Vandal Hearts is a 1997 Japan-only strategy RPG ported to the Saturn by the KCE Nagoya team. Like Konami’s Castlevania conversion, Saturn Vandal Hearts suffers from a lack of Saturn optimization and benefits from the addition of extra items, spells, and playable characters, as well as all-new endings and cutscenes.
Players take the role of Ash Lambert and dive deep into the struggle for control of Sostegaria, finding allies along the way to increase the group’s strength. A character class system is at play, mastery of which is required to emerge victorious in the game’s 34 battles spread across six acts.
Gameplay is squarely focused on traditional SRPG turn-based grid action, as inter-battle sequences are limited to menus for story exposition and purchasing better equipment, etc. with no overworld or in-town maps to explore. The combat is deeply satisfying once players get to grips with the game’s mechanics, and there is a lot of variation possible as the game progress and the player develops their characters… though the language barrier is strong.
Luckily, in 2020, Paul Met and the Meduza Team set their hearts on porting the PlayStation script over to the Saturn, along with implementing a host of QoL improvements. Mid-2021 saw the latest update to this lovely patch.
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