Farland Saga Toki no Michishirube Game Sample - Sega Saturn

Original Air Date: October 25th, 2008 (Revised Today! Originally an intro, it now encompasses eight minutes of random gameplay.)

I was thinking of just re-uploading the introduction for this game, but someone commented in this video on my old account about a month ago and it annoyed me. The person basically said "Any battle movie in youtube??". The person didn't offend me by what they said, but after checking around, sure enough, there were no battle movies or any real gameplay videos for the game.

The annoying part? I get bothered by the huge surplus of games on YouTube (particularly Japanese) that have nothing but intros and/or endings but don't show what the games look like outside of that. I always told myself that I would go back and add these gameplay samples eventually, but me and my bro are only two people... this video was uploaded over a year ago and there are still very few samples for games like this. The thing that bugs me the most about this particular situation is that the "Farland" series isn't exactly what you'd call "obscure", so I'm kind of surprised to not see much on the series outside of movie rips on YT.

I'm currently in the middle of re-uploading Saturn videos, but I'm not re-uploading any games that just have intros without adding gameplay to them too... this means all those generic/weird games I have sitting around that don't have any real gameplay footage like Tanjou Debut S, Hyper Securities S, Riglord Saga 2, Eve: The Lost One, blah blah blah, won't resurface without gameplay, because I can empathize somewhat with those wanting to see gameplay footage. Many of these games paint a very different picture once you look past the glitz and fancy movies. A lot of the Saturn games I uploaded intros/endings for are actually kind of mediocre.

Farland Saga: TnM (ファーランドサーガ　時の道標, also called FS: Toki no Douhyou, where Douhyou and Michishirube are interchangable and mean almost the exact same thing) is a direct sequel to the original Farland Saga, taking place eight years later. The previous hero, Brian, has died at the end of a great war, and has left behind Karin (also called Kalin for relatively obvious reasons), whom he took care off when she was a little girl. Now sixteen and "developed", she travels the land as a mercenary looking for work.

She finds a nice little town where she can make money when she bumps into an amnesiac named Al (who she first mistakes for a pervert and injures him). She helps him regain his health and invites him to work with her as a way of showing she's sorry. Al agrees as travelling with her may give him clues about his identity and this sets the stage for the game as the two go on many quests to find fame and riches.

Talented artists in Japan are almost a dime a dozen... talented programmers and designers, well, let's just say there aren't as many of them as there are artists. Once you get past the nice artwork, you're treated with an isometric strategy game made in the mid-late 90s that generally looks worst than some of the strategy games you'd find on the old SNES/SFC and it sports mostly rudimentary gameplay mechanics. While the visuals don't underscore the overall playability of the game, you have to ask yourself "Really? They couldn't do better than THIS?". Most visual elements are incredibly sparse.

The game has a relatively enjoyable soundtrack and humourous dialogue and scenarios. While Karin is the main character, you'll be very fixated with "Al" as he is the primary male character surrounded by women and is in essence the most important, so it's a bit interesting on a technical level. Some scenarios may surprise you (such as Al getting into a difficult battle where all the girls beat him up if you choose to peek at them while bathing... you'll get a real game over too). Understanding some Japanese is important here as this game doesn't really "excel" at anything else, imo.

Combat is your run-of-the-mill strategy fair. All characters can move and attack in one phase, then all the enemies. Characters have several abilities between them and Al is really important early on as the other characters can't take a beating. Defeating enemies can net items and you can gain experience through various battle actions (you can grind in a few fights to get a very high level very quickly, so difficulty isn't in much of the equation). After battles, you can interestingly divide all earned extra experience evenly or distribute as many to any particular character as you want, so you can give Al generally all the exp. if you want.

Overall, it's an average strategy game with a whimsical story (lighter than some other titles in the series, but doesn't take itself as seriously either) and it's a cheap purchase if you really love strategy games. It was also released for PC and Playstation. Enjoy.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• ファーランドサーガ
• 時の道標
• Farland
• Saga
• Toki
• no
• Michishirube
• Sega
• Saturn
• TGL

[frootloops1789]

Makes me wanna play it again lol. But I have a Mac and dunno if it will work.

Does anyone know me if it will run with Leopard?

[frootloops1789]

OMG...

I remembered playing this back in 1998 when I was 9 years old. I somehow managed to finish the ENTIRE game, often too concentrated and forget to eat or sleep.

The first few battles are easy but it becomes more and more difficult, if I don't remember wrong there were like 33 battles in the whole game and starting from battle #20 it gets very interesting.

[CrevlisZz]

To think I actually finished the entire game without knowing how to read kanji's Lol!

[irisxp]

@ale03000 ahhh. okayy thanks though!

[ale03000]

@irisxp I bought it in Shanghai more than 10 years ago lol...

But if you really want to play now you could download by searching in chinese. I only found emulator versions when I searched in English.

[irisxp]

@ale03000 where did you purchase the PC version? I lost it and i want to play again :(

[ale03000]

I play the PC version, the menu and display looks different for the Saturn version.

[Vysethedetermined2]

No problem at all. I can honestly say I was guilty of doing the same thing back when I had limited resources (as ripping movies don't require much at all), but now I really don't have an excuse, so knowing what I know now, it's only fair that I do more about the situation.

And I don't mind voice-over/LP videos to be honest, but I'm certainly more of a fan of representative footage that speaks for itself. When there are nothing but LPs and no unedited footage, then I think it's a problem.

[AceNoctali]

In short, I'm really sick of this mentality of uploading the game intros for a quick cash-in view-wise. I think YT gamers should take the time of playing the games they show the intro of, really. It's IMO better to take some time uploading things, so that the quality of the uploads is better in the end.

(Sorry for the long rant, I just had to tell it, after seeing you sharing the same feeling. ^^''')

[AceNoctali]

(Thinking of it, the Tokimemo series is in the same boat, despite what I said of TM2... There's an overload of intro videos, and not enough gameplay vids. Look, how many vids of Irodori no Love Song and Tabidachi no Uta there are on YT? Of their anime intro, which is the same for both, at least three uploads. Of the gameplay ? 0, aside from my Nijiiro no Sotsugyoshiki vids from Tabidachi, which is a scenario that requires finishing two games, and thus time to get). [...]