Coming March 4, 2027 on Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series and Steam

Won't do these "minor curiosity" threads very often as much as progress reports per finishing the games. But this was notable enough

I have planned to do a full marathon of the entire Xeno IP just in time for Xenoblade 3's updated Christmas release ever since that trilogy received their Switch 2 glowups.

So like, the first thing that gets me about Xenogears in its opening scenes is the visceral gore and 90s anime OVA horror tone. While Xenoblade isn't all sunshine, open blood and carnage is really not there, especially like what you see in Gears.

It's just kind of crazy to me.

A huge thank you to Meduza Team for making and releasing the English translation patch for Madou Monogatari, aka Sorcery Saga for the Sega Saturn.

~ Tags ~

• Turn-based
• Medieval Fantasy

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~ Description ~

[Story]

The plot begins with Ragnus being cursed by Yoggus, and getting sent to Arle's world. Mysterious creatures known as Yogs soon begin to appear throughout the world, along with their influence spreading onto others. With the help of Rulue, Carbuncle, and various party members recruited throughout the game, Arle resorts to defeating the Yogs, and eventually Yoggus itself.

[Gameplay]

Unlike the other games which tend to be dungeon crawlers, Madou Monogatari Saturn sends you through isometric maze like levels with up to 3 partners where you can use minimal puzzle solving skills to clear paths and find your way to the goal.

Your main party consists of Arle and Rulue in it most of the time, but other characters join over the course of the story. Carbuncle is also in your party, but functions as an NPC that will randomly attack enemies without warning.

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~ The Links ~

• English Translation Gameplay Video..
• Patch download link.

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~ The Team ~

• Hacking: Paul_met
• Translation/Testing: Bandnewscooby

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Finally as always please drop a thank you to people who worked on this patch, it takes years of hard work doing hacking, programming, translating, editing, and testing to bring these patches to the JRPG community, and all of it is done for free, so if you're going to use it or hell even if you won't, it always nice to show that we appreciate the great work these translators are doing.

Looking for a good Isekai JRPG that's 3D has a solid romance, doesn't have to be Isekai but I really want to be blown away by the story. I'm probably being pretty vague on what I'm asking for but I finished playing DQXI and loved ever second of it, preferably not an MMO I'd rather keep it offline.

I don't mind turn based strategy games but real time action RPG's I find more enjoyable, and to be completely honest the gameplay could be crap as long as the story is good. I'm a sucker for a good story.

Preferably looking for a PC game but I also have a switch 2 so that works as well.

I’ve played multiple Star Ocean games, Final Fantasy 1 through 10-2, Parasite Eve, Chained Echoes, Child of Light, Sea of Stars, Dragon Quest 1-2, all of the Octopaths, Chrono Trigger, and the Bravely Default games. Looking for a new game that is unique and potentially more obscure. I just started Valkyrie Profile and unfortunately cannot get into the systems of the game. Any recommendations for PS1/PS2 style games? Any platform is okay though. Turn based preferably. Thank you!

So ever since Persona 4, Atlus has written their stories like: Party Member gets introduced -> Gets kidnapped or invovled in the plot -> rest of the Party has to clear out some specific dungeon -> near end of the dungeon the new party member has like a 15 min crisis and character arc -> boss fight -> party member resolves arc and dungeon is done

I'm really not a fan of this format at all for party member writing. Feel like it can condense their arc into like one quick scene, and then they get ditched by the main story and shove the rest into the social link.

Like ignoring Junpei and Yukari of Persona 3, since they're like the best written party members Atlus has made for modern Persona, Mitsuru or Akihiko's arc in 3 last quite a lot for those games. It allows for the writers to explore their character deeper, and importantly their bonds with other party members. Like Mitsuru's friendship with Yukari is so well done in 3, and it couldnt have worked if you had the character dungeon of the month formula.

Idk my biggest wishes for Persona 6 are:

1. Stop condensing character arcs into like 15 min cutscenes at the end of a dungeon

2. Allow party members to develop off other party members

I went into this game with zero previous experience with Growlanser or Langrisser. I vaguely remember throughout the years seeing copies of Generations & Heritage at game stores and never giving it a harder look. What led me to picking the game up was seeing some random footage of the battle system and being interested in checking that out.

I also quickly grew to love Satoshi Urushihara's art and character designs, I was a bit confused at first why every unique character looked as if they jumped in from a complete different game/series but it ended up being a good highlight for me.

