Review - Final Fantasy Legend/Makai Toushi SaGa

So I guess a brief history with my time with the Final Fantasy series and what lead me to playing the Final Fantasy Legend. Despite enjoying older JRPGs, I was a bit hesitant with playing the Final Fantasy series. My guess was there was a bit of intimidation with how different the games were, the rather inconsistent quality compared to a series like Dragon Quest or Megami Tensei, and ATB just sounding like it wouldn't be my thing. But after a bit of deliberation, I played through Final Fantasy VII, which was fine, like I certainly didn't love it and I recalled my time being pretty inconsistent with my enjoyment, but I enjoyed a few aspects, mainly, the characters and story (when it's not being poorly butchered by the translation.) Then I started Final Fantasy 1 via Dawn of Souls on the Game Boy Advance, and I ended up really liking it, a lot more than FFVII. Afterwards, I've finished Final Fantasy IV, which I enjoyed a bit more than FF1, it's a bit of a different style of game to FF1, much more narrative focused and structured like a traditional JRPG at the time, where the original felt a bit more like a dungeon crawler. I prefer the structure of the first game a bit more, but I think FFIV was the overall better game in spite of a couple problems I had with the story and inconsistent difficulty. After this I gave the series a bit of a break, mainly because I was making decent progress in FFV and my save got corrupted and it just shattered my will to really play another one of the games for a couple years. Every once in a while, I'll play a bit of some random FF game, FFX here, FFXIV there, a dash of Dissidia and Tactics, but nothing where I was compelled to finish it all the way through, I've played a bit of FFVII Remake and thought it was fantastic, haven't finished it yet but I really liked it, as well as, Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion, which as of writing, is my favourite FF game that I've finished. Just loved the combat and materia mechanics, really enjoyed the story and music, Zach is my protagonist so far in the series, I thought it was a wonderful experience. This year, I also finished FFII and FFIII, FFII was fine enough, it's tied with FFVII for my least favourite FF game I've played so far, but it wasn't a bad game. FFIII (3D Remake specifically) was like a supped up FFI, I liked it quite a bit and it had a nice challenge throughout, until maybe the last dungeon when the game became outright dickish.

And now we caught up to today, last week, where I brought Collection of SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend on Nintendo Switch. It's here where I've played the Final Fantasy Legend or Makai Toushi SaGa, but for the purposes of this review, I'm going to call it FFL. Originally released in 1989, came out about a year later in other territories. This game has received a few rereleases and a remake for the Wonderswan Color, which that version was ported to Japanese mobile phones. Collection of SaGa uses the game boy versions but with a couple of text changes as far as I'm aware, either to fix errors or censor a couple parts to remove any accidental references to race or weapons? it's a bit weird, for example, the N. Bomb was changed to A. Bomb, because obviously, the only N. Bomb I think about is N--- N--- N---ukes, but then the Atomic Power Plant to Power Plant, but then what else is A. Bomb meant to represent? Red Bulls changed to Red Horns, fair enough, Monster is the superior energy drink anyways, Colt got changed to Pistol, why? But beyond, those changes, the collection made addition is mainly a speed up and autosave function, which are welcome inclusions. 

Anyways, so as soon as you start the game, the first thing you do is pick a race, and this is a really cool aspect of the game. Each race plays wildly differently and has their own weird way of getting levels and has their own strength and drawbacks. Firstly is the Human, the Human is the class you have the most control over in terms of their growth, you can buy stat upgrades, think like how in Dragon Quest, you can find seeds that randomly increase a particular stat, but these are the only way you can increase the stats of a Human. The main drawback being that the Human, especially early on is incredibly expensive. The Human also can't use magic as well for this reason as there's no Mana increase items. But the benefit of the Human is that they're the only class you can reliably get their stats to an incredibly high number and they have the most available item slots. 

