Rascuache (Day 163)

Hi, yes, I am still awake.

My co-op partner and I started up Seiken Densetsu 3 the other night. I've played it before, but only very briefly. Right off the bat I can say that I enjoy having a choice of characters to select. We decided on a party of Hawk, Angela, and Lise. Hawk is a thief that wields two daggers, Angela a spoiled brat of a sorceress, and Lise a young valkyrie with a spear. This leaves us with no dedicated healer, which hopefully won't become a problem, since the girl's healing spells in Secret of Mana were invaluable throughout the game.

The battle system, although similar to its predecessor, is significantly modified. It takes place in real time, but the charge system is noticeably absent. Instead, landing successful attacks will fill a meter by your characters' portraits. Once this meter is full, you can press the B button to unleash that character's Tech, which seems to be a successor to Secret of Mana's charge attacks. These Techs vary by character and by character class, so I have read.

That is not to say that recovery time on attacks is completely absent, but it is noticeably shortened. Attempting to attack during this recovery time will not result in fumbled attacks but instead do nothing at all. Combat falls into a sort of rhythm--move, attack, move, attack, move, Tech. It is considerably more fast paced than SoM and attacks are dodged considerably less frequently. When attacks do fail, you're actually given the proper feedback in the combat text.

Unfortunately, combat is paused during most spell casts, which does disrupt the action considerably. However, enemies are unable to act during these pauses (unlike SoM) so I feel like I can forgive the flaw. I feel like a lot of boss fights will devolve into mindlessly spamming the same spell until the boss is dead--but it's impossible to say for sure.

Although we have not made a ton of progress in the game so far, we have done some research on the game mechanics. I knew a bit about the game beforehand, but there was a lot I'd forgotten. Each character in the game has access to a series of upgraded classes that modify their base stats, available spells, and Tech. Each character's class can be upgraded twice, following either a Light or Dark path. For instance, Angela's initial Dark class upgrade is called the Delvar. This class can then be upgraded to Rune Maiden on the Light path or Magus on the Dark path. There are quite a few classes for each character. This extra layer of customization already makes the game more appealing to me than Secret of Mana.

Despite a somewhat clumsy spell interface (inherited from its predecessor), the combat feels a lot tighter. The fan translation is quite polished as well and benefits from not being placed under the restrictions of an official English localization. The character development and exposition are noticeably more fleshed out than SoM, which was extremely barebones. So far, I'm definitely enjoying it.