Saga of Tears
 Granstream Saga review for ToastyFrog Zine #6
 (PSX, 1998, RPG)
 Ben Elgin


I surveyed the game box.  "Hmm," I thought, "anime cut-scenes."

That's when the Babbage's clerk walked by.  "You don't really want to
buy that game," he remarked.

I thought he was just a clerk-monkey.  I thought he didn't know what
he was talking about.  I thought maybe (horror of horrors) he just
didn't like anime.

I bought it anyway.  And thus another misguided otaku acquired the
wholly mediocre game _Granstream_Saga_.


Where to begin critiquing this turkey?  Let's start with the obvious:
the in-game graphics.  Never mind the simplistic models and dull
textures on environments and objects - they're at least serviceable.
No, the big problem is the character models.  They have no faces.
Aesthetic scariness aside, an anime-style RPG depends heavily on
conveying characters' emotions, and you just can't effectively emote
with no face.  16-bit sprites from SNES games did better on this
front.

Then there's the cut-scenes.  The animation itself is just good enough
to remind you how bad the rest of the visuals are - it gets the job
done, but isn't astonishingly beautiful.  The accompanying dialogue
and acting begin mediocre and get progressively worse as emotions
heighten towards the end of the game.

But enough quibbling about presentation... how's the gameplay?
basically, this is a traditional RPG with a couple potentially
innovative additions that ultimately fall flat.

The first unusual addition is the "scepter"[1], which has the
ability to restore or replicate items it touches.  Unfortunately, you
only get to use it when the game decides that it's a good
idea[2].  In a few cases, this results in vaguely interesting
"puzzles"; taking the sleeping guard's keys might wake him, but
copying them won't.  Usually, though, it's just gimmicky
window-dressing.  Instead of finding fantastic armor lying around, you
find a lump of rusty metal which the scepter instantly restores into
fantastic armor.  Hooray!

Next up is the battle system: instead of turn-based party combat, we
have one-on-one 3D battles.  These might have been fun, if
the control weren't so sluggish and the combat system had any variety.
There's magic, but since MP is restored only via potions or rare
rewards, you'll never use it.  There are special attacks, but you
hardly learn any until late in the game.  Enemy balance is also a
problem - you'll quickly tire of the constant block/counter strategy
that defeats any soldier, but learn to fear the fast unblockable moves
of lizardmen.

What's especially sad is that apparently the developers _sensed_ how
tedious the game could become, and gave players a built-in cheat.  The
ultimate weapon can be found by using an item at a
particular location... five minutes into the game!  Using it certainly
helps move things along if you're so inclined.

If you move things along all the way to the game's finale, you're
faced with a supposedly gut-wrenching life-or-death decision.
Unfortunately the increasingly horrible voice-acting at this
point makes it impossible to take seriously.   But in the end, it
doesn't matter much - I'm pretty sure nobody who wasn't suckered
into writing a review of this stinker will ever make it that far. 



[1] Actually a sort of glowing bracelet, one of several odd
word-choices in the translation.  I wouldn't have called a giant laser
cannon a "torpedo" either, but what do I know?

[2] Hmm, I can make a copy of the "fake treasure" item, but I can't
just copy this Gold Bar fifty times?  What a shame.