The best thing about TRS is that is very clear that Kaga was free to add whatever he wanted. The worst thing about TRS is that is very clear that Kaga was free to add whatever he wanted.
The main thing with TRS is that it has some random difficulty spikes placed in a few chapters. Split 3 is also hard, but the majority of it feels like FE7 tier difficulty
More evidence that its fire emblem: the game was called Emblem Saga up to a month and a half before release and was changed due to "legal pressure" according to wikipedia, at least.
Yeah that lawsuit was crazy and it clearly left a sour taste in Nintendo's mouth because they didn't even mention Kaga in the 30th anniversary Fire Emblem video.
This video did two things for me: -Get me interested in the game i will 100% try it -Made me think that Nintendo's and Kaga's "Creative differences" were a lot more messy than what We're led to belive
When you mentioned black face, I thought it was going to be a white character using illusion magic to appear black or something. I was not ready for "smeared dirt on her face because she wanted to look ugly, then stopped trying to look like a black person when she decided she was fine with being beautiful again." That's going above and beyond in creepiness. And that it only appears in one paired ending, with what sounds like no other indication the character isn't actually black, makes it seem like a last minute edit. As if, say, Kaga, decided that he didn't want the black character his art team made, and retconned her ethnicity with a little text edit after all the work done.
While I fully admit much of its handling is iffy, I do want to add some extra context on the Zoan mythology. So the "evil god Gerxel" the Zoans worship actually refers to TWO separate beings, only one of which was evil but also not a god. The Zoans were told a "terrible god" slept within a mountain so as not to disturb it, as it was actually the sleeping good goddess Miladona. Over time this turned into a myth of a powerful war god they worshipped, but it was more a neutral deity than an evil one. When the Reevans attacked, one specific Zoan went to the mountain to beseech their god for power, and found the sleeping Miladonna. Drinking her blood, he transformed into Gerxel, went mad with power and tried to start his own empire. The "evil god" that the villains are after in the main story is this second Gerxel. (Essentially it's just Kaga re-using Gair/Loptous) Most of the "devil-worshipping" accusations came later, as a "written by the winners" thing in direct response to all this. The current Zoan cult appropriated this because at least Gerxel is powerful and will help get revenge for their oppression. The PROBLEM is that the modern-day Zoans you fight are still portrayed as a generic evil Fire Emblem cult, most of them just act evil for no reason and the sympathetic excuses are dumped on you very late. And "the evil god the natives worshipped was really the settler's good god all along" is also a HUGELY IFFY trope. Also about Richard. He's decent up until the final chapter, where he gets a last-minute redemption and Tita falls for him for real. Right after he sold her out to be sacrificed to the villain. This was so awkward the fan-translation significantly re-wrote it into him only pretending to sell her out.
I can maybe see a world in which someone uses this general skeleton to make something better, but the person to do that isn't kaga (ideally it would be a team consisting of indigenous peoples able to use their perspective/experience to tell a story about the winners writing history, without the focus on blood and most of the Zoans being just straight up evil). Unfortunately kaga has shown but from IRL comments and game scripts he doesn't handle any discussions of race well.
@@DaniDoyle Agreed. I think he was trying to do a generic FE evil cult that was more sympathetic but used historical references for it that he couldn't handle tastefully. I'd also like to add other reasons people hate the Plum event are: -It's the only way to get a Dancer, meaning the player is rewarded for putting her through this. (The later comic relief slavery scenes also reward massive support increases) -Plum has to go through it to get her happiest epilouges. (As in, reuniting with her long-lost father, because it turns out her mother was a Dancer and he recognizes that in Plum's routines) Also if her adoptive brother is the one to rescue her, seeing her in that outfit causes him to fall in love with her. (Why I ALWAYS save her with Holmes) It's just an iffy event all-around.
Kaga and Kawazu design games in a similar way to each other, and I really appreciate it. They want you to just play it and as things trigger you go "Whoa! That's awesome." and the more obscure and the greater number of moving parts the harder it is to see behind the curtain. Kaga makes a game that begs the player not to look up the mechanics and just go. It's why his games are the hardest to play optimally, but also the easiest to play suboptimally. You are supposed to lose units, and miss recruitments and items -- that's the intent. It's not player hostile, it's player agnostic. Or, to me, I like it, it feels like they are catering the experience just to me. They've thought about how experiencing it fresh would feel, especially because you can always optimize later. What it removes is control. You have to be okay sacrificing more control to the designer than most players are comfortable doing. Also, I feel you on most of the story criticism. As with most discussions regarding creators from different times and places, I think a more full analysis takes into account alternate readings and viewpoints without excusing the places where we feel things now cross the line. Is the Zoan empire stuff more rooted in Japanese mytho-history than Western Colonialism. Probably, but I never like any story that leans too heavily on "special blood". Are there scenes all over Japanese media of the 80s and 90s (and earlier) about pre-pubescent girls talking about their breast development? Yep. Doesn't mean it's integral to this war story.
The difference is the SaGa series is garbage. When Kaga adds annoying BS, it actually has a point to it, either for the sake of the story or giving the player a sense of accoplishment. When Kowazu does it, it's solely to waste your time. The Zodiac Spear in the original Final Fantasy XII is the perfect encapsulation of his so-called "philosophy"
The exact way that Narcus works is like this: Yes he takes the class stats of the unit he copies and puts it on his personal stats, but for HP he takes half the difference between the target and him, adding it to his max HP (only if they have more HP than Narcus) This ends up with Narcus having really unappealing stats unless you give him specific classes to copy, such as the aforementioned Witch or Gold Knight, and even then he’s still worse than the copied unit. Generally, he’s not great but he has an odd ability to waterwalk, imitate, then mount on an endgame indoor map…
Look, I got this pfp. I love the game, but you basically said how I feel about it. It's a game that at times hard to recommend for reasons listed in the video. 25:40 I do want to know where to find those interviews where he said the racist things, because I find it a little concerning this is the first time I'm hearing about it. I guess I'll check out Code of the Burger King.
