SaGa Frontier 2

"Just Shy of Greatness"

Saga Frontier 2 is a lot like that one girlfriend you've probably had. She's pretty, and likeable, but also kind of annoying and tedious, and you you just know there are better ones out there. But for some reason you stick with her until the relationship comes to an end. But enough with the analogies, let's break down the game in a less vague manner. =P

Story: 6/10

No RPG is complete without an awesome story, and SF2 delivers in this aspect! ....Well, sort of. The unique thing about SF2 is that it takes place over about an 80 year time span, which is a cool idea. The trade off is that you only play during important (and sometimes not so important) events, leaving huge gaps in the storyline between many events. You can also pick the order in which you play these events, unlocking more as you go. This was supposed to make the game less linear, but it just winds up becoming quite confusing.

Anyway, there are two main stories throughout the game. The first involves a young prince named Gustave who is unable to succede to the throne, as he is "ungifted", with no anima, or magic powers. This is unheard of in an age where just about everyone uses magic, and soldiers fight with weapons made of materials such as wood and stone rather than steel in order to channel their anima into attack spells. Gustave and his mother are exiled in discrace. In order to prove his worth, Gustave forges a steel sword and focuses on physical strength, and eventually gains political power denied from him at birth.

The second story starts out with a digger named Will Knights, who leaves his aunt and uncle at 15 to hunt for "quells", powerful sources of anima. This turns into a quest to seek reverge for the death of his parents, and he fights against the omnificent source of malicious power that turns people into evil puppets to do it's evil bidding - - the egg. Yeah, it's an evil egg. Three generations of the Knights family basically wind up trying to destroy this horrible egg thing and bring peace to their world.

The story of Gustave is great, and I found myself wishing they filled in more of the gaps. Many of the events were quick cutscenes, and Gustave's scenario is completed fairly quickly. On the other hand, the Knights family has an interesting concept of playing through 3 different generations, but the story is bland, and you unfortunately spend most of your time in these events, doing dungeon crawling quests and hunting after that stupid egg. Also, there are a LOT of events and characters over the span of the game, and it's easy to get them mixed up and forget what's going on, especially if you play the events out of chronological order. Overall the story shows promise, but fails to follow through most of the time.

Graphics: 9/10

Next up is the graphics. And they are excellent. Easily the best part of the game. They are hand drawn with watercolor and everything just looks like something out of a fairy tale book. The character sprites are big and nicely animated, although there tend to be only one or two sprite sets for each character, and often look the same when they're 15 as when they're 30. The only part I don't really enjoy are the battle graphics, which is a shame because you'll see them a lot. Your character are set on a 3d background, and when the background moves, they shrink, grow, suddenly flip over, and everything looks very pixellated. The exception is during the 1 on 1 duel battles, where the characters are huge and more nicely animated. A nice touch is the fact that each weapon has its own graphic in battle, so a huge steel sword definately looks different cooler than a wooden sword. There are also lots of different arts with different animations and effects, which is cool. The game definately looks its best outside of battle though.

Sound: 8/10

The soundtrack to SF2 is great. The tunes are mostly fairly memorable and pleasant to listen to. They really draw you into the world. The amazing battle theme makes the constant battles tolerable, and it gets even cooler when you realize there are about 5 different arrangements of the battle theme. My favorite is still the first one though, mostly because of the funky bassline. =)

The sound effects are good. Nothing groundbreaking here, but everything is crisp and clear.

Gameplay: 5/10

Ah, and then there is the worst part of SF2: the gameplay. While the game is fun and interesting for a while, the battles soon become repetative just because they take song long to finish. Do to the unique battle system, you have to really think about every turn and play everything out or else you will just get destroyed. The game is vague in its explanation of how many of the mechanics work, so you're forced to figure everything out on your own (or with the help of a great website like GameFAQs.com =). Basically, you have your standard HP, and that's about the only standard stat in the game. You also have Life Points, which you can use to recharge your HP (when you're out of LP you cannot be revived). Then you have Weapon Points and Skill Points, which are consumed in order to use physical weapon-based techniques and special anima-based skills, respectively. WP recharge after each turn, depending on the character and how old he/she is. SP also recharge after each turn, but this is instead determined by how many "quells" you have equiped. These are the only real stats you have, and they will increase randomly as you fight battles. Each character also has different elemental and weapon skill levels, some of which increase quicker than others.

If this all sounds confusing, that's because it is. If you don't understand what you're doing, you can easily use all of your WP after a few battles and be forced to defend to build them back up. Also, learning techniques is a pain. You can either fight in group battles and hope someone gets the idea for a new art (which rarely happens), or fight in duels and put in the correct combination of up to 4 commands to learn them. The higher the skill level, the better of a chance you have of actually putting the commands together into an art. The randomness is the thing that bugs me the most about it.

One thing that bugs me about this game is that sometimes you will only have a character for 1 or 2 events before they just disappear altogether from the story and you never see them again. Luckily, you can find a couple of people that can give you their equipment back. They also explain that they have no idea how they can do this. Another thing that gets on your nerves is the relatively small inventory storage. The game mostly gives you weapons that break after you use them a certain amount of times, forcing you to always keep extras on hand. In addition, many enemies drop lots of pointless accessories that take up space. And the worst part is that there is only one person in one town that you have access to only a few times during the game that you can actually sell your crap to! Since the shops usually carry sub-par equipment compared to the stuff you find during quests, you'll likely be throwing lots of stuff out anyway. This bugs me though. =(

Replay Value: 3/10

I rented this game years ago, but never finished it. I was lucky enough to come across a copy recently about play it all the way through. That said, the only part I would play through again would be the Gustave scenario. Luckily, when you beat the game, you get a new game + option where all of the events are unlocked in the beginning.

Overall: 7/10

Through the graphics and soundtrack, SF2 creates an immersive world with its own personality. The only word that can describe this game is "unique". Nothing else is like it. And for that, I can look past even the constant drawn out battles. I just wish they had fine-tuned it a little more, because it's just shy of greatness. Well Saga Frontier 2, it's been fun but it's time we part ways. I'll call you.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/11/08

Game Release: SaGa Frontier 2 (US, 01/31/00)