Collection essentials #386: TearRing Saga (PS1)

This is a game that I’ve owned for years, but unlike a lot of other games I’ve talked about recently, this is one that I’ve freshly played, as I beat it for the first time just this past year!

If this game looks a lot like Fire Emblem, there’s a good reason for that. The creator of Fire Emblem left the company after the fifth entry, Thracia 776, and then went on to develop this game! It is, for all intents and purposes, a Fire Emblem game in all but name. It was originally to be called “Emblem Saga”, and Nintendo thought that the game was too similar and took legal action on copyright grounds. While there were some concessions, such as a name change and some fees paid, TearRing Saga was ultimately allowed to exist. And that was actually quite significant for the gaming landscape, as it set a precedent for creators to make similar spiritual successors for other companies if they wind up changing employers.

The storyline isn’t anything all that unique, with a typical sort of medieval fantasy setting, an evil empire and an evil cult. However, the game does a pretty good job with worldbuilding and has dialogue for a wide variety of characters. One thing that’s interesting is that this game actually has two main characters, and the two of them often split up for large portions of the game, with the player having a lot of freedom about which party members go with who. So there are a large variety of possibilities, not just in gameplay, but also dialogue, as there are many scenes that will trigger under specific circumstances when certain characters are present, which is pretty cool.

If you’ve played Fire Emblem before, you’ll be right at home with how the basic gameplay works. Like Fire Emblem, both your team and the enemies take turns, with each side able to move any and all of their units each turn. Death is permanent, so you have to be careful, but if a unit dies you can always restart the chapter. 

There are many mechanical differences between TearRing Saga and Fire Emblem, and I won’t be listing them all in a casual blog post like this. In addition to mechanical differences, there are a lot of creative ideas with levels and characters that the player will encounter all throughout this game. For example, there’s a woman you can recruit who doesn’t believe in killing, so her attacks can only leave enemies at 1 HP, which is actually sometimes good but can also be bad. And there’s an event later in the game where this restriction can be lifted! When I played through the game, there were just so many little cool things that I had to tell my Fire Emblem-loving sister about.

TearRing Saga is far from perfect and definitely has some drawbacks. The game can be really slow-paced, though that issue is improved a bit if your means of playing the game has a “turbo speed” feature. There are some “quality of life” features absent that would have been nice to have. The menus at times can feel a little unintuitive and clunky. And some of the game’s design choices are at times frustrating and not that good. You also really want to play this one with some kind of basic guide at least because there are a TON of things that can easily be missed.

As you might have guessed from the fact that I was able to play it, this game thankfully has a wonderful English patch available. If you like Fire Emblem, this is one you really ought to try out, as it’s basically a long lost entry in the series! I doubt it will get rereleased or officially translated, but the effort to seek it out is certainly worth it.