Some RPGs Go Best with a Long Car Ride and Dinner from Denny’s
I don’t care what everyone else says. Akitoshi Kawazu is a genius. He work’s with an indie gamer mindset—unafraid of experimentation and rejection, and just making whatever game he feels like making at that moment. So, I’d like to talk for a little bit about the first SaGa game I played—Final Fantasy Legend 2.
Let’s be clear. This isn’t a review. Reviews require objectivity, and this game’s too old to be objective about.
Nothing about this game makes any sort of sense. It’s a fantasy RPG. You’d know this from the title and the basic story synopsis, which you get in the manual. And my first experience with the game was with the manual. I read those a lot when I was younger.
I got the game at a Target somewhere and somewhen. It was coming back from Florida over spring break. I’m not sure how old I was at the time. At least nine since I didn’t get a Gameboy till the Christmas of my third grade year, and definitely no older then eleven. Part of me thinks I got it when I was in forth grade because I’m pretty sure I played it before Pokemon. Part of me thinks I got it in fifth, because that’s when I got into emulation, and seeing as I noticed the thing from name recognition… well, I’m not sureI would’ve known what Final Fantasy even was prior to getting into emulation (although, I had played Mystic Quest, so…).
Anyway, the Target was probably in Lexington, Kentucky, and I’d like to digress and get back to my point.
The manual’s got some pretty crazy illustrations in it. Stuff you wouldn’t really associate with a fantasy JRPG. Crazy looking robots carrying tons of weapons. Crazy looking elves carrying tons of weapons. And a guy that looks a little bit like Indiana Jones who’s supposed to be your dad. And just as you can hear the player thinking, “Why in the world are there robots with rocket launcher in a fantasy game about collecting magical gems,” you can also hear Kawazu answering back, with a grin on his face. “Because it’s awesome.”
This kitchen sink aesthetic continues into the game itself and isn’t just the product of US art director’s changing stuff around in the manual to make it more American or whatever (Notable, though, is that the US art is a lot better. The original art looks sort of like someone aping Toriyama. Badly).
This is one of the biggest differences with a newschool RPG. RPGs where you’ve got magic and technology side-by-side aren’t uncommon now. Or haven’t been for a really long time. The difference is that these days, the writers feel they have to explain everything. You’ve got Magitek or Fontech or Ancient Evil Technology That Nobody Uses Anymore Because It’s Scary or, perhaps an even bigger trope: One society likes science. Another society likes wizards.
With FFL2, you don’t get any explanations. You’ve got robots and handguns in large, forested worlds without any large population centers or any real indication of technology, and families of monsters giving birth to humans, and bazookas sitting comfortably side-by-side with spellbooks. And there’s no explanation why. You’re not even supposed to try and guess why this might be the case. You’re just supposed to accept it. Because it’s awesome.
Although this inexplicableness has another, and much cooler, side effect. See, a lot of this stuff doesn’t make sense to you, the player, and you’re just supposed to suspend your disbelief, willingly. But apparently, all of this stuff that doesn’t make sense to you makes perfect sense to the people in the game because none of them ever question it. The third world you visit used to be a single town inhabited by giants, and what exactly happened to them isn’t really all that clear. The fourth world is rather hi-tech and ruled by a god called Apollo. I think there’s a shopping mall in one of the cities. I also remember killing Apollo with a missile the first time I played the game.
That’s another difference between oldschool and newschool RPGs. In a newschool RPG, they’re not just explaining why you get magic and technology side-by-side for the player’s benefit. No—instead, you’re always going on journeys to find where this technology came from and how it works. And by the ending credits, everything has been neatly explained to you, the player, and there shouldn’t be any questions about what you just saw. And in the process, the writers completely missed the point of creating a fantasy world by explaining away all of the mystique and everything alien and fantastical about it and, after all, what would the point of frungy be if you actually knew what it was?
In any case, the first world always reminds me of those 70’s sci-fi movies that were filmed out in Montana. Cold air, blue skies, and huge pine trees all over the place. And mountains everywhere you look.
Another big thing, for me, is that I still really like the gameplay here.
Races play a big part in the game. Humans and mutants aren’t that different. They’re developed in the same way—stats go up based on what you do in battle, but also a little randomly—and they can all equip roughly the same stuff. Mutants, however, tend to favor magic, and they can also develop various traits as they progress. Humans, on the other hand, are more combat oriented and develop faster.
Monsters and robots are the odd ones. Monsters aren’t new—they were in FFL1 and work roughly the same way. They don’t level up or gain stats, but rather transform into new monsters by eating monster meat that gets left behind after a battle. I never liked monsters my first time through because I was too afraid to eat unknown meats, but in my current game, my party consists of three monsters and a robot, and I’m finding them pretty useful. It’s actually a pretty interesting, almost Shin Megami Tensei-like dynamic. They have a lot of possible skills—both attacks and things like immunities and weakness and other passive abilities like poison skin—so you get some good variety.
