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Trojita · Dec 19, 2012

These games are an odd assortment.

Final Fantasy Legends 1,2, and 3 (which are SaGa 1, 2, and 3 respectively) are pretty well remembered games for being RPG's that were a lot more complex than you would expect from a Game Boy game. They formed a "Final Fantasy" Quadroligy on the Game Boy along with Final Fantasy Adventure. Of course they weren't Final Fantasies at all.

1 and 2 had you choose a party between Humans, Mutants, and Monsters. Saga 2 added the ability to have Robots in your Party, and 3 was a much more traditional game that actually followed Final Fantasy the closest.

SaGa 1&2 also had weapons and items that would break after a certain amount of uses. It kind of sucked when that Infinity+1 sword only had 7 uses on it.

SaGa Frontier was a weird game to me. You could choose between 7 different scenarios with different main characters to play. It seemed pretty damn non-linear and wouldn't give you much clues at all of where to go next. The other game I played that reminded me of this was Legend of Mana. and I got lost in Red's walkthrough near the beginning because I thought you had to get through the bioplant to get to the next event. The enemies inside were way too hard. I ended up using a gameshark to get through it and nothing was on the other side.

SaGa Frontier 2 was a beautiful game. There was two different scenarios in this game. You could choose choose to play as Gustave or Wil Knights and the Knights family. I only ever played a part of Gustave's story.

I don't know a lot about the Romancing SaGas, I heard Unlimited Saga sucked, and have not played the SaGa Remakes yet.

Sora_N · Dec 19, 2012

That was the only one I almost got, I never tried the rest.

Toki767 · Dec 19, 2012

I gave up on SaGa Frontier when I originally tried it. I should go back and see if I can finish it. I remember being stuck at this one boss fight that I could never beat.

Meccanical · Dec 19, 2012

The only one I am familiar with is SaGa Frontier 2.

The game was weird, but way more ambitious than most games nowadays, and I can respect that.

My favorite element of the game was the soundtrack. he way Hamauzu used different melodic ideas throughout the the game made the soundtrack a very unique identity and ultimately makes it a very connected thematic experience.

One of my favorite OSTs ever.

charsace · Dec 19, 2012

I played the legend games for game boy and liked all 3. Romancing Saga 3 has some of the best sprite art ever and was good. Square did their best to kill this series.

Toth · Dec 19, 2012

What I think held back some of the later Saga titles were high difficulty spikes and inabilities to really grind your characters to meet those challenges. I think the Last Megalith best comes to mind. A slew of tough bosses, NO LP Regen (you lose this when you die and it does not replenish. Once it's all gone, your character is gone for good) and a very hard final boss really hurts SF 2's image as a classic.

Impeccable · Dec 19, 2012

I believe I played about 5,000 hours of SaGa 2 in highschool on my gameboy. All I can really remember is just grinding... but I loved it.

t26 · Dec 19, 2012

Beat the original with all 7 characters. Love that game

punkmaggit · Dec 19, 2012

I still listen to the soundtrack to SaGa Frontier II to this day. It's Masashi Hamauzu's best work.

Manmademan · Dec 19, 2012

Saga Frontier 2 was my intro to the series, and it's balls hard for no good reason. the mechanics are deliberately obscure and skills are literally learned at random. Good luck without a faq- but yes it's pretty.

I still own unlimited saga but have never played more than a couple of hours. again it's pretty but flawed to the point it's unplayable. iirc everything is totally random, even opening chests. this game can die in a fire, its literally anti-fun

SchleimanTank · Dec 19, 2012

Oh man. I loved SaGa Frontier 2. Really loved it.

But I never finished it. I played it right up to the end of both Gustave's and Wil's scenarios. I couldn't figure out how to beat the

final army battle

in Gustave's scenario, and in Wil's scenario

when you go fight the Egg, you got new party members that you had to level up, and IIRC the final boss had insta-kill attacks that I think you needed some Ribbon-like item to defend against, and if you didn't have those items by then you were pretty much screwed.

I pretty much gave up at that point. Shame, because there's apparently a

New Game+ mode

if you beat it.

Brilliant game though, and beautiful. That watercolor art. Great soundtrack too.

Ourobolus · Dec 19, 2012

Beat SaGa 3, Romancing SaGa (PS2), and came close on SaGa Frontier 2. I got to the end game and was just getting creamed.

