Seiken Densetsu 3 Review

edit: Upon further reflection I think I've overrated the game. I stand by pretty much every point I made, including the potential for huge replay value and that it's clearly the best Mana game. However, there just are too many issues with the Mana game mechanics. Magic and full screen techs pause the action, as noted before, but it's kind of disappointing that they are impossible to avoid. Most bosses are stationary for the most part. It's an action RPG, but the action is relatively shallow. Turn-based type strategy and some rudimentary attack/runaway tactics still do apply. In short, I'm scaling back my recommendation of the game somewhat (but not too much, it's still better than most).

Seiken Densetsu 3

~by far the best Mana game and convincingly the best multicharacter 2D action RPG on any system

Japanese cover art featuring somewhat chibified versions of the six playable characters

Platform: SNES
Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Japanese Release Date: 09/30/95
Complete English Fan Translation Release Date: v1.00 7/27/99, v1.01 8/27/00

webpage for translation patch download and documentation here

Developer credits:
+ Show Spoiler +

English translation credits:

Neill Corlett - ROM patch design, script editing
Lina`chan - Script translation
Nuku-nuku - Script translation
SoM2Freak - Misc. translation

With special thanks to Richard Bush.

Original developer credits:
Director Hiromichi Tanaka
Director of Game/Character Design Koichi Ishii
Battle Design Goro Ohashi
Battle Design Yuko Sakamoto
Map Design Tsukasa Fujita
Map Design Kazuomi Suzuki
Map Design Hiroyuki Kuwata
Background Design Koji Tsuda
Background Design Takaharu Matsuo
Background Design Tetsuya Takahashi
Background Design Takeo Ohin
Background Design Hiroyuki Ikeda
Character Design Shinichi Kameoka
Character Design Atsuhito Sakoda
Effect Design Shintaro Takai
Monster Design Noriko Sasaki
Monster Design Konomi Ishizuka
Boss Monster Design Hiroyuki Narushima
Boss Monster Design Kazuhiro Ohkawa
Boss Monster Design Yuichi Shiota
Program Satoru Yoshieda
Program Taku Murata
Program Masaaki Saito
Program Yoshiyuki Miyagawa
Program Satoshi Ogata
Program Hidenori Suzuki
Program Shun Moriya
Program Kazuo Suzuki
Music Hiroki Kikuta
Sound Teruaki Sugawara
Sound Yoshitaka Hirota
Sound Kazume Mitome
Sound Chiharu Minekawa
Sound Hironobu Izumi
Executive Producer Tetsuo Mizuno
Producer Tetsuhisa Tsuruzona
Character Illustration Noboteru Yuki
World Map Illustration Hiroo Isono

Game introduction

What is this game?
Seiken Densetsu 3 is the third game in what Western gamers know as the Mana series by Square. Final Fantasy Adventure (GBA remake known as Sword of Mana) is also known as Seiken Densetsu 1, and Secret of Mana is aka Seiken Densetsu 2, to put things into perspective. Nobody knows for sure why Square never released this excellent sequel to the popular SoM outside of Asia, but several explanations and factors include the coinciding establishment of a development team in Washington state, the release of Secret of Evermore, the release of Super Mario RPG, and the general bugginess of Seiken Densetsu 3--known from here on out at SD3. In any case, SD3 was not a game to be overlooked, and after a couple failed translation projects by others, Neil Corlett's translation team pulled through a victory against the game's text compression algorithm and delivered what would be one of the crowning achievements of the fan translation "scene." Since then, through the popularization of game piracy through ROM distribution and the maturation of successful SNES emulators, the game has attracted and maintained a significant fan following. However, to this day, it has yet to receive an official translation even though Square Enix appears to have both the means to do so and the predilection towards remaking and translating other older games.

Gameplay in SD3 is standard enough and should be familiar to anyone who's played a Mana game, especially Secret of Mana. Your party includes three characters roughly equal in power, of which you control one directly. Unlike in some other games, you can switch and probably will switch which character you are controlling quickly with the press of a button depending on the situation. The other two characters tag along by AI in towns and fight according to slightly customizable scripts. Fighting takes place in the same screen as the dungeon does, and enemies appear on the screen ready to attack you almost all the time. Sometimes enemies can be walked by and avoided without too much of a hassle. In battle the A button makes the controlled character swipe the air in front of him or her--if an enemy is in the attack range, it gets hit. However, SD3 is much more than a mindless button-mashing grindfest; since many enemy attacks can be (should be) seen and avoided and the game is moderately challenging, care must be taken while fighting or avoiding enemies.