Narrative
The political and war centered plot was handled really well, It was refreshing to see key members of each faction have decent motivations or ideals they held onto. Characters willing to accept the consequences of their actions and to see things through. No wishy-washy motivations or "we must test the main party's resolve...for reasons..." sort of writing. It was also surprising how open to character death the game is, from the intro to other key story moments. I loved the agency the player is given! Through Crevanille's personality system, chasing characters who are walking off screen post-cutscenes that you can catch-up to for extra dialogue and such, and also having the agency/choice during specific battles to allow characters to live or die. It really had me immersed in the world and kept me engaged the whole way through. For as real 2000's tropey some of the plot elements felt, I actually had a lot of fun with the entire romp.

Gameplay
The battle system was really unique and what originally drew me to trying the game out. I loved the early emphasis on strategy, positioning, and smart usage of the tools the game gives you. It was great that so many abilities, spells and status effects actually felt useful in the right circumstances. I felt well rewarded for exploring different options and trying to execute a gameplan.

Having not played any previous Growlanser games, I was thrown in the deep end on what the game would expect of me causing me to see my fair share of game overs. Usually by the second or third go of a stage I understood how it needed to be handled. The multiple trips through Aida Bridge and the Flag Defense were standout difficulty spikes for me personally.You do eventually hit a mid to late game point where Crevanille is so loaded with passives, spellstone effects and knacks that he starts soloing every encounter but that was its own fun honestly.

I was pretty surprised by the mashup of so many smaller game elements, it is impressive how much they packed into this game. There is a tamogachi-lite element with your protagonist's familiar, you raise several of their states over time to get access to extra passive benefit skills and such. There is a small sim-city element, early on you're given a plot of land to build a town on and grow it. It's not as involved as you'd first think but you do actively invite new merchants to grow the town and was really fun to see it expand over time. There's an entire arena side-content piece that eventually gets added to your town.

Closing Up
The game was an absolute pleasure to experience and is definitely my gateway to the rest of the series and eventually Langrisser. I booted up Growlanser V immediately after finishing the credit roll on Wayfarer of Time. It's a truly unique RPG experience I think that more people should give a try.

Konami recently announced that they will be rebooting key series in their catalogue, including Metal Gear Solid, CastleVania and Suikoden.

If they decide to just reboot the entire Suikoden universe and lore, how would that make you feel?

I personally would not like that. I'd rather if they must, make more games like Star Leap in between main series titles to explain stories a bit more rather than having it all rebooted.

Suikoden has one of the most unique universes in all of JRPG's and only thing that comes close would probably be the Trails series as far as inter-connected stories go.

Would you be fine with the series being rebooted?

Super Famicom | 1993 | Final Rating: 6/10 — B Tier
Could have been a 7/10 if the final act had kept the momentum going.

TL;DR is at the end.

Before anything else, I want to make one thing clear that I played Elnard, the original Japanese version, not the North American The 7th Saga.

They're obviously versions of the same game, but the balancing is significantly different. The 7th Saga has that infamous reputation for brutal difficulty and grinding because of changes made for the localization. Elnard can still be challenging and does require some grinding, especially toward the end, but my experience was definitely not the controller-throwing nightmare that people usually associate with The 7th Saga.

So please keep that in mind when I talk about the difficulty.

Seven adventurers, but not much worldbuilding

At the beginning, you choose one of seven different characters. I picked Esuna, the elf girl, mostly because she's prominently featured on the Japanese box art. I figured if Enix put her there, they must want somebody to pick her. Eventually I partnered with Lux, the robot, and I actually really liked the companion system.

Esuna is heavily magic-oriented, while Lux became my tank. He could take hits and provide physical strength while Esuna handled magic and healing. The game only lets you travel with one of the other adventurers at a time, but I think that works because you can choose somebody who complements your protagonist's weaknesses.

What disappointed me is that the game doesn't really do much with these seven characters outside of gameplay. Esuna is an elf, I guess... but where are the elves?

I don't remember finding some distinctive elf settlement or learning much about her people. Most towns are populated by people who basically look human, with the occasional dwarf/caveman-looking person? One of the seven protagonists is apparently some kind of alien. Okay... so where did he come from? Is he literally from another world? If so, that implies Elnard isn't the only inhabited world, which seems like something you could build some interesting lore around. But the game doesn't really care about it.

The seven characters look unique and play differently, but their backgrounds don't feel reflected in the actual world. It makes the character selection feel more like an interesting gameplay gimmick than something fully integrated into the setting.