I really want to beat SaGa 1 and 2 (wish the remakes were in English, though I think that was 2 and 3?), and maybe try SaGa Frontier sometime. I remember starting it and just having zero idea where to go.

And Unlimited Saga is ass. Phenomenal soundtrack, but total shit everything else. I almost beat Judy's scenario, but that was all I stomach.

Jarnet87 · Dec 19, 2012

I rented Saga Frontier 1 way back in the day, didn't really appeal to me.

Maybe if it ever hits PSN (lulz yeah right) in the US I would give it another shot.

jorgeton · Dec 19, 2012

I enjoyed Romancing Saga 3 on SNES.. it never made it here but I played a fan translation way back when. It was one of those excellent SNES Squaresoft RPGs that inexplicably never made it to the US on an official level (like Seiken Densetsu 3).

I also picked up Minstrel Song on the PS2, and that's a pretty fun one. Tough as nails. But if you're up for the challenge and like the grind, it's a great title. Like most SaGa games, the visual style is very interesting and it has a large cast with different scenarios. I think it's one of the more conventional SaGa games.. way more than Unlimited SaGa.

Manmademan · Dec 19, 2012

SchleimanTank said:
Oh man. I loved SaGa Frontier 2. Really loved it.

But I never finished it. I played it right up to the end of both Gustave's and Wil's scenarios. I couldn't figure out how to beat the

final army battle

in Gustave's scenario, and in Wil's scenario

when you go fight the Egg, you got new party members that were underleveled and IIRC the final boss had insta-kill attacks that I think you needed some Ribbon-like item to defend against, and if you didn't have those items by then you were prettIPpy much screwed.

I pretty much gave up at that point. Shame, because there's apparently a

New Game+ mode

if you beat it.

Brilliant game though, and beautiful. That watercolor art. Great soundtrack too.

I did finish sf2 but don't recall a new game plus mode.

as for the final boss (the egg) the reason it was difficult wasn't that it had insta kill attacks, but rather attacks that directly hit your life points (as opposed to hit points) and once out of LP there was no healing yourself. I don't recall any ribbon item that would have helped here.
I

MoogPaul · Dec 19, 2012

Best SaGa game I've played is called The Last Remnant. It rocks on PC.

Just take it with you. · Dec 19, 2012

Toth said:
What I think held back some of the later Saga titles were high difficulty spikes and inabilities to really grind your characters to meet those challenges. I think the Last Megalith best comes to mind. A slew of tough bosses, NO LP Regen (you lose this when you die and it does not replenish. Once it's all gone, your character is gone for good) and a very hard final boss really hurts SF 2's image as a classic.

This. You can't leave once you're there either. After trading blows with the final boss for literally several hours, I gave up and restarted the entire game and managed to beat it the second time through copious amounts of grinding (insofar as it was possible in that game). I then sold the game and never looked back.

Lesson learned, never again, Mr. Kawazu.

ced · Dec 19, 2012

Unlimited Saga is one of the worst games I've ever played.

Verilligo · Dec 19, 2012

I <3 SaGa games to absolute death. Haven't played every entry, though, I never played SaGa 3, RS2, or Unlimited. But yeah, these games are very much an... acquired taste. There are few games that can match or exceed SMT as a series in terms of being an absolute asshole to the player. I make it a bit of a ritual, though, to regularly play through SaGa Frontier 1. If you know exactly what you're doing, it's relatively easy to complete the game using just the lead character from most of the arcs. Red and Asellus are particularly easy to do as solo challenges, even if they're mostly reduced to ridiculous grindfests.

[Edit]: The Egg can go suck several cocks, though. Starquake eating LP was unnecessarily cruel. Still a fun game, but man dat final boss.

kaioshade · Dec 19, 2012

Manmademan said:
I did finish sf2 but don't recall a new game plus mode.

as for the final boss (the egg) the reason it was difficult wasn't that it had insta kill attacks, but rather attacks that directly hit your life points (as opposed to hit points) and once out of LP there was no healing yourself. I don't recall any ribbon item that would have helped here.
I

The Egg was just outright sadistic. I have never played a more punishing final boss. Even Tri-Ace bosses are not that evil.

SaGa Frontier 2 remains the only game to this day I have ever cheated to finish.

