Mystic Ark (1995, (7th Saga II) SNES/SFC English Gameplay 2022)

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Published on October 13, 2022 11:02:44 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqW_ioZfyic

Game:

Mystic Ark (1995)

Duration: 1:14:10

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11

Mystic Ark is an Adventure/Puzzle Jrpg For the Super Nintendo/Famicom. It was released in 1995, it was Developed by Produce! ..and Published by Enix. Both versions of the English fan-Translations was released in 2009 by Dynamic-Designs, and Aeon Genesis. This video is of the D-D's patch.

NOTE: This game is also commonly called.. The 7th Saga 2 (II) but this is a mistake, though the game carries over some hero/monstder names it is in fact not related at all other than the same developers and use of similar systems.


STORY: 18/20
Depending on the type of person you are you'll either get the story or you won't. It's a deep meaningful story hiding an even deeper meaning for the player by the end, one of self change, reflection, and discovery of a new way of outlook on life.. it's quite obsurd how effected I was by the time I reached the end of this game and how deep I had thought about it.
In a nutshell, the game's story put simplistically.. there are many worlds, all inhabit a people, an evil traps people and sends then to a temple having been turned into statues. One of the statues falls and releases you (male or female charactrer), your job then is to search for a way to return to your World but in the mean time rescue those who have been trapped also. You travel a number of different worlds, solving puzzles, encountering many battles, solving people's issues.. all to free the others and get home.
Whilst above is the main story for you, each World has it's own sub-story for you to follow to keep things flowing nicely.

GRAPHICS: 16/20
Okay, whilst the game seems graphically dated now, in my opinion this was a masterpiece in graphical look and style for the system at the time. Monsters, Bosses, and even your characters all look nice in battle but look just okay when walking about. The Npcs all look nice and fit their intended use depending on the World they are used in. Battle animations are nice for the most part but some don't look that great, you can tell they are limited frame animations. Areas are designed quite well in certain places, like the ships, towns, etc but when you get into dungeons and caves, I feel they suffer a little and they scream RPG Maker at me for some reason, maybe the blocked look of the walls? who knows?

SOUND: 18/20
The game has a real nice and diverse OST, with a very nice selection of tracks to accompany the many locations in the game. There's one that will probably get annoying and that's the battle music, this is due to the heavy grinding involved in this game to level.
There's a lot of sound effects present but one will certainly annoy you, the one when you search everywhere.. man! that's an annoying sound effect.

GAMEPLAY: 16/20
This game is a tough one to pin down to one genre, it's a Jrpg but then it's also a Puzzle game, but then also has adventure and action elements too, I think the closest game I can think of really to something similar is maybe 'Marvelous - Another Treasure Island'. The game consists of 8 worlds for you to explore, each with their own chaptered stories, sets of puzzles, and many battles for you to encounter. This game is by far easier than 7th Saga but then the grind is just as real in this game as in 7th Saga.
Battles are turn-based, so you and your later party members take their turns, then the monsters do, then you.. and so on. As you save statues they become available for you to use in a party as characters, each has their own style and can do certain things the other cant, some are stronger than others. The game has a real slow process for levelling up, so if you aim to hit 99 on all characters without cheating.. expect a LOT of grind.
Depending on who you choose, male or female as your character slight changes happen, like items in locations and not in the same location in the other, one character is more magic based and the other is more strength melee based, so there's options whilst playing and replayability is nice because of this reason.

TRANSLATION: 20/20
Having played both versions they bot have minor differences and translations and really comes down to preferrence of the said groups over anything else, having played both translations.. Dynamic-Designs' translation is the superior, hence why this video is D-D's version. This version also works perfectly on any hardware, D-D made sure of this.

OVER ALL: 88/100
A worthy successor to The 7th Saga, an experience you won't forget if you make it to the end. Do I recommend this game now? YES! it's one of those hidden gems for me.

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