7th Saga - Was it really bad if you REMOVE the difficulty issue?
I've always had a slight feeling about this, but today I'm really dissecting the game and wondering - does it actually deserve the flak that it gets if you remove the crippling difficulty?
When you look online, the difficulty is the #1 thing that people cite about what makes this a bad game, yet when you ask what people think of the game after they beat Elnard (the properly balanced JP version patched to English) they say the difficulty is the one thing that made it unique in the first place.
I find this really odd, and I get that the masses are not just one hive mind, but I'm having a hard time finding too many cons in this game that weren't widely present in that era (like recycling tilesets for example, even FF6 had a ton of it). Here's where the game stands from my perspective:
+Unique characters and roles.
+Very cool partner/traitor system.
+JRPG with oddly dark and somber atmosphere, almost western feeling.
+Super memorable music and graphics - if a little repetitive on both fronts.
+Unusual sound effects that I actually ended up liking a lot. So much so that the different Elnard menu selection sound is a downgrade to me. I like the muted beeps.
+Fast paced combat.
+Runes are a super cool premise, and feel as OP in battle as they are told in the lore which is really unusual, and yet somehow also feel balanced in the game due to turn economy being so important.
+Great resource management requirements, items are very important.
+Incredible first boss battle against Romus. The music was epic, his sprite is incredible, his attacks look sick, and he is a brick wall boss for new players - as he should be.
+Defend/attack adds strategy to the turn economy and actually inspired the first RPG I developed to make defending an actually useful thing to do.
+Very cool encounter system. Not quite random, not quite visible.
+Stats feel good to increase, the difference is palpable and they are easily understood.
+If the difficulty is fixed, the characters being what they are offers the infrastructure for an extremely replayable experience.
-------
-The difficulty is obviously broken, and becomes more broken the deeper you go into the game, requiring and yet punishing you for grinding due to the unintended effects of rival apprentices getting the JP stat boosts while you're stuck with the NA ones.
-Other than the music and layout, the towns and dungeons don't have a ton of identity or lore besides maybe Zellis/Melenam and even that's not much.
-...I'm struggling to find more.
I dunno, I feel like other than the few obvious blemishes, this should have been one of the greats, but so few people seem to agree about this. I see Mystic Ark reviewed a little better, but the art style really stripped away the unique feeling 7th Saga had.
I'd like to make a spiritual successor, but before I do, I need to find out what I am missing about peoples' dislike of the game other than its difficulty. I'd like some opinions, but I am not looking for hyperbole, I'm looking for real data I can take away to imagine a more perfect version of what I consider a rough framework of a masterpiece.