Ziggy587 wrote:I have stopped playing Secret of Mana. It wasn't that I don't like the game, although there were a few things that bugged me about it. I actually really started to get annoyed when the two computer controlled characters would get held up on stuff. Especially when you just want to run through an area and try to avoid enemies, and then you have to backtrack because someone is running in a corner or up against a tree or something LOL. That's not why I stopped playing it, though. It's just a case of I put the game down for a while because I was busy with work for a while and then I got sick. That combined with, I got the itch to play something else.
You have to slow down just a bit for them not to get stuck. It can be kind of annoying, but after a while, I just got used to the AI getting stuck sometimes. Fortunately, I feel it doesn't happen a lot (except in that forest maze, where it happens all the time).
I've been playing Final Fantasy II (AKA FF4). I think I told this story in the SNES TR thread, but to sum it up, I once tried to play FF2 on the SNES but lost my save data about halfway through. I eventually played through the game on the PS1. I really felt like playing this game again, and decided to play it on the SNES since I never beat that version. I'm very close to the end of the game now.
I know that FF2 on the SNES is the easy version of the game. It's definitely really easy as far as stats and money are concerned. You really don't ever have to grind, and you pretty much always have enough money to buy the best equipment along with a healthy stock of healing items. And you seem to find a ton of healing items in the wild. FF4 is a localization of the original Super Famicom version, and I don't remember it being very hard at all. The SNES version is definitely too easy, though. But it's also pretty fun to just plow through it almost mindlessly.
I really feel personally insulted that FFII US was deliberately toned down, and that we got Mystic Quest on top of that. If I, a literal child when it came out, could play it and beat it (so long as my save didn't get wiped!), then so could anyone. There's really nothing difficult about it. The hardest thing is just knowing where/when to grind (which you did need to do a few times throughout the game). But otherwise, so long as you saved often, frustration was non-existent.
I find it hard to go back to these kinds of games in general, too long and tedious these days, so I feel extra cheated that I didn't get the nostalgia for the classic JP game, having had to wait until it came out on the GBA (hadn't known at the time that it also came out on PS1, and wouldn't likely have realized it was different anyway).
Talking about Super Famicom exclusives and repro carts in the TR thread gave me the bug. I decided to pick up a few SFC exclusives since some of them are so cheap. I got Seiken Densetsu 3, Bahamut Lagoon and Treasure Hunter G. I never played through any of those three, but always wanted to. I'm going to patch the carts with the English translations. I've also long owned Final Fantasy V, and plan to play through that one again (I made it to the end once, but never beat it). Also, going through some of my old repro stuff, I realized that I somehow ended up with an authentic Tales of Phantasia cart shell, so I think I'll make a repro of that to put in there. And I have an authentic Star Ocean cart that needs to be repaired. I've played through Star Ocean once before, but it was years ago and I wouldn't mind playing through it again.
Anyone have any recommendations for other cheap SFC exclusives that got English patches? I was thinking about Front Mission or FM Gun Hazard, but I'm not sure if I'll like those games or not.
I'll add in Terranigma, though that came out in English in the EU, so not sure if that's what you're looking for or not. Let me know if you decide to go through SD3 or FFV again. I could use the motivation to tackle those as well.