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The 7th Saga (SNES) Playthrough [1 of 2] - NintendoComplete
430A playthrough of Enix's 1993 role-playing game for the Super Nintendo, The 7th Saga.
This video is the first part of a two-part playthrough, covering from the beginning through the meeting with king of Tiffana.
Part two, beginning with the rescue of the princess at the castle of Baran, can be found here: https://youtu.be/wsRokHc_XBI
The 7th Saga was one of the many JRPGs that appeared on the SNES in its lifetime. It was created by Produce!, who were also responsible for Mystic Ark (the Japanese-only sequel to The 7th Saga) and Brain Lord, and it was the first RPG to be published on the platform by Enix in the United States, showing up about a month ahead of Paladin's Quest.
The game opens with an introduction to the world of Ticondera. (No, not the pencils - that's Ticonderoga.) The king has asked the seven would-be heroes at his disposal to seek out the runes spread across the world, promising ultimate power to whoever finds them first.
You choose who to play from these seven, and you'll eventually end up with another as your travel companion. Your choices here largely dictate how the game will play out, and since each has their own distinct strengths and weaknesses, you're best off choosing characters with complimentary strengths.
For this playthrough, I took Olvan (a dwarf that excels in physical combat) as my primary character, and I recruited Valsu (a cleric sort with a good selection of support spells) as my partner. They're a good match for one another, and together they can handle pretty much any challenge that the game will throw at them.
As you make your way about searching for the runes, you have to worry not only about the regular assortment of enemies, but also about the other heroes on the quest. Some of them are hostile and will attack you in hopes of stealing the runes that you've collected.
The gameplay will feel familiar to JRPG fans - you gather clues and stock up on items and equipment in towns, grind for experience and money on the overworld, and battle through dungeons for important quest related items. Instead of "random" encounters, you have a map that shows where nearby enemies are, which I thought was a cool way of mixing things up.
The 7th Saga is fairly straightforward, but many people dislike it because of its difficulty level. The original Japanese version was criticized for being way too easy, so things in the localized version have been heavily tweaked. Level up stat increases have been nerfed and enemies are often capable wiping you out in a single turn without warning. Remembering to save regularly is an absolute must here!
While the changes do make the game a long and sometimes more tedious experience than the original Japanese game, I don't find it to be terribly difficult - certainly not at the level that its reputation would suggest. The only time I found it to be "hard" was during the second required fight against one of the heroes, and that didn't feel difficult as much as it felt cheap and luck-based. For everything else, if you are struggling, grinding out a few more levels will usually ease the path forward.
My favorite part of the game was probably its graphics and music. The battles all begin with a cool, though choppy, mode-7 zoom effect a la ActRaiser, and fight scenes themselves resemble those in Phantasy Star II-IV. You watch the action from behind your party, and the monster designs and animations are great. There's a fair bit of variety in the tile sets used in different locations, and even though the game mostly sticks to muted earth tones, it serves the overall look well. The music does as well, and a lot of the tracks are super catchy and atmospheric, despite their reliance on tinny and cheap sounding samples.
The 7th Saga isn't a top-shelf SNES RPG, but it is a good one if you have the patience for the grinding it requires. The story is unique (and it has a really cool plot twist near the end that I never saw coming the first time I played it!) and there's a lot of replayability thanks to having multiple selectable heroes. If you've played through all of the better known SNES RPGs out there and still want more, this is one of those deep cuts that should really satisfy. At least, it did for me.
(This is a new playthrough to replace the original I posted awhile back. There seemed to be something up with the stat increases in the rom I used for that recording, so I redid the video making sure to use a verified known good dump of the US version.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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