It's time to check another console off the list, because I finally got my hands on a Sega Saturn.
It's been a long time coming, I've always found myself fascinated by Sega's 5th generation offering. Even when it came out, something about it's look and lineup of games piqued my interest. The problem was, I was just a kid and there was absolutely no way I was ever going to be able to afford more than one console. At least I didn't think so. Being a SNES kid, I got an N64 on launch day, it was the first thing I ever bought with my own money. While it had some great games, it was also a wasteland for RPGs, which were quickly becoming my favorite genre. Believe me, when I first saw screenshots for Final Fantasy VII, I was incredibly upset I would never be able to play it. Again, so I thought. Thanks to a massive sale on top of a price drop, I was able to pick up a PlayStation in early 1997 for a surprisingly miniscule amount of money.
But the Saturn still eluded me. By that point, about two years after launch, support for the console had seemingly dried up. It was difficult to find and expensive when you could find it. I knew a grand total of one person who had one (and his constant bragging about it probably also influenced my opinion of the console) so it was most certainly not popular where I grew up. One can point to myriad reasons why: $299, the lack of a big-name Sonic title, poor marketing, infighting at Sega, being difficult to program for, you name it. But it's failure certainly wasn't for lack of quality games. The general consensus was that any game that relied on 2D graphics looked and played better on the Saturn and it had tons of excellent original titles. Many of those titles were RPGs. Now, flash forward to today, where I write/talk about old games and I needed to choose one of those RPGs to play first. I've talked before about choosing first titles for a console, do I go for the popular one or just pick at random? This time I decided to do a little bit of research, because I wanted to start with the base baseline RPG of what the console has to offer. Not the absolute best, not an absolute dud, but that 7-8 kind of game that carries a console and provides the library base that makes a system worth owning. And that research led me to Albert Odyssey.
Albert Odyssey: The Legend of Eldean is actually the third game in the series and the only one to be released in the United States. The previous two games were Super Famicom titles, I'm unsure if translation patches exist for them but I plan on checking them out if so. The game was developed by Sunsoft, a studio known for making some really great games during the 3rd and 4th generation. They published the game in Japan, but the English translation was handled by a different company: our old friends over at Working Designs. So yeah, that alone kind of gives you an idea of what we are working with here. While it is impressive in many ways, I will say that AO was far from the best game I've ever played. If this is the baseline, then I definitely have a lot to look forward to as I work through the Saturn's RPG library. It was absolutely worth playing, though I think it would have found itself lost in the shuffle of the golden era even if it were released on a more popular console.
Even though I usually save this for the gameplay portion, I have to start with what is probably the best thing about AO: the graphics and sound. As mentioned previously, I had always been told that the Saturn was far superior to the PlayStation when it came to 2D graphics. A scant few minutes with this game proved that to be demonstrably true. Simply put, AO is beautiful, it has some of the best 2D graphics of the era and it puts even top end PS1 RPGs with this style to shame. The details, the animations, the spritework, it looks closer in quality to a modern HD 2D game, or at the very least a modern 2D game like Chained Echoes than it does like, say, Suikoden II. The sound is similarly amazing, it's not the most memorable soundtrack but the actual sound quality is on point and it really pulled me through the weaker parts of the game. I should also note that the Working Design-isms, you all know what I'm talking about, are at a perfect level here. You definitely know they handled this translation, but it wasn't so over the top that it impacted the game in that Alundra "fart jokes during some of the darkest parts of the game" way.
We are going to move on to the story, but before we get into the synopsis, we have to set a little background. If you do find a way to play this game, it is absolutely essential that you watch the pre-game cinematic, the one that plays when you turn the console on, not the one after you already press start. Unlike with most games, where this is usually irrelevant at best, this scene really solidifies the world you are about to walk in to. It introduces the Eldean siblings, the ones the game is subtitled after, and establishes why things are the way they are in the world of AO. While this may seem inconsequential at first, the game very much assumes you will watch this scene and understand who the characters it introduces are. Skipping this will cause a lot of the games better plot twists and more compelling sections to fall completely flat. So don't. There is no need to familiarize yourself with the previous AO games, they do take place in the same world but the do the whole "same world but actually set 1,000 years in the future" thing so it doens't mattter.