Holy fuck i never tought anything could top the surprise incest from fates as a sucker punch at the end to make something you like into something you really don't like, great job Kaga you really got me by surprise there
I wish modern FE had funny recruitments damn it. Like yeah the events are cool, maybe they could make them like a clearly indicated sub goal, or even just eluded too, for that extra “huh” factor. But like I want there to be some goofy ass units that are weird to get.
Honestly, I didn't know about the Juni post-credits scene until watching this video. Or if I did, I had completely forgotten about it, also relatively likely. Probably did more to sour my opinion of the game than being reminded of any of the other bleh parts that I knew of, though in any case it's still overall a game I love, to the same extent as my favorite legally official FEs. I really ought to play more good romhacks, I've never actually finished a playthrough of a non-reskin hack that was, well, finished as a game at the time; might well check out Code of the Burger King (or maybe Vision Quest first, which you've also mentioned positively a lot and which has more of a story thing too)
The route split is an idea I thought would work well in Fire Emblem, giving you a reason not to bench most units. I didn't know it had been implemented already. But yeah, it doesn't work as well if sending units one particular route gives much better rewards, and especially if it's not clear to the player what that beat route will be.
I spent a bit of time googling after the mention of racist comments in interviews, and yeesh "Isaach was based on Central Asia, while Verdane was based on barbarian nations, such as Persia" isn't great! Don't know if there's more but that's a kind of wild thing to say nearly unprompted
I'm watching this now and surprisingly Kaga made a similar misstep (15:00) with Vestaria Saga 2 decades later. In the very endgame you split your party - one group goes to a final dungeon and one group goes to save the city. Some have supports that work in both areas, but many of them have exclusive endgame events in the city and there were no hints to that beforehand. Those final dungeons in Kaga's Vestaria Saga are really intricate too, you're talking like 3-4 hours per map so you do the whole dungeon, go to the city and realized you missed out on a lot, really a pain to go back to reload and redo the party setups. I didn't mind the personal weapons being missed out on but I really liked their event scenes and their own little storylines.
I think another bad thing about the Plum situation is that if you're aware of what happens, you willingly have to send her into that experience if you ever want a dancer. As a player, you're punished for being a good person, because you miss out on dancer utility, which is always huge for gameplay. I remember playing TRS years ago and if I remember correctly, I stopped when I got to that event and plum left the army. All I really knew going in is that if plum visited, you end up with her becoming a dancer. So my natural response was: "Oh hell yeah, I want a dancer." Then I saw the event and it just kinda turned me away from the game entirely. I've always someone that gets overly invested into fictional characters (the fire emblem fan experience am I right?), so it yeah that scene left a horrible taste in my mouth. I've been in a Fire emblem kick lately so I'll probably get around to TRS again at some point, route split and unit selection is really interesting and I hope IS does stuff like that if they ever remake sacred stones, to make units more distinct or other future games that could have a route split in them.
The blackface plot point probably ties into the whole anti-gyaru stuff you see in 90s Japanese stuff from time to time, and always comes across as pretty directly sexist (imo, im not a Japanese person etc.)
Oh yeah, in the 2000s too, there's an infamous scene in Ojomajo Doremi where the protagonist magically transform two gyaru girls into "proper Japanese ladies."
I really appreciate new kaga saga content, and this was an excellent review of this game's strengths and shortcomings. In the kaga saga circles I'm in, TRS is almost unanimously considered to be the weakest of his post-FE games (but still a great game), and I do share that sentiment. I played it for the first time last year mostly blind and had a good time. I particularly love the lategame difficulty spike. All of the kaga sagas have a pretty intense lategame difficulty increase and I think it is done well every time. I hope you get a chance to play Berwick. It's certainly not for everyone, but for the people it clicks for, it REALLY clicks.
I'm curious why tearing saga is generally considered to be the weakest? Is it just because it's easier is there some other reason. I haven't finished any of the other ones although I've started both vestaria and Berwick and I like TRS more than both of them (so far) even though I do like all of the ones I've played.
@@DaniDoyle That is a good question. I Don't think it being easy is necessarily the reason. I think it's moreso a combination of TRS feeling a bit bloated by having a lot of bland throwaway maps, and how you mentioned some maps being annoying to play straight up so you end up just abusing broken tools. BWS and VS don't give you as much broken tools and expect you to play every map honestly. As a result I think the maps are more tightly designed, with more engaging challenges. In berwick's case specifically, the wildly different mechanics are a ton of fun for many people.
I think it's worth checking out, it's really quite fun, and a lot of the story is great. It's just... When it's not great it swings very far in the other direction.
Oh wow. I've heard that Kaga is racist, but I wasn't expecting all the other things. I've grown very numb to general internet terribleness so I'm generally not very affected by a lot of stuff, but some of Kaga's creative vision is genuinely unnerving. Especially the infamous scene brought up in this video. It's uncomfortable to an extreme since you can tell exactly what kind of person the writer is. The early days of gaming really were wilder than I thought- no way something like that would *ever* slip under the radar these days. It'd be all over Twatter within minutes.
