SaGa Frontier Remastered

I can't condone the game being this short and the dialogue sucking this much when Romancing SaGa 1 and 3 already exist. All 3 games feature 8 selectable protagonists, and while I concede that the majority of RS1 and 3 are largely the same regardless of your protagonist, the minimal narrative in Frontier just makes the 8 protagonists and their unique routes feel irrelevant anyway. It's a problem all 3 games have, but Frontier doesn't even bother trying to solve it. This is as opposed to RS2 where the minimal narrative ends up being a good thing, and actually enables the fluidity of the game's open world, as well as the concession of a frequently changing protagonist. Thumbs up because I got it for 10 bucks on sale and had some amount of fun with it.

Otherwise known as SaGa Tapas: a sampler platter of tasty little morsels, boasting a wide array of flavors all produced from a relatively small batch of shared ingredients. It's bizarre even by SaGa standards, a surreal trans-genre patchwork where cyberpunk, fantasy, martial arts, domestic melodrama, space opera, and gothic fairy tale are all tossed into a turn-based dogpile. At times, it felt like a bunch of mismatched action figures smashing into each other. My experience with SaGa Frontier was hardly unique. You've probably heard this story many times before: I picked it up, puttered through my first playthrough, and dropped it after the confusion and fatigue set in. I almost bounced off of it for good. SaGa functions predominantly as a directionless sandbox: an endless jaunt through an unfinished crazy-quilt universe, where each narrative is doled out in short cryptic riddles. At times, the only motivation we're given to schlep through its side quests is either to grab loot or sate our (mild) curiosity. Nothing coheres. It's almost defiantly messy. The world is simultaneously wide open and strangely barren: an unfinished patchwork of fascinating locations surrounded by empty vistas, weird liminal spaces, and staircases leading to nothing. There's a strange tension at the heart of Frontier: it constantly suggests a world much larger and more alive than the weirdly depopulated husk at its center. But eventually I stopped fighting the game's weirdness and started appreciating its stranger qualities. There's something genuinely charming about this janky little collection of half-explained worlds and intersecting storylines. The combat is excellent, the boss fights can be wonderfully punishing, the different species make for some wonderfully strange party-building possibilities (please don't ask me how to level up monsters though), and Kenji Ito's soundtrack is basically wall-to-wall bangers. Once I accepted that SaGa Frontier wasn't going to give me the kind of adventure I wanted and started taking it on its own terms, the charms became much harder to ignore. It will never become a personal favorite of mine, but I'm glad I didn't delete it from my Steam library. Also, for those curious: Asellus > Red > Blue > T260G > Emelia > Lute > Riki.

A very fun game. Very good music, fun characters, difficult sometimes, many innovative ideas for the time it came, and very repetitive side quests. Unfortunately, it's an incomplete game. I wish the remaster would add more stuff from "Essence of SaGa. Well, the new additions for the remaster are still welcome nonetheless. I wish Asellus had her own game, her story is beautiful is tragic. Emelia's story is a mess, I don't know what to say much about it. Red felt complete, but it suggested that would be continued. So kind of a cliffhanger? Riki... Oh Jesus, Virgil's fight is hell, it felt buggy sometimes. He just would know your combo even if you didn't use it yet. Blue story, uhh, it's really interesting. I wish they added a text in the end, though. The robot story is really fun, this one now felt very complete. Loved it. Lute is Lute. I guess, a very short scenario, and boring if you let him for later. His town theme is fun, though. Anne of Green Gables was there. The music is really good: Asellus final boss, Red final boss, Riki final boss, Battle 5, Battle 4, Owmi, Shuzer, and Yorkland. Jesus, so many good musics in this game. SaGa music in general is amazing.