SD3's success lies not in great new innovation (although there is some) but in solid execution of all of the elements of a game and huge replay value. The graphics are fairly nice and easy to see, a sizable step over SD2. Likewise, the music is quite good, featuring one of the best tracks on the SNES. And the plot, while certainly not too deep, certainly doesn't take itself too seriously either, never being a disruption and sometimes being pretty engaging. From whatever angle you view it, SD3 is a classic SNES RPG in the best sense of those words.

There's a time system in the game; certain enemies and townspeople appear at night, and others at day

The Characters

SD3 features 6 different playable characters of which you chose 3 to use at the start of the game. You can't sub in and out which characters you want to use, like in other games, but rather you select which 3 you'd like to play with when you begin your adventure. The first character you choose becomes the main character, and the other two join quickly enough after the introductory scenes (unique to each main character) and a few dungeons, and they stick with you for the rest of the game. The six characters are as follows:

Angela - the only child of Valda, the Queen of the Magic Kingdom of Altena, Angela has lived her life in the city and castle located in the ice fields. However, her relative neglect by the Queen and general upbringing as a princess has left her spoiled and selfish. In her introduction the Queen upon the advice of the Red Magician Koren decides to sacrifice her daughter to unlock the power of the nearby Mana Stone in an attempt to gain the power necessary to magically warm up the region like it used to be. Angela manages to escape, and she heads to the Holy City of Wendel to see the Priest of Light for advice. She's the game's dedicated attack magic specialist, learning spells of every element and having awful physical stats.

Duran - the son of a famous deceased knight in the grasslands Kingdom of Forcena, Duran is a powerful mercenary swordsman. An orphan, he lives with his little sister Wendy and his aunt Stella. In his introduction Koren and the magicians of Altena invade Forcena, and Duran is unable to stop their rampage. Enraged at his lack of strength, he heads to the Priest of Light to see how he can become stronger. He's the game's strongest per-hit attacker, with supplemental spells in the form of healing or elemental sabers, the only character in the game able to equip shields at all.

General fan translation quality is good, with nice-looking fonts and decent editing; Duran's going to find out that being the number one swordsman isn't nearly enough

Kevin - son of a human mother and the Beast King, Kevin is a misfit among both humans and beastmen, the powerful lycanthropes of the world. Although he can also change into a werewolf at night like the other beastmen, Kevin often shows a gentler nature, taking care of his best friend Karl, a wolf pup. In his introduction Deathjester uses dark magic to make Karl attack Kevin, thus unlocking Kevin's beastman prowess as he must defend himself. When he kills Karl and discovers his father was behind Deathjester's actions, he disowns his father and is thrown out of the kingdom, whereupon he seeks the Priest of Light to see how he can revive his only friend. The strongest attacker in the game, he swings twice with every attack. He only gets stronger at night when he turns into a werewolf, although his spell selection is even more limited than Duran's.

Carlie (aka Charlotte) - granddaughter of the Priest of Light, she's the only one who doesn't set out to find him. A rare (the only) half-elf, she's an orphan that was largely raised by the cleric Heath. In her introduction, Heath is sent by the Priest of Light to investigate an evil presence. This turns out to be Deathjester, who then kidnaps Heath as Carlie can only watch in hiding. She then decides she must do whatever it takes to save him. The primary healer of the game, Carlie heals for much more than either Duran or Kevin, and she gets it much much earlier in the game. She also has a set of support spells and either elemental sabers or attack magic in the form of summons depending on how you developer her to compensate for weak physical stats on the level of Angela.

Lise (aka Riesz) - the princess of the Wind Kingdom of Rolante, Lise is the captain of the realm's Amazon army. Because her mother died giving birth to her younger brother, she's become very protective of him. In her introduction, a ninja pair from the new Navarre infiltrate the fortress and turn down the protective wind barrier, allowing an army of ninjas to slaughter those inside, including her father the king. She barely escapes the assassins and decides to make her way to the Preist of Light, looking all the while for her missing brother. In battle Lise can either cast stat-up or stat-down spells depending on how she progresses. She's the character with the most balanced stats of all of the six.