Robots are the new guys, and I really like them a lot. Their stats are based entirely on what they have equipped. With humans and mutants, the base stats aren’t changed by equipment, from my understanding, but you have separate, say, strength ratings, and each weapon has its own effectiveness value, and the total damage you do is sort of a factor of the two. In the case of humans and mutants, mind, because you can equip however many weapons you have room for, weapons modifying the base stats wouldn’t make much sense. So, because they DO modify the base stats on robots, it’s sort of like a double bonus. What makes it interesting is that HP and speed are also determined by what you have equipped, so getting some new equipment—especially in my one robot, three monster game—is sort of a big event. Also, weapons have a limited durability in FFL2, and robots can get around that, sort of. Whenever they rest at an inn, their equipped weapons are restored to their original durability—that is to say, whatever durability they were at when you equipped them to the robot (although it’s worth noting that equipping something to a robot immediately halves its durability. Ergo, you can’t exploit this to constantly regenerate your weapons, because they’d dropped to half of their original value as soon as you equipped them to the robot, so if something’s at a durability of four, it’ll drop down to two when the robot gets it, and it’ll never increase past that again).
Needless to say, the races are distinct enough that it’s a good amount of variety, and party composition can change the game’s dynamic a lot. And just to set the record straight, no, the weapon durability really isn’t annoying, and conserving and stockpiling weapons isn’t that hard, either. Most of them are fairly cheap. At least, unless you have an all-human/mutant party, in which case yeah, restocking might be a problem. Monster abilities have limited uses but get recharged in full at an inn, too, so that’s another plus for them.
Another interesting little system involves Magi. Magi are magical bits of something (pieces of a statue, I believe) which the game’s storyline has you looking for. And from a gameplay standpoint, you can equip them to your characters for various effects. Some increase your stats. Others give you elemental resistances. Two grant you some small navigational abilities. It’s nothing huge, but it’s a nice touch to round things out a bit.
The battle system is a fairly standard turn-based one. The biggest difference here is that, as I already mentioned, weapons have limited durability and you can equip several to a character for use in battle. Attacks don’t re-target if a character was supposed attack a monster and that monster died. Unlike in FF1, this is actually a good thing as it’s helpful in conserving your weapons. Also, enemies of the same type stack. That is, if you’re facing two soldiers and four plant monsters, you’ll see a group of two soldiers and a group of four plant monsters, and you can only attack the groups. Single-enemy attacks hit the first monster in the group. There are also group attacks and attacks that hit every enemy in combat.
Gameplay progression also needs mentioning. You’re not moved forward by cutscenes and the story events for the most part. Instead, you move forward by collecting the aforementioned Magi. See, in the, as I’ve already partially mentioned, there are multiple worlds. Eight, I believe, in all, one of which is just a large, difficult dungeon that’s not even remotely mandatory. These are connected by a hub area, which is basically a giant glass floor floating in space with a bunch of doors and organic pillars. These doors lead to new worlds, and a lot of them can only be opened once you’ve collected so many Magi, which you do by completing quests and exploring. Essentially, the game’s still linear, but it feels like you’re in control instead of being shuffled around. This is actually a lot like how the tablet pieces worked in Dragon Warrior 7, which I talked about in my musings on that.
Another nice feature that I should mention is the memo… thing. There’s not really much to say about it. It just records important plot and quest details. Nothing big, but a lot of newer games should’ve have quests journals, shouldn’t they?
I also need to mention the music. I’m really fond of it. Uematsu was behind it, but it doesn’t sound anything like him. There’re hints of the Celtic-esque style Mitsuda would become known for, and now that I’ve heard some of Ron Hubbards C64 compositions, I can see a bit of a resemblance there, too. They’re honestly pretty simple songs, very melody-driven, and a lot more earnest than some of his later works.
So, Final Fantasy Legend 2 is ultimately a weird, somewhat idiosyncratic game that doesn’t make a lot of sense a lot of the time but still sort of does make sense anyway. And I think it also represents a sort of freewheeling, anything goes style you used to see a lot more frequently in games (or rather, games which aren’t made by, say, Atlus, or Tarn Adams). The style’s really quite unique, surprisingly simple, and a little refreshing, and the gameplay’s creative enough to hold up well today—and unlike a lot of oldschool RPGs, no, this one isn’t a grindfest.
Tags: akitoshi, FFL2, final fantasy legend 2, gameboy, kawazu, saga