Mystaria is one of the ugliest genuinely great games I've ever played. It's a 3D SRPG with superb battlefield, combat and character ability designs and truly dire visuals.
The story is basic, the overworld small. There's only a couple of towns and they're all narrow first person corridors with a few doors to enter. The polygon graphics are atrocious, with a low frame rate, short draw distance and muddy textures. The character designs sum up everything that went wrong when CG character design suddenly became a thing at the tail end of the prior generation.
But none of that matters, because as an SRPG, it's brilliant. The battlefields make smart use of the 3D terrain and obstacles, and often present several valid ways to approach a conflict. Each layout is unique and takes very good strategy to overcome what are frequently daunting odds. The character abilities are all unique and you can cobble together several different combinations of effective parties that have a pronounced impact on the strategies that should be used. Abilities and stats are surprisingly nuanced and well thought out. Protip: have an effective archer!
And the soundtrack, to put it scientifically, rules. The intro video is a good summation of the game itself: bad visuals and character designs, but the music is ludicrously good and makes up for it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQdQXGLHJRM
Loved this when it first came out, and, assuming you can get over the simple plot and bad visuals, Mystaria still holds up very well, as my recent replay confirmed. A very muddy gem on the Saturn.
The story is basic, the overworld small. There's only a couple of towns and they're all narrow first person corridors with a few doors to enter. The polygon graphics are atrocious, with a low frame rate, short draw distance and muddy textures. The character designs sum up everything that went wrong when CG character design suddenly became a thing at the tail end of the prior generation.
But none of that matters, because as an SRPG, it's brilliant. The battlefields make smart use of the 3D terrain and obstacles, and often present several valid ways to approach a conflict. Each layout is unique and takes very good strategy to overcome what are frequently daunting odds. The character abilities are all unique and you can cobble together several different combinations of effective parties that have a pronounced impact on the strategies that should be used. Abilities and stats are surprisingly nuanced and well thought out. Protip: have an effective archer!
And the soundtrack, to put it scientifically, rules. The intro video is a good summation of the game itself: bad visuals and character designs, but the music is ludicrously good and makes up for it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQdQXGLHJRM
Loved this when it first came out, and, assuming you can get over the simple plot and bad visuals, Mystaria still holds up very well, as my recent replay confirmed. A very muddy gem on the Saturn.