Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven

Another remake of the Super Famicom RPG, which in turn had a mobile port/remake several years back, Romancing SaGa 2 gives it a major visual upgrade with 3D-rendered characters, animations and voiceover for all major characters in the story.  Per SaGa standards, it also plays with RPG mechanics in some clever ways; the series' trademark LP system returns once again, though unlike previous games, there is no way to recover it - once a character's LP drops to 0, they're gone for good.  In the case of the protagonist, this also ties in to the Succession mechanic - once they die or retire after a set period of time (and events completed), they choose a successor to inherit all of the skills and levels they have earned over their lifetime, which in turn get passed down to another character later on, gradually allowing the player to overcome progressively stronger challenges they wouldn't have been able to in earlier generations.  Skill levels replace the earlier entries' pure randomness, allowing the player greater chance to unlock ("glimmer") new skills as their level increases.  HP and BP likewise have levels and grant guaranteed gains once they fight in enough battles.  RS2 also incorporates some elements of a grand strategy game like Civ or Heroes of Might and Magic; conquering territory (by defeating enemies and completing quests) affects your revenue after each battle; and yes, it can fall into the negatives.  Revenue of course is spent to upgrade your characters' equipment, but can also be used to upgrade your castle town, adding new amenities like a smithy to buy newer gear or an Incantations lab to shuffle learned spells or synthesize new ones; these are not completed right away as soon as you invest in them, but require a certain amount of time to pass before they become available.  Per series standards it's a very open-ended experience; exploring every nook and cranny to find useful gear, money and potential leads for more quests is a key part of the experience.  The end result is a game with a lot of small-scale battles and dungeon crawling, with an emphasis on steadily upgrading your team over a long period of time to overcome difficult bosses and conquer more territory; essentially an odd combination of Japanese RPG gameplay and grand strategy design tropes with the curious absence of any large-scale war battles.  I'm not convinced its a fully successful experiment, but that's just the nature of SaGa - culling elements from western RPGs to make something that, for good or ill, is quite unique.  I can't even really give it a hard recommendation for that reason - if what I've described sounds interesting to you, give it a try.  If not, well, there's plenty of other SaGa games to try out, which all have their own unique blend of odd, disparate elements that may or may not come together in the end.

Developer: Square Enix, Xeen
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: 2024
Platforms: PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, Playstation 5

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song

 A remake of the original Romancing SaGa and the first in the trilogy to be released in the west after Square opted not to localize any of the Super Famicom titles, Minstrel Song was met with a mostly lukewarm reception; probably not aided by the fact it was released two years after the infamous Unlimited Saga.  But does it manage to prove a more player-friendly and engaging experience overall, or does it effectively alienate much of its intended fanbase just as Unlimited Saga did?

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (localized simply as "Romancing SaGa"; I'll be referring to it by its subtitle to save confusion with the original Super Famicom game) was released to almost no fanfare that I can remember in 2005; what few fans SaGa had built up in its earlier years had largely departed with Unlimited Saga's hostile reception, and as a result this one sold even worse - a scant 60,000 copies in North America, which is staggeringly low for a Square Enix game. (For comparison, Unlimited Saga sold about 100,000 units).  However, I was never quite sure whether this was because it was just bad, or because Unlimited Saga had simply tarnished the franchise's reputation so badly that nobody bought it as a result.

Having played it since, though, I can say that it's definitely a case of the latter.  Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is a significantly more polished and playable game than Unlimited in most every respect, and even seemingly goes out of its way to address a lot of the criticisms its predecessor faced.  One prominent example of this is that every town in the game (and yes, they're explorable towns again; not just menus) has a character who explains most of the game's mechanics to you in detail, as well as providing a map so you can easily find all the shops, inns, trainers and so forth in that area.  During combat you'll also get brief bits of narration that explain particular mechanics to you - sparking techniques, getting a combo attack between two or more characters, or several new mechanics introduced here.  These include a Reverse (a somewhat misleading name; it simply indicates a character gets two attacks in a single turn with a weapon they have high proficiency in), a Surge (an unavoidable attack) or a Fulcrum (in which certain techs can combo more than once during a single turn).

Of course, even with these improvements, the core SaGa experience is still here.  Minstrel Song, like most SaGa games, relies on random chance for many things - learning new combat techniques, stat gains, quests and characters encountered - and definitely shows off its western influences, with the player afforded near-total freedom in customizing their party, recruiting or dismissing comrades, and able to explore much of the world at their leisure without restriction.  You're also given a choice of eight different protagonists to follow, though aside from a brief opening quest for each, they all more or less follow the same overarching story.  However, following this story also bucks most JRPG norms - indeed, you're not really even clued in that there is an overarching plot until you've visited several pubs across the world and followed various (semi-randomized) quest leads you're given by NPCs there.  An even-present character known as the Minstrel also appears here, serving as a strange combination of a music test, dismissing allies from your party at your request, and filling in the game's lore through various songs and stories.  He does also join your party on occasion when asked, though he will depart again the next time you visit a pub.

Unlike many SaGa games, though, character growth here is not entirely freeform.  It utilizes a skill and class system, though in a somewhat unconventional way.  For much of the early game, one learns assortments of skills by purchasing them in packages with Gems; for example, the Blacksmith package gives a character Club, Pyrology (fire magic) and Gathering skills, while the Rogue package gives Foil, Short Sword, Scimitar, Bow, Strategy, Covert and Trading.  Later on, one also earns the ability to buy skills separately, though they still get exponentially more expensive with each level so picking only a few to focus on is generally a good strategy.  Weapon skills tend to see the most use, giving a player a higher chance of sparking techniques in battle for that weapon, as well as reducing (or eliminating) wear on weapons for utilizing said skills.  Classes are unlocked once prerequisite skills reach a set level, and serve as equippable bonuses, usually giving resistance to certain elements or status effects (and not restricting the player in which skills and proficiencies they can use at any given time).  Skills also in turn govern Proficiencies, which grant the player abilities they can utilize in dungeons or field areas.  For example, the Gather skill allows them to use the Mine, Harvest and Excavate abilities to find items at certain points in the field, Survival allows them to learn Climbing to scale certain walls or Jump over pits, and Search allows them to find hidden treasure chests, ore, herbs, and other things.  Gems are earned by defeating enemies, but also using skills successfully in the field, which can be abused with some skills (Lurk and Move Silently in particular).  Some particular items or obstacles require a particular level of a Skill to overcome, though, and you are only afforded a finite number of Proficiency uses per skill level, so continuing to level them up is mandatory if you want to discover many of the game's most lucrative secrets.

As in many western RPGs, crafting and customizing weapons is also integrated into Minstrel Song.  Collecting herbs lets you create medicine at greatly reduced cost at an apothecary (a good thing, as most items in the game are quite expensive), and many weapons can be similarly tempered at blacksmiths, improving their stats in a number of ways.  Interestingly, one can also tweak a weapon's "attack mode" at a blacksmith; one can swap a weapon between Attack, Defense or Trick mode, which has a rock-paper-scissors effect against weapons of the other two types.  Defense beats Attack, Attack overcomes Trick, and Trick overcomes Defense.  Strangely one can also put a weapon in two of these modes at once, presumably giving them less damage overall but also less weakness.  (This also seems to be a rather moot point for the most part, as most enemies one encounters are monsters who don't even utilize traditional weapons).

Minstrel Song's presentation is also a stark contrast to the minimalistic one seen in Unlimited.  The game still utilizes a colorful watercolor fantasy style, though now all characters, towns and enemies are rendered and animated in full 3D; some of the towns and castles rendered this way look utterly fantastic, though many of the dungeons one encounters are very drab-looking in comparison.  Characters are modeled in an odd middle ground between SNES-styled chibi sprites and realistically-rendered characters like the later Final Fantasies, though I ultimately found this style unique and rather charming.  Unusually for the time, almost every line of dialog in the game is voice-acted, though the quality varies wildly; most of the main cast is fine, though many of the minor characters and town NPCs tend to overact and can be very irritating to listen to.  Kenji Ito once again provides the soundtrack here, and as per SaGa standards, it's excellent - every track in the game perfectly fits it setting, the combat themes are upbeat and epic, and it opens with a very cool animated sequence starring the Minstrel that introduces the game in a pretty stylish and clever way.

