#4 – Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2)
Seiken Densetsu 3 is the third game in Square’s Mana series, released for the Super Famicom in 1995. The Mana series started as a side-story to the first Final Fantasy game, but by the second game had dropped all relations to Final Fantasy and developed into its own series.
The world of Seiken Densetsu 3 was said to have been created by the Mana Goddess. She forged the Sword of Mana and wielded it to great effect, trapping eight God-Beasts with Mana Stones. She then turned herself into the Mana Tree and fell into a deep slumber. The mana of the world has begun to fade as the game begins, and there are those who would wish to release the God-Beasts from their prisons.
There are six playable characters in Seiken Densetsu 3, and three major plotlines. The first character you choose to put into your party will affect which plotline that playthrough will follow; you get a total of three for your party. There are two characters per plotline, and choosing to put both of them in your party will add special conversations to the dialogue. These three plotlines give the game excellent replayability.
There are a lot of things I personally find interesting about Seiken Densetsu 3. One of them is how the passing of time affects the game. Different places are available between night and day, and some monsters can only be found at certain times of the day. There’s even an instance of one boss being easier to fight at nighttime, for if you stumble on it in the dark, you’ll find it fast asleep. The game also has its seven-day week, and a different kind of magic is strengthened on each day. One character even transforms into a werewolf every time it grows dark.
The game employs real-time combat and gives easy access to six spells for use in combat. Attacking earns you points for your power gauge, which can then be consumed to use a special move. Only one character is controlled by the player at any one time; the other two are controlled by the AI, and can be directed by the player to either harm foes or aid allies. Seiken Densetsu 3 also hands control of stat progression over to the player by awarding skill points with every level up. Classes can be allocated as each character levels up; there are a total of seven classes including the base one, and four to choose from in the end.
Seiken Densetsu 3 is the only game in the series not on a mobile device that has not made it to the West. I would love to see Nintendo put this on the Virtual Console for all the fans of the series out there.
#3 – Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow
Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow is the twelfth game in the series and released for the Nintendo DS in Japan in 2010. It’s a remake of the third game in the series, Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, which released in 1994 for the Super Famicom.
The game is a direct sequel to Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and takes place one year after it. Emperor Hardin, a loyal ally of Marth’s in Shadow Dragon, has gone mad. Hardin’s just reign turned into one ruled by an iron fist, and Marth has been exiled from his home country of Akaneia. It follows Marth as he seeks to find out what has happened to make Hardin change so, as well as restore peace to the continent.
Heroes of Light and Shadow features turn-based, grid-based tactical combat that will be familiar to series veterans. It contains a rock-paper-scissors-like weapon triangle and many classes to choose from. As this is a remake of the third game in the series, it unfortunately lacks support conversations, as they had yet to be implemented at that stage in the series. And, like all Fire Emblem games, if any of your characters die, they are gone forever. It was the first Fire Emblem to feature My Unit, which allowed the player to make their own playable character. This character is active in the plot, and their stats and growth rates are affected by a couple of questions answered by the player when they’re created. This feature was reintroduced in Fire Emblem: Awakening.
Heroes of Light and Shadow is a game I would love to see released in the West, as I am a huge fan of the Fire Emblem series. I hope Nintendo does something with it for the DS Virtual Console games they’ll be putting on the Wii U.
#2 – Soma Bringer
Soma Bringer is the only game developed by Monolith Soft that never made the jump to the West. Developed for the old DS and released in 2008 in Japan, our very own Jonathan Higgins has described it as “Xenoblade-lite”, and gave the game high praise in his review despite not fully understanding what was going on.
You have three party members and six classes to choose from. Each class fights differently and has its own ability and weapon specialty. You can customise even further by choosing the skills you learn as you level up, and powering them up as you see fit using AP (Ability Points). Characters develop at your choosing; fighting earns you CP (Character Points) in addition to AP, which you can put into any stat you want to increase its base value.
The game’s battle system is an interesting. Beating the crap out of an enemy will cause an exclamation point to appear. Continuing the domination will result in a second, and then a third, exclamation point, at which point all attack dealt will do tremendous damage for a short period. The A, B, X and Y buttons on the DS can each have an attack, skill or spell attached to them. You can save up to five such moveset combinations, and swap between them using the R button, effectively giving you access to 20 different attacks. You can also set items in a similar way, and swap between items and attacks using L.
Frankly, the biggest pull this game has for me is that it’s developed by Monolith Soft. I love the way it looks, and I love the similarities it seems to share with Xenoblade. I’ve played two games developed by Monolith Soft (or their dev team), and they are my top two games of all-time.
