I was excited to play another SaGa fan game after how much I enjoyed Hat World earlier this year. Unfortunately, The Genius of Sappheiros didn't resonate in quite the same way and I decided to drop it after 20 hours.
There's not much to offer here outside of JRPG-style combat. The plot is super thin, the characterizations are basic if fairly enjoyable, the music is just serviceable, and the environments are fairly bland. Unlike the SaGa inspiration, this is a very linear game, so there's not much sense of exploration.
Thus, combat is forced to bear the entire weight of the game. The combat is pretty good in a Romancing SaGa 2 or 3 sort of way. Even random battles can be difficult and you need to make use of your buffs, debuffs, status effects, etc. or you're going to have a bad time. Unlike the RS games, you have 10+ unique characters with their own abilities and skill trees to compliment weapon skills that are shared between characters. Add this to some systems inspired by RS3 -- formations, commanders, field element levels, and you have a good amount of customization. So, the games one pillar, combat, is pretty good. It's certainly not in the running for top 10 JRPG combat for my money, but it's well above average.
The problem is, you get all of these interesting characters, but they all start at level 1. Of course, only characters currently in your party get experience, so if you want to use them, you're gonna have to get grinding. I figured I'd only bother grinding out enough characters to field a solid party, and then I got hit with classic JRPG "make two parties", required me to use 10/11 characters I had at that point. I got all of my lowbies up to a serviceable stage, but doing so really burnt me out. I found myself wanting to start up the game less and less and then realized that I'm just not having fun any more.
While having to grind was what killed my motivation, I was starting to feel that the game was a bit tedious regardless at under 20 hours in. The main game is apparently 50-60 hours, so I doubt I would have finished regardless. This is another game that goes in my "too long for its own good" pile.
There's not much to offer here outside of JRPG-style combat. The plot is super thin, the characterizations are basic if fairly enjoyable, the music is just serviceable, and the environments are fairly bland. Unlike the SaGa inspiration, this is a very linear game, so there's not much sense of exploration.
Thus, combat is forced to bear the entire weight of the game. The combat is pretty good in a Romancing SaGa 2 or 3 sort of way. Even random battles can be difficult and you need to make use of your buffs, debuffs, status effects, etc. or you're going to have a bad time. Unlike the RS games, you have 10+ unique characters with their own abilities and skill trees to compliment weapon skills that are shared between characters. Add this to some systems inspired by RS3 -- formations, commanders, field element levels, and you have a good amount of customization. So, the games one pillar, combat, is pretty good. It's certainly not in the running for top 10 JRPG combat for my money, but it's well above average.
The problem is, you get all of these interesting characters, but they all start at level 1. Of course, only characters currently in your party get experience, so if you want to use them, you're gonna have to get grinding. I figured I'd only bother grinding out enough characters to field a solid party, and then I got hit with classic JRPG "make two parties", required me to use 10/11 characters I had at that point. I got all of my lowbies up to a serviceable stage, but doing so really burnt me out. I found myself wanting to start up the game less and less and then realized that I'm just not having fun any more.
While having to grind was what killed my motivation, I was starting to feel that the game was a bit tedious regardless at under 20 hours in. The main game is apparently 50-60 hours, so I doubt I would have finished regardless. This is another game that goes in my "too long for its own good" pile.
It's a Touhou SaGa fan-game. If you are crazy enough to like those 2 things then it's actually kind of amazing. High IQ only.
Marking this down as just played, as I'm putting this version of the game down, as the best, most content filled, updated version is getting a full translation soon, so I'm going to restart the game and play that version instead as I've only put about 10 or so hours into the game so far. From what I've played so far, this is a goddamn masterpiece though.