The Mutant is probably the most random class in the game. They have the only upgrade system akin to a traditional level up in other games. After every better they have a random chance of a stat increase and this is also how they learn new spells to use. They can also use equipment like humans, but their inventory is cut in half. The main drawback of the Mutant is because of their random stat increases, you can have Mutants with an uneven spread or have pretty poor stats in a category, additionally, you don't pick which spells they learn and which they forget. This is an admittedly very annoying aspect of the game, the only information, you receive after battle is the items the enemy drop after battle (gold and sometimes meat.) but you don't get notify of when the Mutant learns or unlearns a skill. You have to go into the ability menu after battle to check and see which skill have stayed the same and what changed. The benefit of this class is they can use skill books, and they're significantly cheaper than the Human

Monsters are the most interesting class in the game. At the start you pick 1 of 4 starter Monsters, throughout the game after battle, enemies may drop meat a monster can eat and depending of what kind of enemy it was, you will transformed into a completely different monster. The downside of this class is you can easily get a bad combination of monster and meat and end up with a crappy monster, but the plus side is that, if you know what you're doing, you can also just as easily get a really good combination of monster and meat and end up with a super strong monster for the area you're in and that sudden boost of strength can sometimes carry you for quite a bit. In World 1 for me, I started with an Albatross and fused with the first boss monster you fight, and transforming the Albatross into an Oni who really helped out early on. Monsters also don't have any inventory space, but makes up for it by having the abilities being replenished anytime you rest at an inn or you transform into a new monster

I really like how the class system in the game, I think it's a really unique way to go about the traditional class system. Having different powering up mechanics, inventory space, being able to use magic or equipment, and potentially losing strength. I think it's really cool to see a game where all the classes has radically different abilities and strengths and weaknesses that goes beyond "The White Mage can use healing but has bad defence or The Fighter can hit hard but can't heal." However, because of this, I can imagine that doing a Human only run would be very grind heavy, mutants only would be very random and potentially frustrating because of it, and monsters only being a bit tricky with limited inventory space. My playthrough I used a Female Human, a Male and Female Mutant, and started with an Albatross as previously mentioned.

What's the story? I don't give a shit, ok, maybe I care a little. The premise is that there's this giant tower suddenly appears in the middle of your party's world, and you decide to scale it to find out what secrets are at the top. Each major landing of the tower is it's own world. So World 1 would be a grassland, World 2 is a water world, World 3 is the sky, and World 4 is Neo-Tokyo, it's literally just Akira, you even get a motorcycle and have bar fights with gangs and stuff like that (actually it reminds me a bit more of Shin Megami Tensei than anything, but yeah.)

I do like the premise though, I find the game having it's own individual worlds subverts the JRPG trope of each town you visit being almost it's own country. Like think about a game like DQ or even a mainline FF game for example, you go to a town and it may or not be related to your quest, you might have to go there to solve an issue or beat up some monsters for them, but really, these towns don't really talk about other towns or if they do, it's always related to the main quest. A lot of JRPG towns lack personality or memorability for this reason. They might as well be there own country at that point with how little they interact or know of the outside going ons. But here, because each world is it's own thing, the towns and NPCs feels more connected. It's also adds a bit more mystery to the game. Like how is this water world situated above the first world? or why is this city on the top of the tower instead of the sky?

The first world is pretty rough when starting out. This is where I would highly recommend picking the Human Female when you start the game, because she is already equipped with the Saber, which at this point in the game you can't really make effective use of. So sell it to the shop and buy basic weapons for your characters and some Agility increases for your Human Female. Now the grinding in this game is a bit weird because since there's no experience points system (in the regular sense), the main thing you're grinding for in this game is money. Money IS your level up, and early on, I found the game to be really damn stingy with cash. It cost 1gp per hit point lost to rest at the inn and you can easily get yourself into a situation where you're losing money everytime you try to heal after battle and the first town you start off with has equipment that is a bit too high cost to justify staying there. The next town over isn't that far really, but it feels really weird and kinda bad that the starting town isn't like a safe haven to get your bearings with. Your first hour or so with the game is almost certain to be pretty challenging because of your weak characters and money drops being low. 

In terms of gameplay mechanics, it's also a little bit different. You're still doing your typical JRPG stuff, you're buying equipment and items from shops in towns, you can talk to NPCs to get clues or story information in towns, you travel through the worlds and dungeons, you get into random encounters, which in this game, is alright for the time, later on, especially the last stretch it gets a little much but nothing too awful. Battle mechanics uses a pretty basic set up. It's typical 4 N--- N--- N--- N---ice people in a row turn based combat, you pick your actions at the start and you target which group of enemies you want to hit, and you try to kill them before they kill you. This game uses FF1 rules where if the enemy you targeted dies before your character acts, you just completely miss, so watch out for that. Another thing to look out for is that weapons have durability, yep, your weapons can break after a set amount of use. Magic and Abilities can be restored at Inns, drinking Elixirs or Transformations, but weapons such as Swords, Bows, Shields, etc. can all break. Oh, did I say Swords and Bows? Seems pretty standard fantasy/medieval stuff, well, just as soon as you hit World 2, you can start finding more modern weapons such as Firearms, Chainsaws, Laser Guns,  Martial Arts, Explosives, etc.

