SaGa Frontier

"What a mess.... What the hell happened here?????"

SaGa Frontier came out at a time when Sqauresoft seemed unstoppable. So SaGa Frontier of course caught my eye the moment I saw it. I was familiar with the series so how could I go wrong...? I remember trying this game and instantly hating it. I did a few storylines and when I got to Reds, I just couldn't take it anymore. Once I got older, I picked the game back up again thinking I'd give it another try. Well, I can honestly say I wish I had never done that.... I feel like the crappyness of this game is haunting me, and after reading this review, I'm hoping you'll understand why.

To begin with, there's 7 characters to play as. That's 7 different stories each one about 14-15 hours in length. Not bad right? Well, right. I guess. It reminds me of some of the past SaGa games or maybe Live-A-Live. Only difference being, Live-A-Live was good, while this game is... Bad.

I don't know what kind of time constraints they were under, but good lord did they even try? No matter which character I pick I have no clue what's going on. In Reds chapter for example, Reds driving a car... And then a big thing jumps on it... And then Red screams out for his relatives in front of a burning house... I guess they died I dunno, then the black thing shows up again. Looks kinda like Edward Scissorhands. So Red fights Edward here, loses, some Captain Falcon wannabe shows up and... Red turns into a hero called Alkaiser or something... Then you're on some kind of airship.. And what the hell IS GOING ON???? From start to finish I never know what's going on. Not only that, I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO GO! The game is supposed to be non-linear. I guess non-linear= Aimless wandering cause 99.9% of your time is spent just wandering around talkin' to people hoping you'll trigger some kind of event. It's interesting that they tried to make it feel open ended, but they failed to do so. All they accomplished was a game where it's never clear where to go. In Reds chapter (I'm intentionally focusing on this chapter cause it was my first one) there seems to be a pattern. Get off the ship, trigger an event in a nearby town, get back on the ship, land again, trigger another event, then get back on the ship. But just to mess with your head THEY BREAK THE PATTERN THE 3RD TIME! I wound up wasting like 20 minutes aimlessly wandering the city, only to realize via a FAQ that there's nothing to do there at the moment. Oh, gee thanks. I really enjoy being tricked.

It's a constant problem and it never gets better. It's one of the few times in a game where the storyline gets in the way of the gameplay. The coolest thing about Reds Power Ranger rip off chapter was that he could transform. But even that was a mangled attempt because you can't transform unless the other characters are KO'd or blind. Literally be blind mind you. From a status condition. You've got to be kidding me!

In short, the story sucks. The supposed non-linear storyline only drags the game down, and it's easily one of the biggest flaws of the game. Enjoy running around without a clue where to go? Grab SaGa Frontier and knock yourself out. There's plenty of side quests, but good luck finding them. in most cases if you miss them, they're gone for good. I don't really mind that though, it gives incentive for a replay. But there's no excuse not to make the storyline related stuff easier to follow. Majoras Mask, which came out a few years later, had TONS of side quests but that game still made it very simple and easy to follow the main storyline and do the dungeons, and hell that game was 10 times the size of this one.

The gameplay really didn't need the extra weight either. It sucks all by itself. The first major problem is that the enemies are too unbalanced. Often times I would get a false sense of security from slaughtering some weak enemies, only to suddenly run into one that manages to instantly wipe out my party. HOW??? HOW CAN A GAME GO FROM BEING SO EASY TO SUDDENLY BEING SO HARD? unless you level grind (fans of this game prefer to call it "training") your ass off, you're gonna have a hard time getting anywhere. And it doesn't help that there's no option to retry or anything. Die once and it's back to your last save. you CAN save anywhere, which you'd think would help but it doesn't. Unless you save constantly that is. Sometimes I could be in what I THINK is a safe area and get slammed down by enemies. Again, talking about Reds chapter, I once talked to some NPCs. Typical stuff right? You talk to NPCs all the time in RPGs, no big deal. Well a bunch of baddies (randomly generated no less) jump you and depending on what enemy formation you get and the attacks they use, you can either get completely wiped out or just barely survive. Unless you level grinded beforehand. Is that really fair??? I had to start over quite a ways back too. It gets worse too. One characters chapter is pretty much one big level grind until you're able to fight the big boss of that chapter. You can literally find the boss in like 30 minutes or less, so you're just training for it. Lame.

