Sailor Moon Another Story, for SNES

Rating: 6.5/10; Above Average

Played: Feb 2019

This is a must play for Sailor Moon fans. For the rest of us, it is worth playing if you like JRPGs

This game is a traditional JRPG with a Sailor Moon setting, so expect random turn based battles, using recovery items, equipping items, party management and other JRPG features. While the Sailor Moon setting may be a bit of a turn off, the game can be enjoyed without knowing anything about the series. The characters are well represented from the anime, even if their dialogue is pretty vapid; what can you really expect from teenage girls? The story is decent, but you will be missing out if you are not familiar with the anime. I had no idea who most of the villains were, who seemed to be cameos from the show I guess? I also have no idea if the main villains are unique to this game or not.

You get all 10 sailor scouts in your party, though the game creates scenarios which force you to use certain ones as you can only have 5 people in the active party. There are times where you have less, other times where you can freely choose the other 4 (Moon herself is party leader), and even one time near the end of the game where you need 2 separate parties of 5 that must be able to defeat bosses. The graphics for the party members are exceptional and far more realistic than other RPGs (Final Fantasy 6 eat your heart out). They even have great animations as they do kicks and flips when they attack.

Unfortunately, kicking and punching is almost all they can do. A couple use weapons in their sprites, but everyone else goes unarmed. There is no inventory slot for weapons, and no weapons in the game. Rather there are only 3 accessory slots and only a handful of accessories to choose from. Though each character has their own unique accessories to find, there is very little equipment progression in the game. You can also do silly things like equip 3 tiaras at once. Accessories grant small boosts to the basic game stats and each girl has a particular stat growth. You can’t simply equip whatever on them and expect to succeed. Rather you need to achieve specific stat milestones; if attack is too low you will do such low damage that killing a single generic enemy will take minutes. If defense is too low, you will die. If speed is too low the enemies will go first, which is not a big deal. So a character with low attack will need attack boosting items and a character with low defense will need defense. Not much in the way of options.

Combined with accessories is the party formation feature, which I quote from the game “changes your attack and defense values in certain ways”. That is all it says; it does not say HOW the values are changed and leaves it up to you to figure out through experimentation. There are 4 different formations, and broadly speaking they separate characters into the front row (deal and take high damage), middle row (balanced) and back row (deal and take low damage). This is far more complicated than it needs to be, though the crux is that 3 characters will need good defense and will be the damage dealers while 2 will be relegated to support. Each formation has an ultimate attack that causes everyone to spend all of their mana for a single attack. Mana is restored after every battle, so you are encouraged to use it. Each character has their own limited set of spells, which are almost entirely offensive. Too bad it depends on the attack stat, so your support characters in the back row will not be able to do worthwhile damage casting spells from the back. This game has an awesome defend option though. Rather than reducing damage by half, it can reduce a potential 100s of damage one shot to single digits.

There are also link spells in which 2 or 3 characters combine their turn to do a new spell (kind of like Chrono Trigger's group techs), though they are poorly implemented. In order to be able to use them you must first go into the link screen, which is an entirely different button than the menu and cannot be reached from the menu “link” selection, and then pair up each character and then press a button to register the spell. What the hell, why do I have to do so much work? There are also a shockingly low number of pairings possible, and only around 3 triple combinations. I never figured out how to set up the links until late game, and never bothered to use them at all.

And then there is the shockingly overpowered Pluto, with her time stop spell. It uses all of her mana to prevent all enemies (even the final boss!!!) from doing anything for 2 turns. Given how easy it is to get money and restorative items you can simply cheese through most of the game with that, though the game is not really hard enough to require that (except maybe the final boss).

This game is a little on the short side for an RPG and somewhat lacking in RPG features (like equipment progression), though the combat and story are entertaining enough.

Pro

• Great sprite graphics
• Accessories, formations and character diversity give tactical options in combat
• Story and characters true to the anime
• Most enemies (including bosses) randomly use a variety of status ailments

Con

• No weapons or armor
• Uses save points
• Cannot tell what items can and cannot be used in battle unless you are in battle
• Duplicate flavour items that have the same effect and clutter the inventory
• Obtuse link system
• Poorly explained formation system
• Only active party members gain xp. Even slightly underleveled characters perform significantly worse
• Distinct lack of interactive environments and environmental loot
• Possible to miss some special accessories and be unable to backtrack to get them