I did, but youtube is a horrible platform and just... doesn't work sometimes. I've added timestamps to the description now to help if the chapters still aren't showing up
I'm often more lenient towards morally guestionable plot elements in video games, coming from the perspective that imo people allow more of that kind of stuff from novels and the like because they're seen as "higher art" and therefore uncomfortable stuff is deemed artistic expression, and games should be held to the same standard (in good and bad) if they are to be seen as ""real art"", but dear god that blackface scene is not what I meant, what the fuck Kaga, that comes off as egregiously racist even for early -00's Japan The dancer one could have been fine with careful execution, but the player agency is uncomfortable, and the playing for laughs part makes it fall apart entirely
28:55 I think NoA and the TRS translator should be mentioned as well. NoA has rewritten characters in translation at points and the fact that they chose to localize rather than remove the racism is bad. Similairly, the TRS translator has rewritten entire plot beats and conversations because he thought they were dumb so the fact that he didn't rewrite these also isn't great.
35:45 I'd love to see you look at some full-on indie SRPGs sometime! (No offense to Burger-King-themed ROM hacks, but I have a hard time imagining that standing in for an SRPG with an original engine, all-original assets, and a serious politically grounded story.)
Way back in the day I did a video on Triangle Strategy, and I may do more in the future but it's worth noting that many rom hacks have deep world building and original assets, often better world building and politics than independent SRPGs. COTBK is a comedy hack so it is the exception, but things like Vision Quest, Bells of Beylen, TMGC etc all have complex stories with plenty of world building and politics, and are often better written than fully released SRPGs.
i know it's a footnote, but what did fe7 do? i mean that in a neutral tone, I played it once and had a good enough time, but definitely nothing too in the weeds. or, i guess, "haven't thought about it much since finishing it a few weeks ago."
Ngl this made me want to play trs Also please put what rom hack you're playing in a video in the description or have it pop up in the corner I know I'm not the only one interested in rom hacks you are playing sometimes.and you can probably guess I want know what the name of gba remake of fe1 early in the video I would greatly appreciate if someone told me.
@@DaniDoyle many games do a game having issues doesn't make it Immediately bad like in original and it's ports of Oot the water temple has massive issues but doesn't make Oot bad it's still a great game.
Why do you hate fe 7? Im playing it now for the first time since highschool and im really enjoying it, i remember liking it a lot and getting bored of fe6
Ooh that FE1 remake at the beginning of the video! Did you play/like it? I helped with it a bit so I'm kind of invested lol. I actually played FE1 for the first time after hearing you talk about it and liked a lot about it despite how slow and clunky it could be, so I think that remake does a good job of keeping most of what made FE1 good while removing the worst bits like the inventory management. Also despite all the flaws with the story TRS at least has the coolest final chapter in the series by far.
I actually streamed this blind for a bit. Then the game decided to be incredibly cruel. A shame, I mostly enjoyed it until later on. Finding about the... yikesy stuff made it worse.
After hearing a bunch about the story while never getting around to playing this game yeah it seems like quite a deal breaker to me and honestly the thing I hate most is that I feel like my high school self would of defended alot of that stuff and that just makes me squirm.
I think it’s reductive to say TRS is a FE game, it limits both games independence and holds particular trs back. It’s like saying destiny is a halo game, they both have guns in space, and are made by bungie, but they’re not the same game.
Have you played TRS? Like it was originally called Emblem Saga until Nintendo sued them and it was going to take place in Archanea. It's Fire Emblem, but made legally distinct.
that argument would be worth a lot with Berwick Saga, which is actually significantly different, but TRS doesn't really try to not be FE in any way. Gaiden and Three Houses are greater outliers from what you'd expect an FE game to be than TRS is. Obviously it's not the same game as any individual game of the franchise, but it varies no more than the official games of the franchise do from each other. Spiritual successor or something.
I mean, the game has Fire Emblems same combat system, classes, identical skills, general story structure, secret shops run by anna.... Its not just another SRPG, its got all the fire emblem elements. It is more like calling a game with a super powered space marine, all of the same guns as halo, a story that bears similarities to the Covenant vs Flood ve Earth, and a character who looks and functions like cortana "halo in all but name".
That analogy is borderline reductive on its own because you can tell within 5 seconds that halo and destiny are way different but if you were to show a casual fire emblem games and snuck TRS in they would struggle to tell it apart even if you told them one is different
Yikes to the racist and weird stuff, very unfortunate! It’s clear there’s still merit to this game, but interesting I don’t usually hear people talk about these games in these terms
Many of Kaga's works, including Genealogy and Berwick Saga, have a consistent theme of colonialism. However, I don't believe it is fair to conclude that these elements are commentary from a racist mind. Rather I see them as literary devices that are meant to initially place the player in a dogmatic headspace of, "i'm a good person fighting people who worship evil." Eventually, as the player discovers more about the world and truth behind the circumstances of its people, things become less black and white. I believe that's the point, to eventually empathize with a different point of view, and to question your own motivations, despite what you were fed at the prologue. Who or what they worship is irrelevant, it's just done to initially create a stigma towards them. I think we can both agree that people celebrate paganism/astrology/satanism/polytheism or whatever does not automatically make them bad people or absolve them from being victims of their own circumstances. This, in my opinion, is the true intention behind these themes. Perhaps it could have been executed with more subtlety and tact, but for me personally, it still effectively conveys the message.
