Saiyuki: Journey West

I have always found strategy RPGs to be among the most interesting subgenres in gaming.

In some respects, they feel very different from their more traditional Japanese or Western counterparts in terms of presentation, pacing and structure. On the other, they offer similar party structures and require the same kinds of resource and character management the genre is known for. A lot of people love them, a lot of people don't but I've always been a fan, especIIially of SRPGs from the 5th generation. The genre was relatively popular at that point, as developers attempted to ride the wave of what most of us consider to be its most commercially successful, mainstream title: Final Fantasy Tactics. There were SRPGs before Tactics (I've already reviewed Shining Force I and II) and there have been SRPGs since, but FFT went a long way in bringing the genre to the mainstream. And why wouldn't it have? It was a great game in a highly visible series that offered something that was new and fresh to the majority of gamers. of course, every beloved game was going to produce imitators. Some of these games were straight rip-offs, while others did their best to make their own mark on the genre. Which brings us to Saiyuki: Journey West, a title that most definitely fit into the latter category.

Don't get me wrong, the influence of FFT and its ilk will be immediately apparent. The 2D sprites battling in isometric 3D environments, the grid-based movement and attacks, the use of various elevations, the focus on which way your characters are facing, all of those are major parts of Saiyuki. But it also does more than enough to stand on its own. For one, it's a loose adaptation of a Chinese novel called "Journey to the West," or "Saiyuki" in Japanese. Rather than take place in a high fantasy setting, the game opens at Ancient China's Gold Temple, home to a young monk named Sanzo. One day, Sanzo is visited in his dreams by Lady Kannon, a divine spirit who has task for him: take a special staff to Thunder Temple in India, along the way seeking the assistance of the divine guardians. Staff in hand, he leaves the temple accompanied by his escorts, determined to complete his quest from on high. Things look bleak at first. his guards are quickly dispatched by bandits and monsters, leaving him vulnerable. Just when it looks like his journey is going to be cut short, he is directed, again by Kannon, to break a suspicious stone. Breaking this stone releases Son Goku, a warrior who was imprisoned there after attempting to attack heaven and dethrone Buddha. It takes a lot of coaxing, as well as a potent magic spell, from Kannon to get him on board, but he eventually agrees to guard Sanzo as he makes his way to India. Along the way, the duo will face a variety of obstacles, chief among them an army of demons hell bent on getting their hands on Sanzo's staff. I should mention, you can choose to have Sanzo be a male or female at the start of the game. I went with the male version, so that's how I will refer to him. This change is almost purely cosmetic, it changes a line of text or two but the general story will be identical no matter which you choose.

Of course, they will encounter friendly faces during their journey too. Four more characters, dragon lady Shu Ryorin, merman Sa Gojo, tree spirit Lady Kikka and porcine eating enthusiast Cho Hakai will all help Sanzo on his way, with six other secret characters available (naming them would spoil the plot, so I'm not going to), bringing the total to 12. All of these characters are associated to one of six elements and come with abilities imbued with their attributes. Each element has a weakness as well as an advantage, but it doesn't come into play quite as much as you would think. All of your characters, aside from Sanzo, also have a transformation ability, as they come from a society of "Were" people. These Were transformations allow them to unleash powerful elemental attacks, often targeting multiple enemies at once. These attacks are critical for dealing large amounts of damage and taking on boss characters. They are also balanced out by having only one character able to transform at once and having a shared power meter. Of course, Sanzo is not without his own prowess in battle. Once he meets the guardians, he can summon them in battle to provide boosts to the party and perform strong attacks. Sanzo serves the role of the healer, which was unique for a main protagonist at the time. I think it was actually a pretty great design choice. You can only bring five other characters into battle and this essentially prevents one of those other spots from being locked down to a healer character. I kind of wish more RPGs did this rather than following the Final Fantasy model of having the protagonist be an OP killing machine.

Anyone who has played FFT will feel immediately comfortable here as the in-battle layout and control scheme are largely the same. Each character can take two actions, one movement action and one attack/magic action. You move about the battlefield on a grid, with turn order and move distance based on your characters' stats. Each attack has its own unique range, some can only hit single enemies next to you while others can hit from a distance or hit large areas. Of course, not all battles take place on flat maps. Things like terrain and height can impact movement and make it easier or more difficult to attack. It's not enough just to walk up to enemies and swing, you have to attack from the right angles to get the most out of your party. This is true of all SRPGs of this ilk, but especially so in Saiyuki. If there's one area where this game surpassed FF Tactics, it's here. There are some really great maps here, both aesthetically and in terms of gameplay. You have maps with huge mountains forcing you to climb up slowly to attack. You have maps with unique choke points that lead to some epic battles and different strategies. But you also have a few maps that are just big open fields that allow for all-out brawls. Enemy placement is also pretty fair across the board, they did a good job of giving them advantages over your party without overdoing it and putting you in what seem like unwinnable situations. There's nothing like the Dorter or execution site battles from Tactics (sorry for the nightmares, FFT fans) where the developers just felt like they were messing with you. I really liked the tree map from later in the game, where your characters face off with the opposition on giant branches. It was creative and challenging, but not ridiculously so.

