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A friend and I recently played Seiken Densetsu 3 together. This was a RPG released back in 1995 for Japan on the SNES (Yeah, we're big fans of old-school RPGs). Needless to say, we're playing a fan translation. I'm going to briefly describe the game and discuss why you should (or shouldn't) play it. I figure some of the younger people here may have never seen or heard of this game.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gPanI.jpg) this game might be older than you
At the beginning of the game, you choose 3 out of 6 characters to use. This influences what story events you witness. More on this later.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/33sb7.jpg) your choices
This is an action RPG with real-time combat. You control one character, and the AI controls the rest. If you have 1 (or 2) other friends with you, they can control someone else for you. Though you cannot control other characters, you can always command them to use items or cast magic.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gI6ED.png) typical battle
There is a "ring menu" system (similar to the system in Secret of Mana). This effectively limits which and how many items you can bring into battle. So, healing effects are somewhat precious.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yJvJp.png) the ring menu
The plot is nothing special. World in danger, save the Mana Tree, collect the Mana Spirits, yadda, yadda. Depending on which character you choose, you see character-specific plot events. Certain pairs of characters have their own personal conflict, which influences which dungeon/bosses you go through. For the characters you don't choose, you get a hint of their story, but don't participate in it.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2t44z.png) the game is about these, the mana stones
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jMXfQ.png) Koren, main antagonist for Duran/Angela
Each character performs a class change twice. At each class change, there is a "light" and "dark" choice. So, each character has 2 first classes and 4 second classes (keep in mind there's 6 characters!). The class choice influences what spells you get, your special attack, and what equipment you can wear. It is definitely possible to choose a party that has difficulty making progress at certain points in the game (Do your research before you start!).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sidFQ.png) changing classes
The good
How do I feel about this game? I'll just mention the things that stood out for me. I was surprised at all character mechanics. It has a lot of features that you would expect to find in "modern" RPGs: character choices which influence the story, non-linear class changes, customization of character stats, optional super-powerful boss, etc. We kept commenting that this game was ahead of its time. Unfortunately, we didn't really like it (see below), and kept joking that we should choose a better MMO to play.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jagiF.png) ur doin it wrong
The bad
Ultimately, We found it pretty boring, a large part of which was due to the battle mechanics. This deserves an explanation. Essentially, whenever a unit gets hit, it enters a stun period where it can't do anything. This can happen to both you or the enemy. It is worse with magic because you suffer knockdown instead. Anyway, with multiple players, battles mostly degenerate into an exercise of mashing attack. On the other hand, when you only have a single player (the AI will control your other two characters, and it won't spam attack), the game becomes frustrating, because you will often find yourself in stunlock. Supposedly, you solve this by grinding levels. Since we had 2 players, we were routinely 5-10 levels below the recommended minimum, and were doing fine.
tl;dr
+ Show Spoiler +Stunlocking sucks. This game has multiplayer balance issues.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vn8Lw.png) try getting out of that
Another issue that comes up in multiplayer is the gameflow interruptions. Every time someone brings up the menu, uses an item, or casts a spell, all action freezes. This. is. really. annoying. I could easily rant on about all the issues this causes, but I'll just simply say that this is very agitating.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7qZ0A.png) waiting for this gets tiresome, fast
There are other good and bad points about this game worth mentioning, but in the interest of brevity, I'll stop here.
So, play this game if you like:
- old school SNES RPGs
- multiple character choices, which gives you specific events and diverse party choices
- unique class changes
- multiplayer (2-3) support
- real-time combat
Avoid it because:
- it's pretty old, dude
- menu usage interrupts the flow of battle
- character death was a mess. I didn't explain this, but basically a player takes time to die, so they couldn't perform any action (not alive), but couldn't be revived either (not dead yet).
- the game is unpolished. We'd occasionally notice minor bugs, or see simple changes that would make the game smoother. I'm under the impression this game was rushed near the end of development.
- uninteresting dungeons
Poll: How about you?played it (39) 72% seen it (8) 15% never heard of it (7) 13% 54 total votes Your vote: How about you? (Vote): played it
(Vote): seen it
(Vote): never heard of it
 
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Your reasons to avoid this game are stupid.
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One of my online "friends" who i played a bunch of mmo's and online games with uses Seiken as his tag in most games... now i know where its from thanks =)
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This game was a blast to play coop with my friend. I'd highly recommend it for anyone who likes action rpgs. Although I don't really remember anything about the story...
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Oh man, I love this game. Definitely one of my top five SNES games.
