SaGa SCARLET GRACE: AMBITIONS™

Every SaGa game feels like you've stumbled upon a really popular video game series from an alternate timeline. Somewhere in the multiverse is a dimension where these games became more popular than Final Fantasy, and I want to live in that world. It is maniacal, free-form exploration and turn-based combat in a pop-up world. There are no towns or dungeons at all, it is soul-crushingly low budget. The worst SaGa game, but it scratches a JRPG itch that nothing else out of Japan can.

At it's core, SaGa Scarlet Grace is four stories in one. At the outset, you get to pick one of four protagonists, either 'randomly' through the ingame quiz or directly by choice. Each protag has a main storyline, and while following it, each one also dabbles in two of the other three storylines, until they eventually come up against the end boss. Having not played previous SaGa games, I don't know if the Firebringer is a recurring villain, but in terms of the story, I'd be remiss not to mention that I was somewhat disappointed, since while he's alluded to during the main events, he largely just comes out nowhere as the big bad breaking free from his chains, while the stories largely focus on world elements working to release him. The gameplay mostly boils down to a continuous stream of fetch quests. You go from place to place, fight the enemies, move on to the next place, and so on and so forth. The world is pretty large, with 20 zones all of which have their own zonewide story as well as the elements of protag storyarcs. Where the game excels is that a lot of the locations within the zone evolve based on your actions. It's not uncommon for towns to be destroyed, others to pop up, with some events having huge impact on the entire zone while others just dabble around the edges. All told, it's a joy to explore. The combat is where the game truly shines. Each battle has a turn based timeline, and characters can move up and down it based on numerous factors, such as buffs, abilities used, or their their attunement to the elemental type of the encounter. Any time somebody or thing dies on the line, the group of characters on either side compress together, and if they're of the same faction (you or the enemy), then they unite to do a group attack. Among the standard attacks, you can try to interrupt an enemy attack, or defend another character who may be at risk of dying, or you can even attempt counter attack, assuming the enemy attacks that character to activate it. Despite the cast of enemies not being huge, you get a lot of gameplay out of the system, since even battles against the same group of monsters can play significantly differently in back to back bouts. Upon defeating encounters, your entire teams starts getting power ups, often HP gains, but also weapon skill boosts, and these level ups happen virtually every battle, so you're constantly feeling yourself get stronger. But the best aspect of the battling is the weapon skills, whereby your characters randomly get a lightbulb pop over their head after using some techniques, to then use another technique which is learned and can be used at will from then on. Factor in the multiple weapon types, and that learning combinations of skills across multiple weapons also opens up additional buff choices for individual characters, there's an awful lot of meat in a rather simple premise. That all said, to get the full enjoyment of this game you do need to have a certain mindset. This is very much a collectors game. There's 70-80 odd characters alone out in the world, all with their own voices and personalities of which they're not shy to show, and many of which can only be gained through certain protagonist following their story paths in certain ways. Across all weapons there's probably 70-80 unique skills, plus the 20 spells all with unique animations. Each protag also has 5-6 different endings based off choices they made leading up to the final encounter. There's a trading system between towns that carries over between different journeys, a giant collection sidequest to find some 20 odd items sparkling in secluded areas around the world, a host of unique weapons with weapon specific skills ... there's just loads and loads to collect, and if you want the rarer stuff there'll be a fair bit of grinding between. If you play for the four protag stories alone you'll probably get 40-50 hours of fun assuming the combat system keeps you engaged. If you're going into full achievements,…

One of the most overlooked RPGs of all time. It's hard to reccomend SaGa to most people but this is a must-play for any enthusists of the genre as it has an in-depth combat system to master and story events aren't TOO obtuse. (I'd reccomend running multiple save files of the same playthrough though, just in case an event doesn't play out the way you want it to and you need to go back.)