Brave Battle Saga - The Legend of The Magic Warrior

After playing and finishing the game after 18 hours here's my review. I never heard of this game until I looked up on a Steam curator of Sege Genesis games and this one caught my eye since I like playing JRPGs. I got it on a sale and the time I put to it was worth it. To begin the story takes place at a time where it's kind of middle age fantasy like setting with advanced technology. You do meet characters like Albert Einstein in the game who gives you a something to comunicate with him but he usually says things that you already know. You start off as a blue haired man named Tim who does a competition and something goes wrong and is banished from his village. When that happens you try to go around the world to prove your innocence. You have 5 party members in the game you meet in the game but you can only have 4 in the game to help you. The 5th party member comes near the end of the game and the 3rd party member is switched with someone else. Not gonna spoil who it is since it will spoil the story. The story isn't that memorable it's pretty cliche and is something you probably seen before in a JRPG so it's nothing special. The visauls in this game do look nice for a game that's in…

I own it on Megadrive as well, the story is simple and the battle UI could have been better but honestly it's still one of the best and good looking RPG on this console.

I'll cut to the chase, this game is trash. First off, it's not playable on Steam Deck unless you specifically configure your controls using a keyboard to figure out the mapping. No recommended guides, no instructions, no nada. Second, the save file system didn't work. I wasted 3 hours, saving frequently, only to find no data at all when I started it up again. Gameplay wise, it's super basic. Characters have no unique skills and feel pretty much identical. Stats don't seem to matter much when it comes to defense. The story that I played so far was generic. The worst offense was the encounter and combat! Encounters happen when you make contact with an overworld enemy sprite. Sounds cool, especially when you see the variety of them. But this is where they get you. Run into a slime and you might fight a slime and/or skull. See that bat, worm, bird, plant, purple ball? Also slime/skulls! And the option for active combat seems to make no difference whether it's turned on or off. Even at $4 on sale, I feel totally ripped off. So sad when this looked like a cross between Breath of Fire and Chrono Trigger.

I'm a fan of retro games, so this is up my alley. Pros: Good challenge, I found some of the battles tough, but not too tough. Cons: It's like the original SNES romancing saga all over again, with the on-map enemies swarming to you. The number of encounters ends up being too many and repetitive.

Pro. It feels like a homage, rather than a spiritual successor, to the SNES Breath of Fire games, and I love that. Pro. The music is actually decent. Con. Found a critical hardlock bug that's fairly easy to replicate, and cannot progress further. I was about to die in a random encounter, 8 life to spare, and decided to just close the game down. When I later opened it back up to play, I was back in this battle. I died, and instead of the game Game Overing me back to the last save point, it put me back in battle with 8 life, and I died again. Over and over. I cannot proceed forward, it keeps me in this unwinnable battle. Con. The game shows numerous overworld monster sprites; however, the visual representation of the overworld sprite doesn't at all match the in-battle sprite...... In fact, the first part of the game has like two total in-battle enemies while the overworld shows a plethora of different types. Rushed development or cut corners? Con. You're buying a rom with a bake in emulator, enough said.

I'm going to try to give it more of a chance but first impressions: 1. Monsters appear on the field, nice. The monster battle you encounter has a possibility to not be the monster you just walked into. Ex. Run into a slime, fight a flaming skull. Run into a worm in a cave, fight a slime & a flaming skull. Odd design choice. 2. There is art framing the game client that cannot be turned off (unless you follow the guide in the steam community who basically edited a game file to be a black page instead...) 3. I saved after my first level up and then went through the first little dungeon-ish area to a boss fight. While taking a screenshot of the boss mid fight and tabbing out to post it to discord, the game reloaded my save from earlier losing the last 10-15 minutes of gameplay. This is a quit moment. I have quit. lol