Treasure of the Rudra, for SNES

Rating: 8.3/10; Great

Highly recommended for JRPG fans

Rudra is a JRPG by Square which was released after FF6. It shares many similarities with FF6 including: graphics, character and weapon battle animations, a large cast of characters, and a deep story in a hybrid medieval fantasy/tech setting. All of the characters (including the villains) are very interesting, with well developed personalities and background, and the story itself is extremely well done.

The story and characters are experienced in 4 separate campaigns. There are 4 main protagonists who each have a campaign and 3 of them have their own parties. The first 3 campaigns can be played in any order, and even simultaneously. There is no reason against playing all 3 a single chapter at a time. This could even lead to spellcasting benefits (more on that later). These campaigns often intersect, with the different parties meeting and instances where you see the actions/results of another group from a different perspective.

The game features many of the normal aspects of JRPGs, such as traveling between towns and dungeons, random battles, buying and finding equipment etc. An interesting point is that the inventory is unlimited, but you can only carry a max of 9 of any given item, so you can’t hoard recovery items. Other than the quality story and multiple campaigns, there are 6 unique features that stand out. The first is the concept of combat rows. While it is nothing new to have a front and back row, where back row users take less physical damage and can use ranged weapons without penalty, this game allows you to freely switch a character’s row during your turn in combat. This is an added tactical layer, which for example can allow a melee character to fall to the back row to cast a spell. This synergizes well with the second feature, which is a variety of weapon types. Ranged weapons for the back row, but more interesting are the 1 handed and 2 handed melee weapons. 2 handers feature higher damage, while 1 handers allow the use of a shield, which gives passive defense benefits and can sometimes completely negate physical damage. Even the weakest shield in the game could potentially reduce a boss hit to 0 damage.

The third feature is combat order. Characters normally act in order of speed, but you can fully customize the order on the fly. This is yet another layer of tactical depth, though any character that delays their turn in favour of a slower character will lose their speed advantage, so enemies might get to attack first. The fourth feature is the defend command. Again while this is nothing new, this game allows you to choose any party member for the character to defend, which essentially combines 2 abilities found in other JRPGs seamlessly into 1.

The next feature is a big one, and is the elemental defense and weakness system. The game features 3 sets of opposing elements, as well as non-elemental. This is nothing new for an RPG, but in this game being strong in one element makes you weak to the opposing element. So for example, if you are wearing fire resist armor, you will be weak to water attacks, and I guarantee that you will get game over if you try to fight a boss (and even some normal enemies) while a significant portion of your party is weak to their magic. Unfortunately, there is no way to change equipment in battle and it is usually a guess as to what elements the enemy will use. This encourages an initial trial run against a boss to see what equipment you should use, and then loading a save.

The last feature of the game is simultaneously the most interesting and worst feature of the game; the magic system. Magic (called mantras) is created by using the “enscribe” command, which opens up a text input box the same as when you name characters. Every possible string of text is a spell, though the vast majority are duds; either the damage done is terrible or the mana cost is too high (or both). Spells can be learned in a variety of ways. Inputting random text and words can yield some useful spells, and you will learn specific spellings of spells by talking to people; some of whom will offer to directly enscribe the spell for you. You can also see enemies cast spells and try and figure out the spelling (though I found it difficult to read the battle text, possibly because it is optimized for Japanese). Lastly, some treasure chests give you partial spellings and force you to figure out the missing letter(s). I did not enjoy switching a single character 26 times to figure out the correct spelling, though this did occasionally result in finding multiple spells. It also does not help that a few of these seem to be improperly translated, or maybe they are deliberate attempts to waste your time. There are also prefixes and suffixes that can be applied to spells to make them more powerful, or hit multi target.

Other than the excessive tediousness of the spell system, there are 2 major flaws with the system. The biggest flaw is by far the severely restricted amount of space in your spellbook. There is literally not enough room to even have 1 spell of every effect in the game, let alone multiple power and area versions. This is in direct opposition to the creative the experimental nature of spell crafting in this game, and I absolutely hated it. It was the main reason why I went online to a guide to find the best spells. It also does not help that you are not able to know how powerful a spell is without testing it in battle. The other flaw is the fact that you can simply input the most powerful spells at the start of the game, thereby breaking the early and mid game. I also did not like how the mana costs were not really balanced between power and area forms of a spell. For example, I found that single target healing spells were simply not worth using (except very early when you did not have a full team) and that weaker healing spells were less mana efficient than more powerful spells.

Rudra is a long and epic game which deserves to be in the SNES greatest RPGs hall of fame. An excellent story and a large number of unique features make the game stand out, though the magic system is rather tedious and imbalanced.

Pro

• Excellent story, characters, dialogue, setting
• Multiple simultaneous campaigns, with interaction and some choices in one affecting another
• Save files are separate for all 4 campaigns
• Some hidden side quests, though nothing tedious
• Good tactical depth to combat with elemental strengths/weaknesses, row changing and defend
• Good weapon balance; 2 handers, shields and ranged
• Fully customizable order of actions for the party
• Magic system can be fun for those who like to experiment or crack code
• Each element comes with a unique status ailment (such as additional damage over time for fire)
• Challenging combat (especially early on when you do not know many spells)
• Equipment shop shows who can equip items and whether that item is stronger than what they have. You can also equip directly from the shop menu

Con

• Unable to change equipment in battle, which pairs poorly with the elemental system
• No scan type ability to determine an enemy’s elemental weakness
• Sometimes bosses attack last in one round, and first in the next
• Not enough space for spells
• Menu interface does not show how effective a spell will be (hp healed, or damage done for example)
• Typing spells is tedious, especially when you have to guess the letter(s)
• Too easy to abuse the spell system by using out of game knowledge
• Lack of balance between weaker and stronger spells (i.e. no point to use weaker spells to conserve mana)
• Elemental status effects are not inherent in elemental attack spells, but separate spells themselves
• Buffs and debuffs only last a limited amount of time, and (for most) there is no indication of when they are active or not
• Effect of items is not shown in battle menu
• You will end up doing every town/dungeon/treasure chest 3 times, because every party can eventually visit everywhere even if they have no plot reason to go somewhere
• Each chapter is a day in game. Time passes based solely on the story, regardless of how long you spend wandering, fighting and sleeping
• Merging and recovery of equipment from the 3 parties during the final campaign is not handled well
• Sometimes the “memory cursor” setting did not remember the last spell I used
• Serious bug at the start of the last campaign which pretty much scrambled the spellbook (fixed after a battle)
• Uses save points
• Shop menu does not show numerical changes from current and selected equipment. Hard to tell how much of an upgrade an item is without buying it
• Text scroll speed is slow and requires too much button pressing