Squaresoft (now Square Enix) made their bones on the Final Fantasy games, epic role-playing adventures that let players inhabit a colorful cast of characters that changed every game, contending with memorable villains and saving the world across six console generations. But just two years after the first Final Fantasy hit the Famicom, Square launched another role-playing series that also continues to this day, with a new game coming out this week. Confused? Welcome to the world of SaGa, Square Enix’s oddball hardcore JRPG series that brings something very different to the table, game after game.
What Is SaGa?
Much like Final Fantasy, the SaGa franchise is an umbrella concept – the individual games are stand-alone experiences that share certain gameplay elements, thematic concepts and references but don’t take place in the same world – or, in SaGa‘s case, universe. Each entry of the thirteen games so far has expanded the series’ remit along a few directions: players explore multiple planets and complete the story in an open-ended fashion, with optional quests and characters determining the ending you get. This is in stark contrast to the resolutely linear narratives of the Final Fantasy games.
When Nintendo launched the Game Boy in Japan in 1989, Square knew that role-playing would be perfect for the portable’s unique limitations. The company tapped designer Akitoshi Kawazu, who had been responsible for Final Fantasy‘s battle system, to head up the new franchise. Kawazu was a hardcore tabletop wargames wonk, and his love of interlocking systems and nail-biting difficulty would form the bones of the SaGa formula.
After three entries on the Game Boy, Saga would get a trilogy on the Super Famicom, two on the PlayStation, two on the PS2 (one a remake), and then a pair of odd spin-offs for mobile phones and Web browsers before returning with Scarlet Grace, originally released for the PlayStation Vita in 2016 and now coming out in a revised and updated form for Switch, PS4, Steam, Android and iOS platforms.
How Did It Come To America?
Square didn’t feel as confident launching a new franchise in the States – although the Final Fantasy games had done well, the market for JRPGs was still relatively untested, especially on the Game Boy. So the first SaGa game was retitled The Final Fantasy Legend stateside.
That was probably the best choice, as the first game has more in common with Final Fantasy than what would follow. The story is more linear, following a quartet of warriors as they climb a tower that they believe will lead them to Heaven. The game was designed to be played in short bursts of time, like a train ride or school break, and could be completed in under eight hours.
Despite its quirks, Final Fantasy Legend hit a sweet spot as the first RPG on the handheld system and sold well in both Japan and the United States. The first GB sequel would go on to refine its mechanics. Final Fantasy Legend 3 would be the only game in the series without Kawazu at the helm, and it shows, playing much more conventionally than any other game in the series.
The SNES SaGa games would skip the States entirely, and it wasn’t until 1998 that we got SaGa Frontier for the PS1. Riding high on the genre-defining success of Final Fantasy 7, Square dropped this bizarre game that threw out everything that made FF7 a hit. Modern-era 3D polygonal characters? Lush FMV? A rich, linear narrative that pulled the player through a complex, emotional plot? No on all fronts. Instead, Frontier‘s “Free Scenario” system, which let players choose any of seven characters with completely different narratives, perplexed U.S. audiences. Square ran short on time during development, forcing them to cut a bunch of content that would have made for a better game.
The sequel was better-received here, mainly because it smoothed the rough edges of Frontier. The two PS2 games were Unlimited SaGa, which felt more like a board game with the addition of a roulette wheel-like mechanic for a variety of functions, as well as a remake of the first SNES game.
SaGa: Scarlet Grace was the first SaGa game in a decade, bringing Kawazu back to pull the series back to its non-linear, occasionally frustrating roots.
What Do I Need To Know To Play SaGa?
There are a number of mechanical elements to the SaGa franchise that, if you don’t have a solid grasp on them, can make the experience significantly more difficult and unpleasant.
The first is the way the series handles health and healing. Characters have the standard “hit points” that decrease when they take damage in fights, like any other RPG. But they also have “life points,” or LP, and they’re a lot more of a hassle. Depending on the game, if your characters fall in battle or get hit while knocked out they’ll lose these, and simple potions or resting at inns doesn’t always replenish them. In a few of the games, a character losing all of their LP resulted in them being dead permanently.
Character growth is also handled very differently. Taking a cue from Final Fantasy II, your little onscreen avatars don’t gain experience points from killing enemies to level up. Instead, every action they take in the game has repercussions for their statistics. Instead, at the end of each battle you’ll progress depending on what happened to you. Swing your sword a lot, you’ll gain strength. Get hit a ton and your defense will go up. It’s fascinating, but also maddening for people who want more control over how their warriors develop.
Going along with that, magic spells and weapon skills aren’t gained with leveling up or chosen from a skill tree. Rather, starting with Romancing SaGa 2, characters have the possibility of learning new attacks mid-battle when a light bulb appears over their head. Colloquially known as “sparking,” this is one of the hardest aspects of the SaGa games to get used to.
That’s only for human characters, though – many of the SaGa games feature non-human party members with different methods of growth. Monsters gain new skills from eating meat dropped by other monsters. Robots improve exclusively through weapons and armor, and mutants level up randomly, for God’s sake.
Probably most important is the high level of non-linearity present in each game. The SaGa franchise doesn’t spell anything out for you. Instead, as you accept quests, you’ll get little pieces of information that, if assembled correctly, should give you some idea of what happens next. It doesn’t always, though – a few of the entries in the series are maddeningly opaque. In addition, dialogue choices can have huge repercussion for the story, meaning that real heads will replay the campaigns several times to see everything.
This isn’t everything – individual games in the series have their own quirky systems to get used to – but these are the basics.
Which Of The SaGa Games Should I Play?
With thirteen lengthy RPGs in the series, many of which reward multiple playthroughs, it’s daunting to dive into SaGa. But if you want our recommendations, we won’t lead you astray.
SaGa Frontier is probably the best place to start if you want to sample all of the series’ defining characteristics in a relatively modern setting. Although the PS1 graphics look dated and the stories can be a little confusing, this might be the most mechanically rewarding game of the franchise. The battle system is heavily combo-oriented, with player and enemy positioning affecting how skirmishes flow and what skills you can use. In addition, each of the seven stories is fairly brisk, with most first-timers able to get through one in around ten hours.
Opinions vary on the SNES games, but they’re all reasonably solid. Our pick would be Romancing SaGa 2, because it tries a few interesting things that give the adventure a little more narrative heft. Instead of guiding a single main character, you control the Emperor (or Empress) of the land of Avalon, expanding the territory of your kingdom by sending parties of warriors out on quests. As time passes, you take over the next generation of rulers.
The very first SaGa game, released here as Final Fantasy Legend, is a nice little morsel of well-tuned JRPG gameplay that contains hints of what the series would flower into. It still holds up despite the primitive hardware it was developed for, and if you can overlook the monochrome graphics it has some viability.
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is the PS2 remake of the first SNES game, and it’s interesting to see how Square modernized certain aspects of the title while preserving others. Even hardcore fans admit that this one’s complex interlocking systems are nearly impossible to understand without the aid of a strategy guide.
Finally, Scarlet Grace, the latest in the series, is worth cracking if you’ve played a few of the others. We wouldn’t recommend it to newbies because of the opacity and weirdness of some of its gameplay elements, but as the first new SaGa in a decade it’s a solid attempt at bringing the franchise into a modern context.
from Geek.com https://ift.tt/35UkdgX
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment