This used to be a recommendation, but I noticed they randomly doubled the price from $4.99 (already a lot for just a ROM) to $9.99 without changing a single other thing (not even the store page), so... yeah. The old review is still mostly accurate because it's literally the same game, but I'd never recommend paying this price for it. Prick move, Piko Interactive.

Brave Battle Saga (also known as Barver Battle Saga) is a solid RPG. Just my kind of game.

Just to start off, this uses the Mednafen emulator, which works fine, though it had a few hitches. For some reason the emulator's "Pause" function doesn't work at all, and there were a couple of times where the audio desynced and the only fix I could find was to restart the emulator.

Although the preview images and videos show the image all stretched, it's actually far more reasonable, using the base 320x224 Genesis resolution (game looks chunkier at x1 or x2 scaling). The emulator allows up to 4x scaling with or without smoothing and it adds a neat little border when playing in full screen. The game only uses the ABC face buttons so configuring XYZ is not necessary. Steam overlay works fine. Now, into the game.

While the story's not exactly groundbreaking, it's got a couple moments that made me go "huh" in mild intrigue.

It's obvious the spritework and stuff was quite heavily influenced by games like Final Fantasy VI, but hey, they still look real nice.

The music is good, but the sound effects are kind of wonky. A lot of them are really quiet and certain events (getting hit, for example) produce no sounds at all which robs them of impact slightly. I don't know if this is an emulation quirk or if the game really was this way, but it definitely sounds off.

There are no random encounters, all encounters are portrayed as sprites in the world that initiate a battle when touched, though oddly most of the sprites have no correlation to what you'll be fighting, so I guess they're random in that aspect. One downside I'd note is that the screen uses this lazy scrolling where the you're always off-center when moving which annoys me a little, but it still leaves enough room to react to any potential enemies ahead.

Battles are in the standard turn-based style, which is totally fine by me, although I'll admit the fighting in this game boils down to only using Attack on the regular enemies and only using Spells to spam your strongest magic during boss fights since magic sucks against groups. The game has an option called Real Time Battles that essentially works like the ATB system (from Final Fantasy IV onwards). That option won't affect the pacing of fights much though, since it only "pauses" during submenu navigation if you have it set to Off.

The battle UI is a bit clunky, there's a Repeat command that performs the same move that character did the preceding turn, but it's useless because the battle cursor memorizes the last action you did and defaults to that on each turn. It's also a bit awkward to only be able to use left and right to navigate targets.

I didn't have to stop progress a single time to grind, but then again I engaged in a lot of battles voluntarily. I also didn't feel over-leveled except at one early point in the game, the overall balance felt pretty good.

In summary, this game definitely deserves my recommendation. Even though it is pretty derivative in some aspects, I still found it a very enjoyable experience through and through. Give it a shot if you're in the mood for an old school RPG.

While Brave Battle Saga doesn’t come close to the likes of Final Fantasy or Secret of Mana, it’s a solid RPG which I’m glad to have experienced. If you grew up on RPGs from the era, it’s a must!


🟩 Pros:

+ One of the most beautiful SEGA Genesis games I have ever laid eyes upon
+ The combat is similar to Final Fantasies from that era, so fellow RPG fans will feel right at home
+ Rewards those who explore

🟥 Cons:

- The story was all over the place and feels rushed
- Outside battles, the audio leaves a lot to be desired
- When purchasing gear or magic, no attributes are displayed so you’ll never know how much better it is than what you currently own
- Starts full screen, an issue for those not aware of the ALT + Enter keyboard shortcut to change to windowed mode (a stretched game from the era never looks good)


Brave Battle Saga: The Legend of The Magic Warrior (BBS) is an RPG which, up until recently, I didn’t know existed. As an avid RPG lover, I was confused as to how it flew under my radar for so long, so I went to Google for answers! After doing some research, I read that it was originally developed by Chuanpu, and released in Taiwan (that explains how I missed it). This is an unofficial fan translation by Jinny (Djinn) and Steve Martin, which was published on Steam by Piko Interactive.

