Unlimited Saga

"Possibly worst RPG ever?"

Okay, to start this review off, I must say one thing. I myself literally hate this game and think it is a failed attempt at carrying the SaGa storyline-like structure.

Gameplay-
The gameplay in this edition of SaGa is quite worthless. The storyline is as follows; ''Seven things, seven people, seven quests, seven sevens, ok meet at the fair k thx.'' I mean, 90% of the game is moving the analog stick to travel in this inane map that has many dead ends that make no sense, since you don't encounter a random battle you just waste time having to travel back.
Ok well yeah, you can choose from seven characters, that all do the same things, same attacks[exclude Judy] and they all end up meeting at the same place, just like the last SaGa adventures.

Gameplay: 1/10; Seriously, I'd rather play pong.

Graphics-
Okay, these graphics appears to me as 256-color bitmaps from Windows 3.1 running at 5-frames per second. Graphics aren't really a major factor in my choice of games, but this game is just SAD. I am a graphic designer and I could make better animations than they did. The game is in complete 2D, including environments. The only 3D is camera movement, restricted to battles only.
Also, there is no moving your character. At no point in the game can you control the character's movement. When you enter a town you select where you'd like to go, and then a cardboard-like cutout representation of your character literally slides from the left side of the screen to do some business. It brings a tear to my eye.

Graphics: 1/10; Atari could do better.

Battle System-
Okay, the battle system here is plain blah. People say it's like ''D&D'' and I say they've never played Dungeons & Dragons. This game isn't really turn-based like D&D. It's this weird setup where you choose 5 actions and then act them out in whatever order you want them to occur without going back into the menu. As well as you level up/learn new skills RANDOMLY at the end of the battle. As well as people say it's similar to FFT. I would say don't even mention FFT around this game. Doing that is a disgrace to the greatest RPG ever, as well as it is not even similar in any aspect, including the battle system.

Battle System: 1/10: You hit, you hit, then maybe I can hit.

Sound-
Well, there is limited vocals in the game, about 50 words in all the hundred hours of nonsense gameplay. But 99% of the game is done in comic book style bubbles with non-antialiased text. There are very few musical scores, only noticeable is the battle music. Not to mention many of the sound effects are a straight rip from several Final Fantasy adventures, mainly FF9.

Sound: 1/10; Stealing from yourself?

Replay Value-
There are seven characters in this game, mainly to trick you into thinking there is a lot of replay value. In about 20 minutes of finishing your first adventure for a character you'll go, ''This is boring, maybe I'll try another character.'' And you'll do so, only to find out it's almost identical in everything; including sound, gameplay, adventures, and even... Battle skills.

Replay Value: 1/10; Replay the FFX-2 preview maybe.

Overall-
This game is the most disappointing Square work I've ever laid my eyes on. I could almost shed a tear to think Square approved of this game release.

Overall: 1/10; Honestly...

Rent or Buy + Extra

So what to do, to rent or to buy; that is the question. Well in my own opinion I'd say forget about the game and move on with life. Or if you are daring/curious/rich go ahead and rent the game. Yet, if you have Blockbuster's Game Freedom pass, just rent it for a few hours. :D
There is a little add-on goodie in this game, and it's an FFX-2 ''music video-like'' preview. It's wonderfully done FMV and shows some in-game shots. Only thing I have against FFX-2 is that it's just Square Enix making money off the same enemies with some new character models and story. Literally, if you watch the video, you see the same enemies and enemy models(Behemoth, Ochu, and some more seen in the video) but it's still some wonderful pre-rendered eye candy.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 07/12/03, Updated 07/12/03