Lise looks for her brother

Hawk (aka Hawkeye) - a member of the Robin Hood-esque thieves' guild based in the Sand Fortress of Navarre, Hawk is suspicious when his leader, Lord Flamekhan, suddenly declares the guild a kingdom. In his introduction, after discussing his concerns with his two friends, the son and daughter of Flamekhan, he goes to confront him, only to discover him in a meeting with a new advisor, Isabella. In a series of events, Hawk gets framed for killing his best friend, and his girlfriend gets put under a curse that will kill her if he tells her the truth, that he wasn't the killer. When another friend busts him out of jail, Hawk escapes to seek the Preist of Light so see how he can lift his girlfriend's curse. In battle Hawk dual-wields daggers, swinging twice for middling damage each every attack. He is the most versatile character, and the one with the most difference between his classes. He may be the best support character in the game, a stat-lowering Ninja, or a jack-of-all-trades knowing many special skills.

Kevin, Hawk, and Angela face off against a boss near the middle of the game; notice that spells and items must be chosen from the ring menus, and using them disrupts the game flow; only in boss battles do you see this much using the menu...on a side note, this is one of the worst of many good boss battle musics

Class System and Character Development

All characters start in their base classes. Then, at level 18, they can class change to one of their two second classes, known as the Light and Dark classes. Then near the end of the game at level 38, they can class change again into one of their four third classes. The way branching works can be easily seen in this graphic:

Each class for each character has its own color scheme for the character, techs, spells and skills, and max stats, among other smaller differences. However, all spells, skills, and techs learned from a previous class are retained when progressing to the next. How some characters play in different class paths is sometimes surprisingly different. As such, since you have three characters to choose from six and four class paths to choose from for each of your three characters, there are a lot of combinations to try: some interesting, strong, weak, whatever.

Whenever a character levels up, you can choose which stat out of strength, vitality, agility, intelligence, spirit, or luck to raise one point. The game places some restrictions on what stats you can raise, however. For example, you're not allowed to raise one single stat many times in a row (or too many in general in the last several times), so if you've raised strength the last two times, that option is going to be greyed out. As it is, you'll be forced to raise at least three different types of stats for all of your characters, especially if you hit the max stats in an area or two for a class. Upon class change, any stats not maxed out in the previous class are raised to the previous class's maximum, so every once in awhile neglected stats will be raised as well. Thus, the question of which stat to raise for certain characters is quite complex: what other characters you're using, what classes they're all in, what stage of the game you're in, and your particular playstyle all determine what's the right decision to make come level up time.

Guess what Duran's good at

One Game, Three Scenarios

Although SD3 doesn't have true branching paths or scenarios, the game is a little different depending on who you choose as your main character. Depending on if you choose Angela/Duran, Kevin/Carlie, or Lise/Hawk as the main character, a certain sequence of events in the middle of the game as well as the last few dungeons and bosses will be different, with corresponding plot to follow. It's not hard too hard to figure out why there are three pairs of two for deciding this--the answer is within the character section above. As such, SD3, with the number of characters and classes to choose from really deserves at least three plays through, just to see some of the many situations the game as to offer.

Summary and Miscellany

Despite what SD3 does well, it does have a couple notable failings. One is that the game is relatively buggy compared to most games: for example, critical hits don't work as they should (they're extremely rare as it is) and Kevin's werewolf form gains a little strength (as if a stat up were cast on it) once it is hit once on a screen, to name the two most glaring ones. Another is that special attacks, items, and magic pause the flow of the game to allow for the animation. But it's not as if you're required to play with spell-happy Angela, and again, most regular enemies aren't non-stop spamming magic. Another "failing" is that unlike Secret of Mana, which had multicontroller support that allowed the second and third characters to be controlled by other people, SD3 only allows for two inputs.

SD3 does not strive for complexity, and neither does it try for simplicity. Unabashedly, it churns out the same kind of gameplay that other games in the genre do. At one point in the game the goal is to find all eight guardian spirits to help you, one for each element: fire, water, wind, earth, tree, moon, light, and dark, each of which can be found in its corresponding elemental dungeon (with a few differences here and there in premise, and punctuated by other little quests). This filler material clearly isn't the epitome of inventiveness, but what it does do is allow the player to enjoy without distraction the meat and bones of the game--exploring dungeons and fighting enemies with your personal favorite or quirkily-designed team. It's the rare game that makes level grinding enjoyable at all. And it's a rare game I strongly recommend that I don't have much to say about.

Carlie, Duran, and Kevin make their way past a few baddies

That's it for this week. Eventually I'm going to stop writing these things when school kicks into full swing, but expect at least a few more. Please add comments at will, as usual. And here's a poll out of curiosity, mostly to those who've played the game (also a secret ninja way of seeing how many people who have played the games I'm reviewing read the bottom of these posts):

Poll: Favorite SD3 character?
(Vote): Angela
(Vote): Duran
(Vote): Kevin
(Vote): Carlie
(Vote): Lise
(Vote): Hawk

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