For right now, I'm going to examine the three Game Boy games, starting with the first one, which was originally titled "Makai Toushi Sa·Ga (魔界塔士 Sa・Ga, Warrior in the Tower of the Spirit World ~ Sa·Ga)" according to Wikipedia, but was released over here as The Final Fantasy Legend because the publisher wanted to make more money and Final Fantasy was a well known name already (brand recognition makes the world go round). So to explain the mechanics a bit:
For some categorical commentary:
FFL one's concepts for human and mutant character growth is something I haven't seen reflected on the more traditional side of pen and paper RPG, and could be very mechanically interesting concepts. Buying up your favorite murderation stats like humans can make for situations where players may have to chose between being able to hit .000001% harder or buying some shiny new rims for their epic steed, as well as actual important decisions, as can the fixed number of uses on weapons before they break, all of which will contribute to making them more greedy than players normally are, if that is at all possible. The organic growth of the mutant, on the other hand, could make for a truly unique system of advancement for any potentially new RPG, and can lead to player characters taking a more proactive role in your campaign since their stat growth would be tied to them taking action, though this may not always be a good thing.
Video Game RPGs
A good number of mechanics from FFL one are actually fairly rare outside of the SaGa series, and, therefore, are a gold mine for people looking to "creatively borrow" ideas; though you will want to apply a lot of polish and maybe a good spit shine. As noted above, in the more analog style game section, both human and mutant growth ideas are truly interesting ways of doing things outside of the normal leveling structure and encourage players to consider different factors than they usually do. Also, while having every weapon in the game have a limited number of uses before it breaks can be annoying, having some special extra shiny weapons only have a limited number of uses can make for interesting items, if your player base can ever be convinced that they will not need an African nation's worth of AK-47s to fight the final boss.
Monster style character growth is another mechanic that can use a lot of polish and improvement (and did get a bit of it latter in the series (SaGa Frontier)), but has the potential to be made to work reasonably well. Conversely, it also has the potential to be tedious, highly luck dependent, and ruin a game, or at least make one character option undesirable, if not crafted correctly.
MMORPGs
To repeat the above again in shorter terms, human and mutant character growth ideas are interesting and exploration of such might be of merit, hypothetically speaking; though if you were to adopt one, I'd recommend doing it across the board because balancing different styles of growth for an MMORPG could be problematic. One other thing of note for modern MMORPGs is that this old Game Boy RPG stat system of Str., Agi., Def., and Mana, is more elegant and direct than any MMORPG stat system that has ever existed.
The second game in the series, originally titled "Sa・Ga2: Hihō Densetsu (Sa・Ga2 秘宝伝説 Sa・Ga2 ~ The Treasure Legend)" (Wikipedia comes in handy again), but was released over here as Final Fantasy Legend two for pretty much the same reasons as before. As for game play:
Since I'd be mostly repeating myself as both games are fairly similar, I'll just focus on robots this time around:
The last game for this series, and for this article is Space Invaders Final Fantasy Legend three, or (again, copied from Wikipedia) "Jikū no Hasha ~ Sa・Ga 3 [Kanketsu Hen] (時空の覇者 Sa・Ga3 [完結編] The Ruler of Time and Space ~ SaGa3 [Final Chapter])" which is the final game in this series to appear on the Game Boy, or any portable system for that matter. (Lead in statement for the mechanics explanation graphic goes here(make up your own one this time; there's been too many damned ":" in this article already, and this graphic is just full of the double dot bastards)):
This game does something rare for this series; it refines a past idea and puts a new spin on it. There's a couple of things for every category here so:
Since I'd be mostly repeating myself as both games are fairly similar, I'll just focus on robots this time around:
Table Top RPGs
Gear in table top games is often seen as a part of advancement to a degree, but having character growth exclusively tied to equipment for certain characters, while somewhat hard to balance with the more ordinary ways of doing things, can make for a very unique type of character in your games and gives the fluff person an element where they have to be particularly imaginative with how this is justified in the universe, which I see as generally a good side effect if it's done right.
Video Game RPGs
The idea of scaling exclusively with gear is not unique to robots in FFL three, but the games that use such a mechanic are generally not RPGs either. Letting a class turn limited equipment into a recharging ability the way that robots do could make for an interesting special ability that actually gets your players to like those random limited use items as much as they do actual gear upgrades, and the dynamic of limited slots where you can freely balance the character's offense and defense based on what they put in them is interesting as well.
MMORPGs
Oddly enough, most MMORPG characters at max level are effectively robots in the sense that their only way of progressing is exclusively gear upgrades, though, unfortunately, no max level MMO character can wear 7 helmets. Again, the converting limited use items into recharging abilities makes for an interesting style of character.
This game does something rare for this series; it refines a past idea and puts a new spin on it. There's a couple of things for every category here so:
Table Top RPGs
Making spells into a pseudo item drop akin to magic swords can make rewards for encounters more desirable to the finger banging style of player; especially in a system where spell casting is more universal which makes it so most of the party is interested in what materialized knowledge can be looted from a defeated foe. While dynamically being able to change the type of growth characters use would be a monumental task for an RPG designer, as a one way change after death to go from, say, level based growth to pure equipment based growth thanks to a resurrection that turns the character into a literal walking death machine could be a good way of letting the rules help with the flavor of said unique concepts, as well as giving players a second life for when they inevitably screw up and kill themselves.
Video Game RPGs
Since balance is less of an issue in video games, the dynamic switching between different styles of growth systems per individual character can be an interesting way of letting players have the exact characters they want in their party without having to give them enough reserve characters to conquer all of central america with, of which only three or four can fight at a time with no justifiable explanation as to why. Though it's done by a lot of video games, I still wish to state that making multiple world maps that obsolete themselves after a while is a good way of cutting out earlier game content that could clutter a map and annoy the players.
MMORPGs
End game MMORPGs tend to already go from one system of character growth (leveling) to another (gear exclusive), but mixing up this dynamic might actually make a game more interesting and creative; which are both things current MMORPGs need if they want to compete with WOW. For example, imagine if you kept gathering better gear until you got your final pieces, and then started endgame dungeons and raiding where you would get EXP from defeating boss encounters that would level you up into a more and more bad ass looking character or if you ate the meat of your defeated enemies in order to gain their powers and better stats until you could raid with your friends for equipment that would enhance your stats and change your appearance (also known as phat lootz in technical terminological terms). This gets even more interesting if you take three growth systems and divide it between different aspects of your game, and maybe even make it so each type of growth isn't usable in aspects of the game where it doesn't come from, so as to separate the benefits you have gained from PVP and endgame dungeons and raids and make it so you don't have to balance those two aspects of your game with each other.
The Final Fantasy Legend era of SaGa games is in it's own way a distinct sub series within the whole SaGa series. Though later games did revive some ideas, most notably SaGa Frontier, none of the later games in the series are quite like the original Game Boy series, for good and ill.
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