SaGa Frontier 2

"To be honest, I liked the first game a lot better"

I was a big fan of the first Saga Frontier, so I had been looking forward to this game ever since I first heard about it. Unfortunately I have to say that I am dissapointed.

Graphics 9
Okay, might as well get the good parts out of the way first. The graphics are pretty good. If there was ever a game to showcase the advantages of 2D hand drawn graphics, this is it. The backgrounds are especially nice. I did think though that the spells and special moves could have been a bit better though.

Sound 8
The music ranges from very good to very annoying. On the plus side there are multiple battle musics, something SF1 needed. On the down side they are all just different versions of the same theme. If fact there are only a couple of recognizable themes in the game, and they are recycled many many times. Still, the themes aren't bad. The sound effects are very good, definitly better than the first game.

Story 5
Here's were things get bad. Admittedly there seems to actually be a fairly complex story going on. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to follow. It is as if there are many important story elements that you are simply never told about that are necessary to understand what is going on. Characters mysteriously disappear with no explanantion while others appear out of nowhere and the game acts as if you should know what is going on, even though the best you can do is guess. Also, the story is extrordinarily linear. Yes there are multiple paths, but you have to do most of them eventually and the order hardly matters. In fact, the fact that it isn't always clear what chronological order the scenerios go in makes the story that much harder to follow. Within each scenario you are extremely limited in where you can go. Need to go to a shop? Well if the scenario you're in doesn't have one then you are out of luck, which is often the case. While the first game was very open ended, this game is the polar opposite. Sorry, but I'll take open ended any day over this.

Gameplay 6
To me this is far and away the most important category. It is because of it's extremely complex and varried gameplay that Saga Frontier is my 2nd favorite PSX game (after Final Fantasy Tactics). SF2 just doesn't measure up. While the first game had four races, this game only has humans, plus there is very little difference between the characters other than their skill levels. On the plus side, there are many more weapon tecniques than there were for humans in the first game, but the removal of Mystics Mechs and Monsters really hurts the variety of the fighting. No longer are there literally hundreds of abilities available to you. Another problem, which I mentioned earlier, is that characters keep disappearing. It is very annoying to work a character up to a high level just to have him leave and be replaced by a new, weaker character and have to start over building them up. The Duel Battle system is interesting, but it is pain trying to remember how to do all the moves. The Strategic battles are a joke. They are ridiculously simple and easy (except for South Moundtop). There are only a few of them anyway so it hardly matters.

Overall 6
I've beaten SF1 12 times so far, spending at least 120 hours on it. It is safe to say that I won't be spending that kind of time on this game. For all intents and purposes this is really Romancing Saga 4. Almost all of the changes made in Saga Frontier over Romancing Saga 3 have been changed back, for the worse in my opinion since I thought Romancing Saga 3 was pretty boring. If there is another Saga Frontier game I hope it is more true to the first game than this is.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/04/00, Updated 03/04/00