The game does still fall prey to some of the series' usual frustrating trappings, though.  Difficulty in some quests can be drastically harder than others; while most enemy groups you encounter do scale to your party's current power level, bosses generally have very high fixed stats, and you can frequently complete most of a dungeon and then get stomped at the end.  In some cases the game will show you a degree of mercy here and let you restart just before where you challenged them, but in others, you can have key items taken away (requiring you to reclaim them later) or just get a game over and have to reload.  The latter can be especially frustrating since you can only make a hard save at inns in towns.  The game does have a quicksave option, though as in many games of this type, it forces you to stop playing then and there and will immediately delete upon being loaded, so it's more for when real life calls and you don't want to lose progress.  You do have to take certain characters into your party, as well as undertake particular quests, to unlock many areas, which can mean booting a party member temporarily to accommodate them (and hoping you encounter them again later in another bar, which is a completely random occurrence).  Combat does also start to drag after a point, with most enemies stubbornly refusing to die unless you hit them hard and fast - mastering Combos and bolstering your spells and weapon skills to get Reverses, Surges and Fulcrums become an essential part of survival before long.

So, does Romancing SaGa prove to be a better game than Unlimited?  Undeniably.  It's a strange blend of western and eastern RPG sensibilities for sure, but it actually works out for the better here.  The gameplay manages to be largely intuitive and fun rather than opaque and irritating even with its frequent combat, and it's certainly not wanting for content with its vast world, eight playable characters and over 50 quests to experience in all (though it's not possible to see them all in a single playthrough, and choices made in some playthroughs will affect events in others, which also adds substantial replay value).  It takes a bit of time to get used to, but once you do, you'll find an interesting game with quite a lot to offer.  Whether you passed it up the first time due to Unlimited Saga leaving a bitter taste or just not knowing of its existence, I urge you to give this one a chance, because it's a pretty solid game.

(I'm also informed that despite being billed as a remake of the Super Famicom Romancing SaGa, this is a very different experience in almost every way, with only the major story beats remaining unchanged.  I haven't yet played that version to confirm this, however.)

Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Playstation 2, Playstation 3
Released: 2005, 2014
Recommended Version:  While the game did get a rerelease as part of the Playstation 2 Classics line, this version was only released in Japan.  If you want to play the game in English, the PS2 version is your only option.

SaGa 3: Jikuu no Hasha - Shadow or Light

The second Racjin remake of the early SaGa titles was also a notable one for overhauling the original in a number of ways, reintroducing a lot of SaGa's trademark elements that were mostly left out of the initial release.  But does making it into more of a traditional SaGa work in the third game's favor, or does this simply end up losing the element that made it distinct?

The SaGa games on the Game Boy (localized as "Final Fantasy Legend" despite being from an unrelated series) were ultimately not the most well-received of Square's library, but they nevertheless proved to be quite successful financially.  The original was Square's first game to sell over a million copies worldwide (being released in close proximity to the Game Boy's launch), while the second was a more polished experience that introduced a few new elements but kept the quirky setting and gameplay of the original mostly intact.  The third game, on the other hand, was not developed by Akitoshi Kawazu (who was busy working on Romancing SaGa for the Super Famicom), and so it was handed off to Square Enix's Osaka studio instead, who opted to make a more traditional RPG in most respects. As a result SaGa 3 utilizes more linear progression, experience points and levels, non-decaying weapons and a more traditional magic system.  It still garnered some fans, but ultimately was overshadowed by the first two games and ended up being the last SaGa localized until the Playstation 1 era rolled around.

But years later, after Racjin's remake of the second game proved to be a successful one, Square decided to commission them again to create a remake of SaGa III on the DS as well.  This time, however, the game would be overseen by Kawazu, and perhaps as a result of that, it re-incorporated many of the series' iconic elements.  The experience point system was ditched in favor of semi-random stat gains, weapons and spellbooks now decay with use, and skills are now semi-randomly "sparked" during battle, with a much higher chance of learning them during challenging fights (particularly bosses).  Transforming into beasts and monsters via meat also retains something of a random element too, gaining and losing traits (which can be good or bad) and skills they have at the whim of the RNG.

That idea may bring dread to fans who got used to the later, less randomness-based SaGa titles, but they did add some new twists to each of these elements to keep them from getting too irritating.  One notable change is that stat gains are actually applied mid-battle (not afterward), which can potentially help to turn things around for a fight you're struggling in.  They are given out with a bit more logic, too - utilizing weapons that utilize a particular stat (Strength for swords and hammers, Agility for bows and rapiers, etc) will give it a higher chance to be raised, and fighting tougher enemies will give greater odds for HP boosts - a significant improvement over the original games where they were largely random.  Skills make some more sense - spending more charges on a weapon, usually in exchange for greater damage and extra effects (debuffing enemies, for instance).  One can also repair weapons and spellbooks to restore used charges, which isn't cheap, but can spare the player from constantly having to replace them.

One of SaGa III's defining elements remains largely intact, though.  Each of the four playable characters begins as either a Human or Esper (Mutant in the localized FFL3), though by eating meat or installing parts from certain enemies, they can change form.  One part turns them into a cyborg, two turns them into a robot.  Eating one piece of meat will turn them into a beast, and another into a monster, while doing the opposite will roll the process back one step toward their base form.  Strangely, though, Espers can become Human and vice versa via this process now too, so characters are now fully malleable.  They can also retain traits from transformations, keeping some skills, elemental strengths or weaknesses, resistance to status effects, and so forth, all semi-random depending on the enemy types they take meats/parts from.

Another strange change is that each form has their own particular weapon proficiencies, and they will only power up if they're used by that particular form; Cyborgs, for example, wield heavy axes and hammers, humans use swords and katanas, and Espers wield bows and rapiers (in addition to all magic types).  Other races can still use weapons they're not proficient with (and will retain any skills they learned whilst in the form that utilizes them), but they will not gain proficiency with them.  So, unlike the original game where form changes were mostly done out of convenience - to gain a particular resistance or skill for a boss fight, generally - here it's a more integrated part of the game, encouraging the player to shuffle characters between all of the various options to fully customize and empower their party.

Some changes from later SaGas (and the remake of 2) return as well.  Encounters are still visible rather than random, and touching an enemy who is nearby another one can cause a "chain encounter", basically forcing you to fight multiple battles in a row, though you also reap greater benefits from doing so, having a higher chance to spark new techniques or gain stats.  Attack animations can be skipped via the Fast Forward feature, which helps to speed up combat in general.  After a certain point, a new mechanic also becomes unlocked; namely the Time Gear mechanic.  Basically, you fill up a gauge on the screen by taking actions in battle, and once at least one of the five pips is full, you can spend it at any time to create a time-duplicate of another character who repeats their last action at the end of that turn.  This can prove handy at times, letting you sneak in a heal before the next round begins, or to tie into another prominent mechanic - combos.  As in SaGa Frontier and later games, certain moves will combo with one another if each characters' turns are adjacent on the time bar, dealing extra damage and potentially doing a powerful finishing move if certain sequences of moves are completed.  Enemies can do combos too, however, so keeping the party's speed on point quickly becomes key to surviving in the late stages.

The remake also adds quite a bit of new content to really set it apart from its Game Boy predecessor.  In addition to the usual Square remake mainstay of a monster compendium (handy for finding particular skills or resistances you may want on your own characters), a number of sidequests now exist in the game.  These usually entail hunting down a particular monster at a specific location, granting extra money or items for completing them.  One can also find passwords (which let you claim free items, and can be sent to friends so they can claim them too).

