Author: Shea Layton
Never in a million years did I expect to be writing this review. From randomly walking into a pawn shop as a child and finding a game missing the manual insert in the jewel case for two dollars to obsessing over combos and monsters as an early teen to now. Honestly, did anyone have SaGa Frontier slated to get a remaster in 2021? Announced in 2020, this RPG, which happens to be a cousin to a little series called Final Fantasy, was finally coming back as Square Enix promised to give more love to a series neglected for far too long.
SaGa Frontier is an avant-garde RPG that bucked many traditional tropes and mechanics found in the PS1 Golden Age of RPGs, opting to give the player a wildly unique experience for those willing to take the time to delve deeper into its peculiar self-aware nature.
SaGa Frontier Remastered (Steam, Nintendo Switch [reviewed], PS4, Android, iOS)
Developers: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: April 15, 2021
MSRP: $24.99
The game starts you out by picking one of seven protagonists who have wildly different stories and motivations. After you defeat the game with one character, you can access the eighth character, a new addition in the remaster, added after the original version saw that storyline cut. The game records some basic facts about the player to create a save file that will transfer your data across multiple playthroughs. This is particularly important in the remaster, as a “new game+” mode has been added, allowing you to transfer all character levels, items, abilities, and monster levels if you so choose. This option was incredibly welcome. Being able to play the other storylines at a faster pace allowing for me to experience more of the story rather than some repetitive grinding that was so prevalent in RPGs during this time; SaGa Frontier is no exception. After selecting one of the eight main characters, as you travel through the game, you come across various characters that will aid you in your quest, each with their own motivations. Some of these characters will pop up through multiple storylines, and some of them are unique to one storyline. There is a slight overlap with characters and their abilities, which means that more of the fun can come from finding new characters to join your party than actually using them. With the advent of the new game+ mode, I found myself trying to make some characters viable to use but would often give up and revert to some of the characters I had already turned into hard-hitting brutes. I enjoyed exploring the various styles, but not all characters are created equally when it comes to strengths. That being said, if you love a particular character enough, you can still level their skills up enough so they can handle their own. Even though some characters are stronger, you can make any character playable if you are willing to put in the time.
When you play as one of 8 main characters, you can charter a vessel and fly to different regions, each of which is beautifully and intricately designed. Each area has its own vibe: Kyo has the look of Edo-period Japan, Manhattan is a futuristic city filled with skyscrapers, Tanzer is a region inside of a giant monster that swallows your ship hole…the list goes on and on. Besides looking vastly different, each region has its purpose, even though that purpose may not be immediately known when you first go there. That’s part of the fun, though! You have to ask yourself, Why am I allowed to go to this place, and how is it relevant to this protagonist’s story?
Speaking of story, each main character in the game has a story unique to them, except for Fuse, the new playable protagonist who offers the player a different perspective of the protagonist’s version of their own story. More on that later. Some of the protagonists’ stories feel incredibly fleshed out, giving you a healthy offering of that character before you roll credits. Some of the other protagonists’ stories feel more sporadic, incomplete, and confusing. I remember as a kid not being able to play certain storylines because I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. Thankfully, the remaster saw an incredible addition: the story tab in the menus. This gives the player some additional information to fill in gaps and nudge the player to the next place that they’re supposed to do. Does it always work? No, but it is a heck of a lot better than what the original did.
The music in this game is exquisite, to put it simply. Kenji Ito, famous for working on the Mana and SaGa games, and his soundtrack is part of what makes SaGa Frontier so exceptional. Each area (there are a lot of them) has vibrant tracks that keep you looking forward to exploring each sector of this universe. The combat theme does such an excellent job of building up during the screen transition until your characters are thrust onto the screen. When you fly on a ship to the next area, the music creates a feeling of excitement and wanderlust, making you excited to see what’s about to come before you. When you enter the creepy doctor’s office of a hidden Mystic, you will feel unease, not entirely sure if you should have come at all. It all flows together so cleanly, and it’s thanks to Kenji being aware of precisely what each area needed. My only complaint would be that some of the absolutely incredible tracks on this game don’t enough time in the spotlight. In particular, there is a region called Nelson that has an upbeat jazz track that I adored. The problem is that Nelson is a region that you rarely visit in the game, meaning that the track was in effect buried. It’s hard to find balance, so it’s not a significant flaw in the game. But it did leave me wishing that there was a way to select tracks from the game to play at any time so I could jam out to some jazz.