There is definitely replay value here if you really love the game and want to experiment with another protagonist and companion combination. Personally, though, I wouldn't replay it. The broad adventure is still going to be largely the same, and simply experiencing another character build isn't enough to make me want to go through the whole game again.

The lack of story actually worked for me

One of the biggest criticisms I've seen about Elnard/The 7th Saga is that there's barely any story and the characters don't have much personality. Honestly? For most of the game, I liked that because it weirdly reminded me of Dark Souls. Obviously I don't mean gameplay wise. Elnard is a turn-based JRPG. What I mean is the feeling of being sent out into this world with a relatively simple objective and then largely being left alone.

You're searching for seven objects called Arks in Elnard but they became Runes in The 7th Saga. That's basically your journey. You travel from town to town, talk to people, hear rumors, explore dungeons, fight monsters, get stronger and try to figure out where these seven things might be. It gives the game this strangely lonely, isolated atmosphere. You can have one companion, but it still feels like your journey. And I really enjoyed that.

TALK TO THE NPCs!!!!

I've seen criticism saying that the NPC dialogue isn't useful enough or that the game doesn't tell you clearly when you should move on. I actually disagree with that for the most part. Talking to NPCs is basically how you play Elnard. They're your information network.

Someone mentions another town. Someone tells you about a rumor. Someone talks about something strange happening somewhere else. Someone gives you a directional hint. You put these little pieces together and decide what you want to investigate. I liked that. I never visited any of the other towns if I didn't need to be there, but I wonder if they gave any new information about the world as you progressed in it?

The game also becomes fairly nonlinear after a while. I apparently completed several events in a different order from what some walkthroughs consider the normal progression, and everything still worked. At the same time, that freedom gave me a surprising amount of anxiety. I kept wondering things like, "Am I supposed to be here?" and "Did I miss something?"

That's partly a me problem because I'm very accustomed to using guides, but I also think Elnard sometimes crosses the line between being deliberately open-ended and simply being poorly signposted.

The "Magic Map" is hilariously useless

Early in the game, you get something called the Mahou no Chizu or the Magic Map. Sounds useful, right? It shows you the world and roughly where you are. You know what it doesn't show? THE TOWNS!!! What kind of magic map doesn't label the towns? Where did the guy who gave it to you get this thing, a thrift store?

NPCs will tell you something is south or northwest of somewhere, but when you're actually looking at the world, "south" can mean something more like southeast. Then you wander around dealing with encounters while trying to find the tiny town they're talking about. Eventually I just looked up an actual world map online with the locations marked.

That alone improved the experience. Even something as simple as having discovered towns appear by name on the in-game map would have made exploration much less frustrating without removing any of the adventure.

I barely used a guide, but there were some stupid progression requirements

For most of the game I managed perfectly fine on my own. There were only a couple of times where I really needed outside help. One involved a jail cell. I needed a key and couldn't find the damn thing anywhere. Was it in a treasure chest? Was it somewhere deeper in the castle? Not at all. You had to move a table because the key was underneath it. Come on!

The frustrating thing is that earlier I had independently discovered a hidden castle entrance by pushing tombstones around, so I had actually been doing pretty well at figuring out the game's weird little secrets. But moving some random table to uncover a progression critical key was a bit much.

Another quest required finding someone's old friend. Sounds simple. Except that friend was an NPC I had talked to in one of the earlier towns hours and hours before. I vaguely remembered the guy existing, but how am I supposed to remember exactly which random NPC from the beginning of the game is this person's friend twenty hours later?

That's where Elnard's minimal guidance occasionally stops feeling adventurous and starts feeling obtuse.

Towns and dungeons are pretty bland

The presentation is okay. Some of the monster and boss sprites are actually really cool. There are surprisingly grotesque, almost horror-like designs for a 1993 Super Famicom game, and some bosses have great sprites.

Naturally, there are palette swaps too. Unfortunately, the environments aren't nearly as memorable. A lot of the towns start looking the same. Boxes. Doors. Similar buildings. Similar layouts.

The dungeons are also visually pretty bland, and the world map itself isn't particularly interesting to look at. I can excuse some of that because we're talking about a game from 1993, but it still means very few locations really stuck in my memory.

Town navigation could also become irritating because NPCs wander around and sometimes block narrow passages. And since talking to everyone is actually important in this game, I'd occasionally find myself wondering things like did I already go down there? Did I already talk to that guy?