I can certainly say I was pleasantly surprised by SaGa III's remake.  I was a bit worried when I heard it would re-implement a lot of the series' trademark randomness, fearing it would turn into an irritating grindfest with frustrating combat as the original games often were.  Thankfully, though, that isn't really the case - while you still have to grind quite a bit to get the most out of your characters, it's made more interesting by the reworked class system, and the improvements to combat and the user-friendliness in general helps to offset the frustration factor associated with the usual SaGa tropes of awkward balance and near-constant status effect spamming.  The updated presentation is honestly quite nice too - I like the updated character designs quite a bit, and the redone music sounds excellent, bringing an epic and energetic feel to the original tracks.  It's still very much a frustrating old SaGa game, but it is at least an interesting new take on the original version.

• Developer: Racjin
• Publisher: Square Enix
• Platform: Nintendo DS
• Released: 2010
• Recommended Version: N/A

SaGa Frontier 2

SaGa Frontier 2 is noted for being a vastly different game from its predecessor in almost every way, changing up its aesthetic, its gameplay and even many of the fundamental elements of its design.  But does it prove to be a worthwhile adventure regardless, or is it just too much of a changeup for even fans of the highly experimental SaGa franchise?

The SaGa series has never been a hugely popular one outside of Japan, but it has nevertheless found a niche fanbase, with its fans praising its experimental nature and open-ended design that draws influence from western RPGs.  Indeed, most games released under the name were almost entirely open-ended, having the player build a party, train them up and explore the world and all it has to offer at their leisure, only stumbling upon the main plotline after much wandering.

2000's SaGa Frontier II, on the other hand, was almost a complete 180 from that school of design.  Instead of being allowed to freely explore the world, its gameplay was almost entirely linear, having the player pick scenarios from a simple map menu that highlight points along a linear timeline, spanning its protagonists' entire lives.  Some are simple, non-interactive story segments, while the rest would stick the player in a small geographic area and having them advance through it, only being allowed to save their progress after completing it (though they can create a temporary "quicksave" in the interim).  The overarching plot follows two distinct storylines; the tale of Gustave XIII, a prince exiled from his country for lacking Anima (magic, essentially), and the other Wil Knights, a "Digger" (treasure hunter) in search of a legendary artifact. These two plots take place in the same world, with events in one story affecting the other, though the two characters never directly interact until close to the end of the game.

On the other hand, this does afford the game a degree of character depth that few other titles in the series offer.  Gustave is easily one of the most complex protagonists in the series, having low self esteem as a result of his upbringing and generally being manipulated by those around him as a result, even being dragged into a war with the country of his birth that he's reluctant to fight himself.  Wil, on the other hand, comes from a long line of treasure hunters and deals with rivalries and family drama throughout his story.

SaGa Frontier 2 is also a stark contrast from its predecessor in presentation.  Whereas that game was set in a bizarre world of fantasy creatures and science fiction elements, with CGI graphics and quite a lot of synthy electronic tunes, 2 opts for a strictly medieval setting and a "hand-crafted" style.  Sprites are hand-drawn and cartoonishly exaggerated, backdrops are finely-detailed watercolor paintings and the music is much more mellow and instrumental in sound, with a lot of piano tracks throughout.  It's easy to mistake it for an entirely different franchise at a glance, and it easily could have been if not for the handful of game mechanics tying it to the SaGa brand.

Case in point, combat in SaGa Frontier 2 remains perhaps its only largely consistent element.  You get a party of up to four characters and battle enemies when you make contact with them on the map, taking them on in a turn-based system.  The controversial weapon durability system returns from the earliest game in the series (though steel weapons have unlimited durability), and attacks are powered by either SP (for magical attacks) or WP (for special moves performed with weapons).  Skills are still randomly learned through battle, with odds for gaining them becoming better as you battle stronger enemies than yourself, and stat gains are also randomly awarded after battle.

A few change-ups are introduced, however.  One prominent one is that winning a battle doesn't restore all of your HP; just a portion of it.  Perhaps as a result of this, any character can now restore HP even if they don't have access to skills or items for that - they can instead spend one of their LP at the top of a turn to fully recharge their HP.  You also don't necessarily have to defeat every enemy to win.   Sometimes defeating enough will end the fight in a surrender, or you can attempt to negotiate a truce, chasing enemies from the field or, if you're outmatched, pleading for mercy can sometimes cause them to spare you.  Certain skills can increase the odds of such negotiations being successful, though I didn't end up using this feature a whole lot during the time I played.

As the game centers on a battle for the right of succession, I suspected that the game would incorporate some Suikoden-like elements, and I was actually correct in that regard.  Somewhat similar to Suikoden, there are three types of combat - the aforementioned SaGa style battles, one-on-one duels, and large-scale war battles, though they don't bear too much resemblance to that game's counterparts.  Duels are a somewhat strange beast, operating largely similar to the standard combat system save that you pick 3-4 moves per turn and watch them play out before choosing again.  Some attack moves can be chained together for extra damage, while other commands exclusive to this mode can do things like enhance the power of your next attack, give you a greater chance to block an enemy's attack, or increase the chance of hitting with your next move.  Its design is a bit overcomplicated, though - I won almost every one of these by simply choosing to Charge, then picking my strongest attack to deal extra damage with it.  Do that for two or three turns, maybe throw in a Parry or two, and most enemies will have their HP depleted long before you ever do.

Larger-scale war battles are also here, and they play out a bit similarly to the war battles from Suikoden III.  Each side gets a number of units that move across a grid, and when one side's moves into the same space as the other's, a clash occurs, playing out like a single round of the standard combat system.  The side that sustains more damage during this is declared the loser and driven back to the place they last moved from.  Interestingly, though each unit can only have four active characters at a time, fallen ones will be replenished from a supply of reinforcements at the top of each turn, one at a time.  Therefore, if a unit loses a character or two during a clash, it's often a good idea to have them retreat for a turn or two so they can regroup and join the fray again later.

SaGa Frontier 2 is arguably the oddest game in the series, doing away with almost everything that drew people to the franchise (and particularly its predecessor) in the first place.  The series trademarks of open-ended design, a surreal science-fantasy setting and even open-ended character customization are largely discarded in favor of a linear fantasy tale that puts heavy focus on interpersonal drama.  In fact, if it weren't confirmably written and directed by series mastermind Akitoshi Kawazu, I'd swear the franchise had been co-opted by an entirely different team of developers for this entry.  But in a way, it also encompasses what SaGa has always been about - an experimental series that takes unconventional ideas and inspiration from western RPGs and tries to make an interesting experience out of it.  The game certainly succeeds on that front, telling a complex and personal tale of two very different protagonists embarking on their own journeys, then coming together at the end to save the world.  But in a time period when RPGs were beginning to become more open and strive for a realistic sense of scale, making you feel that you were exploring and interacting with a huge living world, SaGa Frontier 2 certainly stood out like a sore thumb for its restricted design.

Developer: Square Product Development Division 2
Publisher: Square, Square Electronic Arts
Platform: Playstation 1
Released: 2000
Recommended Version: N/A

SaGa: Scarlet Grace Ambitions

The SaGa series all but vanished in the west for over a decade after the critical flop that was Unlimited Saga.  Scarlet Grace, released fourteen years later, was the first to see a release outside of Japan since then, but would it prove to be a successful return, or just another disastrous entry for an already niche franchise?

It's no secret to anyone with a fondness for Playstation 2 RPGs that Unlimited Saga was not a well-received game; owing to its complex and poorly explained mechanics,  a rushed development that resulted in steep leaps in difficulty and a threadbare presentation with the barest minimum of animation, it's a game that few ever bothered to learn to play, let alone had the patience to complete.  Perhaps as a result, a localized remake of Romancing SaGa a few years afterward got little attention and sold poorly, and subsequent releases in the series (mostly remakes) wouldn't surface again in the west for a very long time.

Scarlet Grace would be the franchise's first new entry to see a western release since 2005, and thankfully it does a much better job of being a captivating experience inspired by old-school western RPGs.  The game's opening in particular is reminiscent of games like Ultima, asking the player a series of questions to determine which character they begin as, as well as which quests they may have already completed in previous playthroughs (which affects some events in the story).  The game's world is also largely free-roaming, letting the player complete most quests in any order they wish and venture freely around the map to discover new ones, though there are strangely no dungeons (apparently due to budgetary constraints) - nearly all events take place right on the world map.

