Seiken Densetsu 3 (聖剣伝説 3), launched 9/30/1995, developed and revealed by Square

Here we’re within the final recreation of the July-September 1995 block, and it’s an enormous hitter — the sequel to Secret of Mana and the following entry within the Seiken Densetsu collection. I used to be actually trying ahead to this recreation. It’s had popularity for a very long time. Secret of Mana had quite a lot of flaws that I believed resulted from the weirdness in its growth course of, and I hoped that Seiken Densetsu 3 could be the sport Secret of Mana ought to have been. I used to be disenchanted within the recreation, although, and in the long run didn’t assume it was all that good.

The recreation’s graphics are fairly good, and the music is perhaps not precisely the equal of Secret of Mana however it’s shut. The recreation’s finest recognized characteristic is that you just begin off by selecting three characters out of six. Although the general plot is mainly the identical with all of them, there are some totally different bosses and occasions with every of them. Also the fight expertise might be totally different based mostly on who you decide — in addition to which class upgrades you choose for every individual (there are two second degree lessons and 4 third degree lessons for every). This provides the sport a excessive degree of replayability.

I went with Duran, Angela, and Riese. Duran and Riese had been fairly good. The Star Lancer class has very useful stat boosts and she or he has a excessive assault. Duran was effective as properly — I made him a Lord and the therapeutic was useful. Angela was not nearly as good. Magic is worse on this recreation than it was in SoM and by the tip of the sport she was mainly lifeless weight, particularly in boss battles.

My greatest gripe with the sport is how sluggish and unresponsive the system feels to me. It’s presupposed to be an motion RPG, however you spend plenty of time watching animations and mashing buttons to deliver up menus. It will be laborious to inform what’s occurring as you’re knocked across the display.

SoM had an enormous drawback the place magic was too highly effective, and the higher degree techs had been powerful to make use of. Magic is weaker on this recreation — late-game Angela continues to be first rate for attacking grunt enemies though you need to sit by means of the animations to take action. The 2nd and third degree techs don’t require as a lot time to construct up; you get one bar stuffed for every profitable assault you do and when it fills up you get to make use of the tech. It’s good that if the tech misses you don’t lose the bars and may attempt once more.

However, within the latter half of the sport, most bosses and a few grunt enemies reply to magic or degree 2/3 techs by highly effective counter assaults. So not solely do degree 2/3 techs take longer to construct up, however they’ve probability of the enemy walloping you in response. Because of this I simply stored everybody on degree 1 techs later within the recreation.

Another difficulty I had with the sport is that if you’re going after the 8 mana beasts within the second half of the sport, the problem appears to ramp up quicker than you’ll be able to sustain simply by combating the monsters as you go. Because of the best way the weapon and armor stats work (they interface along with your base stats), I needed to do plenty of grinding to maintain up with the enemies. There had been enemies within the later dungeons that might wipe my whole get together with considered one of their particular strikes, and if I used to be 4-5 ranges behind it was laborious to do a lot injury to them. This is actually the half that made me go from not a lot liking the sport to actively disliking it.

One aspect word on the graphics is that this recreation makes use of the Super Famicom’s “high res” mode to render the textual content, permitting them to suit extra textual content in a field and use sharper, simpler to learn kanji. The subsequent recreation I’m taking part in (Odysselia II) additionally makes use of this technique, though I ponder how widespread it turns into after this level. It does trigger a little bit of a graphical glitch or stutter on bsnes as the sport switches from the common decision to the high-res field (and it messes up bsnes-MT’s pixel excellent scaling mode), however I ponder what this seemed like on an precise CRT.

The story is okay. With Duran, it begins with the “Red Magician” attacking the dominion Duran serves, and he leaves house to defeat the magician. Duran’s father was a well-known knight hero. Along the best way he’s chosen by the mana fairy and has to work first to cease the enemies from reviving the mana beasts and destroying the mana stones. The Mana Tree is dying, and to reserve it they should open the best way to the mana holy land and recuperate the Mana Sword (this space is taken straight from Secret of Mana).

Along the best way we study concerning the tales of the opposite 5 characters — as a result of I selected Angela and Riese their tales are extra concerned (Riese must take again her kingdom and Angela has to save lots of her mom), however we get some perception into the opposite three characters as properly.

Of course getting the Mana Sword just isn’t the tip of the story. The mana beasts have been revived anyway, and we’ve got to go monitor down all 8 of them and beat them — the story grinds to a halt right here. Once the eight are defeated, the ultimate confrontation happens in a distinct dungeon relying in your primary character selection. Once these persons are handled, the ultimate boss is within the Mana Holy Land.

I ponder if I’d have appreciated this recreation extra if I weren’t anticipating a lot from it. I feel I first heard about this recreation within the late Nineties and tried taking part in it a bit round then. Sometimes a recreation could be a sufferer of excessive expectations.

So don’t essentially take my unhealthy expertise as how you’ll really feel concerning the recreation — it’s extremely regarded and has a robust fan base.

That being mentioned, this recreation was remade in 2020 for next-gen methods, and this model seems to be extra enjoyable to me from what I noticed on youtube movies. The battle system is way smoother and quicker paced, with far fewer strikes that pause the gameplay when you watch an animation. I’d have an interest to listen to from anybody who has performed this model.