Thankfully, Piko Interactive gives us access to the ROM for BBS. The first thing I suggest is using one of the more superior emulators in the market - RetroArch is my suggestion, which is available for free on Steam. Currently, the game is being emulated via Mednafen (which I’d not heard of prior to playing BBS). Using RetroArch will allow you to tweak BBS to your likings, and you also won't need to deal with the distracting art which fills both sides of the game window when playing via Mednafen.


Coming from the 90s, I didn’t expect much. I assumed BBS would be a generic no name RPG, however, it turned out to be quite an enjoyable experience. It made me reminisce of my childhood favourites, such as Final Fantasy and Secret of Mana.

Visually, BBS is beautiful for its age - Dare I say - It’s one of the most beautiful Genesis games I’ve ever seen. Everything just pops! Animations are consistent with the era and monsters are a treat to see in the overworld. Unfortunately, there are some inconsistencies which hold it back.

Travelling through caves and dungeons annoyed me much more than it should have. Not because they were confusing to navigate, but due to how rooms linked together. Consistently I’d see myself leaving a room from one direction, only for the next to have me enter from an illogical direction - For example, I’d leave one room from the left, only to enter from the left in the following room.

Additionally, the monsters encountered in these caves and dungeons are not only high in numbers, but also move very fast. This makes avoiding battles a challenge as the narrow paths don’t leave you much room to run. Also, the monster sprites you see in the overworld sometimes don’t match those you encounter in battle - For example, I walked into a slime in the overworld, only to encounter a burning skull in battle. It’s small inconsistencies such as these which took away from the experience for me.


I know, I know, these aren’t game breaking issues, but they’re a gripe I’m sure many will share. While lacking the polish of other titles which I grew to love, BBS delivers with its combat, both from an audio and technical perspective! Heavily inspired by Final Fantasy, combat is based on the active time battle system, albeit slower. Not only is this system simple to understand, but it’s engaging, and will have fans of old school RPGs feeling right at home.

The combat music was also brilliantly composed. The theme made every encounter feel like a boss battle. The tempo, tones, and beat, I could not fault it! The rest of the audio… Well, I don’t think I can recall any of the other tracks used. I understand consoles of this generation were hardware limited, but to only have one memorable track is disappointing, especially for an RPG - This is subjective however, as some may like the tracks in the game.

Unfortunately, BBS had me sick of the battle theme after a few hours. Having far too many monsters, which are hard to avoid due to the narrow paths, combined with the slower ATB system, it began to feel like a grind far earlier than I expected. While high encounter rates were common back in the era (think Final Fantasy 2, or Pokemon and the Zubat army which awaited you in every cave), BBS was too much for me.

The lack of polish is further felt with the story, which is easily forgotten. To me, it feels rushed. Without spoiling anything, within the first twenty minutes you’re banished from your hometown for a murder you didn’t commit. I had no idea who I was, let alone who anyone else was. As I played further, I felt confused many times over as elements of the story were delivered poorly.


All things coming together, BBS didn’t hook me enough early on to see me playing until the very end. If the story were more engaging, I’d have, without a doubt, completed it. The English translations are well done, it’s cheap, and you can use the ROM however you wish - All huge positives for me. Despite all the criticisms I have, I do recommend fans of RPGs from that era give it a try.

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I'll recommend Brave Battle Saga, but only as a light recommendation for those who are looking for more old-school RPGs for their collection. It's reasonably priced, but the story and gameplay are fairly standard for those who have been around the RPG block.

Combat is turn-based, using an action bar that builds up to the respective party member's next turn (such as in Final Fantasy games). I oftentimes felt a little rushed trying to search through the Item and Spell lists in battle; there's a large quantity of items, gear, and spells you have to remember and keep in order. Spells in particular can get very messy, if you don't keep reorganizing each of your characters' menus (I didn't realize this was possible until midway through the game).

