Also the story needed a bit more work. Before I proceed, I must confess that I haven’t finished Summon Night 3
Story (spoilers)
Narrator: Attie, our protagnist, has washed up on a island with her student and a magic sword. It is an awesome magic sword. Everyone wants her awesome magic sword. But first…
Pirates: We hate you.
Attie: Let’s be friends.
Pirates: Ok.
Student: I hate you.
Attie: Let’s be friends.
Student: Ok.
Island Guardians: We hate you.
Attie: Let’s be friends.
Island Guardians: Ok.
Other pirates: We hate you.
Attie: Let’s be friends.
Other pirates: Ok.
[End Part 1]
Imperial Army: Give us the sword.
Attie: No.
Imperial Army: Fight you for it.
Attie: No! Fighting is bad! Let’s be friends!
Imperial Army: Fight you anyway.
Attie: *slash stab*
Imperial Army: You haven’t seen the last of us!
[repeat 5 times]
Attie: Fighting is bad! Let’s be friends!
Imperial Army: Ok, ok, geez, fine.
[Exeunt Imperial Army]
[Enter real bad guys]
Real bad guys: Give us the sword.
Attie: No.
Real bad guys: Fight you for it.
Attie: *slash stab*
Real bad guys: Nyah nyah, missed us!
[Enter Traitor, i.e. real real bad guy]
Traitor: *slash stab*
Real bad guys: Oww!
Traitor: Give me the sword.
Attie: No.
Traitor: Then I’ll smash it.
Attie: Aaah! My awesome magic sword!
[15 minute intermission. Crying and soul-searching galore]
Attie: Lookit my new sword! *slash stab*
Traitor: Dang.
Real bad guys: *slash stab*
Traitor: Blargh im ded
Real bad guys: Now we’re just gonna go home.
Attie: Bye bye!
[Exeunt Traitor, exeunt Real bad guys]
[Enter Ultimate bad guy, i.e. the guy we spent the whole game trying to keep sealed but of course he got out anyway because they always get out in the end and I don’t know why we even bother but it’s a JRPG so just play along]
Ultimate bad guy: I’m gonna kill everyone so everyone will be happy.
Attie: That makes no sense.
Ultimate bad guy: I’m gonna do it anyway.
Attie: No.
Ultimate bad guy: Yes.
Attie: No.
Ultimate bad guy: Whatever, let’s fight.
[Exeunt Ultimate bad guy]<— guessing from this point
Attie: Fighting is bad. And I proved it by beating up everyone who disagreed.
Narrator: And the moral of the story is… uhh…
Attie: If you get a bitching magic sword and beat up anyone who tries to take it away, you too can have a happy ending.
Narrator: Right. That.
[Roll credits]
My problem with the story
It’s not particularly bad as far as SRPG stories go. I’ve always enjoyed the fact that Summon Night stories aren’t about some exiled prince/princess taking back his kingdom. You know, unlike 99% of SRPGs. The only thing is, Summon Night 3 takes far too long to tell what should be a nice, simple story. For example the first bit with the pirates and Imperial Army could have been shortened to 3 or 4 fights instead of 8 or 9. Tighter storytelling, faster pacing, happier gamer.
Furthermore, far too much time was wasted preaching and arguing. I don’t wanna fight, fighting is bad, why do we have to fight, why can’t we all be friends, waaah I don’t wanna fight. Repeat before every single fight to get the bulk of Attie’s dialogue. Her supporting cast is made up of yesmen and women who tell her to fight for what she believes in… which is not fighting. It’s fine to be a pacifist, nothing wrong with that. The problem comes when countless faceless villagers get hurt because of your stupid stance. You don’t want to fight, but you don’t want to hand over the sword either. The enemies won’t stop attacking unless you a) kill them or b) hand over the sword. But you don’t want to do either. So what do you want?
Attie spends waaaaaay too much time moping over this choice. The writers can’t come up with a solution either, so they always have some “unexpected” third force, like the above-mentioned traitor, make Attie’s choices for her. Finally, finally, after many false starts and 40 hours, she takes one major decision and decides to seal the final boss away for good. But even then she handles fighting like a distasteful, lie-back-and-think-of-England activity. I shouldn’t have to explain how demoralizing it is as a gamer when your main character’s attitude to battles is “I can’t believe you’re making me do this!” I’m actually surprised it took me 40 hours to put down the controller.
