Square No Tom Sawyer is one of the most interesting role playing games I’ve ever played. As you can probably guess from the title it was developed by Squaresoft, is based on the classic American novel the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and was released only in Japan. That’s a pretty interesting list of facts, but the weirdest yet is that it’s a traditional turn based role playing game in the style of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. It’s a very unlikely package and is infamous for being racially insensitive and an all around bad game. Being such a fan of the genre there was no way I could pass it up so I sat down with a copy of Square’s Tom Sawyer and a handy translation guide and jumped right in. In this case the critics were mostly right. It’s easy to see why it was never translated.
As I’ve already said this game is loosely based off the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. You play as Tom and his party of friends in 1855 in Missouri. The kids (and Jim) are journeying South to piece together pieces of a map leading to pirate’s treasure, but along the way they get caught up in various sub-plots involving a colorful cast of characters. Some of these will be familiar to those who have read the book, and some are brand new scenarios. I don’t like to get political in my reviews, but it must be said that it’s not tough to see why many deem this game insensitive. The graphic designers either didn’t know better (this was developed by Japanese programmers after all) or completely threw all political correctness out of the window. Jim’s design is abhorrent with exaggerated features that hit every mark on the hateful stereotype list. It’s really as bad as everyone says it is.
 |
| A pretty game this sure is not. |
That criticism aside Square’s Tom Sawyer is a pretty typical role playing game. You wander around town areas (which are generally safe with only one exception) gathering clues, collecting items, and recruiting party members. After speaking to everyone and completing all plot related tasks you must wander outside of town and into dungeons where you can encounter enemies at random. Battles take place on the traditional behind the shoulder view of your characters with enemies in front as you take turns inputting commands including attacking, special moves, using items, etc. It’s very all very standard. The major difference between Tom Sawyer and the likes of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest is that there’s no world map. You have a slanted side view when outside of battle, and the environments are generally small and linear. Once you get the canoe the world opens up a bit, but it’s still pretty easy to navigate as long as you pay attention.
There’s some good here, but most of it is bad. You have a pretty comprehensive list of characters to assemble your party with and can switch between them with ease. Eleven characters in total join, but you can only use four in your party at once. You’re always stuck with Tom (he’s the strongest and can carry the most items so it’s not exactly a raw deal). Several of the others outlive their usefulness pretty early on such as Jim, Billy and Johnny whose max stats pale in comparison to the others. Speaking of stats there’s no traditional level system here. It’s a little more cryptic than that; you get in battles and then become stronger after resting. I didn’t really understand it but it’s simple enough that you don’t really need to. I imagine this was done for the younger players. In addition there’s no equipment here either. You have almost no customization and you almost wonder why the developers chose this genre for the game when they decided to keep everything so locked in.
 |
| You’ll really need a fan translation for this one. There’s a great guide available online. |
The battle system is very traditional. You take turns exchanging blows with the enemies, and the battle is over either when your team is out of hit points or all of the on-screen foes are defeated. Each character has the same basic attack, can use the same items, but they all have a special skill that’s all their own. These are generally defense in nature such as running from the encounter, scaring an enemy away, or forcing the enemies to target the character in question. I found these mostly useless and rarely paid them much mind; I couldn’t even figure out what a few of them do at all. Square’s Tom Sawyer is generally a pretty easy role playing game as long as you do a small amount of grinding and make sure not to jump to areas you aren’t yet supposed to. There’s almost no warning when you enter an area with enemies too strong for you until a battle starts and you’re wiped out. It can be pretty infuriating to be honest especially when you haven’t saved your progress in a while. All the boss encounters here are really easy which makes the game mundane.
Tom Sawyer’s one and only RPG outing is not a pretty one. The environments are very drab looking and lack detail with the most generic looking buildings, character designs, enemies etc. The only thing that can be said in its defense is that this game makes use of some rather large sprites and back at the time of release this was a positive point. Nobody cares anymore unfortunately. It’s not a particularly colorful game with some very dull colorization. The only scene I thought was impressive at all was on the canoe on the lake; the use of scrolling is very smooth and quite nice looking considering the hardware for which it was released. Nobuo Uematsu did the soundtrack here. You’d expect that to mean the game is full of amazing compositions but that’s not the case. This may be his weakest project ever. The music fits the Tom Sawyer motif but it’s all very boring, seems to repeat itself in short loops, and is very simple. I really don’t care for the soundtrack much at all to be honest.
As a huge fan of RPGs (especially retro releases) I simply can’t recommend Square’s Tom Sawyer. The game is too restrictive, the battle system is too generic, the story is a real snooze-fest, and the graphics/music are pretty bad. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that this game is downright offensive in its portrayal of poor Jim. Regardless of whether or not the developers knew what they were doing it’s still comically bad and in very poor taste. Square No Tom Sawyer is just boring, and it’s no big loss that this one was never published in North America and that we haven’t had a fan step up for the job yet. This is a blemish on the Squaresoft of old’s legendary record.
