There are a couple of JRPG franchises that I really wish did better in the West. One of them is Phantasy Star and the other is Squaresoft's SaGa games. It wasn't for a lack of trying. Square did make an effort to bring these games across the Pacific a few times. Unfortunately, not enough people showed interest in them.
It's a shame, because SaGa games have done a lot of things differently from your run of the mill JRPG, standing out as a very unique oasis in the sub-genre. The series did quite well in Japan, but its style of play never really caught on here. There are more RPGs that do what SaGa did now, however, so I am left wondering if maybe the series was a little ahead of its time for when entries came to the West, especially the non-linear storytelling.
With that, I've been having a hankering to revisit the series for the last while. It was a toss up between SaGa Frontier and my PS2 version of Romancing Saga. Both have their charms, but in the end I opted for the latter, as I do like some of the changes they made to the game when updating it from the Super Famicom version.
It's been 10 years since the remake came out and almost that long since I last played it, and consequently forgotten much about the game. I remember playing as Hawke, the pirate, but after that a lot of things get very fuzzy, very fast.
 |
| Found this alter early on. It's in a pentagram. It must be important. |
So, I've decided to play through the game once more, and as a different character. That's one of the things that's nice about the SaGa games, as a lot of them have multiple characters to choose from, each with their own goals. For this go around, I went with Barbara. She's an entertainer in a travelling troupe of dancers and the like. It's always been a dream of mine to save the world through the power of dance and this will finally allow me to do so vicariously through her.
I'm not entirely sure what her motivations are in the game. It never really said. Some of the characters have clear goals as to what they want from life, others not so much. So, I'm left to take her and her friend Herman as they wander around, talking with folks, and generally making the world a better place...well, hopefully anyway.
And this is one of the things that I like so much about Romancing SaGa: it's non-linear, a rarity in JRPGs. If anything, I think this is one of the things that scared away a lot of Westerners when Square tried to bring SaGa games out over here. They had expectations of a much more linear experience where adventures would go on rails from points A to B to C with NPCs explicitly telling the player what to do. Romancing SaGa doesn't have this. There's a lot more figuring things out for yourself.
You'll need to visit towns and talk to everyone to take in the local color and figure out what the situation is in a given region. Is there a conflict in the area? Is someone in town missing? How are the local deities doing? Are there any points of interest near this village? Your characters are travels in this world and they may know a bit about some of the major cities, but that's about it. They need to learn all of these things in order to have a better idea of what is going on in a given region. How are they supposed to know there's a monster-infested cave just outside of town? Of course they'll have no idea it exists. They don't live in that city. Only by talking to the locals and learning this themselves can they go there.
 |
| Shooting the breeze with townfolk. |
Even after getting all of this information, there's still the question of what they plan to do with it? Will they check out those ruins, cross that desert, or explore that cave? Maybe. It's up to the player. Even the big bad guy that players will have to deal with is only hinted at early on. There's a forest inhabited by fairies early in the game that hints at them, and a travelling minstrel that you'll cross paths with many times tells a story about them. Players learn about them, and at the back of one's mind the thought, "I should probably do something about that..." comes into play.
Sometimes you don't even need to do anything about problems some town folks are having. For example, there's one village where a mother is panicking because her son has gone missing in a nearby cave crawling with monsters. I popped in there and took a look around, but noticed some of the monsters were to strong for me, so I left thinking I'd come back later. However, when later came along the kid was already back home as he'd figured out a way to escape on his own. So, to an extent it feels like a real, living, breathing world.
That's what I've been doing up to this point, just wandering the land meeting people, helping them with their problems (or not). I can have up to five people in my party and I actually managed to find Hawke, and decided to bring him along for old times sake. He has some nifty moves in his repertoire, and an entertainer and a pirate seem like a match made in heaven, or at least a seedy bar by the docks. I even managed to find his helmsman, Guella Ha, who has some pretty great stats and is an expert at pokie-pointy-stick type weapons. For a time, even the minstrel that hangs out at all of the local pubs and volunteers to boot people I don't want in my party anymore asked to join me for a bit. He actually hit quite hard, but then the guy got bored and buggered off after when we rolled into town. I have been on the search for a mage and finally found one in North Estamir. Her name is Myriam and she likes to burn stuff.
 |
| The game likes tossing much stronger enemies at players out of the blue sometimes. |
Helping my party grow is pretty neat because Romancing SaGa doesn't use a traditional leveling system. Instead, individual abilities improve after each battle, and depending on the person certain things will get better faster than others. It's usually pretty intuitive with stats that accentuate the characters play style going up much faster than others. However, enemies seem to scale with the party's strength to some extent, so these gains are quickly offset.
I've largely been making the party stronger in a more viable way by leveling their skill sets (aka professions) with trainers in town. Getting a bunch of strength or vitality pales in comparison to hitting up a trainer, spending some jewels, and getting martial arts training up an entire level, for example. That's how you get big results. Unfortunately, jewels come slowly early in the game, so getting a skill set past level two will take some time while saving these up.
You can also buy new gear for everyone, which yields big improvements very quickly. The best way to do this is by raiding treasure chests as you find them. Enemies drop a bit depending what you run into, but chests are much better. Of course, completing quests is better still. Suiting everyone up in nice equipment makes a huge difference, and it improves your standing with the various merchant associations in the game. Doing business at item or weapon shops boosts your reputation with their affiliated association and as your levels go up with them the better deals they'll have for you and the more of an item that they'll have in stock at a given time. Loyalty does have its rewards.
 |
| We even helped a grave robber. |
So, there is definitely a bit of a grind in order to get jewels for leveling skill sets and to get enough gold to buy all of the goodies, but the thing that makes it feel worth it is the glimmer system. This is something that was introduced in later SaGa games and not in the original Romancing SaGa, but since this is a remake the developers decided to toss it in. This is a system where characters are struck by a moment of clarity and suddenly learn a new ability during battle. A little light bulb blinks over their head, and bam, they do the new thing. This comes from repeated use of a specific weapon type or school of magic making it feel like they're constantly learning something new. It's really satisfying to see them discover these abilities while grinding, and then you even get to figure out combos where two or more characters' special abilities synergize for an even more powerful attack. These attacks are a little bit RNG in when they get used, but if they do whip them out it usually helps a ton.
And with that, I still have no idea what I want to do next. From what I can tell, there's a demon of some sort imprisoned somewhere and some not-so-nice people are trying to free it. That's probably the big bad, and what I'll probably have to get around to eventually. There's no rush, though. I've yet to see much of this world and there's a lot of other stuff going on. For now, I'll just take Barbara and the gang for a merry romp around the world exploring everything, soaking in the sights, getting to know the local townsfolk, and maybe do some vaguely heroic stuff along the way. It really is nice to spend time with such an open-ended JRPG and I don't want to rush things.
