History

Romancing SaGa 3 is a Squaresoft RPG, released in 1995 in Japan for the Super Famicon. The fan-based English translation project for Romancing SaGa 3 was completed in the Summer of 2000. Ever heard of Saga Frontier for the PSX? That's the sequel to Romancing SaGa 3. Romancing SaGa 3 is also known as SaGa 6, and SaGa Frontier is also known as SaGa 7, so they both share quite a bit of similarities. The on-going characteristic of the SaGa series is emphasis on replay value. In the beginning, you get to choose which character will be the main character. Each character has their own storyline. In the game, not only do you get to go through your character's quests, but you also have the option of going through a great deal of side quests.

Battle System

You get to choose what a character will specialize in and whether to strengthen their physical strength or magic power. If you constantly have a character attack, then their strength will grow along with their TP (tech points). If you constantly have a character attack with a specific weapon, then they will learn special attacks that use only that weapon. Special physical attacks use up TP. If you constantly have a character use magic, then their magic power will grow along with their MP (magic points). If you constantly have a character attack with a specific element of magic, then their magic power with that element will grow, and magic attacks (obviously) use up MP. Characters that you have focus more on physical attacks have a tendency to get higher maximum HP than characters that you have focus more on magic attacks. Items need to be individually equipped with characters in order to use them in battle. Each character has 8 slots in their inventory: 4 for weapons, shields, and items and 4 for armor and accessories. That's pretty much it for the basics of the battle system. Everything else should be self-explanatory.

Tips & Strategy

You must always have at least one character focus on magic because item use is very limited in battle, so its best to rely on cure spells. The best (and easiest to maintain) battle party is to have 4 characters focus on physical attacks and (of course) 1 character focus on magic. Magic is quite expensive - especially strong magic! That is why its easier to have almost your whole battle party focus on physical attacks. If you want more of a challenge then have more of your characters focus on magic. You can level up anywhere because monsters in all random battles are almost as strong as you are.

My Opinion

Romancing SaGa 3 is quite a unique RPG, indeed. The graphics are great! The battle graphics are especially great! Most of the enemies are drawn very well. The music ain't too shabby either. If you've played SaGa Frontier then you would get used to RS3's battle system very quickly. It's pretty much the same thing. Ah, but RS3 has quite a bit of annoying tidbits. There's the fact that everything is so ridiculously expensive! On top of that, you earn almost nothing almost every battle! You earn like 14 G when the weapons/armors in stores have a price tag of 800 G! In addition to that, the most money you can hold is 20,000 G; that amount of money runs out quick when you buy weapons/armor for your whole battle party. In other words, RS3 is an ungrateful angry bitch on crack when it comes to money. However, the money drawback can be corrected with this wonderful little ZSNES CHT file. The other annoying tidbit is the fact that you literally have to talk to everyone to figure out what to do next and to "unlock" other areas you can travel to. I suggest to keep a walkthrough close by while you play it.

About the R0M

Using ZSNES or SNES9X, if you have Romancing SaGa 3 in Window Mode with no screen renders enabled, then the menu text will appear scrambled and illegible. This can be resolved by applying a screen render or entering Full Screen Mode.