Enemy mobs are not random encounters: You can see them on the map and enter combat when you touch them. Knowing how tiring random encounters can get from other RPGs, this was very welcome at first. However, many of the mobs move very quickly, and they all immediately beeline after you if you get close enough to them. This became pretty frustrating, as much of the world features narrow canyons and corridors that prevent you from avoiding mobs. Foes also continue to move while you open chests or interact with the world. Sit too long, and all nearby enemies will be sitting on you, waiting to throw you into combat once that text box closes. I began to quickly tap to get through messages whenever I interacted with things, limiting my ability to tell what I actually picked up sometimes. The worst instances were finding chests containing unique magic spells, which require you to give the spell to a character after you pick it up; as a result, I'd either be swarmed by enemies ready to fight me once I finished assigning the spell, or I'd frantically slap it on the first available character and reorganize later.

...With those experiences in mind, I wonder if a random encounter system would have actually been preferable, given the high encounter rate and the way it punishes the player.

Two observations regarding combat I feel worth pointing out: First, magic spells seemed unreliable. While early spells aren't too MP-costly, subsequent tiers get very expensive. And there's a lot of spells out there. This is usually fine/expected in RPG magic systems, but the damage I was seeing didn't seem worth the cost--save for specific instances against magic-vulnerable foes or elemental weaknesses. Meanwhile, enemies' spells could be downright devastating and wipe characters instantly. More often than not, it was better to just stick with using physical attacks, even for the more magic-focused characters in the party.

And that leads into my second combat observation: Critical hits seem incredibly common, and they are both your best friend and worst enemy. Why burn up your MP on attack spells for an extra bit of damage when your normal attacks have a high chance of going critical and multiplying damage several times over? It's better to keep the MP for healing and boost Spells, since items get pretty expensive (and there's plenty of things to buy otherwise). And watch out for enemies' critical hits--they can drain a character's whole HP bar in some instances.

Despite those shortcomings, Brave Battle Saga was still a fun RPG distraction. The low price definitely helped. But the gameplay and story might not be enough to keep some players invested.

Very simple, straight-forward, feel-good, grindy, predictable JRPG.
And that's perfectly fine.

Just an anecdote: Press Alt+Enter for more options including controller support and save states.