The core of the game's design takes a few steps away from the SaGa norm.  There is significantly less of a random element than most, and particularly much less than Unlimited Saga; though HP gains after battle and techniques are still randomly learned in battle ("sparked" in game terminology), one's stats and abilities are now heavily governed by the type of equipment they have equipped.  Breakable weapons are a thing of the past as well, as are limited point pools that govern how many times skills can be used between rests.  The HP/LP system returns as well, though losing all LP is no longer "permadeath" and LP can be gradually regained over time by swapping a character out of the combat formation.

Combat retains a few elements from other SaGa games, though many are relatively original too.  The player has a choice of several "formations" to pick, each with benefits and drawbacks for the various slots within.  For example, the "Desert Lance" gives one character less BP cost with all skills and greater speed and accuracy, but lowers the speed of everyone else in the group.  Royal Hearts puts two characters in the front and three in back, with the two up front getting a slight boost to damage and speed but giving them a higher chance to be targeted.  Each formation also has a different starting and maximum BP level - generally starting at around 4 and maxing out at 8.  BP governs how many characters can act in a turn and what moves they can perform - basic moves generally costing 1 or 2 while stronger ones with more powerful effects cost more.

Turn order (and alteration thereof) is another prominent mechanic in the game.  Throughout each battle, you can see the order any given character (friend or foe) will act during the current turn if you give them an action to perform.  Some moves can delay enemy turns or intercept enemy moves before they occur, letting you sneak in an attack and potentially defeat them before they can deal damage.  Doing so is actually quite beneficial, because defeating a foe between two or more allies on the timeline will result in a Unite Attack, causing all of the characters whose icons are now touching to automatically do a powerful combo to a remaining enemy and reduce the BP cost of their attacks on the next turn.  Enemies can do this to the player as well, though, so caution is necessary to protect weakened allies and prevent enemies from unleashing a nasty combo of their own.  Spellcasters are another important thing to protect, as their spells often take a lot of action points and multiple turns to cast, and if they're stunned or defeated in the interim, it all goes to waste.  One way to do this is via the Taunt/Frenzy mechanic.  Some skills have a Taunt trait to them, which makes an enemy more likely to target their user.  If the same user repeatedly uses a Taunt on a particular enemy, that may cause them to Frenzy and focus their attacks only on that character until one of them is defeated - a risky tactic in some respects, but useful to draw fire away from weaker characters as well.

Scarlet Grace also contains a crafting system, though thankfully it's nowhere near as complex (or poorly-explained) as Unlimited Saga's.  Defeating foes of particular types earns materials, which can be spent in towns to upgrade weapons or pieces of armor along several upgrade paths - some featuring higher stats or elemental resistances than others.  Different shops throughout the world also have "specialties", reducing the number of materials needed for particular crafts, and earning favored status by visiting repeatedly will further reduce the cost.  It is also to the player's benefit to upgrade whenever they can, even if this means some grinding, as shops can be restricted at certain points in the plot; thankfully, the game does warn you of this right off the bat, so there are no unpleasant surprises later.

Like most, I didn't really expect a lot from a SaGa revival; I expected that it would just remain another niche game with little widespread appeal.  I haven't been completely disabused of that idea (as far as I can tell, it hasn't been a particularly high-seller even in Japan), but Scarlet Grace is nonetheless a welcome return for the long-neglected SaGa series.  It has a significant random chance element and its gameplay is rather simple and one-note, but it has an interesting overarching story split among four different characters' questlines and is decently fun in spite of that.  I even found myself impressed with its animation quality and the fact that they hired professional voice actors to play out snippets of dialog and combat lines (and yes, it is dubbed into English), proving that Square really did want to distance themselves from Unlimited Saga's reputation as much as possible.  So if you want something that's overall very simplified mobile game in design, but nevertheless well-made and fun in short bursts, Scarlet Grace is one you may want to give a try.

Developer: Square Enix Business Division 3, Studio Reel
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Playstation Vita, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Windows, Android, iOS
Released: 2016, 2019
Recommended Version: All versions seem to be pretty much the same, though the game is only available digitally in the west.  The Switch version has a bit of lag when loading animations between turns in combat but otherwise plays fine.

Final Fantasy Legend III (SaGa III)

The third game in the SaGa franchise, Final Fantasy Legend III abandons many of SaGa's trademark elements for a more traditional JRPG experience.  But does this shift to conventional mechanics make for a more enjoyable experience, or does it just rob the SaGa franchise of its unique charm?

The third game in the SaGa franchise was the only one prior to 2015's Imperial SaGa (a browser game) to not feature any input from series creator Akitoshi Kawazu.  As a result of this, many of the elements of the previous two games which drew criticism were overhauled here, and the result is a more traditional, if rather generic, JRPG.

The most prominent change is that the game no longer features randomized stat growth after a battle; instead, SaGa III now operates on a traditional experience system, with experience points gained after battles and levels earned at set intervals that give an all-around statistical boost.  While arguably a defining element of the series, I actually like this change; it makes the overall experience considerably less grindy when you're getting guaranteed gains, whereas the original could subject you to long droughts with few or no significant improvements to your team.  Spells are more traditional Final Fantasy fare as well, with even some mainstays like Fire, Ice, Flare and Cure appearing here.

The monsters and robots of SaGa fame are still present in this game; however, they work on a much different principle here.  The player instead begins with a set team of two humans and two mutants, and they can transform after battles by eating monster meat or installing robot parts - installing a single part will turn them into a Cyborg, while a second part will turn them into a Robot.  Similarly, eating one piece of meat will transform that character into a Beast, and a second will make them a Monster.  Monsters act much like their SaGa counterparts, having high stats but being unable to use any kind of equipment, instead being limited to spells and "Talents" (innate abilities unique to each monster type).  Robots, also like their SaGa counterparts, gain stats by equipping items or using special capsules, but are unable to cast magic.  Beasts and Cyborgs serve as something of a hybrid, allowing the player to use some elements of their base class and monster class, but are typically less powerful overall than the extreme end of the spectrum.

This idea is interesting overall, but somewhat underdeveloped.  Many Talents, particularly those of monsters, just aren't really that powerful compared to the weapons and spells base classes can use, and at the end of the game using the four magical swords becomes an important part of the game's strategy.  Robots are also rather impractical for most of the game, as they begin with low innate stats and require a large investment in capsules to get them up to snuff.  Indeed, I found that Beasts and Cyborgs were the most useful classes overall, with the former having absurdly high MP toward the end of the game that made them perfect for spamming high-level magic.  Similarly, Cyborgs have basically all of the advantages of Robots but none of the downsides, and allow characters in that class to have high stats while still being able to cast spells when needed.

Building off of this, there is very little point in the variety of weapons the game provides.  The game continues to provide all of the SaGa hallmarks - martial arts, axes, swords, whips, et cetera - but unlike the previous two games, weapons do not wear down over time and only occasionally show special effects like being of a particular element or having damage based on a particular stat.  I mostly just ended up using whatever weapon a character could do the most damage with; in most cases, this just meant buying the biggest sword or axe and keeping my casters equipped with something that boosts speed so they can sneak in turns before the enemies.

Some other prominent elements of SaGa are retained here and work in the game's favor.  Exploration in the game is largely open-ended, for one; indeed, the first quest one finds in the game is to get the Float spell, which basically serves as the game's airship for the early stages.  Not long thereafter they get the Dive spell, which allows travel both over and under the oceans, where many hidden treasures can be found.  The game also retains the series' oddly sporadi encounter rate - fighting enemies literally every step while at other times you can wander for minutes without seeing a single battle.  But of course, neither seems to occur when you actually want it to.