When you're not wandering around without a clue or fighting battles you can't win, OR LEVEL GRINDING TO ENSURE YOU CAN WIN, you might realize the battle system is very interesting. Like other SaGa games, you can learn skills by using certain attacks in battle. It seems a little random but it's fun to suddenly learn a skill. Battles are typically turn based, but you have a lot of attacks at your disposal most of the time. It's fun to experiment and see what skill you might learn next. Leveling is complex and based on how you fought. Use a sword and your physical stats are increased. Reminds me a little of Legend of Mana and it's not bad. It's funny to see me praise this piece of junk, but if something is good, it's good. But even so, the battle system still has flaws. One of them being that it's very complex. It can be daunting to try and figure it out. It gets more confusing when classes are factored in. Humans are like jacks of all trades and can use plenty of weapons for example, and it was pretty cool to equip both a sword and a gun at the same time. in other SaGa games, weapons could break but for some reason they don't break in this one. Doesn't really matter, the bottom line is that the battle system is quite good in my opinion. Some hated it for its complexity (Life Points really blows a lot of people away) but I found it to be the games only strong point. Everything else sucked. If I were teacher, I'd give this game a D-. Only thing saving it from an F would be this, the battle system.

When you complete a chapter, there's supposed to be a sense of connectivity, but even this (like the rest of the game) was a bit undercooked and not very well designed. You'd think that if you complete one chapter, any main characters that had joined you (yes some of the 7 main characters may join you) would have kept their skills and such from the time spent with you, but nope. Back to basics for them. you do get some bonuses, but it's nothing noteworthy.

The controls are ok, what more could they have done with them? It's an RPG not a shooter. one thing I did find annoying though is that you merely need to TOUCH an NPC to talk to them. This is really annoying because often times I'm just trying to run past one of these idiots and I end up talking to them. DAMN IT!!

The graphics and sound don't fare much better. The graphics are pretty poor. It looks like SNES quality sprites plastered on top of pre-rendered backgrounds. They're not horrible, but they're not great either. They fail to impress. Hell, so does the music. Some tunes were catchy, but most were just annoying. Like elevator music that would play in Hell or something. I'm sorry that I don't have much to say in this regard, but I just don't have a whole lot to say. I guess the battle theme was ok, and the enemy sprites are actually better detailed than the characters, but seriously there's not much to say. The animation sucks, the music is typically bland and repetitive and I didn't like it.

It's obvious the designers were just bursting with ideas for this game. It's like the ideas crashed into each other and just exploded into this mess of a game. It's like two Rhinos composed of entirely of crap charged into each other with this game in the middle of the crap explosion. The games most bragged about feature, the non-linear gameplay, turns out to be the biggest downfall. It's an incredible hindrance to the overall game. This is what NOT to do when making a non-linear game. It's a broken down piledrived curb-stomped mess. I'd rather bang two rocks together. I'd have more fun covering myself in honey and rolling around in a fire ants nest completely naked. It's not a glitchy game I'll give it that, they obviously bug tested it. But damn, it's still a mess. It's sad too because deep down inside this cluttered mass of crap is a good game struggling to escape. If the player were just given some idea of where to go and what to do, this game would have been fine. But no, if you wanna know where to go, tough luck, you gotta read a faq or waste your time running around like an idiot. And when it gets to the point where I need a FAQ just to play the game then why bother playing it? It's more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. I may as well just watch other people play it on Youtube. You do at least get a lot of characters wow whoopity damn doo that's great, but when the entire game is one pain in the ass after the next, then what's the point??? Why suffer? Interestingly enough, this game does have a fanbase. It has a decent rating among people, and it had mixed reviews from the media. One review even claimed you'd have to be insane to hate it. Maybe they could look past the flaws, but I can't. Just playing through this game long enough to beat it made me miserable. I felt like I wasted my time. I kept playing thinking it would get better, but instead it just kept getting worse. The game was popular enough to get a sequel, which believe it or not turned out to be a lot better. Seems they removed all the crap and kept all the good parts, and added a few new things.

I think I'll just play the sequel, or perhaps the older SaGa games, and just ignore this filthy pile of Cactus ass. Or better yet, maybe I'll play Pong. Pong is like a ray of sunshine compared to this. Two sqaures and a ball kicks the hell out of this game. At least in Pong I don't have to constantly check a FAQ to figure out what to do.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/26/09

Game Release: SaGa Frontier (US, 03/31/98)