The third game in the Last Bible series (a subseries of the Megami Tensei games), was developed by Multimedia Intelligence Transfer and published by Atlus – in Japan only – for the Super Famicom in 1995. It is a Role-Playing Game with random encounters and turn-based combat, and features the unique Megami Tensei trait of talking to monsters to try to recruit them, calling them into your party, and fusing them together to make more powerful monsters who will fight with you. This is a Japanese-only release that currently benefits from fan translations into both English and Spanish, which makes this excellent game playable to a good proportion of the Western world.

You control a young boy who embarks on a mission to explore a local dungeon with his friends Alon and Mochowa, but ends up embroiled in quest to fulfil a prophecy and save the world from evil (ie. the usual Tolkien-esque “Eucatastrophe” – look the word up if you don’t know what it means).

The first part of the game sees you participating in school trips to a nearby tower, where the kids learn spells by fighting their teacher in combat. As the story unfolds you’re introduced to more characters, a certain level of charming weirdness, and a looming threat involving your father.

After a relatively slow start you’re then thrown into combat in a game with a very high encounter rate, which can be good and bad, depending on your point of view (good because you can replace lost party monsters quickly, and you can also build up experience points (EXP) and money (Makka) faster too; bad because you’re constantly being interrupted over short distances).

Your combat options are: Fight, Talk, Run, Plan and Auto. “Fight” is manual control of each party member in combat; “Talk” initiates a conversation (anyone in your party – even the monsters – can try to negotiate with a chosen hostile); “Run” is a dice-roll exit from combat – fail and you lose the initiative; “Plan” allows you to change party monsters, re-order your party, and change each party member’s combat style (between always using physical attacks, player-issued commands, or “Whatever”, which allows the computer to decide for you), and “Auto” initiates automatic combat (which is very useful as it saves time manually issuing commands).

The ‘overworld’ exploration sections are viewed from overhead and scroll as you move around. Entering towns usually gives some respite from combat and provides plenty of NPCs to talk to; shops to peruse and purchase from; quests to fulfil; clues to pick-up, and small cut scenes to watch. Entering caves, monster strongholds and other hostile territory usually leads to a change in monsters, which can be dangerous if you walk into a place that you’re too low-levelled for. Levelling is relatively slow too, mostly because your initial battles only award you one or two experience points per victory, which throttles your progress, but at least prevents you from being wiped-out too easily (unless you’re not playing attention to your HP levels).

One new feature in Last Bible III – over previous instalments – is that you can now build the levels of your recruited monsters by earning EXP in combat, which wasn’t possible before. And you can also equip them with weapons and armour. While this was possible in Last Bible II, it’s been expanded and refined in this game. Conversations with monsters are also much more varied than in previous Last Bible games and are even laugh-out-loud on occasion. Defeated monsters also occasionally drop ‘Beastcards‘, which are collectible cards with information about enemies. I guess these are for those who like to “100%” a game and collect everything…

Fusing (ie. combining) monsters only becomes available when you’re around level ten and begin to climb Dragon Fang mountain. Here you first meet a wizard who offers to fuse them for you, then shortly afterwards you meet another wizard who teaches you the Combine spell – if you complete his task. The process of fusing is very simple: take two monsters in your party and combine them into a hopefully more powerful new one. Before you choose to initiate fusion you can see what the end result will be (and can cancel if you’re unsure about the final outcome). You can only have one of any particular monster in your party, so if your fusion will result in a monster you already have the game will tell you that and make you choose again.

The party menu system is thorough and is broken down into Items, Magic, Equip, Strategy, Status, and System. Most of these are self-explanatory. The “Strategy” option allows you to re-arrange your party or dismiss monsters back into the wild. The “System” option allows you to save the game and change the speed of the text display, among other things. One very good feature in System is being able to toggle the cursor ‘memory’ on of off (when it’s ON the cursor will remember your previous choices during combat so you can quickly click ‘confirm’ repeatedly if you want everyone to do the same action again), which I don’t think I’ve seen in another JRPG before – at least not the ability to switch it on and off.

The graphics in Last Bible III are detailed, attractive and colourful – arguably a work of pixel artistry – and the gameplay is absorbing and fun (if you like this type of game). The music, which I believe was composed by Hiroyuki Yanada, is excellent too (one piece reminded me of the classic Chozo Ruins theme from Metroid Prime, and another piece very much reminded me of the rock band Blur!), which helps to enhance the atmosphere as you’re playing.

Last Bible III has some very nice touches, like the combat icons that show what kind of move each party member is going to execute in combat, and also the icons disappear after a character has made their move, which shows you who is yet to go. The sound effects are also really good, in that they indicate whether an attack was successful or not. By watching the graphical icons and listening to the sound effects you can figure out exactly what is happening during combat, which is neat.

Overall, Last Bible III is a superb JRPG on the SNES and the English/Spanish fan translations finally help bring it out of obscurity and into the realm of the ‘cult classic’. The story is engaging; the dialogue is funny, and the combat timings are pretty much perfect. If you like Japanese RPGs and have never played this before then I highly recommend you check it out.

More: Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible III on Moby Games
More: Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible III on romhacking.net