Combat works well enough, but one thing that does frustrate me is if you're playing without a manual or guide. Knowing what weapons uses what stats is a bit cumbersome to figure out. Some weapon types stick to one stat for their whole line, for example, every bow scales based on your agility, and every spell scales off your mana. That's fine, but you have some swords which scale off strength, or agility or even mana for some of them, and it isn't always clear which is which. Some weapons scale based on both strength and agility, which is a bit annoying because the game has a programming display issue where you can't see your stats raise beyond 99, but the way these weapons work is on the average of both stats so in later parts of the games, equipping something like Vulcan or Laser Gun can be kinda suck. Speaking of the stats not displaying properly, this game also has a thing where, when you reach the invisible stat number of 255, if you get 1 more point in that stat, it rolls over, so be careful. Personally, I finished the game with like 110 Agility and 150 something Strength on my Human and you don't really need that much.

After your first dungeon or two, it got really easy for me, I was now suddenly just one-shotting every enemy, money was still a problem, but I could reliably go for a while without healing once I got a full gear set for my party members. That is until you finish the main boss in this world and progress up the tower. In where, the first few times trying to scale up, I would die multiple times. Dying in this game sucks, and I don't mean that in the usual way dying sucks in JRPGs, because you don't gain experience points, having a dead party member doesn't mean much in terms of them falling behind. However, the game confoundingly enough uses a lives system, like it's fucking Super Mario Bros. or some shit. If your fallen party member was healed at these temples? churches? idk, but if you revive your party member, they permanently lose a heart point, and when they run, they're dead for good. You can buy revives and that won't consume a heart and you can even buy hearts. But holy shit, I do not like this system at all. It feels really arbitrary, ignoring the fact that if you lose your party member, you have spend time building up another one, but this game already has enough random mechanics as is, gaining stat points is random, learning a new skill is random, getting hit by a screw you death attack is random, etc. you're constantly going to be saving and reloading your game, so if you die, the best thing to do really is just reset your game. I don't get it, why even have this at all at that point?

Despite this, I really do like scaling this tower to different worlds. It reminds of like King's Field 1 or Persona 3's Tartarus, there's just something really satisfying about reaching a new plateau and then returning to it later when you're ready to progress the story. World 2 is pretty interesting in terms of traversal, because you start out on this small island and your only method of island hopping is through the underground tunnels, eventually you can ride on little land masses to different islands and eventually you go into a tsunami and you explore underwater. All of these later worlds has some unique traversal systems which I really like to help stand out, World 3 has a moving castle and you use an airship to get across the clouds, and World 4, as mentioned before you get a bike early on to avoid the roaming Suzaku, but you also have to go through underground train tunnels to avoid him early on and to make longer distance travel less troublesome for you.

World 2 is alright, I think it's my least favourite of the Worlds (mostly because it took me a while to figure out what to do to progress) but there's also some more puzzle elements compared to the other worlds which just kind of felt out of place. Like there's this one where in order to fight the main boss of this world you have inspect bubbles to find where he's hiding in a room full of them, and if you get it wrong you have to do an enemy encounter, or another where an old man asks you buy some items for him which matches a certain gold expenditure which I wasn't a huge fan of.

World 3 is pretty cool, it's really short compared to the other worlds, it's around this part of the game where money isn't much of a problem anymore and I was pretty reliably getting decent equipment and I got 99 in my Human stats. So I was able to kill everything really easily and finish the chapter in about an hour, even the boss of this area was pretty easy. I think this is also where the plot of the worlds starts to get a bit more ambitious and dark, which is neat to see but it's also kinda hard for me to care when a character I first meet, dies like 20 minutes later, I didn't even remember their name, you got this sad music playing and I'm going "well, that was stupid." On topic of the music, this game's OST is great, Nobuo Uematsu did tracks for the game, and despite the game boy's hardware limitations in terms of sounds, Uematsu was able to deliver really memorable and occasionally atmospheric tracks due in part to his excellent composition.