After playing and finishing the game after 18 hours here's my review. I never heard of this game until I looked up on a Steam curator of Sege Genesis games and this one caught my eye since I like playing JRPGs. I got it on a sale and the time I put to it was worth it. To begin the story takes place at a time where it's kind of middle age fantasy like setting with advanced technology. You do meet characters like Albert Einstein in the game who gives you a something to comunicate with him but he usually says things that you already know. You start off as a blue haired man named Tim who does a competition and something goes wrong and is banished from his village. When that happens you try to go around the world to prove your innocence. You have 5 party members in the game you meet in the game but you can only have 4 in the game to help you. The 5th party member comes near the end of the game and the 3rd party member is switched with someone else. Not gonna spoil who it is since it will spoil the story. The story isn't that memorable it's pretty cliche and is something you probably seen before in a JRPG so it's nothing special. The visauls in this game do look nice for a game that's in 1996 since it's the year since that playstation 1, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64 came out at this time. The music is alright but the music can be annoying when you hear it a bunch of times. There are different enemies in the game but most of them are the same but with different colors. There's enemies you probably seen before like slimes and dragons. Some of them are pretty goofy to me like a zombie like monster with a shotgun. When I first played this game I had no idea on what to do so I looked up a guide on YouTube on where to go and it helped me out a lot in this game. There are different areas in the game you go to like forest, snowy plains, deserts, industiral factories, and so on. Some of the bosses in the game can be tough when you fight them and can take a bit of trial and error but when you level up a lot in the game progress further in the game it gets pretty easy. Some bosses spells can one hit you which is pretty unfair at times also when you get further into the game the spells don't one hit you at all or do that much damage compared to past encounters. You do get exp and money in the game that are pretty useful. Everytime you level up it increase your stats like Health, MP, attack, defense, agility, and so on. For gold you use it to pay for things like for inns, weapons, shields, armor, healmets, and accesories that give different attributes depending on the one your using. You do get items that are useful like potions that heal your health, mp, or both. There are items that can help you fight against monsters but I never used them since I had spells to help me out. There are items that can heal certain things you got like poison, sleep, confusion, and so on. For spells you can either buy them from the store or get them from chest. Some spells in the chest are very useful like one where you get a spell thats much better than cure 2. When you get spells be wary because you can only carry a limited amount of spells so make sure you get rid of the ones you don't use very much. For spells you start off with basic spells to way more advanced spells that are more powerful than the last spells you have. You get spells like fire, ice, stone, cure, spells that increase attributes, spells that get rid of things like poison and many others that affect you, and spells that decrease and affect enemies like poison, slow, and many others. You can talk to people in this game that give you advice on where to go but some are pretty useless like one guy you meet in another town says he will give you advice but just scams you of your 100 gold. The final boss for me was so easy because I leveled up my character all the way up to nearly level 70. When I watched the walktrough the guy highest level in the game was like level 57 compared to mine since I was grinding a certain enemy that gave me a lot of exp for me and I put so much time trying to level up which helped me out a lot in the game and made things easy for me. There are a few things that were annoying like when you fight an enemy and one is near they can come after you after the battle and fight you before you have a chance to fight them. Also when I was done with a certain section I died to a point that I needed a break from the game then came back and got through it. The game does glitch a bit but it rarely happens so it's not a big deal for me. It's nothing game breaking it just makes the graphics not show on battles. Not the best JRPG I played but was pretty worth playing after a while. It kind of reminds me of Breath of Fire 2 on SNES when I played it on the Nintendo 3DS since I finished it before and because of the visuals of the game. I give this game a 6 out of 10. If you want to try it out and play it, get it when it goes on sale. I got for less than 4 euro which is pretty worth it compared to the time I put into it. I hope this review makes you think twice about getting or not getting the game. Thanks for reading my review and I hope you have a good day.

A turn-based RPG that is not a clone of RPG Maker, and also a rare Taiwanese gem sold for Sega Genesis that managed to be pick up and sold legally on Steam.

I own it on Megadrive as well, the story is simple and the battle UI could have been better but honestly it's still one of the best and good looking RPG on this console.

This game has one serious issue that unfortunately ruins the experience completely for me.
There are just too many battles.
The enemies walk on the map but they aren't really avoidable as they move faster and target you.

In fact, the battles are so frequent that one loses orientation of the map because there are so many pointless battles.
Currently I'm in the Moon Temple where I'm supposed to walk around in a "labyrint" where the rooms looks very similar and turn six different switches in order to progress.
I'm just unable to get my orientation of the map, where I've already been etc because of the frequent battles.

it's nice to play a rpg from the snes era i never player or even knew about and combat looks like breath of fire. out side this the game didn't age well as combat happens to often, get tedious and has a bad ui. this game redrew or out right copied a lot of sprites from other games though it mainly seems to be breath of fire and tactics ogre. unless you're like me and get some nostalgia out of it or just like playing these old rpg's i would skip this. i really dont see modern gamers getting into this with so many better options out there.

p.s. if you do get this check out art section as i'm slowly uploading maps.

Pro. It feels like a homage, rather than a spiritual successor, to the SNES Breath of Fire games, and I love that.

Pro. The music is actually decent.

Con. Found a critical hardlock bug that's fairly easy to replicate, and cannot progress further. I was about to die in a random encounter, 8 life to spare, and decided to just close the game down. When I later opened it back up to play, I was back in this battle. I died, and instead of the game Game Overing me back to the last save point, it put me back in battle with 8 life, and I died again. Over and over. I cannot proceed forward, it keeps me in this unwinnable battle.

Con. The game shows numerous overworld monster sprites; however, the visual representation of the overworld sprite doesn't at all match the in-battle sprite...... In fact, the first part of the game has like two total in-battle enemies while the overworld shows a plethora of different types. Rushed development or cut corners?

Con. You're buying a rom with a bake in emulator, enough said.