Let’s delve into the combat, which is part of what makes SaGa Frontier such a wildly unique experience even today. You can have up to 5 characters in battle face off against enemies. There are many styles of fighting enemies: guns, swords, melee, arts (monsters and mystics), and magic. Each style plays differently, allowing for massive customization about how you approach battles in SaGa Frontier. If you are fortunate enough, you can combo your characters’ moves, causing vast amounts of damage. There is a lot of trial and error in this process, but when you hit a 5-move combo with all of your characters getting in on the action, there are a few more rewarding experiences. What also makes the combat reasonably unique is that the enemies level with you. As you defeat enemies, your characters don’t level up; they increase their various stats. As those stats increase, the enemies get slowly stronger and tougher. And yes, that includes bosses. However, there’s a cool caveat: you don’t NEED to grind. In an era that saw players spending hours in front of their TV jamming Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill on repeat as they slayed the same enemies over and over again in any RPG of this era, the creators decided not to force the player to have to level up. You can play the game having fought only a few battles, and you will still feel strong enough to take down all of the bosses, granted you understand the strategies involved.
There are five main kinds of playable characters: humans, mechs, monsters, mystics, and half-mystics (human and mystic). The humans are the easiest to play as, being able to use any ability. You can mold them into whomever you need them to be, despite most of them having an aptitude for one style of play. I recommend using humans for beginners. Next is mechs, which require a little more understanding of the game. Instead of equipping them with abilities and armor, you equip mech mods, which unlock abilities and slots for them. It’s not terribly in-depth, however, allowing you to use them pretty early on. Monsters are creatures that “absorb” enemy monsters after combat, allowing them to liberate enemy abilities, gain a stat increase, and change their form. Monsters take a LONG time to master. You have to understand the combat system to make a powerful monster. However, the road to getting that particularly powerful form is exciting. As you absorb other monsters, you wait in eager anticipation as you wonder what ability and form your monster will take on. Mystics also absorb monsters, but the absorption happens via their equipment. They gain one ability from a monster, and their stats are increased. This makes the mystics easier to level up than humans early on in the game but not quite as powerful at the end of the game. There is a lot of nuance to playing as a mystic, but they are also rewarding for early-game development. The last kind of character, the half-mystic, is unique to one protagonist (don’t worry, no spoilers). This character can be trained as a full mystic, half and half, or as a human. This all may seem overwhelming, but as you go along playing, you pick up a lot of this pretty quickly.
A few other additions for the remaster worth mentioning are the speed-up options, the UI overhaul, and the “flee” option in combat.
As I had mentioned before, the main staple of all RPGs in the early days was grinding. Spending hours and hours to turn your characters into overpowered killing machines. Think of trying to master a musical instrument and the amount of painstaking hours you’d have to put in to feel like you are an “expert.” The remaster of SaGa Frontier saw the addition giving the player the ability to speed up walking and battle. I can tell you right now that this option got me way more invested in finishing each storyline. Had it not been there, I would have spaced out playing each storyline throughout the year. Boss battles that would take 20 minutes were cut down to 5 minutes. Faster walking meant I wanted to explore more. The addition of speeding up the game was a game-changer for me.
An excellent quality-of-life addition that Square Enix included was overhauling the menus and UI to make it easier to find what you were looking for. It was challenging to find out what weapons and armor did what or what combat moves did in the original. With the overhaul, I understood exactly what I was equipping to my characters, allowing me to bring out the most in them. On top of that, there was an addition of a “combo” section, allowing the player to see what combos they had made in combat for future usage. This allows the player not to have to memorize hundreds of possible move combinations or to have, for example, to resort to busting out a ballpoint and scratch paper.
My favorite addition of them all, though, was the “flee” option being added to the remaster. To this day, I cannot fathom how the original did not include the option to flee combat. This made the game significantly longer and more difficult. Each battle you came across, no matter how meaningless, had to be fought. This required the player to waste precious time that could have been spent exploring other storylines. I’m ecstatic that Square Enix realized that this was unacceptable in modern gaming, both in the request of time from a player and from taking away from what makes SaGa Frontier so darling: the stories. With being able to flee battles, I no longer felt like I had to kill the same low-level enemy for the 73rd time just to advance to the next area.
I know that reviews should be shorter, but I couldn’t help myself with this game. I have so much nostalgia tied into it and many upgrades, like the visual improvement to the hand-drawn environments. It makes this game feel fresh and new despite being a game released in the 90s.
Verdict: It’s a weird game. I know it won’t be for everyone. If you look into the history of the game creator, you will learn that his life history drastically influenced the peculiar way the game plays out. Those characteristics which make it unique may also make it unattractive at first glance. However, suppose you are able to look past the usual RPG trappings to understand that SaGa Frontier was created as a way for player freedom and creativity. In that case, you start to appreciate the vision that guides you throughout the entire experience.
Buy It
[This review is based on the retail version of the game purchased by the reviewer]