@@DaniDoyle I don't think having completely garbage scenes like the blackface or bloodline things in and of itself makes it impossible to still have significant nuance elsewhere. Though it's definitely been too long that I played for me to be able to defend anything, or even know that I'd want to.
@@DaniDoyleAs someone who doesn't know who this guy is, what the hell did I walk in on. Thanks for being the reason I don't support an asshole, RUclips started recommending their vids to me like, yesterday.
In 2020 there were credible allegations of rape against Chaz Aria LLC. He sent his fans to harass the accuser then rebranded to Choops. I don't really have the spoons to go into details, but a lot of it is still thankfully easy to find on Google.
TRS is definitely Kaga at his most deranged, for better and for worse. You said it very well: Zany gameplay and unbridled creativity, but also overstuffed story with too much blatant fetish stuff and icky implications. I recommend you try Berwick Saga next if you're still willing to give the Kaga Sagas a chance; it's a completely different beast with more mature writing and radical gameplay departures from FE. And if you give Vestaria Saga a shot after that, you'll start to see Kaga re-examining, parodying, and even critiquing himself. Would love a link to some of those interviews you mentioned, though. This is the first time I'm hearing about Kaga being racist and if it's true I might have to re-evaluate a few things.
I'm part way through Berwick and a video is coming, I plan on doing a video about all parts of kagasaga, whether or not I finish each game just because I do think all of the games are individually fascinating and worth talking about The Good The bad and The ugly
garmtranslations.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/fire-emblem-genealogy-of-the-holy-war-fan-special-roundtable-discussion/ This is one of the interviews. Iirc there are others, but i cannot find them with a quick google.
Yeah learning the mechanical optimal choice is to have one of your party members kidnapped into sex slavery permanently removed my interest in the game. *Then* I learned about the racism.
Oh my god. I was honestly planning on Tear Ring Saga but wow the pro-genocide stuff really through me off and I'll probably just skip it. It sucks because this game's setting and backstory could be used as a great commentary of coloalism and propaganda; but no, Kaga just added those elements just to justify his facists beliefs. Jesus Christ.
I will say I still think its a great game mechanically and even parts of its narriatiare great ...it's just tarnished but the worst qualifiers you could have.
I honestly remember commentary that's, well perhaps not _great_ but at least relatively good existing there, not just a justification for fascism but rather the opposite. I need to revisit the game more to say anything specific definitely, but I'd say if you already wanted to play the game before and the weirdness with colonialism is the only part mentioned in this video that turned you off it, I'd recommend giving it a shot anyway and getting to form a fully informed opinion on it. It's most certainly heavily flawed, but still.
The section mentioning what happened to Plum is a similar reason why I dropped Like A Dragon. There's a side quest dealing with a dominatrix who is being bullied by her coworkers (also doms) who are trying to get her to quit. What they decide to do is hire some guys to "take advantage of her" to scare her off. You intervene, stop the assualt, and despite the ridiculous nature of this event, things had been played straight... then it's immediately played for a gag, and the woman who was almost attacked now is acting like nothing happened. The game was fine overall, but that whole scene put a really bad taste in my mouth, and the rest of what was happening wasn't good enough to make me slog through the ending.
![FORTNITE CLASSICS IS BACK! Fortnite Item Shop [November 15th, 2024] (Fortnite Chapter 5)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RbQURbeFwqs/mqdefault.jpg)
The best thing about TRS is that is very clear that Kaga was free to add whatever he wanted.
The worst thing about TRS is that is very clear that Kaga was free to add whatever he wanted.
Seems Kaga is both the best and worst kind of unhinged . . .
Kaga is simultaneously the best argument for and against the "Great Man of History".
Like half of this video is "hah classic Kaga" and the other half is "oh christ, classic Kaga"
The duality of Kaga 😞
"Yes, my fellow Christians, we have come to save you."
"Hurray, it's the Catholic Church."
"FROM YOURSELVES!"
"...oh no, it's the Catholic Church."
"It has a reputation for being incredibly hard"?! Wait, what? Its reputation is for being quite easy. It's Berwick that's hard.
It has a reputation for being hard mostly among people who haven't played it
@@DaniDoyleJust like with Thracia
The main thing with TRS is that it has some random difficulty spikes placed in a few chapters. Split 3 is also hard, but the majority of it feels like FE7 tier difficulty
More evidence that its fire emblem: the game was called Emblem Saga up to a month and a half before release and was changed due to "legal pressure" according to wikipedia, at least.
There was actually a lawsuit. The history of it is pretty cool but beyond the scope of this video
Yeah that lawsuit was crazy and it clearly left a sour taste in Nintendo's mouth because they didn't even mention Kaga in the 30th anniversary Fire Emblem video.
This video did two things for me:
-Get me interested in the game i will 100% try it
-Made me think that Nintendo's and Kaga's "Creative differences" were a lot more messy than what We're led to belive
i hate invisble Ballistas
i hate invisible Ballistas
i went B Route on my blind playthrough and dear god i hate invisible Ballistas
There are what?!?
@@ShinigamiKristak invisible Ballista
I'm an empath, and I feel that you hate invisible ballistas
When you mentioned black face, I thought it was going to be a white character using illusion magic to appear black or something. I was not ready for "smeared dirt on her face because she wanted to look ugly, then stopped trying to look like a black person when she decided she was fine with being beautiful again." That's going above and beyond in creepiness.