World 4 is probably my favourite world, at least stylistically. I really love post apocalyptic city environments, so to see this on a Game Boy game was really cool. It also just has a gritty vibe about it. The people in this world is dealing with Suzaku, a massive fire bird which wiped out most of this city before you even arrive and later on, one of the towns has the whole civilisation of people killed. 

You're going around climbing power plants and towers as dungeons, which would be awesome... if it weren't for the actual dungeon designs. The dungeon designs in this game are pretty basic, but the last dungeon (the Skyscraper) in this place is filled with invisible walls which I personally don't like, it's probably my least favourite dungeon gimmick unless it's well telegraphed. I probably wouldn't mind, if it also wasn't around this part of the game where random encounters starts ramping up. The visuals while basic, really sells the atmosphere of a lot of these worlds. Although for me, the main visual highlight are the monster designs. While repeated throughout, they all look great for the system, extremely well detailed and some of these have a lot of personality to them like the slimes or plant monsters.

During the last climb of the tower, you'll find Ashura, who surprisingly goes down easily. Well after you kill him, you end up at seemingly the bottom floor. I actually thought the game glitched out here, but no, this is meant to happen. Because now you climb the tower again but this time, you refight all the bosses. You also enter weird subworlds around this point, one is just like a swimming pool filled with monsters, an empty room with dead children, and old man living on island, freaky shit.

You get to the top again, and you find this little forest with a man in a top hat who periodically shows up throughout your journey. He's actually Go-- YHV-- Kam-- The "Creator", he basically says he created this world just because he was curious to what would happen, and for some reason, this pisses off the party so much we decide to kill him? Anyways, it was at this point when a friend of mine told me to use the Chainsaw weapon on him to instantly kill him. I-- uhhhh-- didn't know this and so I sold it when I got the chance because it was dealing pretty bad damage. So I had to fight The Creator with just my best gear, it took me a couple resets, mainly because his Flare spell and Right/Left arm ability does insane damage and he has the chance to recover his health. He didn't do that with me, but he can do it. I was just throwing out Solar Flares and slam dunking Atomic Bombs into his face and hoping for the best. It took a few tries but eventually I downed him.

The ending isn't anything special. Your party just contemplates whether or not if they should find out the secrets of the tower, and they're just like "nah, it's best if we don't have the knowledge of God or the secrets behind the tower." Roll credits. 

I've written reviews before but this is easily the largest one I've written so far, I just ended up having a lot to say about this game. But I think that's a testament to how much I ended up being invested into this game. I really enjoyed my time with and just with how strange and unique the systems are and the worlds of this game is, it really stuck with me well after I finished it a few nights ago, where I find like most games don't tend to leave a lasting impression on me, even the ones I do really like, seldom to I think more than a small handful of moments throughout the game. But here, I feel like I could recount my whole adventure through the game and not miss out on a whole lot of it. Like it's not my new favourite game or anything like that, but I'm incredibly happy to actually have played it and ended up really liking it. It might be my new favourite Final Fantasy game I've finished so far, and maybe my favourite game boy game, if not easily Top 5. So yeah, if you haven't played it, give this game a try.

I would first like to apologise for how long it's been since the last blog. In my last blog, I've mentioned my desire to finish Kirby and The Amazing Mirror, but unfortunately, the game just wasn't able to hold my interest after a while. I think while it's by far a better execution of the format seen in Kirby Super Stars' Great Cave Offensive, I just don't think it works super well for Kirby's gameplay and just felt really bloated. I did finish Castle of Illusion and World of Illusion for the Sega Mega Drive before finishing Final Fantasy Legend, and while they were great games, I didn't have anything to say about them or stuck with me after finishing. They were just solid platformers with great presentation, especially, World of Illusion is one of the best looking Sega Mega Drive games. I also finished Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, but that game was really dull, I could potentially write a review and why it fails at being a beginner's JRPG, so I might do that if I feel up to it. Next blog might be another travel style one, last week I went to an anime figure/merch store, so I wouldn't mind writing about that as well.