Finding treasure is always so rewarding, especially when you have to work a bit to get it. If it is just handed to you, then it really isn't as fun as when you have to reach out and grab it. Of course, when speaking of mimics I suppose there is a considerable chance they will reach out and grab you well before you've made sense of the situation.

This week we feature Seiken Densetsu 3, the game that would have been known as Secret of Mana 2 if SquareSoft localized it outside of Japan. Secret of Mana was already one of my favorite games in my SNES library, so when this sequel never came stateside I was rather disappointed. It was one of the most gorgeous looking games I had seen at the time and it became a bit of an obsession to own it. When I finally saved up enough to buy a new copy, I was ecstatic as it opened up new doors for me like system modding and importing. To this day, Seiken 3 still holds up to the test of time as a well built title with a gameplay element I never seem to tire of: branching character classes.

In Seiken 3, you are given the option to choose your alignment for each of your 3 out of 6 available characters. At level 18 you can choose to go down a light or dark path and again at level 38, a light aligned character can go light-light or light dark whereas a dark aligned character can go dark-dark or dark-light. This ultimately adds up to 24 total end classes, each with their own skill sets and special charge attacks. In addition to the variety in party composition offered, there were also 3 separate end bosses and final dungeons based on your primary hero which made it really enticing and fun to replay several times.

The game also holds a special meaning to both Pie and me as it laid the foundation for us meeting. We both adored this game so much, that it ended up drawing our interest into Ragnarok Online, the game we met through. RO was a game that very much felt like Secret of Mana Online, if there were such a thing, with similar fantasy setting, beautiful sprite work and of course branching character classes. We were both such huge Seiken 3 fans in fact that Pie had named her main character in RO after one of the heroines, Riesz, and I chose to play a dual dagger wielding assassin, similar to Hawkeye.

On a side note, we got word back about Penny Arcade's Strip Search earlier this week. Sadly, we did not make it into the final round to go to Seattle and be on the actual show. It's disheartening because I was really looking forward to the opportunity for a great adventure, but we were turned down for unknown reasons. I thought it would have been a blast to get to know Mike and Jerry on a personal level, to joke around, create and game together, but I know there is no shortage of people who would love to do that, so I suppose I'm not unique in that aspect.

I'm not sure who the winners are, but I am really looking forward to seeing the trials we would have been put through if we had made it. I know the winners haven't been coming forward because I think PA has a NDA up until they finalize some things and make a proper announcement. I believe Ronnie Filyaw is in it though, which would be cool since I think Whomp! is rather awesome; you should check his stuff out!

Hopefully one day we will cross paths with the PA crew and we can get to know each other and maybe Pie and I can get to the point where they would consider us friends, similar to Scott Kurtz. For now, we will just keep working on trying to be our best and honing ourselves to be the best creators we can be.