Romancing SaGa

"Unique, non-linear, and deep, but not without a few snags"

It's simply amazing to think that Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is a remake. RS:MS (hereon simply "RS") was incredibly unique when it was first released for the Super Famicom oh-so-many years ago, and it has lost little of it's individuality in this PS2 remake. As far as being remade goes, the combat system has been spruced up, quests have been revamped, the graphics have been redone (obviously), a lush new musical score has been recorded, and the game world has been expanded. As far as remakes go, this is an exemplary piece of work. There's a reason some of what RS does has never been copied by other games, however, and that's because some of it's unique features aren't necessarily the best. Even with it's drawbacks, however, RS is a well crafted RPG that certainly warrants a few dozen hours of your time.

Non-linear?

Almost totally non-linear, RS allows you to pick from one of eight protagonists and take them through the game world in pretty much any fashion you like. Will you be a pirate and face off with your adversary? Will you be a treasure hunter, and scour the world for the legendary Destiny Stones? Will you be a wandering dancer? The eight main characters available are all quite colorful, and they all have an individual storyline. Note however that the vast majority of the quests in RS can actually be done by of them - it's not even necessary to complete any given character's personal quest to finish the game.

Although you'll most likely end up being a hero, it is possible to be more than a little evil in RS as well, but you kind of need to know what quests will allow you to make "evil" choices beforehand. Otherwise you end up being a hero that occasionally screws someone over, and little more. Being heroic is more fun anyway, if you ask me. Your inner villain may feel otherwise, of course.

The drawback to all this freedom of choice is a lack of direction. Sometimes you simply don't know where to go. There are some quests which you can apparently only get at certain places at random intervals, which seems more than a little strange. One infamous quest involving one of the destiny stones must be completed very, very early in the game or else the player will miss out on several things. Is there any way to know this? Not really, unless you read about it ahead of time or play the game multiple times. Even with problems like this, however, the non-linearity of RS is quite refreshing; it's enjoyable here but I don't know if I really want other games copying the idea.

Itemized and ready for... repair

As is seemingly required by law in Japan, RS features item customization. You can attach some sort of material (often metal, but not always) to your weapons and armor to make it stronger (you can make it weaker too, if you really want). This is usually a benefit for armor, as although armor usually becomes heavier, the extra defense is often worth it. Weapons, however, are another story. Once you have bonded something to a weapon, that weapon no longer has its endurance points (which are easily consumed during battle) restored by resting at an inn.

Instead, you must trek back to a smithy and pay to have it repaired. The extra cost of repairs makes doing this early in the game a bad idea, as money can be scarce at first, but late in the game, the extra time it takes to repair your weapons almost makes bonding material to them more of a bother than it's really worth. Almost. Those who want the most out of their blades will be happy to slap some extra metal on them and enjoy some benefits.

Skills all over the map

One of the new features of RS is the "map skills," abilities you can use on the game maps outside of battle. It's a neat idea, and somewhat novel at first, although this is actually one of the weakest features of the game. Unless you know what skills you need beforehand to progress in some areas, choosing your skills poorly can result in some very annoying backtracking. Sometimes the game even punishes you for not bringing a specific skill along - such as some treasure chests I couldn't get due to not having jump in one area, which disappeared when I went back having jump enabled - which is ridiculous. Why are you punishing the player for not having -guessed- what skills they need in a specific area? Other skills are simply not very helpful - I went the entire game without gathering any herbs, and I used climb perhaps three times at most. The map skills idea is interesting, but simply not executed too well overall.

The majority of the skills in RS aren't map skills, however. Most of the skills are weapon skills and magic skills, which can be raised by giving jewels to shady-looking men posted throughout the world. The cost curve on skills is EXTREMELY steep, meaning that you'll probably develop the skills of your party members rather evenly, rather than focusing on just one person. By raising enough related skills, you can change your character's class (or job, as some people like to call it), which gives them some sort of extra bonus. Swordsmen receive a bonus to their aggressive weapon attacks, fortress knights get an increased chance to deflect an attack, etc. The classes are a nice touch, but some seem rather superfluous (Who wants to be an herb picker? Anyone? Didn't think so) and the effects of some are almost unnoticeable (one class is supposed to reduce your risk of enemies chain-attacking you, but having one in your party doesn't seem to change anything). The weapon and magic skills, and classes, work out better than the map skills do overall, however.

Five man enter, five man leave

The battle engine of an RPG is often what makes or breaks it. Really, you spend more time fighting than doing anything else in an RPG. RS is no exception here, and thankfully, the battle system is quite a bit of fun (until the end of the game, that is... more on that later). You can give pretty much any character any type of weapon, and if you give them a few skill levels in it, you'll start whipping out impressive attack techniques quite quickly.

For a while, this is really fun. You keep getting better and better abilities and can really feel your characters progressing. Unfortunately, combo attacks, which are a fairly important part of battle, are totally random, which can be frustrating when fighting some of the harder bosses. You can influence the odds a bit by mixing up your battle formation, but ultimately lady luck will decide if you get a combo or not.