While the game's intro is important, the story begins in earnest with you in the role of Pike, a young boy who lives in the Harpy Village. Pike was adopted by the Harpy tribe of winged humanoids, who found him after his village was attacked and his parents killed. He's always had been something of an outcast, with his inability to fly due to his lack of wings making him stick out like a sore thumb. Having a talking sword, named Cirrus, that he's had since he came to the village certainly doesn't help either. Still, Pike has a very close relationship with his adoptive sister Laia and he makes the best of his quiet life in the Harpy Forest. That is, until the forest gets attacked by a dragon riding sorcerer named Belnard. He steals the forest's magic crystal, which provides them protection, and turns both Pike and Laia into stone. Cirrus is able to cure Pike, but is unable to break the spell on Laia. With his sister petrified and his adopted village without any way to protect itself, Pike sets out on a journey to cure Laia, take down Belnard and retrieve the Harpy crystal. Along the way, Pike will learn about his past, Cirrus's true nature and just how they are connected to Belanard, or his masters, ultimate goal.
The plot is fairly basic and the story doesn't really break a whole lot of new ground. It's a good story, but not an incredible one, although it also never bored me either. I think that was largely due to the strong world building, hence the suggestion that you watch the intro. AO does a great job of setting the tone and really establishing the stakes for what is going on with the story. The world feels very, for lack of a better term, realistic, at least in the way its denizens act. In many RPGs, the world feels like a monolith where everyone sort of fears the ever-growing presence of whatever evil the party is fighting and every town is in some sort of crisis. That isn't the case here. Some towns, like Gigarl and Agnus are just, well, towns, their citizens are just going about their business and living their best lives. Fighting Belnard might be a life or death mission to Pike, but the average NPC doesn't really care. A lot of the towns have their own issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the main plot and are focused on those problems rather than some grand, potentially world altering catastrophe they know nothing about. The conflict between the birdmen and beastmen is the center of their world, not some wizard trying to steal crystals. It makes a lot of the conflict within the story feel organic and the world feel like a living, breathing place.
I think the cast is another stong point, they aren't the most memorable RPG group but they are definitely closer to good than bad. Some of the party memembers you will recruit are a little bit flat, to a point that I think it actually bleeds over into gameplay. You will recruit a Dragon man named Gryz after you save his village, and then you don't learn much else about him. Amon, a vain birdman you meet in Weran, takes on the role of the cocky, over-confident but good hearted warrior that all these games seem to have. Side note, it really threw me off that you have a birdman in your party, but the dragon man's name is Gryz. Any other Phantasy Star fans keep messing their names up? Anyway, your human characters, the priestess of Solace Leos and smart mouthed magician Kia are fine, the latter largely drives the back half of the story. It's a bit of an uninspired cast, save for Eka, the first party memeber that joins your group. Her relationship with Pike is incredibly engaing and extremely organic in the way that it plays out throughout the game. I like how the two of them slowly grow closer together throughout the game, end up married after the time jump and decide to continue fighting together during the last third of the game.
And now I need to talk about that time jump, because it was a major part of the story here. Around twenty or so hours into the game, you will come face to face with Belnard and the sort of higher power behind him in what feels like a final boss fight. The stakes, the setup, it all feels like the stage is set for the big finale. And, well, it kind of is. You have your big fight and vanquish your foe, big twists happen, sacrifices are made, standard RPG things, etc. The crystal is restored, Laia is saved and all the characters live hapily ever after...or so it seems. One year later, a new threat has arisen and its our heroes are once again reunited to stop a world-ending threat. I actually kind of like this in theory, but I think the execution is a little bit off. For one, the new threat is only tangentially related to the foes you have spent the last 20 hours battling, so I think it kind of fell a little flat. Like is this a continuation of the story or an epilogue? I know it's the former but it sort of felt like the latter. I think if they had either split the game in half rather than had it be 70/30, or had they done a better job of connecting the back third of a game to what you had just spent most of your time on, it would feel a little better. Instead, it felt disjointed. I will say though, both sections work well in a vacuum and I like that they tried something different.
While there were attempts at changing things up, the core plot here is fairly basic RPG fare for the era. That's a bad thing in some ways, but it's also good in many others. You have decent characters, a strong world, a hateable antagonist and some really fun plot twists along the way. But that's not all we have to talk about here. Because it's time for us to move on to the gameplay. Was it on par with the decent story? Or did it fall flat? We will get back to that, and give AO a score, next week.
