[19/1000] Makai Toushi SaGa

Platform: WonderSwan Color

Release date: March 20, 2002

Developer: Square

Publisher: Square

Genre: RPG

Battle System: Turn Based

Difficulty: Varied

Setting: Mixed

 

A WonderSwan Color remake of the first SaGa game which was originally released for Game Boy. It's also known in west as Final Fantasy Legend but it has little to do with FF series though there ARE some references. SaGa series is known for it's unique gameplay and open world structure and this game is start of the series.

The backstory Makai Toushi SaGa is that there's a huge tower leading straight to paradise and a lot of adventurers tried to do it but failed. Now you - one of adventurers also going into tower to climb to the top. 

 

When game starts with character creation. You have to choose race, gender and name of your main character. And this is the first thing that separates this game from other jrpgs: each race plays differently. 

 Humans can use all 8 equipment slots but you need a lot of money to power them up - their stat upgrades are sold in shops and you use them to permanently increase your character's hp, strength or agility. Humans are great frontline fighters with lots of equipment options.

 Espers are mages of first SaGa. They can use only 4 equipment slots - other 4 goes to abilities they can randomly learn after each battle and frequently you'll be in situation where a useful spell is replaced with something you'll never use or even with weakness to certain element. Espers gain their stats like their abilities - randomly after battles meaning they are much cheaper to gear up. Sometimes stats increase too fast like my second esper who had 99 mana when I finished second world!

 

skeleton's meat, really?

Monsters can't level up at all. Even more: they don't use equipment too, they're monsters after all. Instead after defeating enemies you may find their meat which your monster can eat and transform into different monster getting it's stats and abilities! Some of monsters you can get are references to first FF like Tiamat or Marilith, even having same design.

 

After making your main character you'll be thrown straight into the first city where you have to create three more characters in adventurers guild and them embark on journey. You'll quickly find out that this giant tower connects different worlds each with it's own theme. You'll visit in 4 worlds, one of them even being post apocalyptic! There's also few smaller worlds you can visit while climbing the tower but there's usually not much you can do in them. For me the strangest thing is that first two worlds doesn't have much of a story - you just speak to a few npcs, do a few dungeons, defeat a boss and gain an orb you can use to open door in tower allowing you to climb further. Starting from the third world the game starts to have small story arcs with characters and cutscenes. 

Battles in Makai Toushi SaGa are turn based. You choose weapon or ability for each character and then everyone act depending on their agility. Weapons here are break after certain number of uses and there's quite a selection of them - you'll get to use everything from a normal longsword up to a freaking nuclear bomb! But nothing beats chainsaw which can instantly defeat every enemy, even bosses, even the final boss. Other than hp characters also have lp (life points) represented by hearts. After resurrecting dead character they lose 1 heart and once they lose all - they're gone for good. You can buy hearts in shops tho.

Makai Toushi SaGa was a short but good and unique experience. First three worlds were very easy - my espers completely destroyed all enemies, and bosses fell in two turns max but in fourth world I encountered a power spike: enemies started to hit hard, almost killing my characters, even with the best possible armor, in one turn but espers aoe spells still destroyed everything in one turn. Final boss also felt too hard - he almost always attacks everyone but there's no aoe healing spells or items in this game (as far as I know). He also can completely heal himself to a full hp. So in the end I just sliced last boss in half with chainsaw. Anyway the game is cleared. 

Final Stats:

Game playtime: 4h 31m

Total playtime: 11d 2h 26m