In a fantasy world inspired by Indian folklore, the end of mankind draws nigh. Can you break the cycle before humanity is doomed? Up to four separate scenarios are available for players to enjoy, with a magic system that gives the player total creativity in combat!


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RPG


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Treasure of the Rudras - Squaresoft's last project for the SNES, appropriately played like a 'greatest hits' of their past experiments, assembling concepts not only from Final Fantasy (row-based sideview combat, personal subplots) but also from Live A Live (multiple routes tackled in almost any order, although this time reduced to four) and Trials of Mana (intersecting storylines). What makes this portfolio stand out is the Enscribe function; Ars Magica-like spellmaking achieved by entering names into the magic menu, their power, element and range determined by a combination of keywords learned from around the world. Combat - however, fails to exploit its potential, often resorting to type-matching during boss fights instead (i.e. cast the element opposite of whatever they're using while wearing the appropriate armor). In the meantime, a severe lack of unit/party-building options and lightweight versions of Square's usual merits (story beats, dialogue and humor) tend to expose their usual flaws (simplistic dungeons & progression). Gameplay marks a step forward in terms of animations & pacing, and their town designs remain top-notch, but overall this is unusually conventional by their standards, trying in vain to impose a meaningful identity despite 30 hours of play.

It's a visually beautiful game and probably the best looking one on the console... however this game is just really boring.

The gameplay becomes very tedious when it has you constantly backtracking through levels and fighting enemies that are much lower than your own, and it doesn't help that there's zero puzzles to break up the gameplay. Separately, while I like the games gimmick, the spell naming shit that creates better spells, it felt like more could have been done. A remake would do this game a great service because the story and characters from what I remember aren't that bad. The soundtrack isn’t very memorable either which is a shame considering it’s a Square game.

Muy buenas ideas ejecutadas de forma regular. Lo del sistema de Mantras está bien hasta que lo rompes, entonces es tirar de los que ya tienes y pasar por el slog de explorar la historia tres veces, que, si bien no se sienten repetitivas entre ellas, se sienten repetitivas consigo mismas.

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Treasure of the Rudras was the first and last game by director Keita Amamiya, responsible for the Kamen Rider series, as well as Zeiram and some other things. Popular belief holds that Amamiya was fired by Squaresoft for making such a bad game. I find this very difficult to believe. I mean, it's a pretty decent game, for one thing, and I think that if a game really was that bad, and it actually was the fault of the director, it probably wouldn't have gotten, you know, released. Anyways.

Rudra here was one of Squaresoft's last releases for the Super Famicom, and looks very much like every other post-FFVI RPG of Square's. The music is very catchy, having been done by the same guy who composed the soundtracks for all the Gameboy SaGa games. Hell, some of the tracks are downright fantastic. Naturally, it's Rudra's graphical and musical excellence (and the simple fact that it's a Japan-only Squaresoft game) that have propelled it to “underrated gem” status.

There's three chapters, involving three different people, that can be played in any order, and you can stop one and start another one as easily as hitting Reset (and possibly saving beforehand). In the fourth chapter, all three characters band together, and go fight the ultimate evil or something. This system works out to be pretty neat, and would probably in today's gaming world be called the “Matching Cool Encounter System” or something crazy like that. As an early example, if you clear the air of toxins in one chapter, the characters in the other chapters will be amazed at how the sky suddenly turns blue and bright and clear. It really gives you a sense of three people doing stuff all at the same time. It seems like lots of developers now are using the “play-as-multiple-people” shtick nowadays, but not put to such good use.

The real jewel of the game though, at least to most people, is the game's magic system. It's all based on words; meaning, enscribe a word, any word you want, and pow it's a magic spell. There's some order to it all, like IG is a basic fire spell, and LEF is your healing magic, and you can attach various prefixes and suffixes to those words to make them more powerful or target multiple enemies and such. The further along you travel, the more powerful suffixes you can learn, and you can see what spells your enemies cast and try them out yourself. Pretty neat, huh? The problem is, the magic system the way it is, every single spell is available to you from the second you start playing; all you need to know is the right word. So you can go look at a FAQ or type in random things and immediately rock your enemies’ faces, with no limit to your power other than your Max MP. It also seems like the developers were prepared for this, as the game (especially the bosses) are bastard hard. If you don't know what you're doing, you will die quickly and often. This might not be a problem if you know exactly what to do, but it seems like the game discourages fair play, while (in contradiction) encouraging straight-up trial-and-error. Personally, I've never been big on the whole “die repeatedly while learning from your mistakes” way of beating bosses.

Gideon Zhi mentions more than once that despite the graphical similarities, this game is definitely not Final Fantasy VI, in that you can't just walk through the game and expect to be prepared for anything. But is that necessarily a good thing?

Mehhh... Treasure of the Rudras starts out fine but it just kinda hits the same snag as a lot of RPGs of this time. The mantra system is cool, the presentation is great the story being split between three characters is... probably cool but I focused on Surlent's story and kinda got bored of it (apparently a lot of events in it only make sense if you play Sion's first but that just makes me wonder why you'd let me play the campaign in any order).

My issue with Treasure of the Rudras is the same as FFV, it's just dungeons after dungeon without really anything new introduced to the gameplay or story, just aimless wandering through them hoping that the core combat is somehow strong enough to carry the game for that long (it isn't).

Typically I always try to only be playing one game at a time but I kinda got bored of Rudra, started some other game with the intention of it just being a break to refresh myself, barely ever came back to it, today I just decided to "officially" drop it.

Also apparently you can bug out the game if you use save states to play it, and there's a glitch where you can softlock yourself which I might have done? So uh, I dunno, maybe a good thing that I dropped the game.

As one of the last Squaresoft games on the SFC, they go all out with an incredible spritework and animation.

This is just me talking out of my ass but I believe Octopath Traveler took inspiration in this game with how it's structured. You get to play with 3 main characters and those 3 main characters cross paths with each other as you get to see the story from different perspectives.

What differentiates this game from the others is the magic system, or in this case, the Mantra System. This mantra system gives you the liberty of creating the magic spells you want my entering up to six characters. Of course, as this was played with a fan translation, it was probably a different experience if you play the game in japanese.

Special mention goes the incredible OST, with a lot of diverse tracks and bangers, this a game that makes me sad it was never localized. Maybe one day.