It's been a long time coming, I've always found myself fascinated by Sega's 5th generation offering. Even when it came out, something about it's look and lineup of games piqued my interest. The problem was, I was just a kid and there was absolutely no way I was ever going to be able to afford more than one console. At least I didn't think so. Being a SNES kid, I got an N64 on launch day, it was the first thing I ever bought with my own money. While it had some great games, it was also a wasteland for RPGs, which were quickly becoming my favorite genre. Believe me, when I first saw screenshots for Final Fantasy VII, I was incredibly upset I would never be able to play it. Again, so I thought. Thanks to a massive sale on top of a price drop, I was able to pick up a PlayStation in early 1997 for a surprisingly miniscule amount of money.
But the Saturn still eluded me. By that point, about two years after launch, support for the console had seemingly dried up. It was difficult to find and expensive when you could find it. I knew a grand total of one person who had one (and his constant bragging about it probably also influenced my opinion of the console) so it was most certainly not popular where I grew up. One can point to myriad reasons why: $299, the lack of a big-name Sonic title, poor marketing, infighting at Sega, being difficult to program for, you name it. But it's failure certainly wasn't for lack of quality games. The general consensus was that any game that relied on 2D graphics looked and played better on the Saturn and it had tons of excellent original titles. Many of those titles were RPGs. Now, flash forward to today, where I write/talk about old games and I needed to choose one of those RPGs to play first. I've talked before about choosing first titles for a console, do I go for the popular one or just pick at random? This time I decided to do a little bit of research, because I wanted to start with the base baseline RPG of what the console has to offer. Not the absolute best, not an absolute dud, but that 7-8 kind of game that carries a console and provides the library base that makes a system worth owning. And that research led me to Albert Odyssey.
Albert Odyssey: The Legend of Eldean is actually the third game in the series and the only one to be released in the United States. The previous two games were Super Famicom titles, I'm unsure if translation patches exist for them but I plan on checking them out if so. The game was developed by Sunsoft, a studio known for making some really great games during the 3rd and 4th generation. They published the game in Japan, but the English translation was handled by a different company: our old friends over at Working Designs. So yeah, that alone kind of gives you an idea of what we are working with here. While it is impressive in many ways, I will say that AO was far from the best game I've ever played. If this is the baseline, then I definitely have a lot to look forward to as I work through the Saturn's RPG library. It was absolutely worth playing, though I think it would have found itself lost in the shuffle of the golden era even if it were released on a more popular console.
Even though I usually save this for the gameplay portion, I have to start with what is probably the best thing about AO: the graphics and sound. As mentioned previously, I had always been told that the Saturn was far superior to the PlayStation when it came to 2D graphics. A scant few minutes with this game proved that to be demonstrably true. Simply put, AO is beautiful, it has some of the best 2D graphics of the era and it puts even top end PS1 RPGs with this style to shame. The details, the animations, the spritework, it looks closer in quality to a modern HD 2D game, or at the very least a modern 2D game like Chained Echoes than it does like, say, Suikoden II. The sound is similarly amazing, it's not the most memorable soundtrack but the actual sound quality is on point and it really pulled me through the weaker parts of the game. I should also note that the Working Design-isms, you all know what I'm talking about, are at a perfect level here. You definitely know they handled this translation, but it wasn't so over the top that it impacted the game in that Alundra "fart jokes during some of the darkest parts of the game" way.
We are going to move on to the story, but before we get into the synopsis, we have to set a little background. If you do find a way to play this game, it is absolutely essential that you watch the pre-game cinematic, the one that plays when you turn the console on, not the one after you already press start. Unlike with most games, where this is usually irrelevant at best, this scene really solidifies the world you are about to walk in to. It introduces the Eldean siblings, the ones the game is subtitled after, and establishes why things are the way they are in the world of AO. While this may seem inconsequential at first, the game very much assumes you will watch this scene and understand who the characters it introduces are. Skipping this will cause a lot of the games better plot twists and more compelling sections to fall completely flat. So don't. There is no need to familiarize yourself with the previous AO games, they do take place in the same world but the do the whole "same world but actually set 1,000 years in the future" thing so it doens't mattter.