And that it only appears in one paired ending, with what sounds like no other indication the character isn't actually black, makes it seem like a last minute edit. As if, say, Kaga, decided that he didn't want the black character his art team made, and retconned her ethnicity with a little text edit after all the work done.
While I fully admit much of its handling is iffy, I do want to add some extra context on the Zoan mythology. So the "evil god Gerxel" the Zoans worship actually refers to TWO separate beings, only one of which was evil but also not a god. The Zoans were told a "terrible god" slept within a mountain so as not to disturb it, as it was actually the sleeping good goddess Miladona. Over time this turned into a myth of a powerful war god they worshipped, but it was more a neutral deity than an evil one. When the Reevans attacked, one specific Zoan went to the mountain to beseech their god for power, and found the sleeping Miladonna. Drinking her blood, he transformed into Gerxel, went mad with power and tried to start his own empire. The "evil god" that the villains are after in the main story is this second Gerxel. (Essentially it's just Kaga re-using Gair/Loptous) Most of the "devil-worshipping" accusations came later, as a "written by the winners" thing in direct response to all this. The current Zoan cult appropriated this because at least Gerxel is powerful and will help get revenge for their oppression.
The PROBLEM is that the modern-day Zoans you fight are still portrayed as a generic evil Fire Emblem cult, most of them just act evil for no reason and the sympathetic excuses are dumped on you very late. And "the evil god the natives worshipped was really the settler's good god all along" is also a HUGELY IFFY trope.
Also about Richard. He's decent up until the final chapter, where he gets a last-minute redemption and Tita falls for him for real. Right after he sold her out to be sacrificed to the villain. This was so awkward the fan-translation significantly re-wrote it into him only pretending to sell her out.
I can maybe see a world in which someone uses this general skeleton to make something better, but the person to do that isn't kaga (ideally it would be a team consisting of indigenous peoples able to use their perspective/experience to tell a story about the winners writing history, without the focus on blood and most of the Zoans being just straight up evil). Unfortunately kaga has shown but from IRL comments and game scripts he doesn't handle any discussions of race well.
@@DaniDoyle Agreed. I think he was trying to do a generic FE evil cult that was more sympathetic but used historical references for it that he couldn't handle tastefully.
I'd also like to add other reasons people hate the Plum event are:
-It's the only way to get a Dancer, meaning the player is rewarded for putting her through this. (The later comic relief slavery scenes also reward massive support increases)
-Plum has to go through it to get her happiest epilouges. (As in, reuniting with her long-lost father, because it turns out her mother was a Dancer and he recognizes that in Plum's routines)
Also if her adoptive brother is the one to rescue her, seeing her in that outfit causes him to fall in love with her. (Why I ALWAYS save her with Holmes) It's just an iffy event all-around.
Kaga and Kawazu design games in a similar way to each other, and I really appreciate it. They want you to just play it and as things trigger you go "Whoa! That's awesome." and the more obscure and the greater number of moving parts the harder it is to see behind the curtain. Kaga makes a game that begs the player not to look up the mechanics and just go. It's why his games are the hardest to play optimally, but also the easiest to play suboptimally. You are supposed to lose units, and miss recruitments and items -- that's the intent. It's not player hostile, it's player agnostic.
Or, to me, I like it, it feels like they are catering the experience just to me. They've thought about how experiencing it fresh would feel, especially because you can always optimize later. What it removes is control. You have to be okay sacrificing more control to the designer than most players are comfortable doing.
Also, I feel you on most of the story criticism. As with most discussions regarding creators from different times and places, I think a more full analysis takes into account alternate readings and viewpoints without excusing the places where we feel things now cross the line. Is the Zoan empire stuff more rooted in Japanese mytho-history than Western Colonialism. Probably, but I never like any story that leans too heavily on "special blood". Are there scenes all over Japanese media of the 80s and 90s (and earlier) about pre-pubescent girls talking about their breast development? Yep. Doesn't mean it's integral to this war story.
The difference is the SaGa series is garbage. When Kaga adds annoying BS, it actually has a point to it, either for the sake of the story or giving the player a sense of accoplishment. When Kowazu does it, it's solely to waste your time. The Zodiac Spear in the original Final Fantasy XII is the perfect encapsulation of his so-called "philosophy"
80s and 90s? Bro, they never stopped doing that
The exact way that Narcus works is like this: Yes he takes the class stats of the unit he copies and puts it on his personal stats, but for HP he takes half the difference between the target and him, adding it to his max HP (only if they have more HP than Narcus)
This ends up with Narcus having really unappealing stats unless you give him specific classes to copy, such as the aforementioned Witch or Gold Knight, and even then he’s still worse than the copied unit.
Generally, he’s not great but he has an odd ability to waterwalk, imitate, then mount on an endgame indoor map…
This is entirely unrelated to your comment but is your PFP weedle casting Forsetti? Because if so that's sick.
@@DaniDoyle not necessarily casting Forseti, but yeah, it's shiny Weedle with Forseti background
Amazing plot twist at the end
Peak Ring Saga
Look, I got this pfp. I love the game, but you basically said how I feel about it. It's a game that at times hard to recommend for reasons listed in the video.
25:40 I do want to know where to find those interviews where he said the racist things, because I find it a little concerning this is the first time I'm hearing about it.
I guess I'll check out Code of the Burger King.
12:22 I'm sorry, is that a tank?
yes
ok i watched more of the video and fucking hell, i was not ready for that part 3 section
Holy fuck i never tought anything could top the surprise incest from fates as a sucker punch at the end to make something you like into something you really don't like, great job Kaga you really got me by surprise there
kaga really did it first, huh
I wish modern FE had funny recruitments damn it.