Some clever new elements appear in the game as well.  The Talon is the most prominent of these, and is easily the game's most distinctive element.  Finding the ship's crew members and installing new functions is a major goal in the game, and it's cool to see how the Talon evolves over the course of the adventure - going from a threadbare ship that can't even fly to essentially a floating fortress, complete with its own inn, weapon shops, facilities and defensive weapons (getting a free attack in during random encounters before the fight even begins).  Pretty cool stuff, but sadly you don't get to use the ship's functions much at all until about two-thirds of the way through.

Final Fantasy Legend III is also another early example of a game with a crafting system.  Elemental stones found throughout the adventure can be crafted into powerful pieces of equipment or top-tier spells once the proper crew members are brought aboard the Talon, and these cannot be acquired in any other way.  These items are very limited, however (typically no more than about 6 of each in the entire game), so they should be spent wisely.

In short, the third SaGa game, while a more conventional and therefore more polished JRPG experience than its predecessors, is still very much a product of its era - level-grinding and drawn-out, one-note boss fights are still very much the order of the day.  For that reason it's a bit hard to recommend today, but I still point to it as at least worth a look for its creative new take on the SaGa formula.

Developer: Square
Publisher: Square, Sunsoft
Platform: Game Boy
Released: 1993, 1998
Recommended version: There is a DS remake titled "SaGa III: Shadow or Light" featuring 3D graphics, visible encounters and gameplay tweaked to be more akin to the SaGa games (randomized stat growth), while the original version is available on the "Collection of SaGa: Final Fantasy Legend" compilation.

Unlimited Saga

The ninth game in Square's SaGa series was released to a very hostile reception, especially in light of its low budget after the blockbuster movie-like experiences the company's brand became known for. But is there some merit to be found in Unlimited Saga's gameplay, or is this one heavily-maligned RPG that really is as bad as people say?

Akitoshi Kawazu's SaGa franchise is known to be very divisive, even among die-hard RPG fans; those who love it enjoy its experimental nature and quirky, surreal settings while those who don't are quick to criticize its difficult design and bizarre, often unintuitive mechanics.  This primarily stems from the franchise not drawing much inspiration from other Japanese RPGs like Dragon Quest, but rather on the games that inspired their origins - western tabletop games and relatively obscure computer RPGs like Phantasie and Star Command.  Thus, we end up with a series that puts emphasis on powering up stats individually, earning new skills through repeated use of weapons, breakable equipment, having to negotiate with enemies to end battles early, and so forth, with specific mechanics varying wildly from game to game.

Unlimited Saga is no different in that regard, and in fact probably follows the Tabletop/CRPG format more closely than any prior game in the series. "Towns" in the game are more than a bit reminiscent of the old Wizardry titles, consisting of simple menus to purchase equipment, talk with people, craft items and accept quests.  Dungeons play out like a turn-based board game, having the player follow a series of paths where they may encounter enemies, traps and obstacles like collapsing bridges which temporarily divide the party, requiring them to unite at a later point.  One can also choose to pass turns to recover some of their lost HP (via the incredibly intuitive method of pressing R3), which is often a good idea as one does not regain it over time and skills that restore it are relatively hard to come by.  In fact, the interface in general is rather unintuitive, with the player having to navigate a baffling sequence of menus just to perform basic tasks like checking their status screen, changing equipment or interacting with objects on the field (For one example, changing one's equipment in towns can only be done via the inn menu).

The similarity to tabletop games only becomes more prominent in the emphasis the game places on player skills, which allow the player to do things like crossing certain obstacles in dungeons, disarming traps and locks with greater chances of success, or avoiding some enemy encounters when used at the right time. The game lacks a proper "experience" system, with characters instead gaining and losing skills and stats only at the end of a quest via a panel system.  Basically, each character has seven slots arranged in a honeycomb-like layout, and each panel is placed in one of these slots.  Each point of the grid tends toward a different stat or elemental affinity, with the player gaining greater benefit by putting, for example, weapon skills on the Strength side of the grid and Magic skills on or near that point. Attaching multiple panels of like types next to one another or three in a row across the grid will grant greater benefit, while placing a panel in the center space will boost all stats to a lesser degree.  However, what panels someone gets to pick from has a hefty random element; while it can be influenced to a degree by using certain abilities between one quest completion and the next, there is no guarantee you'll get something you want, and if you happen to have your grid just the way you like it, too bad - you must replace one panel with a new one at the end of each quest.  (For that reason, having a designated "dump panel" on each characters' grid is a good idea.)  Further exacerbating the problem are panels with negative effects, such as dealing reduced damage to an enemy or even taking damage yourself if a particular enemy type is attacked; once in place, these can only be replaced with other negative panels (or, if plot related, cannot be replaced at all).  While these negative panels do give large stat boosts and can be used effectively because of this, they're far more likely to be a hindrance to the player at a bad time.  While one can scrape by with panels that make them fearful of, say, plants or insects, one should definitely avoid panels that put the player at a disadvantage from undead enemies, as nearly all of the game's strongest enemies (and major bosses) fall into this category.

Unlimited Saga's most infamous element is the large amount of reliance on random chance - not a roll of the dice in this case, but a spinning of slot machine-like reels that have varying effects depending on the context.  Outside of battle, rolls are often brought up when a player is about to trigger a trap or use a skill - hitting a green orb causes them to successfully use the skill or evade the trap, hitting a red X causes it to trigger, and hitting dynamite causes a critical failure, which often results in more damage or a worse outcome overall.  One's skill in timing button presses usually helps to mitigate some of the difficulty, but if one's panel set is lacking, the slots will often "wander" two or three spaces after the button is pressed, which can land the player on a bad result regardless.

The reels are also heavily used within battle, though in a much different fashion.  When a weapon is equipped, a player gains access to a number of basic attack skills with that weapon.  However, as they use them more, they may unlock stronger attack skills, though these cannot simply be picked from the menu - instead, they must spin the reels and hit a blue, red or pink weapon icon among a large plethora of green ones.  Elemental spells spin reels with icons representing the five elements, with the maximum effect only being achieved if the player lands on a slot matching that spell's element.  One is even able to "stack" and activate multiple reels at a time by pressing the circle button, allowing them to chain numerous attacks together for extra damage; however, this comes with two drawbacks.  First is that the player is spinning all of said reels at the same time, each with slightly different timing, and one press of the button stops them all, so unless they have a monstrous amount of skills unlocked they're likely to just get a bunch of weaker attacks.  Second, if an enemy (or enemy group) gets turns whilst the player is doing this, they will also get bonus damage with their own attacks.  Enemies can do team attacks of their own volition as well, which causes combat to quickly devolve into a battle of powerful combinations engineered to deplete the other side's LP.  Paired with the fact that, like most SaGa games, weapons will break after a set number of uses, this quickly adds much to the difficulty factor present in Unlimited Saga.  Managing one's party during fights is an essential part of the strategy as well - any character that doesn't take an action in a particular turn is removed from the field entirely for its duration, and they will recover some of their HP while away, so swapping characters in and out as the situation develops is key to winning many boss fights.

The game works in a crafting system in an attempt to offset weapon wear-and-tear, allowing players to combine weapons and raw materials together in order to restore a weapon's durability or create new equipment that can have higher attack power or durability and can carry over some unlocked skills from its components.  As with many other elements in the game, however, the mechanics of this are not clearly explained in the manual nor anywhere in the game itself, so it quickly turns into a process of trial and error.  Especially when paired with the minuscule amount of money the player is given at the start of the game, and which they can only earn more of by going through dungeons, whether on story missions or just sidequests.  When one also considers that quests can have huge variances in difficulty even at the start of the game, with one quest being almost trivially easy and the next being nearly impossible at your current level and there being no forewarning of this fact whatsoever, Unlimited Saga can quickly become an exercise in frustration.  As a result of this, its limited interface and its overall esoteric design, few have ever had the patience to make their way through the game.  Probably not helping matters was the fact this was one of the few Square games of the era to never receive an official player's guide of any kind; hell, even The Bouncer got a guide from Bradygames, but Unlimited Saga received no such luxury.  The manual included with the game isn't much help either, skimming over several key mechanics and only explaining the most basic skills one finds in any detail.