While the game's intro is important, the story begins in earnest with you in the role of Pike, a young boy who lives in the Harpy Village. Pike was adopted by the Harpy tribe of winged humanoids, who found him after his village was attacked and his parents killed. He's always had been something of an outcast, with his inability to fly due to his lack of wings making him stick out like a sore thumb. Having a talking sword, named Cirrus, that he's had since he came to the village certainly doesn't help either. Still, Pike has a very close relationship with his adoptive sister Laia and he makes the best of his quiet life in the Harpy Forest. That is, until the forest gets attacked by a dragon riding sorcerer named Belnard. He steals the forest's magic crystal, which provides them protection, and turns both Pike and Laia into stone. Cirrus is able to cure Pike, but is unable to break the spell on Laia. With his sister petrified and his adopted village without any way to protect itself, Pike sets out on a journey to cure Laia, take down Belnard and retrieve the Harpy crystal. Along the way, Pike will learn about his past, Cirrus's true nature and just how they are connected to Belanard, or his masters, ultimate goal.
The plot is fairly basic and the story doesn't really break a whole lot of new ground. It's a good story, but not an incredible one, although it also never bored me either. I think that was largely due to the strong world building, hence the suggestion that you watch the intro. AO does a great job of setting the tone and really establishing the stakes for what is going on with the story. The world feels very, for lack of a better term, realistic, at least in the way its denizens act. In many RPGs, the world feels like a monolith where everyone sort of fears the ever-growing presence of whatever evil the party is fighting and every town is in some sort of crisis. That isn't the case here. Some towns, like Gigarl and Agnus are just, well, towns, their citizens are just going about their business and living their best lives. Fighting Belnard might be a life or death mission to Pike, but the average NPC doesn't really care. A lot of the towns have their own issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the main plot and are focused on those problems rather than some grand, potentially world altering catastrophe they know nothing about. The conflict between the birdmen and beastmen is the center of their world, not some wizard trying to steal crystals. It makes a lot of the conflict within the story feel organic and the world feel like a living, breathing place.
I think the cast is another stong point, they aren't the most memorable RPG group but they are definitely closer to good than bad. Some of the party memembers you will recruit are a little bit flat, to a point that I think it actually bleeds over into gameplay. You will recruit a Dragon man named Gryz after you save his village, and then you don't learn much else about him. Amon, a vain birdman you meet in Weran, takes on the role of the cocky, over-confident but good hearted warrior that all these games seem to have. Side note, it really threw me off that you have a birdman in your party, but the dragon man's name is Gryz. Any other Phantasy Star fans keep messing their names up? Anyway, your human characters, the priestess of Solace Leos and smart mouthed magician Kia are fine, the latter largely drives the back half of the story. It's a bit of an uninspired cast, save for Eka, the first party memeber that joins your group. Her relationship with Pike is incredibly engaing and extremely organic in the way that it plays out throughout the game. I like how the two of them slowly grow closer together throughout the game, end up married after the time jump and decide to continue fighting together during the last third of the game.
And now I need to talk about that time jump, because it was a major part of the story here. Around twenty or so hours into the game, you will come face to face with Belnard and the sort of higher power behind him in what feels like a final boss fight. The stakes, the setup, it all feels like the stage is set for the big finale. And, well, it kind of is. You have your big fight and vanquish your foe, big twists happen, sacrifices are made, standard RPG things, etc. The crystal is restored, Laia is saved and all the characters live hapily ever after...or so it seems. One year later, a new threat has arisen and its our heroes are once again reunited to stop a world-ending threat. I actually kind of like this in theory, but I think the execution is a little bit off. For one, the new threat is only tangentially related to the foes you have spent the last 20 hours battling, so I think it kind of fell a little flat. Like is this a continuation of the story or an epilogue? I know it's the former but it sort of felt like the latter. I think if they had either split the game in half rather than had it be 70/30, or had they done a better job of connecting the back third of a game to what you had just spent most of your time on, it would feel a little better. Instead, it felt disjointed. I will say though, both sections work well in a vacuum and I like that they tried something different.
While there were attempts at changing things up, the core plot here is fairly basic RPG fare for the era. That's a bad thing in some ways, but it's also good in many others. You have decent characters, a strong world, a hateable antagonist and some really fun plot twists along the way. But that's not all we have to talk about here. Because it's time for us to move on to the gameplay. Was it on par with the decent story? Or did it fall flat? We will get back to that, and give AO a score, next week.
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