Like yeah the events are cool, maybe they could make them like a clearly indicated sub goal, or even just eluded too, for that extra “huh” factor.
But like I want there to be some goofy ass units that are weird to get.
Damn, can't believe this was a psy-op for code of the burger king
Let's not allow this to distract us from the fact that there's a guy in Berwick Saga named after Faramir from Lord of the Rings
True! He's even a ranger! (At least in one translation)
@@DaniDoyle but is ranger a good class in this game
Honestly, I didn't know about the Juni post-credits scene until watching this video. Or if I did, I had completely forgotten about it, also relatively likely. Probably did more to sour my opinion of the game than being reminded of any of the other bleh parts that I knew of, though in any case it's still overall a game I love, to the same extent as my favorite legally official FEs. I really ought to play more good romhacks, I've never actually finished a playthrough of a non-reskin hack that was, well, finished as a game at the time; might well check out Code of the Burger King (or maybe Vision Quest first, which you've also mentioned positively a lot and which has more of a story thing too)
Putting this in the rom hack playlist is the funniest shit. Do not take it out please
You technically need a hack to play it (translation to English hack)
Theres tears but where are the rings?
Unused files in the game code
The route split is an idea I thought would work well in Fire Emblem, giving you a reason not to bench most units. I didn't know it had been implemented already. But yeah, it doesn't work as well if sending units one particular route gives much better rewards, and especially if it's not clear to the player what that beat route will be.
I spent a bit of time googling after the mention of racist comments in interviews, and yeesh "Isaach was based on Central Asia, while Verdane was based on barbarian nations, such as Persia" isn't great! Don't know if there's more but that's a kind of wild thing to say nearly unprompted
I'm watching this now and surprisingly Kaga made a similar misstep (15:00) with Vestaria Saga 2 decades later. In the very endgame you split your party - one group goes to a final dungeon and one group goes to save the city. Some have supports that work in both areas, but many of them have exclusive endgame events in the city and there were no hints to that beforehand. Those final dungeons in Kaga's Vestaria Saga are really intricate too, you're talking like 3-4 hours per map so you do the whole dungeon, go to the city and realized you missed out on a lot, really a pain to go back to reload and redo the party setups. I didn't mind the personal weapons being missed out on but I really liked their event scenes and their own little storylines.
I should probably check out Code of the Burger King, especially cause Im trying to work out ideas for unique unit mechanics in my own project
I don’t have much to add, except that Sacha has sapphic potential like no other.
I think another bad thing about the Plum situation is that if you're aware of what happens, you willingly have to send her into that experience if you ever want a dancer. As a player, you're punished for being a good person, because you miss out on dancer utility, which is always huge for gameplay.
I remember playing TRS years ago and if I remember correctly, I stopped when I got to that event and plum left the army. All I really knew going in is that if plum visited, you end up with her becoming a dancer. So my natural response was: "Oh hell yeah, I want a dancer." Then I saw the event and it just kinda turned me away from the game entirely.
I've always someone that gets overly invested into fictional characters (the fire emblem fan experience am I right?), so it yeah that scene left a horrible taste in my mouth.
I've been in a Fire emblem kick lately so I'll probably get around to TRS again at some point, route split and unit selection is really interesting and I hope IS does stuff like that if they ever remake sacred stones, to make units more distinct or other future games that could have a route split in them.
The blackface plot point probably ties into the whole anti-gyaru stuff you see in 90s Japanese stuff from time to time, and always comes across as pretty directly sexist (imo, im not a Japanese person etc.)
Oh yeah, in the 2000s too, there's an infamous scene in Ojomajo Doremi where the protagonist magically transform two gyaru girls into "proper Japanese ladies."
I wish they’d remake this game 😭 I really want to play it and also the sequel Berwick Saga.
I really appreciate new kaga saga content, and this was an excellent review of this game's strengths and shortcomings. In the kaga saga circles I'm in, TRS is almost unanimously considered to be the weakest of his post-FE games (but still a great game), and I do share that sentiment. I played it for the first time last year mostly blind and had a good time. I particularly love the lategame difficulty spike. All of the kaga sagas have a pretty intense lategame difficulty increase and I think it is done well every time. I hope you get a chance to play Berwick. It's certainly not for everyone, but for the people it clicks for, it REALLY clicks.
I'm curious why tearing saga is generally considered to be the weakest? Is it just because it's easier is there some other reason. I haven't finished any of the other ones although I've started both vestaria and Berwick and I like TRS more than both of them (so far) even though I do like all of the ones I've played.
@@DaniDoyle That is a good question. I Don't think it being easy is necessarily the reason. I think it's moreso a combination of TRS feeling a bit bloated by having a lot of bland throwaway maps, and how you mentioned some maps being annoying to play straight up so you end up just abusing broken tools. BWS and VS don't give you as much broken tools and expect you to play every map honestly. As a result I think the maps are more tightly designed, with more engaging challenges. In berwick's case specifically, the wildly different mechanics are a ton of fun for many people.
well at least you convinced me check out Tear Ring. I am little curious to see how that stank smells
I think it's worth checking out, it's really quite fun, and a lot of the story is great. It's just... When it's not great it swings very far in the other direction.
Oh wow. I've heard that Kaga is racist, but I wasn't expecting all the other things. I've grown very numb to general internet terribleness so I'm generally not very affected by a lot of stuff, but some of Kaga's creative vision is genuinely unnerving. Especially the infamous scene brought up in this video. It's uncomfortable to an extreme since you can tell exactly what kind of person the writer is.
