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It's a amazing that TearRing Saga is a good game when seeing it's troubled history.


Spatha
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Seeing how Kaga, Enterbrain and Tirnanog suffered a fatal torpedo in the form Nintendo lawsuit that may have eventually led to Kaga not being able to develop new games until Vesteria Saga.

I'm amazed both TearRing Saga and Berwick Saga are such good games.

 

TearRing Saga especially. The game 2d-sprites are beautiful, surpassing the graphics of most turn-based rpgs at the time. Even when turning off the animations, the map animations are also beautiful. Overall, I'd say they on par with GBA games although TRS's battle animations are inferior to GBA ones.

Aside from the great soundtrack, the sound design is excellent. How satistfying to hear the sounds of spells and weapons going off is tough to describe on text, it's pretty good when compared to even modern FE games.

However, when reading through the story and playing through all the stages. It feels strangely "incomplete". The stages are schizophrenic, wavering from fun, boringly or frustrating and easy or hard.

Some important characters are introducted way too late for their characters to develop and I get the feeling there should be more to the story than what was already presented.

Reading the troubled history of the game, no wonder TearRing Saga's best potential couldn't be made.

 

 

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About that "incompleteness," I believe that the other two "lords" who only join near the end were supposed to also have their own storyline/path to go through, but the court stuff probably made the team decide, with their lesser budget now due to court fees, it was best to just keep what they had done so they could finish the game before the PS1 was completely dead. It's kinda sad that TRS probably only did so poorly and was clearly only half done all due to Nintendo who wouldn't try to make a project on Kaga's scale until PoR and RD. It's also funny considering they straight up stole his ideas from his left notes as there are many similarities in story between TRS and FE7, and apparently the same can be said for BS and PoR/RD. Kaga's story is a sad one all things considered, but at least some people appreciate his hard work.

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2 hours ago, Spatha said:

It feels strangely "incomplete". The stages are schizophrenic, wavering from fun, boringly or frustrating and easy or hard.

Actually, I have to disagree with you there. I absolutely love how bonkers the difficulty curve is, because it actually makes the whole experience feel a little more inmersive without breaking the gameplay: this is a war, the enemy isn't just going to throw weaklings at you day after day so you can gain experience to defeat the big baddies after a while.

Look no further than Fort Balt. One of the game's hardest chapters, yet it comes pretty early. It isn't just fitting in the context of the story and the characters present, it also made it into quite the memorable chapter. You've been fighting these weak lords, idiot generals and stuff for a while now, but suddenly, you're hit with a formidable battle topped off by one of the game's most memorable boss fights. It's great.

While I don't think all of the game's chapters are as great in how they handle difficulty (in particular, the finale could've done with being a bit harder), I definitely do not feel like a non-linear difficulty curve is a bad thing, especially considering how a lot FEs actually get consistently, boringly easy at the end. I'd take this over that any day.

I also think you're judging the game's story a little too harshly. It is fairly clear that the game's missing a layer of topping, but the base? It's all there. The characters get story arcs and they're all wrapped up okay, the story has a clear start and end, the game's brimming with backstory... Sennet and Tia, I don't think they were wasted potential as some people seem to think they are. Sure, they didn't have that much time onscreen, but you get a pretty good idea of what their goals and what they do throughout the game. They're off on their own adventures. It surely would've made for a fun game, but I actually like the idea of another group doing their own stuff that is clearly important but that you don't really influence as a player. Makes it seem like there's a bit more to this war than "Runan's good guys" versus "Guenchaos's bad guys", and considering how long the game already is, maybe it would've been a little counterproductive to double that by adding a Sennet and Tia campaign.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the only part of the story that truly felt incomplete to me was everything regarding Istoria. Sooo Richard's fighting them to reclaim Mahl, Prince Ronald appears that one time to explain how he freed Tia and how Richard would suffer the same fate as him... and that's about it. They're never heard from again. Pretty sure noone from Istoria joins as a playable character, either. Considering how much of a killer design Ronald had, it really is a shame he had almost no screentime or relevance at all.

In short, yeah, I don't think this game really feels all that incomplete. They couldn't do some things they wanted to do, perhaps, but that doesn't stop the game from being a full, perfectly enjoyable experience that isn't really missing much of anything, aside from a couple, easily ignored issues.

...please forgive me if I went on a bit of a fanboyish rant there. I love this game, it's in my top 3 FE list both gameplaywise and storywise. I just had a most pressing need to speak my mind.

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Honestly, the difficulty level always felt very deliberate to me. The big battles with a lot of buildup were hard and the battles inbetween allowed you to lick your wounds. Which is good. Nothing is gonna feel big if there is nothing small to compare it to. That may well be the an even bigger reason for why Awakening is such a chore to play through then the absence of any kind of map design. They were clearly aiming for the same level of pressure on every damn map.

Of course there are some concepts that clearly didn't work out all that well. But it does at least show their commitment to keep things varied, if nothing else.

That Ronald thing is the only thing that feels really weird. Not only is there no followup to it, the rest of the story basically contradicts the mere possibility of a followup. He paints a picture of Tia that is just not supported by anything in the game. He says Richard has to watch out for her, yet Tia is shown to be idealistic and pure to a fault. And indeed she is the one who gets stabbed in the back by Richard in the end. It's like that scene is a leftover from an entirely different draft of the story where Tia was a completely different character.

Also the fact that the game allows you to transform your Woodshooters into Ballista, but doesn't allow you to transform them back. I can't imagine that this limitation was intended.


I do think that it's pretty amazing that the game turned out as well as it did, but for different reasons. Kaga seemed to be incredible naive about independent game development. I mean, forget about the game basically being a Fire Emblem game under a different title. He intended for the game's story itself to be a sequel to his Fire Emblem games. He even alluded to the return of past characters. And I'm sure I don't have to explain how many levels of absurd this is.

Meanwhile other folks that go independant release games like Mighty No 9. Kaga did sooooo much better then that. And he didn't even need any Kickstarter money.

Edited by BrightBow
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