Romancing SaGa

"A fantastic RPG"

I have always been a fan of the SaGa series. I played the SaGa Frontier games on the Playstation 1 and thought they were excellent. I also played the Final Fantasy Legend games which were very good as well. Hell, I even liked UNLIMITED Saga which most people can not stand. Let me just say that this is the best one so far.

Romancing SaGa is actually a remake of the SNES game which never saw release in the States. I never played the original due to the fact I don't know Japanese, but after seeing some screenshots of the Japanese game, this is a wonderfully done remake at least in terms of graphics.

The game is set in the world of Mardias. Mardias is threatened by Saruin, an evil god that was long ago imprisoned in a barrier that is now breaking. You, as one of eight different characters are the one that gets to stop it. The game's story may not seem very strong on the surface, but it actually is decent. Like I said earlier, you choose one of eight different characters from the world of Mardias. Each character has their own bit of back story and reasons for traveling the world but overall, character development is not huge. Some characters have a lot more story then others do, which may turn all but the most hardcore fans off of playing through all the characters.

The gameplay of Romancing SaGa is what will turn casual fans off. At the beginning of the game you are given a little back story and then are thrown out into the world. A lot of people will probably think "Well now what?" and the answer would be "Whatever you want".

This is not a Final Fantasy like RPG. Not in the slightest and anybody looking for a FF like RPG will be utterly disappointed. After you are thrown out into the world you have to visit the available places and recruit characters which will in turn lead to new areas opening up. The game is driven by quests and battling. Time in the game is advanced by something called an Event Rate, or ER for short. All the battles you fight will advance the ER and make new quests available to you. Small, easy battles will not advance it very much at all while larger boss battles will advance it much more. This unique system discourages power leveling and makes it so that you can not possibly do every quest in one playthrough as some quests expire as the time goes by. Its a great system and I would like to see it done more in other RPG's.

The structure of Romancing SaGa is almost entirely quest driven. As you go to different towns and advance time, more and more quests become open to you while others expire. Since you can not do every quest in one playthrough its best to just relax and go through the game at a leisurely pace, doing quests and fighting battles until you advance time far enough to get to the ending boss.
There is also a nifty little system in place called proficiencies.

Proficiencies are basically different skills you can use across your journey such as climbing, lurking, ore mining, etc. You'll come across spots in the game where you will need to use them and almost all will come in handy once or twice throughout the game..

If I have one problem with the gameplay structure it is that sometimes quests are hard to come by. If you aren't using an outside source as a guide, you could spend quite a bit of time looking for a quest that you can do and when you get them, some don't give you a lot of direction in what to do. Some will hate the searching, for others it only adds to the appeal of the game. I personally fall into the latter category.

The battle system in Romancing SaGa may seem simple, but it can actually be very complex. Your party consists entirely of people you recruit so it can be changed to fit your fighting style based on the people you recruit. There are no levels in Romancing SaGa. Your characters get stronger after winning fights and having separate attributes go up based off of your fighting style.

All your characters have a certain class such as Swordsman, Wizard, Hunter and Pirate to name some basic ones(trust me, they get better). A characters class determines how well they wield certain weapons. A Swordsman for example uses a long sword well while a Wizard uses magic better(duh). The cool thing is that every character can change classes whenever you want them too. So you're never stuck with one character only being able to use certain weapons.

Battle has a lot of stats to keep track of. There is HP, which is hit points obviously. BP, which allow you to do techniques and special attacks. LP, which is how much life a character has after they have ran out of hit points. DP is how much durability a weapon has and how many attacks it can do before breaking. Confused yet? Don't be, it's really not as complicated as it sounds although it could turn off some casual fans as soon as they see it.
For RPG vets, Romancing SaGa won't give you a huge challenge. It's not easy, it's just not that hard either. Casual fans will probably be tearing out their hair at points though.

Sound in Romancing SaGa is pretty good. The music is done well although it doesn't really stand out from any other RPG in terms of tunes. The game also has voice acting. Most people can't stand this but I really didn't think it was that bad.

All in all, Romancing SaGa will be loved by the hardcore RPG fan and hated by the casuals. I don't hand out tens easily, and I'm doing it here because there really was nothing about the game that I thought was bad. Sure, there were a few things, like not being able to find quests easily, but they didn't bother me. I absolutely loved the game and I highly suggest it to anybody who calls themselves a RPG fan

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/23/05