The 7th Saga (1993)

This was a rather unexpected pick. A turn-based RPG that resembles the well-known representatives of this genre like Final Fantasy. We start at a castle and after a quick briefing and choosing our character class we depart to look for crystals/runes that will make its wielder the most powerful man. With each gained level we become stronger and learn new magic spells. There are also quite a lot of random encounters along the way. Each successful one gives us money and experience. Failing in battle teleports us back to the inn where we saved our progress. It’s also nice to see very quick transitions between the battle and exploration screen. Another cool feature that makes things simple and clean is the inventory. We don’t have to trouble our head with carrying too much, as when we buy a new piece of equipment, we sell the old one at the same time. It is also a good idea to level up (grind) and stock up on mana potions and healing potions as the monsters get more dangerous fairly quickly. During one of my recent sessions, I got a map from an NPC after completing a quest. I was looking forward to this as it is rather hard to navigate the world map not knowing where to go. The map, however, has nothing on it. It is just an outline of the continents...

I've started to consider starting over with a different character than Lux, because while Lux is a beast early-on, he's really boring to play. He's the only character who gets the Laser and Thunder spells, but his Magic stat is so pitiful that his spells do almost no damage to anything—while eating up large chunks of his pitiful MP—so all he does is hit people. And as valuable as Valsu casting Power has been (and as appealing as Elixir is), Valsu is also boring as hell—his offensive utility is roughly no and he doesn't have enough MP to cast anything but Power if I don't want to run out of his MP.

I'm not entirely sure why "to hell with this game" isn't at the top of my list of options either.

I reached a point where I was fairly certain I needed to grind, because there were enemies that'd do nearly one party member's entire HP in damage from a single magic attack. Incidentally, one of such enemies (which could also buff defense to make battles take even longer) gave far less experience than other less-threatening enemies in the area. The balance of enemy power really doesn't make sense, even with the restored-difficulty patch.

I complained about the game's enemy targeting last time, and now I'm going to complain about a gimmick the game throws at you almost immediately. When you use the Defend command, the damage you do the next turn is doubled. Thus obviously, if an enemy takes two normal hits, then Defend > Attack means taking 50% less damage. That's how it works in theory, except a.) defending does nothing against magic damage; b.) the way enemy targeting works means that it's flat-out difficult to even get enemies to hit your tougher party member while they're defending; and c.) using Defend > Attack doubles the damage output, as opposed to doubling the user's Attack stat like Power buffs do. While Defend > Attack does double damage, having Valsu cast Power on Lux typically triples Lux's damage output, to the point where he can one-shot most enemies with a normal attack and take out tougher foes with a single Defend > Attack.

The whole Defend > Attack gimmick is not only all that effective, but adds to just how long individual battles can take in this game. I never feel I'm in actual danger (especially since I have the Water Rune, which can be used for a free heal in battle), but it just takes so long to kill enemies given that I need to use Power every battle to get through at a more reasonable pace, I still need to Defend > Attack for stronger enemies, and some enemies have a really aggravating evasion rate.

The 7th Saga isn't really a good game, is what I'm getting at.

I've found a patch for The 7th Saga that restores the difficulty back to that of the Japanese version (which is called Elrand, which is a stupid name), and I've actually had quite a bit of fun with this game so far now that it's not stupidly masochistic. I decided to go with Lux because he makes the early-game a complete joke, and ended up with Valsu because Esuna is a jerk. (I'm glad I did; Valsu's Power spell + Lux's fists = anything dies, save for those stupidly-evasive spider [BLEEP]s.)

One thing I've come to realize: 7th Saga's turn-based system is really...dumb. It's sort of a CTB-thing, but it's not as much that each party member gets their turn as your party in general gets a turn. You choose one person to act, then on your next turn the other partner can act, and then both partners' actions are refreshed and you can choose between the two to act first. I have no clue how Agility is supposed to factor into turn order, if it does at all, especially when it's possible to have Lux (who is supposed to be the slowest character) defend and then immediately attack depending on how the turns play out. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if 7th Saga didn't have enemies focus solely on whichever party member acted last, so part of battle strategy becomes trying to predict the turn order so Lux gets punched in the face by everything instead of Valsu. It's...just weird.