Wolfire Games Forums

Ragdollmaster wrote:I remember one game I played a while back for PSX. It was an RPG from what I remember and made by Square Soft (now Square Enix). I think it was published somewhere around 1999-2001, though I can't be sure. I know that the battle system was pretty simple but unique; it was turn-based, with up to 4 people on a side in a battle, and when you picked a spell/attack you would scroll between menus for each character to see their available weapons and the skills they had for those weapon-types. I also remember that you could do one-on-one battles, and then, the attack interface would change and you could select more specific attacks for weapons (eg; in a group battle, a sword's basic attack would be Slash, but here it would have Slash, Backslash, and Cleave) and you would pick 4 commands and then fight out a turn. Oh, and some of the commands entered in the right order could combo up to make new, more powerful moves.



I've looked for the case or disc everywhere but can't find any game among my collection of retro games that fits the description above. I dunno if anyone here will know it, but hey, it's worth a shot. Hopefully there's an emulator version somewhere so I can get back into it.

Ozymandias wrote:But you know the names of them so you didn't really forget, and you don't need help remembering =P

Ragdollmaster wrote:I remember one game I played a while back for PSX. It was an RPG from what I remember and made by Square Soft (now Square Enix). I think it was published somewhere around 1999-2001, though I can't be sure. I know that the battle system was pretty simple but unique; it was turn-based, with up to 4 people on a side in a battle, and when you picked a spell/attack you would scroll between menus for each character to see their available weapons and the skills they had for those weapon-types. I also remember that you could do one-on-one battles, and then, the attack interface would change and you could select more specific attacks for weapons (eg; in a group battle, a sword's basic attack would be Slash, but here it would have Slash, Backslash, and Cleave) and you would pick 4 commands and then fight out a turn. Oh, and some of the commands entered in the right order could combo up to make new, more powerful moves.

I've looked for the case or disc everywhere but can't find any game among my collection of retro games that fits the description above. I dunno if anyone here will know it, but hey, it's worth a shot. Hopefully there's an emulator version somewhere so I can get back into it.

The game you're thinking of is Sage Frontier II. The character you controlled for the vast majority of the game was named Gustave, and the story takes you through his whole life from when he was a young boy, although you control many different characters in different scenarios, some of which never actually meet, although their stories are all inter-linked.

The one-on-one battles you're thinking of were called Duels. It was interesting how the graphics changed when you were taking part in a duel. I thought the Duel gameplay was very well executed, because it could have been shitty and boring. I also loved the way you learned different attack techniques, as you already mentioned, and what attacks you learned were based on which skills you levelled up, a bit like the way skills were handled in Grandia.

Also, Suikoden IV attempted the whole duel-system thingy kind of like you see in Sage Frontier 2, but it was pretty badly done. It wasn't fun at all. In fact, Suikoden IV only annoyed me. I played it for about 4 or 5 hours until I was playing that dice game with the bowl against some old guy, and I lost all my money and got fed up and turned off the Playstation, ripped out the chords, and threw it out the window of a ten-story building. Okay, that last bit was a slight bit of hyperbole.

Also, to answer your question, I did find an ISO for it. I was going to PM it to you, but I can't see an "PM User" command on your profile. Bah humbug. Anyway, I think you'll find what you're looking for in the last "o". Tell me if this helps.