The early days of gaming really were wilder than I thought- no way something like that would *ever* slip under the radar these days. It'd be all over Twatter within minutes.
Kaga games are the definition of "i would give you a chance if you didn't just put actually vile content in this"
Kinda wish you'd use the chapters function on videos like these, especially since you already have the video separated into separate sections.
I did, but youtube is a horrible platform and just... doesn't work sometimes. I've added timestamps to the description now to help if the chapters still aren't showing up
@@DaniDoyle Oh yeah neat they're there now.
It is a war game so getting dark isn't really an issue but I do get the lack of tact and perverseness argument.
I love ALL Dani Doyle videos!!!! ❤
I'm often more lenient towards morally guestionable plot elements in video games, coming from the perspective that imo people allow more of that kind of stuff from novels and the like because they're seen as "higher art" and therefore uncomfortable stuff is deemed artistic expression, and games should be held to the same standard (in good and bad) if they are to be seen as ""real art"", but dear god that blackface scene is not what I meant, what the fuck Kaga, that comes off as egregiously racist even for early -00's Japan
The dancer one could have been fine with careful execution, but the player agency is uncomfortable, and the playing for laughs part makes it fall apart entirely
28:55 I think NoA and the TRS translator should be mentioned as well. NoA has rewritten characters in translation at points and the fact that they chose to localize rather than remove the racism is bad. Similairly, the TRS translator has rewritten entire plot beats and conversations because he thought they were dumb so the fact that he didn't rewrite these also isn't great.
35:45 I'd love to see you look at some full-on indie SRPGs sometime! (No offense to Burger-King-themed ROM hacks, but I have a hard time imagining that standing in for an SRPG with an original engine, all-original assets, and a serious politically grounded story.)
Way back in the day I did a video on Triangle Strategy, and I may do more in the future but it's worth noting that many rom hacks have deep world building and original assets, often better world building and politics than independent SRPGs. COTBK is a comedy hack so it is the exception, but things like Vision Quest, Bells of Beylen, TMGC etc all have complex stories with plenty of world building and politics, and are often better written than fully released SRPGs.
Tmgc is a hack made by the same creator as cotbk that is utterly perfect. I love it so much. If you don't play any other romhacks, then play tmgc.
what was the hack at the beginning? it looked neat
Shadow Dragon Faithful Remake
i know it's a footnote, but what did fe7 do? i mean that in a neutral tone, I played it once and had a good enough time, but definitely nothing too in the weeds. or, i guess, "haven't thought about it much since finishing it a few weeks ago."
great video what is your option on Vestaria saga?
Even more complicated haha (there will be another video on it eventually)
@@DaniDoyle yay Cool pog
It's a Kaga game.
Dani said basically everthing people should know about the game
WRONG I didn't mention the best est ever
She didn't say that Holmes is the best lord in the series so she clearly missed important stuff
@@maxyaju4293 in fairness, my tier list said Holmes did nothing wrong
Ngl this made me want to play trs
Also please put what rom hack you're playing in a video in the description or have it pop up in the corner I know I'm not the only one interested in rom hacks you are playing sometimes.and you can probably guess I want know what the name of gba remake of fe1 early in the video I would greatly appreciate if someone told me.
I think you should play TRS, i really like it it just... Has issues
@@DaniDoyle many games do a game having issues doesn't make it Immediately bad like in original and it's ports of Oot the water temple has massive issues but doesn't make Oot bad it's still a great game.
Why do you hate fe 7? Im playing it now for the first time since highschool and im really enjoying it, i remember liking it a lot and getting bored of fe6
PEAK RING SAGA
Indeed!
Ooh that FE1 remake at the beginning of the video! Did you play/like it? I helped with it a bit so I'm kind of invested lol. I actually played FE1 for the first time after hearing you talk about it and liked a lot about it despite how slow and clunky it could be, so I think that remake does a good job of keeping most of what made FE1 good while removing the worst bits like the inventory management.
Also despite all the flaws with the story TRS at least has the coolest final chapter in the series by far.
I liked it (maybe video coming soon)
What game is the one with Marth in it? :25
I actually streamed this blind for a bit. Then the game decided to be incredibly cruel. A shame, I mostly enjoyed it until later on.
Finding about the... yikesy stuff made it worse.
After hearing a bunch about the story while never getting around to playing this game yeah it seems like quite a deal breaker to me and honestly the thing I hate most is that I feel like my high school self would of defended alot of that stuff and that just makes me squirm.
Wait what’s the hack shown in the intro?
Shadow Dragon Faithful Remake
Hell yeah, code of the burger king
What's that GBA FE1 hack in the intro?
Faithful shadow dragon remake
@@DaniDoyle Thank you!
Berwick time now
I think it’s reductive to say TRS is a FE game, it limits both games independence and holds particular trs back. It’s like saying destiny is a halo game, they both have guns in space, and are made by bungie, but they’re not the same game.
Have you played TRS? Like it was originally called Emblem Saga until Nintendo sued them and it was going to take place in Archanea. It's Fire Emblem, but made legally distinct.
that argument would be worth a lot with Berwick Saga, which is actually significantly different, but TRS doesn't really try to not be FE in any way. Gaiden and Three Houses are greater outliers from what you'd expect an FE game to be than TRS is. Obviously it's not the same game as any individual game of the franchise, but it varies no more than the official games of the franchise do from each other. Spiritual successor or something.