Of course, one cannot mention Unlimited Saga without also bringing attention to its overall aesthetic.  Unlimited Saga contains oddly low production values for a Square game, with very minimal animation for most elements (even in combat, you'll be seeing the same loops a lot), nearly all cutscenes being composed of little more than still frames, and no rendered dungeons - just flat two-dimensional maps reminiscent of a board game or tabletop RPG.  There are relatively few FMVs in the game, which similarly have only the barest basics in terms of animations, rendered characters and backgrounds.  Voice acting in the game is surprisingly threadbare as well, with only a small handful of recorded lines per character story and the acting ranging from mediocre to laughably campy.  Very out of the norm for a company that practically invented the "cinematic RPG" experience that redefined the entire JRPG genre and dominated the gaming consciousness for the better part of a decade.  Music in the game is at least up to the SaGa series' high standards with some beautifully-composed tracks by Masashi Hamauzu, though curiously absent in many dungeons in favor of simple ambient noise.

Also not aiding matters is the fact that each playable character's quest is a much different undertaking, with some being vastly easier or harder than others and possessing much different mechanics.  Unlimited Saga once again opts for the SaGa Frontier style "Anthology RPG" format, with only a vague backdrop upon which each character has their own short story.  Characters do occasionally cross over and even join one another's parties at times, but for all intents and purposes each story is a standalone excursion.  Some gain access to exclusive gameplay elements as well, such as Ventus; as a "carrier", he is able to perform essentially limitless delivery quests that give him easy access to money, chests and character upgrades, making his quest a good starting point for beginners.  Kurt has a cursed gauntlet that forever occupies the center slot on his skill grid, stifling opportunities to earn stat bonuses and forcing him to fight solo battles against progressively stronger enemies every fifteen minutes (in real-time), which effectively turns his quest into a race against the clock.  Armic's quest mostly consists of collecting various materials through completion of quests, though owing to the random nature of the game, this will likely result in having to do a large amount of crafting, searching and manipulating the in-game economy before the story is finally done.  Many of these probably helped contribute to the game's overall perception of difficulty, as some characters can go through the game with relative ease while others require an absolute mastery of its mechanics and a substantial amount of luck to get everything they need to win.

At the end of the day, Unlimited Saga lives up to the series' reputation of being a bizarre, esoteric, oft-confusing and exceptionally challenging experience with a heavy element of random chance and trial-and-error, which already heavily hampered its appeal in the west.  However, it goes a step further than most in calling back to '80s RPGs, with its minimalist UI, awkward interface, lack of tutorials and punishing gameplay from the get-go only compounding the frustration factor.  Like the early CRPGs that inspired it, Unlimited Saga is not a game geared toward instant gratification - you have to go on a mission to find the enjoyable elements in it.  Those who can push through the opaque design and threadbare presentation and master the finer points of its mechanics will find a game with quite a bit of content, a well-realized setting and some surprisingly clever ideas, but as it requires dealing with a lot of randomized elements, reloading old saves, trial-and-error and reading a novel's worth of online guides to figure out just how everything works, it's not an experience any but the most devoted of build-optimizing, mechanics-mastering RPG fans are bound to enjoy.

Developer: Square Enix

Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Playstation 2
Released: 2003
Recommended version: N/A

SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny (Final Fantasy Legend 2 remake)

Square's reimagined version of the second SaGa game makes several tweaks to the original.  But is there enough of a change here to warrant another look, or is this an example of a "remake" that serves as little more than a glorified paint-job?

SaGa 2 ("Final Fantasy Legend 2" outside of Japan) was the logical followup to the first; the original game proved to be a runaway success due to its timely release on the Game Boy platform, so a sequel was inevitable.  So one year later came the second game in the series, which did away with several of the annoying traits of the original (such as the limited lives system) while introducing a few more of its own.

One improvement comes in the game's class system.  While the familiar human, robot and mutant races return, they have seen some overhauls.  Humans now gain stats from combat, which makes them a much more viable (and less expensive) class to use than in the original.  Mutants are largely unchanged, gaining and losing abilities at random (though you do have a degree of control over that now - the last slot on the menu is the volatile one; you can swap skills into other slots if you wish to keep them) and gaining statistics through combat, though at a somewhat slower rate than humans.  Monsters are also relatively unchanged, though the DS remake allows them to carry over abilities between forms (changing from a Medusa to another monster type will sometimes let them carry over the Stone ability, for example).  There is also a new class introduced in the form of "Robots", whose stats and abilities are entirely governed by the equipment they use - equipping armor will boost their defense and HP, for example, while equipping weapons will boost their other stats depending upon the type.  Equipping them with a weapon or shield will also immediately cut its total uses in half, but unlike other characters, they can restore these charges by resting at an inn.  They are also innately immune to most status effects, but owing to their low Mana, tend to be vulnerable to magic.  They're effective tanks and powerful fighters, but you can't let them do all the damage or you'll severely gimp the rest of your party (and be left in a bad spot later on when enemies start spamming powerful magic).  You'll have to do quite a bit of grinding in this game, unlike the first one.

The game's storyline centers around the players gathering the 77 Magi (or "Relics" in the DS version), which are said to be ancient artifacts that grant their bearers special powers, and which some have abused to become new gods.  The player can also utilize Magi to some effect - some grant bonuses to stats when equipped (such as increased Strength or resistance to a particular element) while others simply serve as a means to complete puzzles - one allows the player to see in a bright dungeon, for example.  The DS version expands upon this by adding several new functions to the player's repertoire as they find Relics - the ability to dig for treasures on the world map, see enemies on the minimap, destroy weak walls to find treasures, and avoid damage from lava tiles to name a few.  This does add a nice sense of progression to the game as the skill set expands, as well as encouraging exploration by letting the player return to earlier areas to find items they couldn't reach on their first visit.

Following up on this, the leveling system seems to have been overhauled somewhat.  Namely, the player must now use items that correlate to a given stat in order for that character to receive gains.  Using agility-based weapons now boosts Speed, using strength-based weapons boosts Strength, and so on.  Somewhat unintuitively, equipment that boosts one's stats also stunts their growth, so grinding is best done without any stat-boosting armor or Magi equipped.  One must also face enemies that are relatively on par with the party in terms of overall strength to receive gains, so grinding against weak enemies is not an option either.  But even with all of this in mind, the random nature of stat gains can make these sessions extraordinarily long and frustrating.

A welcome change in the DS version of the game is the elimination of random encounters.  The Game Boy version of SaGa 2 was even more notorious than the first with its encounter rate, with battles against huge groups of enemies occurring very frequently, sometimes as little as every single step the player takes.  The DS version trades this in entirely in favor of visible enemies on the map, allowing the player to avoid them.  This does carry a risk, however, as if a player narrowly avoids an enemy but gets touched by another one, all of the nearby enemies will join in the combat as well, which can at times result in the player facing upwards of twenty enemies in a single fight.  And should they be faster than your party or get a surprise attack... well, you're generally reloading your last save, no matter how strong your party is.

As in the first SaGa game, the overall balance of this one leaves something to be desired.  Absorb spells still do massive damage, and any enemy with a full-party attack skill is a massive threat for much of the game owing to the lack of full-party healing options.  Encountering a group of enemies with such skills is pretty much an immediate death sentence as well, particularly late in the game when they do several hundred points of damage apiece.  Training one's speed to keep ahead of enemies, as well as having enough hard-hitting enemy group skills/spells, quickly becomes an essential part of the overall strategy, as the late game essentially boils down to "whoever gets the first turn wins".

The DS version does attempt to address this balance in a few ways, notably with the addition of a sidequest is added where the player can find the eight Muses over the course of the adventure.  One can also gift them with items they find (generally in hidden chests), which will grant them substantial bonuses to "MP" and allow them to unlock more powerful attacks to use.  One can also unlock the Arena of the Dead, which allows them to face more powerful versions of previous bosses in order to gain levels and items.  Completing the Nasty Dungeon and talking to the character that appears outside will put the player into a battle with very powerful enemies; completing this unlocks the Opaca of Souls, which pits the player against several powerful groups of enemies in a row, with victory granting numerous powerful and rare items.

