Retro Games Beaten

anayo

Oh, yeah, I remember seeing something about Takeshi's Challenge, and how it's basically a troll game.

I'll write something up soon, but I managed to finish off The Granstream Saga. I don't think my opinion of it changed at all going through, maintaining a consistent "very good" ranking in my head.

Okay, I better talk about The Granstream Saga before I forget it all.

So it's not something immediately apparent at a cursory glance, but it is at least in spirit part of the Quintet lineup of games for SNES. Of course, the shift to 3D changes much in how the game plays, despite mostly being a 2D game at heart. Speaking of 3D, though, one thing I didn't know about the game until recently is that it is the first action-RPG on PlayStation to be fully rendered in 3D. No static backdrops with polygonal characters, instead it's all in 3D. The engine used here is... interesting. I can't say it looks all that great at all, but I also don't think it looks awful. One of the more annoying things is that the camera view is directly overhead, and also feels a touch too zoomed in. I have my suspicions that this is for technical reasons - there are some real quirks at play here.

First of all, in most cases, the game runs at a silky smooth 60 FPS. But there are times it chugs pretty hard, often during cutscenes, which tells me there's some culling going on with the direct overhead view. (This doesn't always happen, however, and the game will sometimes maintain full speed.) What's really strange, however, is that the game stays smooth if you are rotated in the cardinal directions, but rotating on the diagonal makes the game super choppy. Basically, don't leave your camera in that position. It's a very strange thing, and again, I suspect it's something engine/culling related. (I'm almost positive it wasn't the emulator; I used PCSX ReARMed on PS Classic, but also tested the diagonal scrolling on real hardware at the beginning of the game.)

So the technicals aren't super great. Character models are extremely simple, and don't even use textured faces. It makes for an odd stylistic choice, but you eventually get used to it. Still, one place where it doesn't suffer is in the most important aspect: the combat. That's the real draw of this game, in my opinion. The unique one-on-one fighting had me originally thinking a sort of duck-and-counter Punch-Out!! comparison, but it's in actuality probably closer to what Zelda II tried to achieve and what Ocarina of Time would also try to achieve in a 3D space. Fights are genuinely rewarding, even if there aren't a ton of enemy types - much like that boxing analogy, you get to learn their tells and how to take advantage when they whiff.

You get three primary weapon types: quick dagger, balanced swords, and powerful axes. They're what you'd expect, but each new weapon you find (actually procured through finding "pieces of metal" that your armlet restores) can also teach Street Fighter-style command moves. Some of these are good, some not so much, but it adds a dash to the proceedings. As well as an actual dash (good for breaking the enemy guard) and dodges. It really is unlike any other ARPG of the time. There are also magic spells to use, but I tended to save all my precious MP for healing spells and not much else.

I brought up the armlet, and it plays a large role in the story. Eon has it to start with (apparently since he was taken in), and it has the mysterious power to restore broken things. Incredibly convenient from a plot perspective, but also an interesting way to change up how you perceive obtaining new equipment and items. Functionally it isn't any different than finding them, but it still seems a bit neater done this way.

Exploration takes the form of pretty much any other ARPG you've played. I don't think it really stands out in this regard, but it's also not bad. I appreciated that areas felt constrained enough that my mental map of them wasn't particularly taxed - or maybe that's just my understanding of the way these sorts of spaces are constructed in most ARPGs with an additional 20+ years under my belt.

I like a lot of the soundtrack in the game. It does a good job setting the mood in a lot of places, and I can't think of any tracks that are egregiously bad. It's good that it has that for mood, because the translation sometimes suffers pretty badly. While not the worst I've seen, there are quite a few typos and dry spots, and I feel that the story they tried to tell here maybe lost some of its import in the process. I also think there's something of a reveal towards the end that felt like it needed a bit more development and some bread crumbs hinting it to the player, but to me it felt dropped in very last-minute. But who knows, maybe I missed all the signs along the way. It's happened before!

The one thing you'll see as a thread through the entire story, though, is sacrifice. It happens a lot. A lot. They really wanted to drive that home, methinks. Hopefully this doesn't spoil too much, but even at the end, you are forced to make a difficult choice that actually leads to two separate endings. (Of course I did both.)

On balance, I think the decent exploration, passable (and potentially more interesting with a bit more work) story, and really fun one-on-one combat combine for me to rate this one a 7.5/10. It's so, so close to achieving greatness, but I feel it needed a little something extra to push it into the pantheon of greats. For a game that often gets ripped a lot, though, I think it holds up surprisingly well. No idea how much time I spent on the game (12-ish hours?), but each of my play sessions felt fun, so it was definitely doing something right.

EDIT: Oh, dang, I forgot to mention the anime cutscenes, which in contrast with the main game graphics are very well done. Definitely fun whenever they come up, with Production I.G. doing the work.

I guess that depends on what one considers an "action-RPG". The original King's Field predates The Granstream Saga, and it is entirely 3D. In KF1 you do fight monsters, gain experience, level up, converse with NPCs, change your equipment load out, many action-RPG tropes are present. However, KF is not an action-JRPG in the same vein as the Quintet games are. So it's a matter of discernment.


I remember that stuff bothering me too. I assumed it was to maximum framerates by showing less polygons on screen.


I'd wager it's an engine issue, wherein the engine isn't optimized for skewed views. Drawing diagonally projecting polygons uses more complex math than orthogonally projecting polygons.

I'm glad to see you finished this one, and you enjoyed it. It's on my list to beat sooner rather than later. I've got the game loaded on my Retroid Pocket 2 at least.