Everything else, most of which I really liked
As I said in the title, Summon Night 3 is a fine game. Part of the reason the game lasted 40 hours is that I spent far too much time fighting free battles and failing at the mini-games. I’ve heard people say SN3 is the hardest in the series, but that’s only true if you try to fulfill Brave requirements by keeping levels low and everyone alive through every battle. For me the rewards of Brave clears weren’t worth striving for, so I played the game normally and had a great time.
The art and character designs keep getting better from game to game. Summon Night 1‘s designs weren’t even good enough for deviantart. SN2 was a little better, but not by much. SN3’s art is quite close to “good”, though there are a few odd angles and strangely shaped faces. The characters themselves are great, except for the whole yesman bit. So much so that I had a hard time deciding whose ending to shoot for. I chose my student Bellefrau in the end, but I probably would have been happy with anyone else.
There’s a remake out on the PSP, but apart from the bad plot pacing – which is something remakes never fix – there isn’t much I would want changed. I mean, it’s frustrating how enemies dodge status effects so much more often than you do. And how their mikiri move lets them evade your arrows 90% of the time, versus like 10% in your case. But any experienced gamer gets used to the computer’s cheating ways after a while. It’s nothing to cry over. The only major thing I’d like them to change would be the rewards for Brave clears. I want something tangible, like rare accessories or equipment. I’d also appreciate it if they made the mini-games a little easier, but I just suck at those.
Otherwise, crappy story aside, it was pretty much my ideal SRPG. Moderate challenge, fun characters, bright happy colors. It’s got great replay value as well, what with your choice of 2 protagonists and 4 students, 4 different viewpoints on the story depending on which guardian you befriend, at least 6 recruitable characters, a bonus dungeon, a “bad” ending I really want to see but no one has it on Youtube, etc. Maaaaaaybe I’ll finish it one day and replay it just for fun. You never know.
Where to next
The next game on my PS2 backlog was supposed to be Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, but there’s something wrong with my copy. I’ll get round to buying/downloading another one eventually, but right now I’m going to skip over it and proceed with Dark Cloud 2. That’ll be after I finish the two or three games I’m playing on the PSP and DS. Busy, busy, busy. But it’s a good kind of busy.
Yah, the story was the biggest issue I had with this game as well, or rather, the protagonist attitude was. On the other hand, the SRPG aspect of the game was so engaging I actually managed to play through the game multiple times. My favorite aspect of SN3 was how it gave you complete freedom in how you want to build your characters and as a result allow for completely bat shit crazy play-style for all of them. That said, you do get a Omake Mode after the game that features the casts of SN2 who came to the island on Mei Mei and Paffel aka.Hazel’s behest. It’s kind of fun seeing those character revisited and watching them interact with the SN3 cast and a grown up version of your student but that’s about the extend of what you’ll get if you finished the game. Also, I don’t recommend SN4 unless you’re very invested in SN1 and 2’s characters since it’s pretty much a glorified fan disc with an absolutely non-sensical plot.
I’ve just received my copy of SN5 yesterday and have played quite a bit of that. The character design has improved yet again but the story is pretty much the same kind of “why can’t we be friends?” bs you get from SN3. I’m thoroughly enjoying the gameplay though since they’ve streamlined the game quite a bit and you don’t need to grind free battle nearly as much. Ati also makes a cameo appearance as well as the descendant of SN2’s protagonist.
Come on, if you understand how much fun the gameplay is, then you know I have to play SN4 and 5 eventually, I just have to. I don’t remember SN2 having such a wonderful story either. It’s the characters and gameplay that make up for all the frustration. I’m slightly more motivated to finish SN3 now. Maybe later this week.
[…] me for 13 hours and I actually finished it, unlike Shadow Dragon or even the infinitely better Summon Night 3. Also somehow playing SRPGs helps me ‘recharge’ my mental batteries so I can try more […]
I am a really big fan of this series, so it is extremely bias for me to say something about it… Anyway, this is one of my favorites in the series (the second one is still No1). The pacing and the protagonist didn’t bother me as much as you. While I agree the pacifist stuff happens a lot, the different cultures in the island and the classroom events were enough to keep me entertained while the story pacing was slow. I think the only major problem I have with this game is how almost every enemy is ghost-type, which means they are immune to every special status and effects, which made a lot of summons specialized in this to become useless. Thankfully, they fixed this in the PSP remake.
I didn’t notice the ghost-type so much. What annoyed me was how almost every enemy near the end had the ‘mikiri’ skill making your archers useless. I hope they did something about that in the remake as well.
I’ll be playing SN4 soon because I just can’t stay away from the series.