Lumpy Onion · Dec 19, 2012

I played through to the end of Saga Frontier 2 (final boss stopped me tho). To be honest I am not sure why, because I didn't hardly understand what the heck I was doing. It looked pretty, and the music was nice though.

I beat Romancing Saga 3 way back when it came out in Japanese. I bet it's a hard game to "get" even understanding the language, I can't imagine how hard it would be to go in with limited Japanese reading skills. But I did, and I really enjoyed the game.

I have tried over the years to enjoy Unlimited Saga and just can't. I managed to buy the game around four times to give it another chance. It never clicked.

TheyTookOurJobs · Dec 19, 2012

I gave up on Saga Frontier - too difficult and boring. I liked the Final fantasy Gameboy Sagas, but never finished them...

kunonabi · Dec 19, 2012

Huge fan of the second one on the gameboy. I loved Frontier but never finished it. Loved Frontier 2 until the goddamn endboss. I had to use a gameshark to beat him since he refused to die. Playing without the gameshark I took off 3 million more HP than his max(actual max which was already too much since I did kill the sub parts) and he just wouldn't go down. With the gameshark I ended up doing 20 million over his max before he died. Soured me on the whole series after that.

Toth · Dec 19, 2012

ced said:
Unlimited Saga is one of the worst games I've ever played.

There is a great YouTube series that actually shows you how to play the game. It turns out that the JP version came with a huge instruction manual that explained the game's MANY systems and we got jack over here. My opinion for the game jumped a lot higher after seeing how the game was meant to be played lol

ohlawd · Dec 19, 2012

I've only played the GB games.

I could never get into 1. I always stopped right when I kill the king shield boss? Forgot.

I really love 2 but I haven't finished because the 2nd final boss is a fucking roadblock. I've made numerous playthroughs only to stop at that point lol. Point and laugh at me

I've finished 3. This game is perfect imo. Nothing to be said really.

tokkun · Dec 19, 2012

Saga Frontier: Beat with all of the characters but one, then ended up accidentally saving my game in the final boss area (which it turned out you couldn't leave) with a level-1 character with no random battle to grind.

Saga Frontier 2: One of the first battles I got into just kept going and going - like 30+ minutes. I eventually turned off the system and never played it again.

Last Remnant: Played for 10 minutes on consoles. Got motion sickness due to the terrible framerate and gave up.

Gameboy games were alright, though.

Kuro Madoushi · Dec 19, 2012

Kawazu is an evil human being

RedBoot · Dec 19, 2012

SaGa 2 and SaGa Frontier remain two of my favorite games of all time. Wish we had the remake of the former and that there was a remake of the latter (with all the cancelled content).

Not only is the series an acquired taste, though, each game in the series is an acquired taste.

SkyOdin · Dec 19, 2012

I am a huge SaGa fan. The SaGa games are really unique, full of setting elements and game mechanics that are radically different from most RPGs out there. Worlds full of robots, gun and sword wielding humans, and weird monsters, all of which possess distinct game mechanics.

While I owned all three Final Fantasy Legend games for the Gameboy, SaGa Frontier was the title that really made me into a huge fan of the series. It is still one of my favorite Playstation games and one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Seven different protagonists, each of whom have their own story, along with a cast of a couple dozen recruitable characters makes for a game with a ton of replay value. And the cast of the game is absolutely crazy: a transforming superhero, a half-vampire, a robot, an evil magician, and so on. I seriously regret the fact that I only ever rented the game. I beat it with all seven characters through renting it. I would have saved money if I had just bought the game. Now, it is number one on my list of PS1 games I need to track down a physical copy of, since for some silly reason it isn't on PSN.

SaGa Frontier 2 is pretty good in its own right, if it lacks the sheer variety of Frontier 1. The story is pretty deceptive, though. Trojita, if you have only played a part of Gustave's story, you have only scratched the surface of the game. However, what really stands out about Frontier 2 is its music. Both SaGa Frontier titles have absolutely amazing music. Heck, most SaGa games do.

Romancing SaGa for the PS2 was pretty good as well, if rather lacking compared to the Frontier titles. I know it is a remake of the SNES original, but it really needed more recruitable characters and more differentiation between the plots of the eight protagonists. The combat is great though. I still need to play through it some more. Too bad that is even worse than normal for a SaGa game in that it requires a FAQ or strategy guide to really understand how the game works and what you should be doing.

