A look back at: Romancing SaGa 3

At this writing, I am officially now all caught up with putting all my old RPG reviews from TheTopTens onto "look backs" in this blog. This includes Romancing SaGa 3, which I actually just finished just a day or so ago and written my full review on it. So yeah, more SaGa stuff. I've played more games here than I have any other franchise apart from Suikoden and Final Fantasy.

I won't walk away from it impressed though. There were things I was expecting. Having eight potential protagonists with some intertwining intros, fair enough. Having to get lucky with the RNG to get the techniques and stat boosts, not a fan of that anyways. Quests are interesting, but somehow Romancing SaGa 2 did a better job with them. There were things I hated. Monica, which was my main character, is barred from several quests. Harid can't use anything but a curve sword in his first weapon slot*. Katrina is pretty much unavailable unless she's your main. Mikhael's war battles are honestly more trouble than they're worth, and I don't know if the ruling game is any better than being the emperor in Romancing SaGa 2. There are of course, hidden counters. I was barred from recruiting some of the last few characters like the snowman due to an unknown "character recruit limit", which honestly shouldn't have existed. There's also a greed counter, apparently bad if you are playing as Harid, I think. Oh yeah, and mastering techs is at the mercy of the RNG. Especially evasion ones.

For what its worth though, at least Romancing SaGa 3 provides a neat premise, like the other two before it. And at least we will get involved with them in the middle of all the quests to take. And despite not a whole lot of background for most recruitable characters, Romancing SaGa 3 seems to better than its predecessors. The ones involving Sharl and Muse are good, as is Herman/Black. Zo (the elephant) wants to cure his sister, while the eastern characters like Bai Meiling and Yan Fan work together with the hero on things. The best part is that none of the characters in the game actually suck at everything**, each one is skilled in at least something. So barring some minor nuances, Romancing SaGa 3 is a nice swan song for the mini-franchise, one that even got translated well enough. SaGa Frontier takes over from here.

*Though the Seven Star Sword trick does work with Harid, good freaking luck with that RNG.
**Except Herman, who's meant to suck due to having lost his youth. Sure, he can use the axes rather well, but then again, his entire stat pool is a tumble. Fight Forneus with Herman in the party and win and he becomes the much better Black. Also Muse may count, since she has zero levels in everything, but she gains them very quickly and can be really good overall.