Farland Saga Toki no Michishirube Game Sample - Sega Saturn
0Original Air Date: October 25th, 2008 (Revised + Updated Today!)
I was thinking of just re-uploading the introduction for this game, but someone commented in this video on my old account about a month ago and it annoyed me. The person basically said "Any battle movie in youtube??". The person didn't offend me by what they said, but after checking around, sure enough, there were no battle movies or any real gameplay videos for the game.
The annoying part? I get bothered by the huge surplus of games on YouTube (particularly Japanese) that have nothing but intros and/or endings but don't show what the games look like outside of that. I always told myself that I would go back and add these gameplay samples eventually, but me and my bro are only two people... this video was uploaded over a year ago and there are still very few samples for games like this. The thing that bugs me the most about this particular situation is that the "Farland" series isn't exactly what you'd call "obscure", so I'm kind of surprised to not see much on the series outside of movie rips on YT.
I'm currently in the middle of re-uploading Saturn videos, but I'm not re-uploading any games that just have intros without adding gameplay to them too... this means all those generic/weird games I have sitting around that don't have any real gameplay footage like Tanjou Debut S, Hyper Securities S, Riglord Saga 2, Eve: The Lost One, blah blah blah, won't resurface without gameplay, because I can empathize somewhat with those wanting to see gameplay footage. Many of these games paint a very different picture once you look past the glitz and fancy movies. A lot of the Saturn games I uploaded intros/endings for are actually kind of mediocre.
Farland Saga: TnM (ファーランドサーガ 時の道標, also called FS: Toki no Douhyou, where Douhyou and Michishirube are interchangable and mean almost the exact same thing) is a direct sequel to the original Farland Saga, taking place eight years later. The previous hero, Brian, has died at the end of a great war, and has left behind Karin (also called Kalin for relatively obvious reasons), whom he took care off when she was a little girl. Now sixteen and "developed", she travels the land as a mercenary looking for work.
She finds a nice little town where she can make money when she bumps into an amnesiac named Al (who she first mistakes for a pervert and injures him). She helps him regain his health and invites him to work with her as a way of showing she's sorry. Al agrees as travelling with her may give him clues about his identity and this sets the stage for the game as the two go on many quests to find fame and riches.
Talented artists in Japan are almost a dime a dozen... talented programmers and designers, well, let's just say there aren't as many of them as there are artists. Once you get past the nice artwork, you're treated with an isometric strategy game made in the mid-late 90s that generally looks worst than some of the strategy games you'd find on the old SNES/SFC and it sports mostly rudimentary gameplay mechanics. While the visuals don't underscore the overall playability of the game, you have to ask yourself "Really? They couldn't do better than THIS?". Most visual elements are incredibly sparse.
The game has a relatively enjoyable soundtrack and humourous dialogue and scenarios. While Karin is the main character, you'll be very fixated with "Al" as he is the primary male character surrounded by women and is in essence the most important, so it's a bit interesting on a technical level. Some scenarios may surprise you (such as Al getting into a difficult battle where all the girls beat him up if you choose to peek at them while bathing... you'll get a real game over too). Understanding some Japanese is important here as this game doesn't really "excel" at anything else, imo.
Combat is your run-of-the-mill strategy fair. All characters can move and attack in one phase, then all the enemies. Characters have several abilities between them and Al is really important early on as the other characters can't take a beating. Defeating enemies can net items and you can gain experience through various battle actions (you can grind in a few fights to get a very high level very quickly, so difficulty isn't in much of the equation). After battles, you can interestingly divide all earned extra experience evenly or distribute as many to any particular character as you want, so you can give Al generally all the exp. if you want.
Overall, it's an average strategy game with a whimsical story (lighter than some other titles in the series, but doesn't take itself as seriously either) and it's a cheap purchase if you really love strategy games. It was also released for PC and Playstation. Enjoy.
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