The 7th Saga

"Enix at its best? No. Enix making hits? Yes"

Enix, the name alone divides RPG fans. Some people love their games to death, while others say they're to ''Boring''. To conquer most Enix RPGs, you need patience. Patience is a missing virtue that is needed in large supplies around the world. Patience is the ability to set down and play a game without getting antsy or complaining about the storyline being over 20 seconds long. This is one of the reasons 7th saga is dreaded. But, beyond all of this you have a very strong RPG; one not many should miss.

Dreaded, and I should still get it?

The opening portions of the game give you the preface. You’ll be able to choose one of 8 characters. These characters can be broken down in to three classes: Fighter, Mage, Crappy. One has high HP, while another gets maimed in 3 seconds. This allows you to set the difficulty level to your own preference. If you want the game to be hard, pick a magic user. Easier? Vise-Versa. After you pick the character that is appropriate to the difficulty level you want, the storyline begins. It follows: King Lemel is in fear of the resurrection of a demon that can destroy about everything. He tells you to go collect runes to stop this beast. The usual happens; you’ve got a bazillion side-quest too.

When you exit the castle the first thing you’ll notice is that you have a map in the upper right that shows you where all the monsters are in the form of dots. They’ll come for you, and you can dodge most of them. When you do get into a battle. It’ll give a third person perspective. You’ll have the usual options: Magic, Attack item, what they do is self explanatory. After you beat the monsters you’ll be rewarded “EXP” which helps you gain levels. Here’s where the big problem most have with 7th saga kicks in. In later stages of the game the monsters can annihilate your party if you don’t train forever. Level gaining can break most peoples hopes of getting further into the game. Thus, they stop playing and dub 7th saga “To hard” or “It’s takes to long”. Both of these are true, it’s a fault in which spells doom for a most RPGS, but it shouldn’t for 7th saga

I can spell doom: D-O-O-M

To aid you in your quest are runes. Each rune will have a special ability that you can use. Some will raise your defense while other completely restore your MP!. Don’t get to excited, you’ve got to play pretty far into the game to get most of the runes. But, you know they’re out there at the beginning of the game so that’s motivation to get further. On second thought, maybe there was no need for this paragraph. The length of the game still might scare people off.

To be brutally honest, I’ve been at this game for 4 years and I’ve not beaten it yet. But, that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. The battles are quick, and the action fast. The only battles which take your time will be those of boss battles. These battles take about 20 minutes or so of working down the defense, then pummeling them with all you got. After the battle you will be rewarded money. You need a lot of money to purchase armor and the such. So, in essence, the level building and buying new armor go hand in hand. Both take a long time, but shouldn’t be to boring. It all else fails just run away.

You’re telling people to act like a chicken, FFM?

For a SNES game, the saga pushes beautiful textures, lush environments, and bedazzling monster models. To elaborate on the beautiful textures, you’ve got a lot off different areas in the game. From ice caps to the middle of the desert, they all look magnificent. The detail is there in the form of higher resolution. You can actually see single rocks in the ground, pieces of grass fighting vigorously to break the surface of the desert. The monsters are in the same category as the textures. They move while in battle, and have their own special moves that make them unique from other monsters in the game.

Unique is good

Technically, yes, unique is good. So is the wonderfully composed music of the 7th saga. It has the weirdest, yet most distinctive battle theme of all SNES RPGs. It begins soft, then it just explodes. After you get to the second half of the game, the music changes. This music is the exact opposite of the regular music you‘ll hear in the earlier parts of the game. Still sounds weird and distinctive too. The sound effects might leave on feeling empty, but just listen to the music some more and that should sooth you. The controls will be just as easy to master as any other RPG, shouldn’t take you more than 2 minutes to figure them out.

All in all, you got a pretty long-drawn out RPG with very good elements. While Enix could‘ve polished it bit more and lowered the ridiculously high EXP bar. The game is still a winner in my book. It’s a shame that 7th saga has such a bad karma. Notification, karma loss of 3 to be precise.

Final Verdict

Gameplay = 7
Controls = 10
Sound = 9
Graphics = 9

Final =8

If you ever see 7th saga for sale, pick it up. You’ll either love it or hate it. If you have a thing for leveling up, though, pick this one up.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/05/03, Updated 07/29/03