Best Super Famicom RPG?

marktheshark

Morden's Lackey
Joined
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I've been thinking about getting any one of these games:

Seiken Densetsu 3
Bahamut Lagoon
Treasure Hunter G
Lennus 2
Energy Breaker

I'm not planning to get Star Ocean just yet until I get a PSP.
 

Jon

Mr. Tater
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Terranigma, if you can find it. JP version is much easier to find...and, cheaper, too.

Jon
 

GohanX

Horrible Goose
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Do you speak Japanese or are you playing translated versions? Just curious, I've been wanting to try some of those.
 

marktheshark

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Do you speak Japanese or are you playing translated versions? Just curious, I've been wanting to try some of those.

I'm playing translated versions. I would play all of them, but I'm not a ROM person and the repro carts don't come cheap.
 

k'_127

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I played Seiken Densetsu and Bahamut Lagoon a while ago. Here are my mini reviews:

Seiken Densetsu 3

As good as Secret of Mana. Expect a similar lengthy adventure with a good level of variety. With that said, I still prefer Secret of Mana and find it much more memorable, but I can't tell why. Perhaps if we had the chance to play SD3 back in the day, we would have appreciated it more.

+ The general style of the game may seem different, but the gameplay is almost intact
+ AI characters no longer cause you to get stuck. They can wander off the screen
+ Some of the soundtracks were catchy
+ Great variety of locations and monsters. Some of the villages were memorable and unique.
+ Some of the boss fights were simply awesome
+ The multiple scenarios were well-done from technical aspects. You could tell they have put a lot of efforts on this part of the game. I imagine this would greatly raise the game's replayablity.

- I can't help but wish the multiple scenario's concept was dropped on favour of a more consistant and organized story. It felt a bit messy and disjointed the way it is.
- Lack of optional side quests
- The menus were unresponsive and clunky. I wonder if it has something to do with the translation. Luckily, you won't be using them much.



Bahamut Lagoon

It's a great Startegic RPG with a very nice story. I had two main issues with it; being too easy and too long.

The game mainly consists of battles, but there is minor room for wandering around between missions, where you can speak to other characters, buy stuff and feed your dragons.

Another notable issue I had with it was the translation, which was perhaps restricted by technical limitaions. It felt off on many occasions and undermined certain aspects of the story (I'm grateful to the translation team for sure though)

I stress that the game is very long though, especially for a strategic RPG. Just keep that in mind before starting it.
 

NeoSneth

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Seiken Densetsu 3 and Bahamut Lagoon are good games, but they are nothing special.
 

Earthquake24

Dodgeball Yakuza
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Some others you may want to look into: Treasure of the Rudras (really enjoyed this one), Brandish II, Mystic Ark (if you like The 7th Saga), Tales of Phantasia (highly recommended, GBA version is weak compared to the original SFC cart version), Romancing Saga 3.
 

opt2not

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Seiken Densetsu 3

As good as Secret of Mana. Expect a similar lengthy adventure with a good level of variety. With that said, I still prefer Secret of Mana and find it much more memorable, but I can't tell why. Perhaps if we had the chance to play SD3 back in the day, we would have appreciated it more.

+ The general style of the game may seem different, but the gameplay is almost intact
+ AI characters no longer cause you to get stuck. They can wander off the screen
+ Some of the soundtracks were catchy
+ Great variety of locations and monsters. Some of the villages were memorable and unique.
+ Some of the boss fights were simply awesome
+ The multiple scenarios were well-done from technical aspects. You could tell they have put a lot of efforts on this part of the game. I imagine this would greatly raise the game's replayablity.

- I can't help but wish the multiple scenario's concept was dropped on favour of a more consistant and organized story. It felt a bit messy and disjointed the way it is.
- Lack of optional side quests
- The menus were unresponsive and clunky. I wonder if it has something to do with the translation. Luckily, you won't be using them much.

I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about the class changing trees. SD3 was one of the first console RPG's to have the ability to choose the Light or Dark path for class changing. Giving you a wide variety of spells, moves, and replay-ability with changes to the sprite artwork and character portraits.

The combat in SD3 is pretty close to that of SoM, but I felt SoM had a better "attack cool-down" system by showing the attack energy percentage rather than just a character animation to indicate when you're ready for another full attack. Also, the charging system (by holding down the attack button) in SoM is superior than the "accumulated successful attacks" for allowing the Special physical attacks. But this is all personal preference.

SD3's group set-up is nice at the beginning of the game, having multiple class choices of who would make up your group. Much nicer in terms of RPG-ness than SoM. Story-wise I like the multiple endings, as well as the tie-ins between multiple characters.

Artwise, SD3 is probably the best looking game on the Super Fami, and it's definitely better looking than SoM. There are multiple parts of the game where I caught myself thinking "man, this is one gorgeous sprite game". The backgrounds are lush and vibrant, the bosses are epic and colourful, and the spells and special attacks are all animated handsomely and are very iconic.

I'm not sure if SD3 is the best RPG on the Super Fami, but it's definitely in my top 3.
 

SNKorSWM

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Star Ocean on the SFC is not the same as the remake on the PSP.
 

ki_atsushi

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I'm disappointed that no one has mentioned how awesome the soundtracks for SD3 and Bahamut Lagoon (especially) are.

Final Fantasy V, Seiken Densetsu 3, and Bahamut Lagoon were the first games I ever imported.
 
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SNKorSWM

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I still remember that thread about the top 100 video game music of all time. Something like every one out of six was composed by Nobuo Uematsu.
 

Taiso

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I liked the Fire Emblem games for SNES, even though I had no idea what was going on in them.
 

Heinz

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To be honest Iam stunned that Chrono Trigger has not been mentioned, quite easily the best RPG I've ever played.
 

theMot

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To be honest Iam stunned that Chrono Trigger has not been mentioned, quite easily the best RPG I've ever played.

It was ok back in the day, a bit childish now. Even back then Final fantasy 6 shat on it. CT is basically FF6 with less character development.

For a lesser known rpg try romancing saga 3.

To be honest though, there are better games to play from back then. Time hasnt been kind to the 16 bit rpg.
 
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LoneSage

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live-a-live

To be honest Iam stunned that Chrono Trigger has not been mentioned, quite easily the best RPG I've ever played.

since OP specifically said super famicom and not super nintendo, it's to be assumed he wants recommendations of the japanese library.

besides. everyone knows chrono trigger.
 

Heinz

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live-a-live



since OP specifically said super famicom and not super nintendo, it's to be assumed he wants recommendations of the japanese library.

besides. everyone knows chrono trigger.

excuse my ignorance but SNES is SNES is it not? lol
 

Taiso

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excuse my ignorance but SNES is SNES is it not? lol

He said Super Famicom. It's in the title. In gamerspeak on a western-centric forum, that immediately implies titles only released in Japan.
 

Steve

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Terranigma, hands down.

I recently beat both Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean. Loved ToP. Liked SO, but wasn't so crazy about it. I found Lennus II to be solid, but nothing special.
 

Neo Alec

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Even though we already have a real SD3 cart, I recently picked up a repro cart of the game with the 3-player patch applied. Although my brothers and I rarely have time together to play it, it really is special to be able to revisit this series with 3-players, the way we experienced the previous game.

I got a UK Terranigma cart but I can't figure out how to get it working, so I never played it. I probably should've gone for the Japanese one.
 
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