I do have to agree with prototype about your reasons to avoid it, though. A game being old has no bearing on whether or not it's good, and it should not be used as a metric to judge it. (For example, FF7 is 14 1/2 years old, but people still consider it a top title.)
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How dare you say bad things about one of the best RPGs ever made O_O The class system was so well done and I'dd replay the game over and over to experience all of them
I played it way back and it's one of my best gaming memories, got chills just reading the title on the blog section
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This game is sooooooooooo awesome, I played it with all characters just to see if there were different endings. Just too classic of an RPG to not love absolutely everything about it.
The only thing I would say that I dislike about this game is the random factor in when getting the "???" seeds for your second class change; it can take seconds or days T_T.
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Oh, I agree some of those are bad reasons to avoid this game. None of those certainly stopped me. But, for people didn't play SNES back in its prime, and who realistically might want to check out this game, those reasons are probably some of the main problems.
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On August 17 2011 12:29 The-Ice-Inside wrote:
The only thing I would say that I dislike about this game is the random factor in when getting the "???" seeds for your second class change; it can take seconds or days T_T.
Did that take you a long time? The "??? seeds" started dropping for us around lv36 (you class change at lv38), and we had all the seeds we needed by the time we hit lv38. No farming required 
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1995 caption with "This game might be older than you"
Fuck man I'm getting old.
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very sick game, a must play for any SNES fan along with my all time favorite game: FF6/3
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I thought this was super famicom only? (I did modify my snes to accept famicom games so the only issue would be acquiring the cart)
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On August 17 2011 13:30 101toss wrote:
I thought this was super famicom only? (I did modify my snes to accept famicom games so the only issue would be acquiring the cart)
Acquiring the cart is more involved than you might think. I live in Japan at the moment, and I saw it going for about 7000円 last week in Akihabara.
This was an absolutely awesome game, although trivially easy if you've played other SNES-era RPGs (even more so with multiple human players). In order to lend some difficulty to it, you need to avoid a lot of the useful things, such as healing spells, the attack magic exploit and the entirety of Kevin.
People who like RPGs should play this, if only to see how old some of the "new" fancy shit that's being put into games these days is. Also, people need to look at old games more often to see how masterfully the spell animations were crafted with such limited technology.
If you're wondering, the attack magic exploit is an exploit based on a bug where the casting time of a spell continues to count down while in a menu. Basically, if you want to beat this game EZPZ, pick Angela and load up on MP healing items. On bosses, start casting the spell they're weak against, summon the ring menu (you may have to change characters), wait for the duration of the cast time, then exit and let the spell fire. Rinse, repeat. You really, really should not need this though.
There is also a way you can get Kevin (maybe more? Never tried) to do his level 1 tech attack multiple times in a row. I never got it to work repeatably, but i'm sure it's on the internet somewhere.
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Blazinghand
United States25558 Posts
On August 17 2011 11:51 prototype. wrote:
Your reasons to avoid this game are stupid.
I AGREE. This is literally the greatest RPG experience I've ever had. I grew up on this, and my sister and I would play it together every day after school for an hour until we finally beat it. Later when we were older and she had just been dumped or something and couldn't sleep, we'd stay up for a couple hours and play through a part of it. It's got drama, a great battle system, action, and everything you could ever want. I straight-up cried in some of the story scenes.
Even though it's not quite Chrono Trigger in quality, I will never lose the memories.
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I remember attempting to play this and getting bored easily. The pace of this game is terrible and the clunky UI doesn't help (good god that menu screen -_-). Also combat mechanics are extremely simplistic compared to most other games.
If you want to play an action RPG on the SNES go for Terranigma.
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![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/penny_arcade.jpg)
from xkcd
pretty much my thoughts when people talk about rpgs on the snes, this game was honestly amazing, good story, excellent combat and overall gameplay, and a large amount of replayability= win
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I love this game though I never finish I wouldn't rate it my top game of all time on SNES that goes to the original : Secret of Mana. Replayed that game so many tomes ts not funny and if reading this right the stunlocking you refer to after an enemy is hit doesn't atop it taking DMG. I remember in number 1 at least you could hit the enemy before it came out of stun and it would still take the DMG.
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Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2) > Seiken Densetsu 3. Just play Secret of Mana.
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@QUEENT: I never knew about those exploits. We'll try not to use the magic one from now on (which is pretty much just the final boss) but it sounds unavoidable.
@mcmartini: Yup! And it works the other way around too. It's pretty painful when casters get stuck in it.
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Loved this game, a little easy if stacking buffs/debuffs but still very fun :D
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EPT