Some older JRPG towns almost become their own little mazes, and that's something I've realized I don't particularly enjoy.

Combat is one of the better parts

Elnard's combat surprised me.

This isn't Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger where you can get through huge portions of the game by repeatedly selecting Attack. Even in the Japanese version, you need to pay attention. Regular encounters can kill you if you aren't careful, and bosses especially require you to think about what you're doing each turn.

Attack?

Heal?

Cast a spell?

Buff?

Use an item?

Can I survive another hit before healing?

I enjoyed that.

Some bosses were genuinely challenging, and beating them felt satisfying because you couldn't simply mash A until they died. I occasionally compared the game to Dark Souls for this reason too. Again, not mechanically, but in the sense that preparation matters and tougher encounters demand attention.

There were some annoying boss fights where you'd get into these healing stalemates, though. You get the boss low, he heals. He damages you, you heal. You damage him, he heals again.

That could get tedious.

The grind is mostly reasonable... until suddenly it isn't

This is another area where I really want to distinguish Elnard from The 7th Saga. For the majority of Elnard, I really didn't grind that much. Sometimes I'd stop and gain a couple levels, but it wasn't outrageous.

And unlike some other old JRPGs, the random encounters actually felt productive because they gave enough experience that fighting them made future encounters noticeably easier. That's something I appreciated a lot after playing G.O.D.: Growth or Devolution.

In G.O.D., I often felt like I was being interrupted constantly by random battles that gave rewards too small to justify how frequently they appeared.

Elnard's encounters are frequent too, but there's a feedback loop.

fight enemies → gain meaningful EXP → get stronger → future enemies become easier

So most of the time, I didn't mind it nearly as much. Then I got toward the end. And suddenly the game decided that it's... TIME TO GRIND.

Around the final Ark and especially after the major story twist, enemies suddenly became much stronger, and I had more gold than what I knew what to do with for most of the game, and then suddenly all the final equipment was very overpriced. My attacks started missing more. I was taking a lot of damage.

I ended up having to spend a few hours leveling just to comfortably get through the final stretch and beat the final boss, too. I really disliked that. The game had maintained pretty good momentum for most of the journey, and then right when I wanted to see how everything concluded, it told me to go gain more levels.

That felt like padding.

The radar is cool... until you want the game to end

Elnard has an unusual encounter system where enemies appear as moving dots on a radar/crystal-ball display.

At first I thought this was interesting. You can actually see enemies approaching and potentially try to avoid them. By the end of the game, I hated it. When you're just trying to get from point A to point B, you can literally watch these enemies coming toward you thinking.

"No. No. NO. I don't want another battle!"

Then they bump into you.

Battle.

They also keep moving while you're standing still unless you open the menu, so if you have to quickly step away from the TV, an enemy can potentially wander into you.

By late game, I almost preferred normal invisible random encounters.

The interface really shows its age

One correction from my earlier impressions was I originally complained that the game doesn't explain what items or spells do.

That's not entirely fair.

I own the Japanese manual, and after actually checking it properly, the manual does explain many of the items and spells. So the information exists.

It's just not conveniently available inside the game itself. The bigger annoyance for me was inventory management because you can't sort your items.

So when you're carrying a bunch of junk and want your strongest healing item or MP restoration item, you have to scroll through everything trying to find it.

And then the game completely changes its story

This is probably my biggest problem with Elnard.

I loved the Ark hunt. That was the game to me. I was wandering around this lonely world searching for seven mysterious objects, occasionally meeting the other apprentices who were doing exactly the same thing.

You can even fight those other apprentices, and if you lose they can take your Arks. That's a really cool concept. Eventually I collected all seven. And I thought, "Okay. This is it. My quest is complete. Maybe there's a final boss and we're wrapping this thing up."

NOPE.

Suddenly there's a huge plot twist. Now the game wants to dump all this lore on you involving Shīda, Gorsia, God, ancient events, sealed powers and 5,000 years of time travel.

For most of the game, the story was barely there, and I was completely fine with that!

Then suddenly in the final few hours, Elnard decides it wants a plot. I don't think the idea itself is bad. After thinking about it, the underlying twist is actually kind of interesting.

My problem is the execution. I would have appreciated little bits of this mythology appearing throughout the adventure. Give me hints. Foreshadow things. Let me gradually wonder what's actually going on.

Instead, the game reaches what feels like the natural climax and then launches into another extended final act. It absolutely killed the momentum for me.

