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Close, but no SaGa.
Square-Enix’s SaGa series, the brainchild of developer Akitoshi Kawazu, who started work on
Final Fantasy II
is the eccentric sibling of the company’s other franchises, given
offbeat mechanics, learning curves, and high difficulty. While most of
the games got positive response in Japan, reception of the series beyond
the country has been less forgiving, leading Square-Enix’s North
American branch mostly not to bother with translations. One entry that
got foreign release was the PlayStation 2 remake of
Romancing SaGa, which is more or less what one can expect from the oddball franchise.
When
beginning a new game, the player can choose from one of eight different
characters, each with their own starting points and stories in the
game’s world, which ultimately opens up to players with a greater number
of quests completed. Ashen avatars representing different enemy types
indicate enemy parties to encounter, with all taking notice and charging
the player’s chosen protagonist regardless of their party’s strength, a
step down from the vastly-superior visual skirmish systems of past RPGs
such as
EarthBound. Should other encounter models be nearby when
the player contacts one, they will need to fight multiple enemy parties
with no rest in between, and no ability to escape.
While
proficiencies players can learn from non-player characters in towns
grant two skills with which to evade visible monsters, remembering which
of them work against which types is difficult. Battles themselves,
however, have many things going for them, with the player’s party of up
to five characters squaring off against foes, players able to outfit
them with up to four usable items, including weapons having limited
durability (in most cases except with those whose menu icons have square
borders recoverable at inns), a first-aid kit also with finite
replenishable uses, or medicines with single uses.
Each weapon
characters equip typically have minimal skills to start other than
standard attacks, although, mostly when fighting powerful foes, new
skills may instantly “spark” and execute. Some of these learnable
abilities consume the weapon’s durability points, usually maxing out at
thirty, weapons able to break if all durability expires, although,
except for the mentioned armaments with square-border menu icons,
sleeping at inns for an additional cost can repair them fully. Once the
player has inputted commands for all characters, they and the enemy
exchange commands depending upon speed, fights ending when all enemies
are dead or all characters have run out of hit points.
Should an
ally fall in battle, they lose one of about a dozen or so life points
(with some skills such as a few martial arts abilities also consuming
LP), also replenishable at inns, although fortunately, standard
HP-recovering spells and items can bring them back into the fight.
Speaking of magic, eight different schools of spells, four opposing the
others (the player unable to wield sorcery of antagonistic classes
simultaneously), are learnable for a cost, characters unable to share
spells, and typically cost one or more LP, although investing skill
points, always earned whether in small or large quantity from combat
victories, into certain classes can reduce or eliminate cost.
Battle
Points, each character having fixed starting and maximum amounts that
can gradually increase also through winning battles, dictate which
skills they can execute during a turn, each ability other than standard
attacks costing BP, although after each round, BP increases for each
character by a fixed amount, meaning that characters can defend to both
reduce damage and accumulate points to execute more powerful attacks,
some of which can form more powerful combination attacks, although
unlike the second Frontier game, there is no in-game tracker of combos,
nor are there any charts indicating learned and unlearned abilities.
Back
to LP, when a character loses all, they become unable to be healed or
fight again unless the player sleeps at an inn. Once battles have ended,
the participants receive random stat increases, maybe some money (a
scarce resource throughout the game, with the bulk of finances coming
from quest completion and selling excess items), and skills points
players can invest into various classes in towns to increase skill
proficiencies. While all characters fully recover HP after battle, this
by no means makes the game a cakewalk, and the difficulty is generally
above-average, some mechanics possibly necessitating the use of a guide,
something no player should really have to do when playing a game.
While
combat certainly has its foibles, control fares much worse, one issue
being the terrible direction on how to advance the main storyline, which
is more or less nonexistent, although there is luckily in-game tracking
of quests players may receive at times. Another high point is that the
player can quicksave 99% of the time outside battle, and reload this
save should they quit the game, die, or soft-reset. A further problem
with control, however, is that the voiced dialogue during story scenes
is almost always unskippable, certainly a burden for hearing-impaired
players, with no scene-skip option, either. The final dungeon also
forbids players from backing out, and too is a problem given scenes
outside that occur as they trek to the final boss, although standard
saves at towns at inns ensure that, most of the time, regardless of the
situation, the game is beatable. Even so, the developers could have very
well given interaction a once-over.
The overall narrative in
Romancing SaGa
only fares marginally better, and while characters early on receive
some sort of story, maybe even twists in a few instances, the general
plotline somewhat fails to unify the game, although there is some sort
of backstory to the game itself, and an ending of modest length. The
translation doesn’t really hurt the game, although it pales compared to
other efforts of Square-Enix’s North American branch, given some rather
questionable names for characters such as Eule (spoken as “oi-lay”) and
places such as Kjaraht (oddly pronounced “koo-juh-rot” in voiced
dialogue). In the end, the plot falters significantly, but isn’t a total
writeoff.
An aspect that does significantly better is the
soundtrack by Kenji Ito, which has a variety of tracks encompassing
different genres, such as the rocky battle theme (which can, though, get
somewhat repetitive with the endless fighting the player will do), each
character having their own different theme, and the game itself having a
central tune with several remixes. The English voicework, however,
misses more than hits, although some of the performances are okay. All
in all, while the voice acting might not win awards, the music
definitely deserved to do so in the game’s time.
Neither great
nor bad is the game’s visual style, with character models having
cel-shading and bearing slightly-unrealistic proportions similar to
early Japanese roleplaying games, which gave the graphics a sort of
distinction compared to other PlayStation 2 titles of the title’s time,
although the environments largely appear rusty, with blurry and
pixilated texturing, and the camera is totally uncontrollable, sometimes
affecting the gameplay in regards to the encounter system. There are
rare CG full-motion videos, although a few cutscenes make the odd
decision to narrate the story with static shots of the in-game graphics.
On the whole, an average-looking game.
Finally, completing each
character’s quest can take one to two days’ worth of playing time, the
player able to undertake repeated New Game Pluses to view all eight
allies’ plotlines, with some aspects from prior playthroughs carried
over.
Overall, the PS2 remake of
Romancing SaGa is, like
most of its brethren within the franchise, an odd duck. It definitely
has many things going for it such as the general good ideas behind the
battle system, the liberalized saving system, the largely-competent
translation, the excellent soundtrack, and plentiful lasting appeal.
Conversely, one can levy many strikes against it such as the many
foibles of combat stemming from the subpar encounter system, interaction
issues such as the unskippable voiced dialogue and poor direction on
how to proceed with the plotline, the need to play the game more than
once to get the most out of the story, the weak voice performances, and
graphical follies such as the camera. The game certainly won’t make
believers of the franchise nor is a repellent from the series, given its
arguable inconsistent quality, but there is some minor entertainment to
have.
This review is based on a playthrough starting as Claudia.
The Good:
+Combat is fun sometimes.
+Liberal save system.
+Mostly-good translation.
+Great soundtrack.
+Replayable.
The Bad:
-Battle system has issues, stemming from encounter system and beyond.
-Many interface quibbles such as unskippable voiced dialogue.
-Multiple playthroughs necessary to get most of story.
-Weak voicework.
-Camera and visuals have problems.
The Bottom Line:
Has some good ideas, but somewhat falters in execution.
Score Breakdown:
Platform: PlayStation 2
Game Mechanics: 6/10
Controls: 3/10
Story: 4/10
Localization: 7/10
Music/Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 5/10
Lasting Appeal: 9/10
Difficulty: Hard
Playing Time: 1-2 Days
Overall: 6/10
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