One thing you'll notice right away is that your characters heal automatically after each battle. Yep, that's right, no more healing spells or herbs needed once each battle ends. In exchange, your characters can be reduced to zero hit points quite easily, and when they do, they lose and LP - a life point. After they've run out of LP, they're gone from your party for good. Magic points can't be recovered because, well, there aren't any. Spells can be cast for free or for a life point, which is a fairly high cost to pay for some of the magic. The result of this rather odd damage scale is that battles are fast and furious, with you needing to throw all your might up against each and every monster that stands in your path.

While this is all well and good for quick encounters, it was not meant to sustain long encounters, and the longer boss battles suffer for it. Your ability to use weapon techniques sputters out part way through and you're stuck picking away at a boss with tons of HP for a long period. Get used to it, some battles in RS are just like that.

Overall, the battle system here is good fun for random encounters but has some problems which show through in boss battles.

Magically delicious... or not

Square Enix (mainly Square in this case) is famous for fantastic looking spell effects. While the spells in RS often look cool, most of them are actually pretty lousy effect-wise. There are many types of magic - fire, water, earth, wind, light, dark, spirit, illusion, and more - but almost all of them are worthless. It's depressing, really. Fire magic is the best by far - until you get access to the really high level spells, at which point other disciplines become useful, such as water. Healing is best left to light (and water, for one of the weaker spells). And while healing magic is good (almost necessary), attack spells are terribly weak in most cases (again, until you've got access to much higher level stuff). Oh, and don't ever, ever bother with status-ailment causing spells. They don't seem to work on anything, and most don't offer any damage of any sort.

Also, don't bother with mages. Just teach magic to your fighters and get on with it. The effect bonuses spellcasters get with their high mental statistics aren't worth the cost of their laughably low hit points. Once your mage dies for the umpteenth time due to a fluke strike, you'll be happy your party is full of burly warriors. Spellcasting burly warriors, but burly nonetheless.

The magic system in RS is one of the greatest flaws in the game, as while magic can be made useful, it's simply too much work to make magic good when the weapon skills are so powerful.

Randomly encountered, and difficult

The dungeons in RS are another spot where a bit more polish could have been applied. Most dungeons are incredibly simple chains of boxy rooms connected by corridors, and the few that do try and implement some sort of puzzle turn up quite uninteresting. The number of monsters in many of them is quite outrageous, and you'll be thankful that there are some map skills that let you avoid random encounters. Here, you run into an unfortunate catch 21, however. If you avoid too many battles, you'll never be strong enough to beat some of the bosses. But if you don't avoid the monsters, the dungeons can turn into plodding affairs where you fight a monster every few steps. Sometimes you'll find a happy medium, sometimes you won't.

The difficulty of the monsters is also a bit... uneven. In the early parts of the game, you can easily blaze through everything the game can throw at you, yet by the middle sections many encounters turn into massacres for your hapless characters. The difficulty of the monsters is adjusted depending on the strength of your party (due to the fact that there is no set order in which you have to do things, this sort of setup is necessary) and sometimes the calculations just seem to be off. Fret not, however, as the problems begin to get sorted out as you approach the endgame. By then your party members are strong enough to deal with the fiends that infest every last nook and cranny of the world.

The strength of the bosses does NOT depend on the strength of your characters, however, and you're likely to run into at least a few impossibly powerful ones early in the game. I ran into a dragon quite early on that I couldn't beat until near the end of the game. That wasn't too annoying, as I could simply go back, but I actually found it impossible to complete my main character's storyline due to my inability to beat a boss at an encounter that I couldn't revisit. In that case, I felt pretty cheated. How was I supposed to know that I couldn't beat something, and why am I being penalized for it?

You can save the game anywhere, which comes in quite handy, and this can alleviate some of the frustration the battles can bring as well. It also helps when you suddenly get called out of the house - but that's not really RS's fault, of course.

By the later stages of the game, you've also probably reached the limit of what your characters can do. Once you've found a few key skills, you don' t need to vary your battle strategy much, and the majority of your random encounters will be fought the same regardless of what lies opposite you on the battlefield. The lack of real elemental affinities in the game (fire magic isn't good against fire elementals, but it works on almost everything else just fine) and weapons all being equally effective (or quite close to it, at least) saps some of the fun out of playing.

Romancing the score

So, where does all this leave RS as a whole? Being so unique in a genre that isn't known for wild innovation, RS gets an easy recommendation for RPG fans who want something different from the norm. Having multiple characters gives it some replay value as well, but the fact that many of the mid-game quests overlap between characters makes more than a few replays a bit less appealing. Even if you don't feel like playing through it again, however, the flaws of RS don't stop it from being a very novel and very entertaining RPG that, while unique, is unquestionably an RPG through and through. The game hits a few snags, and being penalized for things you can't plan for is horribly frustrating, but overall, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is well worth playing.

The Good Stuff:

+ Unique
+ Fantastic musical score
+ Battles are fun and fast paced (at first, at least)
+ Non-linear and open
+ Lots of control over character development
+ Ability to save anywhere can save time and frustration

The Not-So-Good Stuff:

- Often unclear how to complete a quest
- Quests can be failed for no clear reason
- Magic is underpowered in general, lots of worthless spells
- Sometimes you're punished unfairly (don't have the right map skill even though you weren't told what you needed, can't complete a quest due to a boss you didn't know you had to beat, etc.)
- Battles can get incredibly redundant in the endgame

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/05