. The original Tactics Ogre back art and instructions had similar screencaps (and said maps were later worked into the 2010 remake as levels in POTD iirc). The only map with that tile set and color that I can think of was the dam level with the two switches, but the walkway looks incorrect for that.

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Watching the FFT trailer that someone posted way earlier, you can see this map in action for a moment. That trailer also has a bunch of other stuff that didn't make it into the game, like a map with a high bridge way above the terrain. The maps also look considerably bigger than in the final product. I'd really like to see more of that cut content.

I played some Collection of SaGa on the Switch. It's pretty good, though nothing you can't emulate easily enough. With one exception: Turning up the game speed doesn't affect the sound. That's pretty awesome.


Started FFL1 (SaGa 1 in Japan). This is the most basic/rudimentary of the trio. FFL2 is the best (takes what worked in the first and refines it) and I'd say FFL2 can hang with the console FFs. I'd rank it above FF2 and maybe FF3 on the NES. FFL3 is a departure from the first two and more of a traditional RPG than a SaGa game, and my least-liked of the 3 as a result, but it's good in its own way.

I got about...I want to say 30-40% of the way through FFL1 in 2-3 hours. It's a really short game for an RPG. It's charming AF though. You choose from 3 different classes and they're all very different. Mutants level up the fastest, from battles, but have some weaknesses like low strength and randomized abilities that often don't give you very good options. Humans are the best DPS and easiest to customize (you have a lot more control over their weapons/attacks than with Mutants), but are very gear-dependent and money-dependent since they level via store-bought stat items. I actually love this concept of total customization rather than blind level-ups. A party of four Humans would be a really interesting game, though it'd take like twice as long due to the money grind. The third class is Monster, which transforms after fights (like in SaGa Frontier). These things are so hit-or-miss that I tend to avoid them.

One thing I don't like is that with Humans it's most efficient to grind their HP up 1 at a time after they reach 400 HP. The lowest-tier HP item (HP200) costs way less than the higher-tier items. HP400 is more efficient from 200-400, but once you cross the 400 threshold, HP200 goes back to being the most efficient. I.E. it's better to just buy HP200's for 100 G and gain 1 HP from them than it is to buy HP600's for 5000 G and gain like 13 HP from them. All of the HP items give 1 HP after you cross their upper limit. So it's a slog to grind Humans past 400 HP. Though also not really necessary until the endgame.

Speaking of which, this game is so incredibly breakable. I'm on the third world (out of five or six, I think) and my characters are already almost maxed-out. There's no difference between grinding low-level enemies and high-level enemies in terms of leveling. Except you get more gold from higher ones which is better for Human characters. But either way you can reach max stats by the end of the 2nd world if you want to, and in a matter of a couple of hours. I might have actually hurt my enjoyment of the game by overleveling though. I defeated the first and second world bosses inside of one turn each. I didn't even really mean to overlevel, it just happened while I was playing and zoning out.

So yeah, if you want to play a retro RPG that can be completely broken, give this a whirl on Switch or emulator. It's also cool to play normally and see how the SaGa series began. Though IMO FFL2 is when it really found its footing.