Rudra no Hihou

Rudra no Hihou ("Treasure of Rudra", rendered as "Treasure of the Rudras" in the fan translation) is another late-to-the-party Squaresoft RPG for the Super Famicom, and while it has gained a small following over the years it remains one of their more overlooked games.  It was relatively unique in its time for being primarily based on elements of Hinduism, though a few Biblical references also appear.  Somewhat like Live a Live, the game follows different characters with separate narratives, though unlike that game, they also all take place in the same time period and interconnect in small ways - one character can leave behind a relic for another to pick up later, for example, and at certain points you can even swap to another character's narrative and come back to the other's later.  The final chapter of the game has you take control of a fourth character, uniting with the other three protagonists to that point in order to face the story's antagonists.  Said storylines are broken up into "days" counting down to the end of the world, though this is simply a measure of progression; resting "overnight" at an inn does not cause it to increase.  Rudras' presentation is a step above most RPGs on the platform, with fully-animated character sprites in battle (including all enemies and bosses) for even mundane actions like using items and normal attacks, and just some gorgeously detailed spritework in general.  The gameplay is pretty standard turn based combat and mechanics, although one interesting twist is that elemental resistances have mutual exclusivities - you can't become resistant to fire and ice at the same time, for example, so tweaking your loadout requires a bit more thought.  The real selling point of the mechanics, though, is the magic system - by entering combinations of up to six katakana characters (or just typing combinations of letters in the translated version), you can create new Mantras with a wide variety of added effects.  For example, "Ig" is a basic fire-elemental attack, but adding "Na" to create "IgNa" will cause it to hit all enemies instead, or "IgRex" will increase the damage it outputs.  As the game progresses you'll learn new prefixes and suffixes to add to a core effect.  Bosses will also frequently give clues to spells you can create and use yourselves and you can even try just punching in random words to see what you get, although more often than not you'll get something weak or outright useless.  Other special words can also be used to create powerful effects, like "Epymetheus" creating a powerful water-element spell that can freeze enemies, "Peace" being a guaranteed flee from battle, or "Saintelmo" for a powerful lightning-element attack.  There are countless possible combinations to find and surprisingly nearly all of them do at least something, so it adds a great deal of experimentation to the game.  While not Square's best RPG of era, it is an interesting game with some unique elements and certainly worth a look.  Hopefully one day it gets an official localization or remake so a wider audience can appreciate it too.

Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Released: 1996
Platforms: Super Famicom

Bahamut Lagoon

Bahamut Lagoon was one of many late era Super Famicom RPGs by Square that came out just a bit too late to be considered for localization; the Saturn, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation were all out by then and steadily building up their audience, so putting in the time and effort to localize a game in a still-niche genre for a soon-to-be-retired console didn't make much sense from a business standpoint.  Still, the game got attention from fans in subsequent years, getting a fan translation and numerous requests for a remake that have thus far gone unanswered.  Gameplay-wise it feels a bit like a mashup of Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle, with each protagonist leading a squad of up to four units that can engage the enemy from afar with spells, or in turn-based battles in close quarters.  Each squad also commands a dragon; you cannot control it directly, but rather give vague commands to engage, retreat or stay alongside the squad and assist with attacks.  Dragons can also be fed between battles to boost their stats, change their elemental resistances or even alter them into different forms, granting advantages in future battles.  The game is quite impressive visually with its detailed backgrounds, smoothly-animated segmented characters and elaborate spell animations; in fact, it might just be the best looking Square RPG on the Super Famicom, which is no small feat from the company that previously brought us Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG.  It all adds up to a game with Square's usual blend of depth and presentation and a few clever gameplay quirks (like freezing water with ice attacks so land units can cross over it), but the slow pace of it all gets to be a bit annoying - battles can easily take upwards of 30 minutes in the early chapters and only get larger (and longer) from there.  The overall plot is largely formulaic and the characters fall into the usual fantasy tropes, so it's nothing too spectacular there either.  Still, it is at least worth a visit as a mostly-overlooked curio of a legendary company, and I still hope it may one day get a polished-up and rebalanced remake as Live a Live did in 2022.

Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Released: 1996
Platforms: Super Famicom

Mirai Shinwa Jarvas

A relatively early action-RPG for the Famicom, and it's built on a surprisingly unique concept - as the titular Jarvas, you're actually the lone survivor of a nuclear holocaust and go back in time to well before the atomic era to conquer the entire world, averting humanity's extinction in the most heavy-handed way possible.  The game is relatively full-featured for the time period, with the player able to change between multiple job classes, a pretty lengthy campaign, a rather large world map with numerous sub-maps, and a lot of sub-quests to complete to earn gold, which you must do as random enemies on the map do not drop money when defeated.  You also have a Fame stat that increases as you win duels, which you must do in order to recruit troops to open castles so you can overthrow each continent's rulers (and no, they don't provide you any aid in battle whatsoever).  That said, design-wise it's a bit of a trainwreck - it's buggy, slow paced, has very poor hit detection, it's easy to wedge the game into an unwinnable state by picking a quest you can't finish yet (you can only take one at a time and can't cancel quests without actually completing them), and it's extremely slow and grindy.  Oh, and forget trying to play as a magic user; as in old Dungeons and Dragons you start with one spell that barely does any damage, and your physical stats are so pathetic that one or two hits from basically anything will knock you dead.  It is at least notable for being the first Famicom RPG to use a battery backup to save games; prior to this games either relied on a tape recorder peripheral, rewritable floppy disks or just using a password system, and its general "western-ness" with a focus on sidequests, army battles (such as they are) and being able to change character classes are all relatively novel for the time and the platform.  But as the saying goes: being one of the first means it's also one of the worst.

Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito
Released: 1987
Platforms: Famicom