Treasure of the Rudras

About Treasure of the Rudras

Treasure of the Rudras (1996) is Square's last self-developed Super Famicom RPG, a Japan-only game set in humanity's final 15 days, in which players invent their own spells by typing magic words.

Treasure of the Rudras in Depth

Every 4,000 years a Rudra appears with a new race, and the race before it is destroyed or driven to near extinction; the Danans, Merfolk, Reptiles and Giants have all come and gone, and fossilised Rudras survive as Lago Stones. With fifteen days left before humanity's turn, Sion, Surlent, Riza and Dune each come to hold a Jade found in the Lago Stones. The story is split into three scenarios, for the soldier Sion, the priestess Riza and the archaeologist Surlent, which can be played in any order and switched between, while the days ebb away in a fixed day-night cycle; actions in one can affect the others, so a relic left behind by one group may be found later by another. A fourth scenario brings in the thief Dune and all the heroes against the villains, including the evolutionary Gomorrah, the weapon Sodom on the Moon and the creator Mitra.

Exploration and turn-based battles follow the usual RPG pattern, but magic is unique. Players write spells of up to six katakana characters into a grimoire, called kotodama in Japanese. Most words do something, though most are useless; a full mantra combines a prefix, an elemental core and a suffix, with eight elements plus healing, and roots such as tou for lightning or aqu for water. Some unique words, many in English, skip the system entirely, and players can copy spells they see enemies cast.

Making Treasure of the Rudras

Square's Osaka division made the game over three years from 1993, led by director Kouji Ide, whose staff had worked on Final Fantasy Legend III and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Ide's team started with the magic system, basing it on Japan's love of word play. Field planner Masato Yagi, hired in 1994, was given free rein over the maps, and programmer Shingo Tanaka tried to make long battles stress-free. Keita Amemiya, advertised from the start, only officially joined a year and a half before the end, revising existing designs with his studio Crowd, and Ryuji Sasai composed the music.

It was released on 5 April 1996, within four months of Bahamut Lagoon, Super Mario RPG and Treasure Hunter G, among Square's last Super Famicom games. Famitsu gave it 31 out of 40 and a place in its Silver Hall of Fame, praising how easy the complex magic was to understand, and Consoles+ rated it 92%. Retrospectively, Retro Gamer called it a "hidden gem" and HobbyConsolas one of the best Super NES games, while Destructoid likened its shifting perspectives to Game of Thrones. It came to the Japanese Wii and Wii U Virtual Console before those services closed.