SFC Game 98 – Romancing SaGa 3 (Part 2)

I’m back. In the last post I mostly went over the game system of RS3. After the initial story sequence the main goal is simply to explore around the world and find things to do. I was stymied by that rat quest I mentioned, which is an annoying beginning to a game that’s supposed to not have these kind of blocks.

In any case, with a walkthrough I solved the rat quest. Many of the game’s quests do not really provide much in the way of rewards, they’re just a way to build your levels and earn skills without having to just grind in circles.

Early in the game I talked to someone who revealed what seemed to be at least the first major “story” quest and links up with the opening pre-title screen narration. There are four elemental abyss gates that need to be sealed by defeating their guardians. But the person can’t give any specific information on where these gates are, so that’s something that will need to be uncovered through game progress.

Meanwhile I gained some party members — it’s annoying to have party members like the 2nd one who join you just by talking to them without any confirmation, and can’t be gotten rid of (except by killing them off permanently). I also found a place where I could send various people around the world to work on forging weapons and armor, which seemed like a better way to get equipment than to buy it in stores with the very limited amount of money I had. Instead I was using the money to open new towns.

I also didn’t get much magic because it seemed too expensive.

Here are the missions/events I manged to do:

  • Protect caravans going from one town to another, and then visit the thieves’ cave to stop their marauding
  • Recover a strange woman’s “pets” in the forest
  • The rat quest
  • Rescue a boy named Gon from the Devil King’s Palace (which will have a more in-depth quest later, I think)
  • Deal with the “mysterious thief Robin” and the imitator
  • Defeat the master fish in the Ice Lake to allow the villagers to fish again. This was a tough boss at the point I fought it, and I barely survived.
  • The Muse Dream world. This may seem tough at first but each fight gives you an item that completely restores all your stats (including LP), making it hard to game over if you’re aware of this — all of those items disappear when you complete the dream section, so you don’t need to worry about wasting them.
  • Treasure Caves in the islands (although I didn’t do the Dolphin statue part)
  • The long series of events in the desert — this place can be a bit annoying because you get locked into a series of quests and cannot leave back to the world map until you complete them. The final boss in this section is rather difficult, but you can recruit an old woman that has the Tornado spell which the boss is weak to.

Although I can’t say I was having a huge amount of fun with this game I am sorry that my save got deleted. From the amount I played, it does seem like this is the most approachable Romancing SaGa game — RS1 is too hobbled and unbalanced, and RS2’s system is too complicated and unforgiving, and is even more unbalanced than RS1. As I said before, I felt that the first two games wanted you to figure everything out on your own but then made the difficulty so punishing that it didn’t feel rewarding to try to work it out. RS3 is much easier (as long as you don’t get stuck on that rat quest as your first thing). You’re able to try out more things and make mistakes and experiment without permanently missing things or locking yourself into bad results.

I also did not do the Business or Ruling minigame at all; they seem quite in depth and could add a lot of interest (and the Business game seems like the best way to get money).

The game was remastered for Android quite recently and has an official English translation so that may be the better way to play than the original.

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