I mean, the game has Fire Emblems same combat system, classes, identical skills, general story structure, secret shops run by anna.... Its not just another SRPG, its got all the fire emblem elements. It is more like calling a game with a super powered space marine, all of the same guns as halo, a story that bears similarities to the Covenant vs Flood ve Earth, and a character who looks and functions like cortana "halo in all but name".
there are less differences between FE and TRS than there are between any two entries in Final Fantasy.
That analogy is borderline reductive on its own because you can tell within 5 seconds that halo and destiny are way different but if you were to show a casual fire emblem games and snuck TRS in they would struggle to tell it apart even if you told them one is different
Dani Doyle: "Content Warning-"
Me: "Ah , its probably blood and viol- BLACK FACE??!!!! THIS GAME HAS WHAT??!?!??!!!!!!"
Yeah it hit me like a fe6 ambush spawn wyvern. Really not great....
00:25 what game is this?
Shadow Dragon Faithful Remake
Code of The Burger King Baybeeeee
Yikes to the racist and weird stuff, very unfortunate! It’s clear there’s still merit to this game, but interesting I don’t usually hear people talk about these games in these terms
Many of Kaga's works, including Genealogy and Berwick Saga, have a consistent theme of colonialism. However, I don't believe it is fair to conclude that these elements are commentary from a racist mind. Rather I see them as literary devices that are meant to initially place the player in a dogmatic headspace of, "i'm a good person fighting people who worship evil." Eventually, as the player discovers more about the world and truth behind the circumstances of its people, things become less black and white. I believe that's the point, to eventually empathize with a different point of view, and to question your own motivations, despite what you were fed at the prologue. Who or what they worship is irrelevant, it's just done to initially create a stigma towards them. I think we can both agree that people celebrate paganism/astrology/satanism/polytheism or whatever does not automatically make them bad people or absolve them from being victims of their own circumstances. This, in my opinion, is the true intention behind these themes. Perhaps it could have been executed with more subtlety and tact, but for me personally, it still effectively conveys the message.
This is a game that literally has a blackface scene and a focus on the importance of blood. There's not mich "nuance" to be found here.
Anyway you're a rapist so I don't really care what you think about blackface being okay.
@@DaniDoyle I don't think having completely garbage scenes like the blackface or bloodline things in and of itself makes it impossible to still have significant nuance elsewhere. Though it's definitely been too long that I played for me to be able to defend anything, or even know that I'd want to.
@@DaniDoyleAs someone who doesn't know who this guy is, what the hell did I walk in on.
Thanks for being the reason I don't support an asshole, RUclips started recommending their vids to me like, yesterday.
In 2020 there were credible allegations of rape against Chaz Aria LLC. He sent his fans to harass the accuser then rebranded to Choops. I don't really have the spoons to go into details, but a lot of it is still thankfully easy to find on Google.
TRS is definitely Kaga at his most deranged, for better and for worse. You said it very well: Zany gameplay and unbridled creativity, but also overstuffed story with too much blatant fetish stuff and icky implications. I recommend you try Berwick Saga next if you're still willing to give the Kaga Sagas a chance; it's a completely different beast with more mature writing and radical gameplay departures from FE. And if you give Vestaria Saga a shot after that, you'll start to see Kaga re-examining, parodying, and even critiquing himself.
Would love a link to some of those interviews you mentioned, though. This is the first time I'm hearing about Kaga being racist and if it's true I might have to re-evaluate a few things.
I'm part way through Berwick and a video is coming, I plan on doing a video about all parts of kagasaga, whether or not I finish each game just because I do think all of the games are individually fascinating and worth talking about The Good The bad and The ugly
garmtranslations.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/fire-emblem-genealogy-of-the-holy-war-fan-special-roundtable-discussion/
This is one of the interviews. Iirc there are others, but i cannot find them with a quick google.
@@DaniDoyle Thanks! Looking forward to future videos!
where is the rom hack propaganda in the description of the video?
Yeah learning the mechanical optimal choice is to have one of your party members kidnapped into sex slavery permanently removed my interest in the game. *Then* I learned about the racism.
wooHOOOOO!
Oh my god. I was honestly planning on Tear Ring Saga but wow the pro-genocide stuff really through me off and I'll probably just skip it. It sucks because this game's setting and backstory could be used as a great commentary of coloalism and propaganda; but no, Kaga just added those elements just to justify his facists beliefs. Jesus Christ.
I will say I still think its a great game mechanically and even parts of its narriatiare great ...it's just tarnished but the worst qualifiers you could have.
I honestly remember commentary that's, well perhaps not _great_ but at least relatively good existing there, not just a justification for fascism but rather the opposite. I need to revisit the game more to say anything specific definitely, but I'd say if you already wanted to play the game before and the weirdness with colonialism is the only part mentioned in this video that turned you off it, I'd recommend giving it a shot anyway and getting to form a fully informed opinion on it. It's most certainly heavily flawed, but still.
The section mentioning what happened to Plum is a similar reason why I dropped Like A Dragon. There's a side quest dealing with a dominatrix who is being bullied by her coworkers (also doms) who are trying to get her to quit. What they decide to do is hire some guys to "take advantage of her" to scare her off. You intervene, stop the assualt, and despite the ridiculous nature of this event, things had been played straight... then it's immediately played for a gag, and the woman who was almost attacked now is acting like nothing happened.
The game was fine overall, but that whole scene put a really bad taste in my mouth, and the rest of what was happening wasn't good enough to make me slog through the ending.