I never played enough of the original SaGa (Final Fantasy Legend). It is supposed to be short, but I never got past the second world, I think. SaGa 2 (FF Legend 2) is a very solid game, but I have never beat it either, for some reason. I will go against popular sentiment and say that SaGa 3 is really fun. It doesn't have the SaGa-style ability evolution, but it does have gameplay where you can feed meat to your human characters to turn them into were-wolves or krakens, or instal parts into them to change them into cyborgs or robots. That alone is really fun. The Talon is on my top-5 list of RPG vehicles as well.

I really wish we got the DS remakes of SaGa 2 and 3. I am desperate for a new SaGa game to play at this point.

randomkid · Dec 19, 2012

Yo dudes that last boss of Saga Frontier 2 can't possibly be as difficult as you all are making it out to be. I beat it back in the day without grinding (I never grind) and I'm not that great at RPGs.

Unlimited Saga is the one that's actually impossible to play.

LuuKyK · Dec 19, 2012

Sora_N said:
That was the only one I almost got, I never tried the rest.

I remember trying this game back in the day. Couldn't play it for more than 30 minutes. It was that bad.

kunonabi · Dec 19, 2012

randomkid said:
Yo dudes that last boss of Saga Frontier 2 can't possibly be as difficult as you all are making it out to be. I beat it back in the day without grinding (I never grind) and I'm not that great at RPGs.

Unlimited Saga is the one that's actually impossible to play.

Well considering I was able to rack up3 million more hp with my underleveled team I would agree with that. My trouble had to be a glitch.

SkyOdin · Dec 19, 2012

randomkid said:
Yo dudes that last boss of Saga Frontier 2 can't possibly be as difficult as you all are making it out to be. I beat it back in the day without grinding (I never grind) and I'm not that great at RPGs.

Unlimited Saga is the one that's actually impossible to play.

Yeah, I managed to beat the final boss of Frontier 2 on my first attempt. It is really powerful and a long fight, but it is hardly impossible. I just think of it as a fun, epic fight. On the other hand, on my first go-through of Romancing Saga, I got completely stone-walled by the final boss. Of course, that entire play-through was a disaster where I didn't know what I was doing. Even that final boss I consider to be a great fight.

How difficult SaGa Frontier is really depends on what main character you chose and what side-quests you are attempting. Red and Emilia's routes are fairly easy, while Asellus' route is by far the hardest. Likewise, the Rune quest is much easier than the Arcane quest. As long as you do some occasional sidequesting between plot segments and recruit a good team, most routes are pretty easy. Of course that is from the perspective of someone who abused the game's infinite money trick. But the game has two of them and is just begging you to use them.

Manmademan · Dec 19, 2012

randomkid said:
Yo dudes that last boss of Saga Frontier 2 can't possibly be as difficult as you all are making it out to be. I beat it back in the day without grinding (I never grind) and I'm not that great at RPGs.

Unlimited Saga is the one that's actually impossible to play.

the boss isn't impossible but it IS a pain in the ass.
since what skills you end up fighting it with are random it's unlikely any of us had the same experience with it. (unless of course you consult a faq) again, not impossible but much more frustrating than your typical jrpg boss.

grinding isn't all that useful in that game anyway, since the game has a habit of killing off your party members and replacing them with new ones you've never heard of.
gr

RedBoot · Dec 19, 2012

SkyOdin said:
I will go against popular sentiment and say that SaGa 3 is really fun. It doesn't have the SaGa-style ability evolution, but it does have gameplay where you can feed meat to your human characters to turn them into were-wolves or krakens, or instal parts into them to change them into cyborgs or robots. That alone is really fun. The Talon is on my top-5 list of RPG vehicles as well.

I feel like if we just swapped the titles for SaGa 3 and Final Fantasy 2, everything would make more sense.

Tex117 · Dec 19, 2012

SaGa frountier played as a young teenager I think was just way too over myh ead.

CielTynave · Dec 19, 2012

Romancing SaGa on PS2 is the only one I've tried, thought it was awful.

Jucksalbe · Dec 19, 2012

Tried both SaGa Frontier 2 and Unlimited SaGa several times, couldn't get into either of them. But the music's great.
I hope we at least get the FF Legends games on Virtual Console, I always wanted to try them.

