Zoids Saga review

 Zoids Saga review: The First in Saga Trilogy

The gaming era of 2000s in my country in Indonesia is wild. You could have games like Grand Theft Auto, Counter Strike, Doom or games like Sonic, Mario, Golden Sun, Lunar, Mana series and then...we have games like the one above. We also have games like Kao the Kangaroo, Tomato Adventures, Snap Kids, and so on but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Released in 30 November 2001, Zoids Saga was released exclusively in Japan. It was the first entry in the installment series that later on evolved into full trilogy series with Fuzor being the last entry of the trilogy following Zoids: Fuzor TV series timeline while the DS is a remake of the original with some change of plot from the original. This and Zoids VS became the only trilogies in the game franchise. 

The game takes you in the perspective of a 12 years old prince named Atory (Athle) Arcadia. The Arcadia Kingdom has been known as one of the neutral kingdom supporting neither sides. In fact, both the Republic and Empire supported Arcadia for years hence why every generation of Arcadian family have at least one chosen representative from both the Empire and Republic. Atory or Athle himself were raised and personally trained by one from the Empire named Earth (Ace) Kreuze, taught battle strategy by one from the Republic named Jack Spade, and taught history by a young Zoidian named Regina Cuori. These three served the Arcadian Family as the Prince's personal bodyguards. When the kingdom under attack by an unknown group led by Emperor and his Four Heavenly King, the prince had no choice but to flee along with his 3 bodyguards. Using Arcana Town as his gathering place, the group managed to take back the Time Artifact and the group traveled across time from Zoids: Chaotic Century era to Zoids: New Century era.

So What's the Flaw Here?

Blood Keel using Particle Beam on the party and missed on Atory Arcadia, your main character in the game. Be glad when you picked a flying Zoid like what I did in my last run here (Raynos) or he missed cause his AI in the game was set to use this Particle attack often compared to DS version where he prioritized reserving Energy Point and focus on using melee combat weapons than his Geno Saurer's Particle Beam

As you can see from the screenshots above...compared to the DS, the original Zoids Saga is more difficult and it wasn't actually a surprise since this was their first entry in Saga series. While the second till DS has Energy Shield added in Zoids with internal or external Shield weapon, the original didn't have that. Now I'm not sure if the first game, Zoids till Mokushiroku or Zoids: Apocalypse has Shield equipment but to see the first entry not having it especially if your first time getting into Zoids was because of Zoids: Legacy, the original will catch you off guard somewhat and made you think it's difficult when it's not. The first game had no Shield mechanic even in Zoids literally called Shield Liger which should have Energy Shield weapon but it doesn't have it in the first and in fact, the E Shield shown to be used when attacking one Zoid enemy with close combat weapon

I'm not gonna complain about the fact that this game is in Japan only, no...us Indonesians had these kind of games in our Gameboy collections but my complain in the past when I first play this without any knowledge of Japanese is that...in this game, hitting flying Zoid is much harder than the rest of Saga games. Flying Zoids are harder to hit by long range weapon and it's easier for you to use close combat weapon on them mechanic-wise because melee weapon had higher hit rate than ranged weapon for some reason in the game. The same thing apply to attacking Zoid with smokescreen or camo internal weapon (Wolf type Zoids have smokescreen weapon while Attack Cat have camo weapon), it's hard to hit them once they used the smokescreen or camo as these increase their evasion unless you used weapon that increase your Hit stat (Hit is a stat used in the game to determine your accuracy when attacking enemy).

While the second game until DS had weapon and Zoids stat customizations, the first game doesn't have it. So, like in DS, there is what it's called Affinity. Some pilots are expert in particular type of Zoids, for example...Jack is an expert in Gojulas and Berserk Fuhrer type, Ace is an expert in Tiger and Iron Kong type, Regina is an expert in Wolf type so they get bonus stats when piloting those type of Zoids. Also unlike the third and DS games, it doesn't have what you called as manually picking skills for pilot in the available skill lists when they level up and you also can't change their stat growth, you can only manually adds the stat points of your MC to whichever stat you wanted. Also remember...since this is the first entry, Takara Tomy at the time didn't implement Energy regeneration feature yet so if you ran out of mana? You have no choice but to use weapons that don't use mana. Taking extra note here that the first game....despite Zoids have armor stat, weapon damage hit you with full damage most of the time unless you are trying to hit Gojulas or Iron Kong Zoids which reduce some weapon damage when you attack them because these two types have very high armor stat.

Rating

• Graphic: 10/10 (For a Zoid game released in 2000 era, this game is graphically beautiful in that era)
• Gameplay: 8/10 (No EP regen, no E-Shield, hitting flying Zoid is difficult and no Anti Air feature yet)
• Sound & Music: 9/10 (Game got great soundtracks for a first entry)
• Story & Characters: 10/10 (Considering that it was the first entry, I prefer the plot of this game than the DS. I wish they hadn't make the ending in the DS without conclusion. Poor Blood never come back from time-space pocket in DS)
• Replay Value / Content: 8/10 (When you finish the game, you can still come back to the game and unlock the rest of Zoids Database that you have missed before)

Afterthought

Last year, Takara Tomy made a Realize Model of Atory (Athle) Arcadia's Trinity Liger. Considering that Takara Tomy had terrible marketing and almost never keep up with their audiences (Not the Japanese, the international audience or Asian audiences in overall). I wish Takara Tomy would listen to their main audience for once. Had they listened to their audience, we would have gotten more Zoids games by now. They fumbled so hard when they did Zoids: Fuzor