Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon: Another Story

"Not as good a job as Square but still a good RPG"

AN ACTUAL RPG
After seeing so many Final Fight clones featuring Sailor Moon and that nasty fighting game, it's finally refreshing to see the soldiers in an actual RPG for once and players of both genders will enjoy this game.

STRANGE TIMES
The very time of the game is strange but judging but the key characters in the game, I believe that it takes place after Season 4 (Doom Phantom) but right before Season 5 (Queen Nehelenia).
Five evil Sailor Soldiers led by Sin (Sailor Moon look-alike), have appeared and it seems that they're screwing up time, which is altering the fates of everyone on the planet, including the good Sailor Soldiers'. Because of this, old foes that have been vanquished have returned and Hotaru (Sailor Saturn) has been revived from her baby form. Now Sailor Moon and her friends must track down the source of the evil and destroy it before it's too late.

The game itself is very well set up and the graphics are impressive. Just as in most console RPGs, each soldier has stats that are based upon character traits. For example, the offensive Sailor Mars will have a high attack rate whereas the passive Sailor Mercury will have a lower one. As you fight battles, they gain experience points that allow your party members to grow stronger and learn more magic attacks. To add to the fun, you may have up to five soldiers in your party (go figure). Even with such a large number of people, battles run smoothly and enemies can still be a worthy challenge. To extend it even further, you will eventually meet the four newer Sailor Soldiers and the near-worthless Chibi Moon, resulting in a complete total of ten available characters.

COMBINATION MAGIC SYSTEM
One of the unique features that the game has to offer is the combination magic system, It's, well, a magic combo attack in combat that can inflict massive effects depending on the one who calls the attack and the elements of the magic attacks used. Up to three party members can pull off a single attack. This is a fun way to kill enemies, especially when your Energy Points (MP in Final Fantasy terms) recover after every battle. However, unlike Chrono Trigger, the visuals are not all that impressive and it's really just the individual magic attacks of each soldier striking one at a time. Some are visually impressive though but not many.

There is also a set of magic attacks that can be done with all five Sailor Soldiers in a fight. They often cost a hefty amount of EP to cast but they're powerful. However, trying to find the soldiers who can perform the attacks is a tough job. While one combination is all too obvious to Sailor Moon fanatics (Sailor Planet Attack), others require that you have certain soldiers in your party in order for the attack to become available to you.

GRAPHICS 9/10
The graphics seem to resemble the series' animation and it's not too bad. There's not too much depth in the graphics but there are some impressive special effects from some of the magic attacks like the transparency effect from the Moon Spiral Heart Ache.

SOUNDS 9/10
The sound effects aren't too bad in the game. An impressive part of the game is the voice clips taking directly from the TV show (Japanese of course). You here them whenever the soldiers perform their magic attacks and you do hear them cry in pain when they get hit by an enemy's physical attack. Of course, some of the magic attacks are placed in just for the game itself so there are no voice clips for them.
The music is very fitting for a Sailor Moon game. The soundtrack often fits the moods in the game well. You'll even recognize the Neo Tokyo music from one of the Final Fight clones. However, the music can get downright annoying after a while.

CONTROLS 10/10
There are no real problems with the controls. The layout of the controls is similar to those found in many Final Fantasy games for the SNES/SF. Menus are easy to get through and battle commands are easy to input.

GAMEPLAY 8/10
The gameplay is loaded with many twists and turns in the story plot and each character plays a strong role in the game. Hell, you even get to know about the dreams and hopes that each character has, including the origins of the evil Sailor Soldiers. Battles are fun and they do require a little bit of strategy in party members' battle positions and other little tidbits.
Another good aspect about the game is its strong difficulty. Enemies and bosses can be deadly, even with a full party. However, sometimes the game can get a little too difficult. There will be times in which the soldiers will split up and go through different paths in the stories. It's a great way to go but sometimes you have party members that can make a simple battle a disaster, especially later in the game when random battles will become way too frequent. Sailor Neptune, Saturn, Pluto, and Chibi-Moon may have been fairly useful in the series and worthy party members early on in this game but their abilities seem far too crippled to handle the tougher enemies late in the game, especially Pluto, whose strongest point of defense is the Time Stopper that freezes enemies still for three full turns. Even though three turns in a lot, enemies can still inflict a good amount of damage to your party before she gets a chance to pull it off and you may not even kill them in three turns.

OVERALL 9/10
The game is a lot of fun and it almost matches up to the likes up Final Fantasy but the developers should've taken a second look at some of the weaker soldiers before releasing the game.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS
If you like turn-based RPGs like this one, try out the Final Fantasy series. It has now reached its tenth game, which is set for the PlayStation 2. You should especially try out Final Fantasy III, VI, VII, and IX. Those who want a different style of turned-based play can go for VIII.

There are also RPG games that allows for a degree of flexibility in exchange for a weaker development in story plot and more time required for play. If you like those, go for the following:
- Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II Expansion (all for PC)
- Evolution: World of Sacred Device, Evolution 2 (Dreamcast)
- Phantasy Star Online, Phantasy Star Online ver 2 (Dreamcast)
- Digimon World I and II (PlayStation)
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (non-video RPG game)

FINAL COMMENTS
For this review, I played the translated ROM instead of the actual game on the Super Famicom. Unless you know Japanese, I recommend that you play the translated ROM as it's almost impossible to get around the hefty text of the original game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/12/01, Updated 07/12/01