Aeana · Dec 19, 2012

I'm not a huge SaGa fan, but I like 2 and 3 a fair bit. 3 is kind of an oddball in the series though, since it doesn't have a lot of the quirky SaGa systems and such, and it was developed by Square Osaka (FFMQ, Rudra) so that's not surprising.

MoogPaul said:
Best SaGa game I've played is called The Last Remnant. It rocks on PC.

This is true, it's the best one.

SchleimanTank · Dec 19, 2012

Manmademan said:
as for the final boss (the egg) the reason it was difficult wasn't that it had insta kill attacks, but rather attacks that directly hit your life points (as opposed to hit points) and once out of LP there was no healing yourself. I don't recall any ribbon item that would have helped here.

There were accessories called Dead Stone that had a "null deathblow" effect. But they were rare drops so you had to grind for them. I think you could get 1 or 2 during the story though.

ToastyFrog · Dec 19, 2012

Kuro Madoushi said:
Kawazu is an evil human being

He's a saint

Coinspinner · Dec 19, 2012

I love SaGa 2, SaGa Frontier, and Minstrel Song.

Frontier was the game I played between other RPGs in the PS1 days, before I got into FFT. I loved the mechanics - different races had different ways of growing and powering up. I found SaGa 2 had the same idea and wound up loving that one too. I only played through Minstrel Song once. Even though the character building is awesome, the game is too long to replay and the fun of seeing a great team come together (or a bad team crumble) gets stretched thin.

Maybe best thing about these games how they reward you for knowledge of the game and for challenging yourself. Your odds of learning new skills or gaining stats rises dramatically when fighting hard enemies. Avoiding trash enemies and fighting just hard ones or bosses puts you ahead of the curve for a while. There are reliable, non-randomly obtained items and skills in the games that help with this. Romancing Saga pushed that angle really well, giving you reasons to tackle some quests earlier than you otherwise might. Even the super boss, the Jewel Beast, can be fought early for better results. You can even sacrifice the Fatestones you spent the game collecting to fight harder versions of the final boss.

Augemitbutter · Dec 19, 2012

i played SaGa Frontier when square was still cool and you could buy their games blindly. but this game was weird. you could go anywhere and something would kick your ass every couple of fights. i tried several main characters, but didn't know where to go with any of them.

i think my last party ended up in some sewer system. they must be down there still. or rotting.

vagabondarts · Dec 19, 2012

Unlimited Saga is my favorite, right behind Saga 2...

...oh and The Last Remnant!

*edit-beaten by a mile

Absoludacrous · Dec 19, 2012

My favorite SaGa game is The Last Remnant.

If that counts.

SeriousApes · Dec 19, 2012

I've only played Unlimited SaGa. I just knew it was an RPG and I liked the box art. I was around 12 years old and I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. So, with the help of my sister, I returned it the next day and I think I got Onimusha 2 instead.

Teknoman · Dec 19, 2012

Time out, Last Remnant is a SaGa game?

Also Romancing SaGa PS2 is great. Havent played SaGa Frontier 1 or 2, but i've got 1 and will get to it one day.

Aeana · Dec 19, 2012

Teknoman said:
Time out, Last Remnant is a SaGa game?

Also Romancing SaGa PS2 is great. Havent played SaGa Frontier 1 or 2, but i've got 1 and will get to it one day.

It's definitely a SaGa game in spirit, but obviously not officially part of the series.

Maxim726X · Dec 19, 2012

randomkid said:
Yo dudes that last boss of Saga Frontier 2 can't possibly be as difficult as you all are making it out to be. I beat it back in the day without grinding (I never grind) and I'm not that great at RPGs.

Unlimited Saga is the one that's actually impossible to play.

I couldn't touch the last boss and actually had to stop playing. I tried everything.

Which brings me to my big qualm with the series: The laughably uneven difficulty. I never felt like I had any idea if I was where I was supposed to be because either the enemies were too hard or too easy. And there were times in the first one where I would cake walk through an area and literally not even be able to advance in the next.

Say what you want about the games, but they were designed poorly.

AColdDay · Dec 19, 2012

I loved SaGa Frontier 1 a lot. It was a very flawed game, but the scope and setting(s!) of the game left a major impression on me.

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