I wonder why it is that Phantasy Star is more popular in the US than it is in Japan.
I was reading over this thread and then looked at what Doug listed as the SNES’s traditional RPGs and DrCrypt’s question of, “has any 16 bit RPG looked this good” (I’d argue Chrono Trigger and Seiken Densetsu III as well Dragon Quest VI look better, but meh, why, when its obvious Phantasy Star IV is gorgeous too?) and I had thought Gran Historia had been released in the US. But a quick research seems to say it hasn’t been.
Quick lowdown: Gran Historia a was neat, cool SFC RPG that kind of crossed Chrono Trigger and Phantasy Star. That is, it was science fiction, with a front-view battle system and a Phantasy Star-type plodding progress, but revolved around correcting moments in time so that a better outcome would result in a future where the good guys didn’t lose. You had this history list in your menu and you’d go through ages to the most important points in time to confront the problems. One of the other cool points about the game was that it was first person view on all sides, that is, the screen would pivot around front, back, forward and side depending on where enemies attacked you from, and there were combos and moves that were only effective dependent on how your party was facing.
It strikes me as odd that we seem to have gone back to 16-bit days in terms of translating RPGs for the GBA. Just a cursory list is astounding, ignoring all the bad RPGs or questionable ones: Snap Kids, Shin Megami Tensei (remake), Shin Megami Tensei If (remake), Mother 1 and 2 (remake), Tomato Adventure, Magical Vacation, Oriental Blue, Narikiri Dungeon 2, Tales of Phantasia (remake), Summoner’s Lineage, Wizardry Summoner, Summon Night: Sword Story and Klonoa Heroes. I also imagine the QT3 type of taste would go nuts for something like Chocobo Land which can best be described as Culdcept meets Chocobos.
I also imagine the GBA would be an ideal platform to re-release or give translations to games that never appeared in the US, like Dragon Quest V and VI, the other two Phantasy Star games that didn’t come over (small contributions to the series, but neat nonetheless, especially if they came in pack games), Seiken Densetsu III, Shin Megami Tensei, Romancing Saga (and the second one too!), Rudora’s Treasure, Mystic Ark, Front Mission and so on. It would also be great to to let wider audiences play all the fantastically different RPGs that came out in the SFC period, games like Down the World, or Monstania, or Traverse: Starlight & Prairie, or Dark Law, or The Demon of Laplace, Sword World, Solid Runner or the awesome, awesome, awesome Chaos Seed.
I’ll throw in a vote for Sword of Mana, as it was my favorite game last year, BTW. I simply disagree with nearly all the criticism it has received, and I don’t mention it much, because I’m not much for arguing. However, I loved the many enormous, 16-bit style colorful, large bosses with lots of attacks, the wonderful environments, sense of color and colorful, redone music tracks. I’m inclined to be more impressed by the AI characters that follow you around than not, since the original game its remaking, they were far, far dumber and far less useful. A combination of switching characters, changing the AI command for a given situation and micromanaging them every once in a while made up for their weak AI, and made for such a different play experience, that I played through the game once ignoring them and the next time baby-sitting them and both were fun experiences. I can’t fathom why people don’t like the weapon and armor creation system (and no, this isn’t an invitation to tell me), I understood and used it a lot, but perhaps you have to like the game in the first place, and if you don’t, you just don’t put any effort into it, I dunno.
I also LIKED how they revamped the very old storyline, giving more character and attention to all of the characters, and I thought a lot of dialogue was great and very funny in that lighted Seiken Densetsu/Mana way and the cutscene direction was top-notch, though maybe it didn’t translate well. There are annoyingly old cliched scenes though, maybe they could have taken them out, but since it is a remake, I guess they didn’t want to.
The game has an absolutely huge overworld, lots of things to pay attention, a great magic system that determines whether its helpful or harmful on how long you hold down the button and how the spell acts, depending on what type of weapn you’re weilding. My favorite two additions were the addition of a day/night transition (always a plus) and tons of secrets and additions to gameplay because of it (its really well used), like all the little mini-quests and sub events that you can get, Infinity Engine/Fallout style and spend your time on, that and the fabulous way each enemy can be defined by senses, i.e. how well they hear, see or smell you depending on certain factors. Putting smelly grass on the ground to attract bees away from your weak healer and then standing back and pummeling them as they fall to was great fun, as was going to a certain area at a time when night-sight enemies were effectively blind was too. I also liked how they had biological clocks of a sort and would fall asleep at certain times of the day.
Anyway, I’m a great fan of this entire series and was really pleased with this remake.
I had no idea Lufia was so buggy, that’s a shame, because other than a small one that makes some party members attack a little slower than they should, this isn’t the case with the Japanese release. Though it has all the other same problems, I would say its the second best in the series, behind Lufia 2 and a very solid and good RPG in its own right. It just has rather noticeable flaws.
Its more of an adventure game than an RPG, but if you can deal with the sunlight thing, I thought Boktai was absolutely superb. Its an excellent all around game with the type of long-term play time, exploration and tropes you’ll see or like in console RPGs (and some of the tweaking as well). If it wasn’t for the whole sunlight sensor idea, I bet the game would have gotten more respect and better reviews. Though the sunlight has proved to be a problem for me, so I thought it was an awesome game and the best adventure game on the system, by far.
Speaking of pseudo-RPGs, the two Lord of the Rings games, The Two Towers and Return of the King offer very Diablo-esque gameplay that ain’t anything too special, but also isn’t bad. The skill trees for each character and the types of Tolkienesque drops that can be found were especially well thought-out I thought. Not sure on Baldur’s Gate, I haven’t played it. Will one day though. Farther on the pseudo-RPG scale are the Castlevania trilogy for the GBA. They all have cursory “RPG elements” like certain amounts of non-linearity and character-building, but they’re such fabulous action games with the addition of RPGesque elements that they could be a lot of fun if you’re willing to look past the fact that they don’t play like your typical RPG.
Golden Sun 2 comes recommended as well. There’s lots to like about it and its closest to the type of game you seem to want.
One series of RPGs no one has mentioned, but that are fabulous are the Rockman.exe games or Mega Man Battle Network. In each of the game’s Mega Man is simply a net navi who travels on the isometric net passages in the game busting viruses while Lan, his user journeys around the real world. It has a very unique battle system that is somewhere in between an action RPG without the M&L timing and jumping, a card battle game where you make decks and sometimes luck is important and a regular RPG with all the character building and stats you’d expect. The games are large and have everything you’d expect from a console RPG. Especially after the first game. All of them are worth playing, even the spin-off that is only battles and no more RPG or plot, they are currently four games released, with the fifth on its way. I recommend Battle Network 2 if you think might like the others, it corrects some problems in the first and is just an overall huge game, but if you want more there is the even huger Battle Network 3, or if you just like the battles without all the other stuff, Chip Challenge. Its especially nice if you like Mega Man games, because there’s lots of great references for fans of the series.
Have you played a Lunar game? If not there’s Lunar Legend, which is very old-school, but I’d only recommend it really if you’re looking for something to remind you of the 16-bit age, its what we “jidai okure” in Japanese, which kind of means the opposite of the phrase ahead of its time in English. Not bad if you’re looking for that, its just nothing spectacularly good, especially if you have to pay a lot for it (is importing cheaper then?)
My highest recommendations would be for Golden Sun 2, Mega Man Battle Network 2 or Sword of Mana for this reason: they’re all long, large games with great replay value, they’ve all got excellent graphics and sound, and they all fighting systems with some appreciably high layers of depth and strategy in them.
-Kitsune