The overworld map is also very similar to what you see in tactics, with each location represented by a space. Every city has at least a chemist (item shop) and dojo, where you can participate in practice battles to gain experience. Unlike in Tactics, there are no random battles on non-city map spaces, so this is your primary way of gaining experience if you are behind on levels. Larger cities will sometimes have a blacksmith, where you can upgrade weapons, an armor/magic shop and a post, where you can take on jobs to make money. I hate to bring up FFT again, but it's exactly like the tavern jobs in Tactics. This is important, because items are pretty expensive here and you will always find yourself needing to do jobs to buy items. Of course, having a job active will also cause random encounters to become possible, so you need to be careful. Most of these jobs are just bringing something from point A to point B, but there are a few that will unlock additional battles or secret items. There are a few points throughout the game where you can take split path, but you will always have the option of going back and doing both, so there's no real change to the gameplay there. You will likely need to do both paths anyway just to make sure your levels are high enough.

As previously mentioned, each character is closely tied to one of six elements, each of which have their own independent levels. Regardless of their alignment, characters can grow levels in all of these elements, which are required to equip items. You don't learn new moves by leveling up in Saiyuki, instead you learn new attacks by equipping scrolls. All of these will have a level requirement to equip, so it will sort of force you to focus each character on the element with which they align. However, you can mix and match somewhat. Everyone only has one weapon, which can be upgraded up to five times, but can equip different armor. I kind of wish there were more character customization here, you can mix things up a little but everyone largely ends up stuck in their defined roles. I also found quite a few of the characters to be strictly weaker than the others, I kind of got what they were going for in theory, but it didn't always work out in practice. The Were attacks are also critically important in deciding which characters to bring, but the game definitely rewards you more for using certain transformations over others. For better or worse, the A.I. will always gang up on whoever is transformed, so you want to stick with the beefier characters. I guess I can't complain, it's actually pretty sound strategy by the A.I., but it does make some of the transformations less relevant. Characters do learn more Were moves as they level up, but using the stronger moves force you to transform back faster. You also can't heal transformed characters without passive buffs, which is a bit frustrating.

There aren't a lot of major issues with Saiyuki, it's really more a case of a whole lot of little things keeping it out of the upper echelon of PS1 JRPGs. Battles take an incredibly long time, even for a strategy RPG. Even the earlier battles can take upwards of an hour, which is a very long time. Some of this is the result of attack or spell animations, which take a long time. A lot of it though is just the general pacing of the game, though this can be mitigated somewhat by the fact that you can save mid-battle. Of course, this is a blessing and a curse. You'd better have multiple save files, because if you save in the middle of a fight you can't win, you are going to be in trouble. But in a weird way, it also makes it a little too easy, you can save and go back on just about any moves you want. The controls are a little stiff, this doesn't matter as much as it would in an action game, but its still noticeable here. The enemy designs are uninspired, and they do a lot of palette swapping. With only a few characters, most of who play similarly, there isn't very much variety in party construction. I think that might be the biggest thing that prevents Saiyuki from ascending to the top of the PS1 RPG heap. If it's not that, it's the dragging endgame that forces you to play past a certain point without access to shops. That's common in RPGs and it's okay when they tell you its going to happen.

That doesn't mean Saiyuki is bad though, far from it. This is definitely a hidden gem in the PS1 library. I do wish the story was a little bit better and the midgame twist isn't great, but it has a unique atmosphere and a setting you don't see very often. It has good graphics and sound and is generally well designed even if the controls are stiff. It's also a good length, the main game can be beaten in about 20-25 hours but there are plenty of sidequests on offer as well. If you complete the dojos, you could easily get up to 40 hours of gameplay out of Saiyuki. Unlike some obscure games where it's difficult to tell why they are forgotten, it's easy to see why this one never really took off. It was release late in 2001, towards the end of the PlayStation's life cycle. The PS2 was already out by this point and a Koei game based on a Chinese novel wasn't going to move the needle. It's a shame too. It may not be a top tier RPG, but it's not far off and it's definitely worth experiencing for fans of strategy RPGs, or really any RPGs that aren't Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. It was a little rough around the edges, but Saiyuki is definitely worth a look.

8.5/10