Blazing Heroes aka Mystaria: The Realms of Lore aka Riglord Saga (Japan)
This was an SRPG developed by Microcabin and published by Sega exclusively for the Sega Saturn that released in Japan as Riglord Saga in July 1995 and later ported to the West a few months later in November 1995 as Mystaria: The Realms of Lore. Apparently the name was later changed to Blazing Heroes as 'Mystaria' was a location in the popular Dungeons & Dragons IP and Sega was forced to reissue the game with the new title due to copyright issues, as well as changing the name of the in-game world from Mystaria to Oldeland. It's a bizarre case because typically any copyright issues would be squared away first before release however this came after the fact so you can find both variants of this game out in the wild, though they are identical in nature aside from the name change of the in-game world.
Original vs. Current
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As for the game itself, I found this to be an excellent SRPG with some major shortcomings keeping it from true greatness when discussing the genre.
The main premise of the game is helping Aragon, the prince of Oldeland and the main character, rid an evil conqueror known as Bane who invaded and took the queen and your castle by force. The story gets a bit more complicated as it goes but for the sake of spoilers I won't dive too much into it.
Like a typical SRPG, you control your party via a grid-based playing field where you can interact with enemies, objects, and your party within your set range. What's neat about this game is the non-linear approach you are presented with once you get to the world map and need to recruit fellow heroes to your party to help defeat Bane. You start with 5 party members and need to recruit a total of 12 throughout the game. On your journey you visit other castles, towns with shops, taverns and townspeople to talk with to gather lore and information in the area, forests, islands, etc. The world map is a smaller affair compared to games of today, no doubt, but offers enough areas to explore and visit without feeling overwhelming which is a good thing considering how open-ended the game presents itself and how you can tackle progression.
The game features many battles in different locations and are quite good and can definitely pose a challenge if you go in unprepared. Like a typical SRPG, the game demands a methodical approach to your gameplay or else you will get overwhelmed by the enemies. Each character has specific fighting techniques via hand to hand combat, weapons, and magic that will develop into newer, stronger techniques based on how often you use a specific skill. Each character has up to 9 slots to equip different techniques and you can change these on the fly which is great. Just from my playthrough alone I could see the extensive amount of upgraded skills you can get for each character and the ability to pick and choose what you can use to help with a certain battle condition offers some really nice tactical play with the ability to typically bring 6 party members along for the battle.
However, I think the game is majorly let down by two big factors, and those are the graphics and the writing. Graphically, this is a pretty ugly game, even for the standards set back in 1995. It can also suffer from slowdown as well depending on what is happening on the screen. The other major letdown comes from the writing which I found to be very poor in quality and suffering from translation errors no less which really hurts the overall story and the characters. While the story does advance the narrative in different ways, definitely don't go into this game expecting a great story as it's mostly a generic medieval affair. Also, it's puzzling to me they chose to rename the game to Blazing Heroes for the West due to the Mystaria copyright claim when they could have easily just used its Japanese name, Riglord Saga, which is a far superior name than the generic Blazing Heroes, IMO. It's a shame these things weren't better, especially in the graphics department, because I feel many people may have passed on the game for this simple reason alone, but for those who looked past the ugly presentation, they were rewarded with a really fun and customizable SRPG experience.
Showcasing the less than stellar visuals:
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Another disappointing thing was this game received a sequel the following year in 1996 but was only released in Japan as Riglord Saga 2 and was never ported to the West and I don't believe the game received any fan translations yet. A shame because I would love to play it but due to the extensive Japanese text for the dialogue and menus it would be basically impossible to play and enjoy. The original also remains a Sega Saturn exclusive and was never remastered or ported to another system, so I feel the game doesn't get its due when discussing good SRPG's as you never hear anyone talk about this game.
It's not a terribly lengthy game and I clocked in about 30 or so hours for my playthrough to the end. I would definitely consider this game a must-play if you are a fan of SRPG's and have the means to do so.