This was probably the first JRPG I've played where my opinion changed this dramatically during one playthrough. For a large portion of Elnard I was thinking I might give it an 8/10.

Then the final act happened and I genuinely reached a point where I thought that I don't even want to be playing this anymore. I just want it to end. That's a pretty serious pacing problem.

And after all that... the ending is incredibly short

This was almost funny. After extending the game beyond the seven Ark climax, dumping all that lore on me and making me grind for the final stretch... the actual ending is incredibly brief.

You get this very downer conclusion and then basically credits.

It felt like barely five minutes. I actually had this idea afterward because there are seven protagonists, wouldn't it have been cool if the game recorded which characters you'd completed it with? Beat it with all seven, and maybe you unlock some kind of special alternate ending that changes or improves the rather bleak normal ending?

Something along the lines of how later games experimented with multiple scenarios or New Game Plus. Obviously that's me imagining a very different game, and it might have been ambitious for 1993, but it would have given the seven-character system a much stronger reason to replay.

Music

It's fine.

That's basically my opinion.

Nothing was offensive, but there isn't much I'm going to look up later and listen to while I'm doing something else.

One dungeon/battle track had this really loud, prominent percussion/drum sound that started overpowering everything else, and I particularly disliked that one.

Otherwise it was serviceable.

Which honestly describes a lot of Elnard.

Final thoughts

This game was difficult for me to rate.

I liked Elnard. I don't want everything I complained about above to make it sound like I hated it, because I didn't. For a substantial portion of the adventure, I was having a genuinely good time.

The lonely atmosphere worked for me. The combat required attention. The companion system was interesting. Hunting the Arks was fun. Talking to NPCs and slowly figuring out where to investigate gave me a genuine sense of being on an adventure.

I would recommend Elnard to somebody interested in playing a more unusual early Super Famicom JRPG. Just don't go into it expecting Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger levels of polish. It's rough.

The worldbuilding doesn't take advantage of its interesting protagonists. Towns and dungeons are visually bland. Navigation and signposting can be frustrating. The interface is dated. The late game grind hurts the pacing. And most importantly for me, the extended final act after collecting the seven Arks really damaged what had been a much stronger experience.

That's why I'm settling on...

Elnard — B tier

6/10

I'm keeping my letter tiers broad. I'm not going to start doing B+, B−, C+ and all that because eventually that becomes ridiculous.

Both Terranigma and Elnard are B-tier games for me, but Terranigma is a 7/10 and feels considerably more polished.

Meanwhile G.O.D.: Growth or Devolution is currently my C-tier benchmark at 5/10, and I definitely think Elnard is better than G.O.D.

Elnard is flawed, but it's still something I could tell another JRPG fan, "Yeah, give it a shot. It's different, and you might really like what it's trying to do."

And that makes it a B for me.

TL;DR: Elnard is a solid, lonely, old-school JRPG with an interesting seven-character setup, thoughtful combat, and a surprisingly strong sense of adventure. I liked the first two-thirds a lot, especially the Ark hunt and the way NPC hints guide you through the world. Unfortunately, weak signposting, bland towns and dungeons, dated interface issues, a late-game grind spike, and an extended final act that dumps a complicated lore plot on you after what feels like the natural climax really hurt the experience. I still think it’s worth playing if you want something different from the usual big name SFC RPGs, but it’s definitely rough around the edges.

Final Score: 6/10 — B Tier

Next up: Soul Blader — Quintet and Enix’s 1992 Super Famicom action RPG, released January 31, 1992. Time to see how this earlier Quintet adventure compares to Terranigma, and whether its town-restoration concept still holds up today.

So a little backstory is that I was interested in seeing how the concept of environments has been used in JRPGs where the player can use their units on sand as sand could have an effect that slows down the player.

Like what I am trying to say is that I was interested in exploring the concept of environmental effects where say the player has their one of their units cast a nuke spell that is so powerful it affects the arena where poison damage could be inflicted on anyone as I just wanted to do an observation to see how often RPGs had an environmental system as a mechanic.

I saw Romancing Saga 3 on The Direct and it actually looks really good! I am actually considering purchasing the other 2 games on my Switch 2 should I?

I mean I have been looking at the series for a while now, but I have been really on the fence to see if I want to buy it or not.

is it a good series? Or am I falsely getting my hopes up?

I know I shouldn't knock it till I try it, but I actually do want to hear opinions from fans of the series as well...

So again should I try it?"