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| This box means business... it's real; isn't afraid to get its hand's dirty. |
1992
The only real big change staff-wise from Gateway is that Mark Buchignani seems to have been promoted. He was credited as only an encounter author in the first game, but seems to be on the level with Don Daglow for this one.
Each of these games has, wow, FOUR encounter authors? I find this surprising because the encounters are so damn repetitive in both games. Either each person only wrote certain types of encounters, or they all ended up writing the same ideas separately. I almost think the second is more likely. I can imagine the team going "Wait, your climax had the villain being a secret tattooed Kraken spy also? Oh dear..." a week before release. Granted, I've never designed a video game before, but I have designed D&D adventures, and I think this team could have done better.
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| This was one of the more unique and memorable, if frustrating, battles. |
Treasures is the Gold Box game I've had the least amount of experience with previously, having only played it shortly in my childhood before moving on to something else. There has been a pattern throughout my life with these games, I start a series planning to get through it with the same party. Then, I make it to the last game and just get burnt out. Having made my way through the game for this project, finally, I can understand why this happened in my youth. As I've stated numerous times about Treasures, in the later Gold Box games, the combats become such a drag. The rules set these games are based off of was never balanced for high level play, and man does it show. It also seems like the designers compensated for the ability to save and reload by making the combats ridiculously hard; it should not surprise you that I think that was a mistake.
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| Hordes of pirates are kind of fun... kind of. The hordes of lightning bolt throwing mages that followed them were no fun at all. |
All my griping aside, at least it's done. After some 20 years probably since first I had the thought to complete all the Gold Box games, at least one series is down (granted, it's the shortest, but that's not my fault!)
Mechanics - It's the tried and true gold box engine. They added some bells and whistles like weather and love. These didn't add much for me, and in many cases detracted from my experience. Weather would have been good if it reduced visibility, but it only reduced movement, increasing the power of spells, which is the last thing this game needs. I'll put it just below Gateway, because the designers put in those questionable things, but still didn't figure out the importance of being able to "center" while manually aiming, or being able to load without quitting to DOS.
3. Lightning Returns: FF13
4. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
5. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
6. Final Fantasy 13-2
7. Final Fantasy 13
Storyline - It's average, sometimes a bit repetitive. I was probably giving it more credit than it deserved while playing for story, when I was really thinking about atmosphere. The events often seem random, and the ending doesn't tie in well to the rest of the game. It's a long game; they could have cut a fair amount, and the game would have been better off for it.
5. Final Fantasy 13
6. Final Fantasy 13-2
7. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
8. Forgotten World
9. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights
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| It's... another pointless revelation! |
Atmosphere - I think they immersed the player better than in Gateway. This is a strength, but is ruined by what happens in between the good stuff. I think it's rare that a game simply needed to be cut down to make it significantly better, but that's exactly what Treasures is. I guess they felt it needed to be 40 hours of gameplay to be marketable, because man, that extra 20 hours really ruins the game. It's still good enough to come in at number 4 in my rankings.
2. Lightning Returns: FF13
3. Final Fantasy 13
4. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
5. Final Fantasy 13-2
6. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
End Game - Besides getting tired of encounters, I found the actual end game at Fireshear and Ice Peak to be a lot of fun. It's odd that the ending didn't tie in to the game's main plot at all, but wound up being the most fun part. What does that tell you about the rest of the game?
1. Lightning Returns: FF13
2. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
3. Final Fantasy 10-2
4. Final Fantasy 10
5. Final Fantasy 13-2
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| They really enjoyed showing off their text color capabilities... I really wish that time would have been put toward the "center" command! |
2. Forgotten World
3. Final Fantasy 13
4. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
5. Final Fantasy 10-2
6. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
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| They lifted this beast that was created for Pools of Darkness, where the party is about ten levels higher, then had the nerve to have reinforcements appear! |
4. Final Fantasy 10-2
5. Final Fantasy 13-2
6. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
7. Final Fantasy 13
8. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights
Music - Treasures's single tune is eerie and minimalist, even here they forgot to make the game interesting.
4. Final Fantasy 10
5. Lightning Returns: FF13
6. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights
7. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
8. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
Art - Treasures has some good stuff, but it re-used a lot of assets from Gateway and Pools of Darkness, as opposed to the all fresh Gateway. There wasn't much that stuck out to me, besides the cool snow wall sets at the end.
5. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
6. Final Fantasy 10-2
7. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
8. Forgotten World
9. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights
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| Here's another guy from FRUA I was happy to find. Jake was nowhere to be found. |
Best Villain - Freezefire? Geildarr, Cortona... I realized while writing my notes that the lack of named villains in the game was a big detractor to getting invested in it. 99% of the time, you are fighting faceless organizations; not very interesting. I'll have to go with Freezefire. Wait, you're saying a dragon who isn't introduced until the end of the game and doesn't say a word is better than Shuyin? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
3. Barthandelus (FF13)
4. Gilgamesh (FF13-2)
5. Freezefire (TotSF)
6. Shuyin (FF10-2)
7. Broadhand (GttSF)
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| Augustar makes his impassioned speech after suddenly recovering from his greed for The Gem. |
Worst Villain - That asshole soldier who drugged us. Although really, we're the assholes for falling for the same trick.
4. Vaalgamon (GttSF)
5. Jihl Nabaat (FF13)
6. Asshole Soldier (TotSF)
7. Caius Ballad (LR:FF13)
8. Angry Old Pirate (F:NWN)
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| You... |
Best Ally - It's close between Siulajia and Ougo, but Ougo deserves it because he is also linked to one of the few quests that is interesting.
3. Sazh Katzroy (FF13)
4. Rikku (FF10-2)
5. Ougo the Strange (TotSF)
6. Krevish (GttSF)
7. The Angel of Valhalla (LR:FF13)
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| That may be, but you seem to have lost your marbles. |
Worst Ally - Jabarkas, he is an alternate love interest who comes in to play if your lead character is female, but why introduce him if he is going to mean nothing?
4. Chocolina (FF13-2)
5. "Hope Estheim" (LR:FF13)
6. Jabarkas (TotSF)
7. Jagaerda (GttSF)
8. Father Bartholomew (FW)
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| And that's pretty much all he does... |
Best Enemy - Freezefire, he was badass, even if he did disintegrate one of my guys. Actually, that kind of makes him more badass. Like Bhunivelze, he is the best this game has to offer in two categories.
1. Bhunivelze (LR:FF13)
2. Yojimbo (FF10)
3. Freezefire (TotSF)
4. Dahaka (FF13)
5. Angra Mainyu (FF10-2)
Worst Enemy - Magic-users... F! It was unreal what these Bs did to me in the course of this game.
1. Gilgamesh (FF13-2)
2. Mages (TotSF)
3. Cid Raines (FF13)
4. Shambling Mound (GttSF)
5. Meonekton (LR:FF13)
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| Oh Hosttower mages, how I hate you, let me count the ways... |
Best Mini-Game/Puzzle - Falling in love. It would have been a neat feature, if it weren't for potentially losing control of the character in combat. The game deserves credit for implementing a relationship mechanic way back in 1992.
1. Blitzball (FF10)
2. Falling in Love (TotSF)
3. Kraken Code (GttSF)
4. Cavern of the Stolen Fayth (FF10-2)
5. Hold 'Em (FF13-2)
Worst Mini-Game/Puzzle - The lucky papers, because; all that work for nothing... Amanitas's crown makes them redundant, excepting their use as MacGuffins.
2. Lightning Dodging (FF10)
3. Spherebreak (FF10-2)
4. Mirror Map (GttSF)
5. Hide-n-Seek (FF13)
6. Lucky Papers (TotSF)
Side Quests - Farr Winward was very cool, the secret dwarf dungeons not so much.
3. Final Fantasy 13-2
4. Final Fantasy 10
5. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
6. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
7. Final Fantasy 13
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| This guy and some dwarves point you to secret dungeons. I'm not sure I even mentioned them in my posts, because there isn't much to talk about. |
Overall - Given this was the "last" of the GB games, I had high hopes that they would have ironed out all the kinks, and pulled out all the stops. Of course, the end of a long running series often means something else... that it didn't do well. I had a very FF13esque feeling about half-way through, here was this game from a beloved franchise, and I thought "This feeling... OMG... I think... this game might blow!"
Treasures isn't quite as big a shame as FF13, but almost there.
4. Final Fantasy 10-2
5. Final Fantasy 13-2
6. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
7. Final Fantasy 13
8. Forgotten World
As the Heroes of Ascore, and now of all the North, return to the Tired Traveller, I'm happy to see the door shut on this one. I'm also curious about others' impressions of Treasures, since I do feel like it's the least talked about of all the Gold Box games.
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