MP is another new mechanic in the DS version.  After rescuing some of the Muses, the player can venture to the Castle of Fate in order to purchase Threads of Fate themed after emotions - Love, Hate, Strife, Friendship and so on.  Using these allows two of your characters to unite their attacks together for additional damage (slightly similar to the combo system from SaGa frontier), and will also affect the relationships between your party members, which in turn can unlock new events and sidequests that will allow the player to find extra items.  Clever use of these in battle can also allow players to break the usual turn order in order to defeat problematic enemies; for example, if one character gets a turn before an enemy group, they can use a unite attack to allow a second character's attack as well, and the bonus damage may just be enough to allow them to defeat that enemy group before they deal out massive damage that turn.

While SaGa 2 on the DS does make some improvements over its predecessor by adding new features and eliminating random encounters, it's essentially still the same game at its core.  The difficulty and overall balance remain very uneven, there is still a heavy emphasis on stat-grinding, and the added mechanics and areas mostly feel like they were simply added to give the game some token new content rather than well-integrated new features that enhance the overall experience.  Fans of the original will probably find something to like in the new content Goddess of Destiny provides, but if you found the original game too frustrating, this one probably won't do a lot to change your mind.

Developer: Racjin
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Nintendo DS
Released: 2009 (in Japan)
Recommended version: N/A

Makai Toushi SaGa (Final Fantasy Legend)

The very first RPG available for the classic Game Boy, which served to fill a niche the portable platform had lacked to that point.  But does this portable RPG still hold up today, or was it just an adequate title for its era and nothing more?

Makai Toushi SaGa came out at a time when JRPGs were just beginning to gain a foothold in the western market, with Square achieving some success with Final Fantasy and Sega having their own competitor in the Phantasy Star games.  They also saw an opportunity to fill a missing niche on Nintendo's highly successful portable system and commissioned Final Fantasy veteran Akitoshi Kawazu to direct the project.  For the game's western release, the game was rebranded "Final Fantasy Legend" to capitalize on that game's popularity despite bearing little resemblance to that game in design (and going on to spawn a completely separate series).  While the game ultimately garnered somewhat mixed reception, with much criticism directed at its unusual mechanics and steep difficulty, it reaped the benefit of being released in the right place at the right time and became Square's first RPG to sell over a million copies worldwide.  It also maintains a cult following to this day for its quirky design and setting and was a major influence for the Pokémon series, which would go on to become one of the most popular video game franchises of all time; a bit of an anomaly considering how unpopular the SaGa series is in comparison. 

The player is free to customize their party as in the original Final Fantasy, though unlike that game, characters are not broken into distinct classes with their own set of abilities.  Instead, one is given a choice of races - Humans, Mutants (aka Espers) and several variations on Monsters.  Human characters gain no direct benefit from combat, but have up to eight slots for equipment and items to use in a fight, making them debatably the most versatile of the choices; however, they are also by far the most expensive to maintain, as they must buy each and every HP, stat upgrade and equippable item they use.  Mutants gain stats through battle (albeit randomly) and also randomly gain and lose abilities (elemental strengths/weaknesses and spells) from fights, making them stronger in the long run, but also much more volatile in usefulness - they can easily lose a powerful spell and gain a weakness to something a common enemy in a given area casts, with the player having little recourse for combatting this other than frequent saving and reloading.  Monsters are the hardest class to use well, with their abilities entirely dependent upon their current form, which can only be changed by eating meat after a battle - generally a stronger monster will grant them a more powerful form, though this is not always the case (and often a stronger one has less useful abilities than a weaker one).  End-game monsters can be extremely powerful, but using them well enough to last that long is a challenge in itself.

Another notorious feature of the SaGa series was the fact that skills and equipment in the game could not be used indefinitely.  Shields and weapons can only be used a set number of times (usually 50, sometimes less for more powerful ones) before breaking.  Spells in the game are equally fleeting, with mutant/monster abilities having a set number of charges between rest periods and potions, spell books and wands having a finite number of uses before they break as well.   For this reason, it's a good idea to always have a couple of spares around, as a character without any usable attacks is effectively dead weight for the remainder of the dungeon (which tends to be a problem for monster characters in the early stages).

Somewhat following up on this, the game also takes a cue from tabletop RPGs in that characters' lifespans are finite.  Each created character starts the game with three hearts that indicate "lives", and when they die and are revived at a healer, one heart is taken away.  Once all three hearts are gone, that character cannot be revived again.  The player can purchase more hearts to replace those lost over the course of the game; though they may prove prohibitively expensive in the early stages, this is generally a preferable option to letting a large time and money investment in a character completely go to waste.  This feature was apparently unpopular even among the game's fans, as later SaGa games either replace it with a "Life Points" system (with characters becoming "unconscious" when their HP hits zero and only "dying" when their Life Points are depleted through subsequent attacks, though they can still be replenished by resting) or simply having them automatically revive after battles with 1 HP.

In terms of gameplay, the title is also fairly emblematic of its era - turn-based combat with simple, static monster sprites and actions being described via text and simple animations.  There is also a substantial amount of grinding involved, with enemies giving a relatively low amount of money (especially early on) and equipment upgrades generally being quite expensive.  Keeping a balance between one's inventory and available weapon/spell uses is a significant element of the game's strategy, and late in the game it can be extremely difficult to survive if you don't carefully manage your weapon uses and money.

This is also not aided by the extreme jump in difficulty at roughly the midpoint of the game.  Once the player gets into the latter stretch, battles with enormous groups of enemies become relatively common, and spellcasting enemies do as well.  This proves to be problematic for human characters in particular, as their lack of Mana prevents them from effectively resisting magic.  More pressingly, however, there is no real way to effectively heal the entire party at once; pair that with large groups of enemies that cast spells that hit the entire party, and you can easily get wiped out no matter how much grinding and equipment upgrading you've done to power up.  The high encounter rate (with battles sometimes occurring with each and every step) and unreliable "Run" command (even with maxed-out Agility) only further compound this frustration, turning the late game into a frustrating ordeal of constant saving and resetting.

On the flip side of this, the game's bosses are remarkably easy in comparison.  Having only a single enemy turn to deal with greatly reduces the potency of full-party attacks, and even their high-damage moves can frequently be reduced in potency by having a proper skill, or even negated entirely.  Further compounding this is a notorious bug with the "Saw" weapon, making it an instant kill against any enemy whose Defense stat is higher than the player's Attack stat (the inverse of what the developers intended); this provides an ironic benefit to having a weak human or monster character in the party, and if nothing else, makes Makai Toushi Saga the only game where you can cut the final boss in half with a chainsaw and instantly win the fight.

Makai Toushi SaGa marked the beginning of the SaGa series and many of its hallmarks - a large emphasis on random elements, a strange and surreal setting that combines elements of high fantasy, mythology, urban fantasy and science fiction, and uniquely bizarre mechanics that change drastically from game to game.  However, it also has a lot of unsavory elements of the period - its random elements cause the difficulty to fluctuate wildly, enemy encounters are extremely frequent and often overbearingly powerful, and it is possible to get trapped if the player runs their resources dry, requiring them to either return to an earlier backup save or simply restart the game.  It is worth a look for curiosity's sake, however, just to see how this strange and mostly-overlooked franchise got its start, as well as the aforementioned novelty of murdering various mythological figures with a chainsaw.  It is also a relatively brisk experience (about 10-12 hours for a first playthrough), which helps to offset some of the long-term burnout.

Developer: Square
Publisher: Square
Platform: Game Boy, Wonderswan Color, Mobile phones
Released: 1989, 1990, 2002, 2007, 2008
Recommended version:  The Wonderswan Color adds in enhanced graphics and cutscenes to build upon the fairly drab visuals of the Game Boy Version while retaining its surprisingly good music, and also seems to rebalance the gameplay slightly, making mutant/esper stat gains more frequent and allowing the player to preview what their monsters will transform into before committing to the change.  The high difficulty and awkward balance remain, but these help to mitigate some of the frustration with the original release.

SaGa Frontier

One of the more overlooked Square games from the Playstation 1 era, as well as the first Saga game to get a stateside release in over five years.  But is this title a hidden gem, or should it be left in the bargain bins to collect dust?

SaGa was always Square's more experimental series, taking many cues from western RPGs with its open-ended gameplay, randomized elements and highly customizable characters, yet retaining the strange, fantastic worlds and monsters of Japanese RPGs as well.  The franchise has gone in many directions over its lifespan, starting as a somewhat traditional JRPG before branching into a time travel story where changing events in the past affects the future (before Chrono Trigger, no less), a turn-based war simulation and even a tabletop RPG.  SaGa Frontier is perhaps the franchise's most well-known game in the west, as well as one of its most divisive - in an era where JRPGs were aiming to provide a more grandiose, movie-like experience, SaGa Frontier aimed for somewhat lower stakes, mostly retaining the low-key aesthetic of a traditional 16-bit RPG and going for more of an anthology format by telling seven shorter stories rather than centering on one gigantic, world-spanning adventure.  Each story is told independently of the others, though all are set in the same universe and characters frequently recur throughout each quest and the events of other characters' quests are never acknowledged within a given storyline.  In brief, they are:

• Asellus, a young girl who finds herself reanimated as a "half-Mystic" after accidentally being run over and killed by the chariot of Orlouge, Charm Lord of Facinaturu.  She must cope with her new, bizarre existence while on the run from Orlouge's underlings.
• Blue, a talented magician tasked by the heads of the Magic Kingdom academy to learn as much magic as he can and duel his twin brother, Rouge, to the death.
• Emelia, a fashion model who finds herself imprisoned after witnessing seeing her fiance killed by an assassin known as the "Joker" and leaving her to take the fall.  She vows to escape from the prison of Despair, find Joker and avenge Ren's death with the aid of a secret organization known as "Gradius".
• Lute, a slacker who is ejected from his comfortable life by his mother and wanders the realms in search of adventure, eventually stumbling upon a plot by the paramilitary group Trinity.
• Red, a normal kid whose father's activities result in them being attacked by the criminal organization BlackX, leaving his father dead and himself critically injured.  His life is saved by the superhero Alkarl, who grants him a portion of his power to sustain his life; Red uses this power to fight BlackX under the identity of "Alkaiser".
• Riki, a monster whose home world of Margmel is dying and who travels the realms in search of seven magic rings that may be able to save it.
• T260G, an ancient robot rebuilt from the salvage yard of Junk who seeks to recover his corrupted memories and fulfill a forgotten mission.

The character types available in the game are highly reminiscent of the earliest SaGa games, with human characters being the most adaptable and versatile class (though taking the longest to build up), Mystics taking the place of Mutants as spellcasters, Mecs as the mechanical tanks who derive all of their stats from the equipment they wield, and Monsters as the most malleable characters, absorbing the abilities (and occasionally the physical forms) of other monsters the player defeats.

Perhaps in response to complaints about the overall difficulty and random nature of the earlier games, though, the mechanics have changed up significantly.  Weapons no longer break after a set number of uses (though guns can run out of ammunition during a fight) and the player is given more control over what spells and abilities their Mystics and Monsters gain and lose; rather than having it happen at complete random, monster abilities are added to an ability list that the player can customize (with the last slot on the list being overwritten when a monster changes form) and Mystics operate much differently than their Mutant counterparts, absorbing monsters into their exclusive "Mystic equipment" and retaining some of their stats and abilities until they get overwritten with another monster at the player's discretion.

All of these things greatly cut down on the "adapt to arbitrary changeups" style of gameplay of SaGa's earliest titles, as well as contribute in various ways to the new combo system, whereby several teammates can coordinate their attacks for extra damage.  There are many different attacks that can be combined together (so much so that, as far as I know, nobody's bothered to document them all), and discovering which of your characters' attacks sync up is a significant part of the fun of the game.  In fact, mastering this system even proves to be mandatory during Riki's quest, with one boss battle requiring you to earn ten "points" by creating combos involving at least three characters before a set number of turns have passed.

In addition to nearly free-form character growth, the game also features largely open-ended gameplay.  While there are set missions for each character to complete in pursuit of their particular storylines, the player is free to explore at their leisure at any time in between them, visiting the various worlds and embarking on a plethora of sidequests to power up.  Many areas that play into the story of one character's quest simply serve as explorable side-areas in others, and nearly all of them can be freely visited at any time, whether the player simply wishes to travel there or goes there as part of a larger sidequest.  This works in the game's favor overall, especially since some of the main storylines are quite short and have severe difficulty spikes from mission to mission, so having chances to roam freely and level up at one's leisure is all but essential to completing each story.

Uneven difficulty aside, the game shows many other signs of being rushed - there are numerous elements in the game with no apparent purpose, as well as several prominent areas that don't tie into any character's stories, leaving them as simply curious oddities for the player to experience (with the most famous being Shrike's Bio Lab, originally intended for Asellus's story).  Some quests are also relatively haphazard in layout, with Asellus' quest in particular forcing the player to wander randomly until they find a new boss character to fight, Lute's simply consisting of wandering around until you find and talk to a specific NPC to embark upon the main plot, and Blue's quest coming to an abrupt stop once the story starts to pick up, not even giving the player the courtesy of a proper ending sequence (the screen simply fades to black-and-white and "THE END" appears once the final blow is delivered to the big boss).  There is also evidence that an eighth scenario was planned - one featuring the policeman Fuse (who is recruitable in every character's story but plays little role in any of them plotwise).  Still, this does lend itself to the game's overall charm in a strange way, adding a sense of mystery to exploring the bizarre world of SaGa Frontier and leaving the player wondering what role its disjointed elements ultimately would have played had the developers been given the chance to fully flesh the game out.

Artistically, SaGa Frontier's style is very emblematic of the Playstation 1 hardware, utilizing colorful prerendered backgrounds for its environments and 2D sprites for its characters, though many of said sprites are adapted from low-detail 3D models, lending them a somewhat odd, plasticy appearance.  Further contrasting this, many of the spell and attack effects in the game utilize 3D effects, adding to the flash and flair of combat.  These elements all feel a bit disparate from one another, but I honestly think that works alongside the theme of the game as a whole, combining elements of numerous genres and styles together into something strange and quirky that by all measures shouldn't work, but ends up being a lot of fun to explore and get immersed in.  The overall lack of 3D elements also lends itself well to the gameplay, allowing for minimal load times and keeping combat consistently crisp and fast-paced rather than being dragged down in overlong attack animations.  So while Saga Frontier may not be the most visually advanced game of its era, it's one of the better-playing RPGs on the system even today.

In short, SaGa Frontier is  representative of the Playstation 1 and that era of Square products as a whole - rough, unpolished, yet highly ambitious and experimental.  I think this is actually one of their better outings from that period as well, emphasizing Square's strongest suits - namely, their inventive gameplay and imaginative game worlds - and also perfectly encapsulating the quirky and surreal style of many SaGa titles.  So while it may be an unfinished product they stamped on a disc and shipped out for the same price as one of their big-name blockbusters, it's such a unique experience that it's still worth at least a look for any serious RPG fan.

Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Platform: Playstation 1, Android iOS, PC, Switch, Playstation 4
Released: 1998, 2021
Recommended version: I do have a fondness for the original PS1 release, but the 2021 remaster is definitely the version to play these days.  Not only does it retain all the fun quirks of the original like the Takonomics trick, but it offers a vastly improved UI, a single-command quicksave, many more save slots, restores much of the cut content and even polishes up a lot of the item and enemy names to be less Engrishy.  There is even a New Game Plus option that lets you carry over your inventory and trained-up characters' stats between quests, which cuts down on grinding.