Board 8 > Are any if the Romancing games on Switch notably good?

(+) Yeah! (+)

They're basically all on sale today. I have inexperience with the series, and am curious if any of them are of particularly high quality.

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Assuming you actually mean SaGa games, SaGa Frontier is pretty widely liked and Ive never heard anyone say bad things about Scarlet Grace

The Romancing SaGa games have some opaque systems that youll have to consult guides to understand, so if thats a turn off I would avoid those. And of course the Final Fantasy Legend games for Game Boy were also SaGa, most people like 1 & 2 (all three of them are in a collection together)

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WazzupGenius00 posted...

The Romancing SaGa games have some opaque systems that youll have to consult guides to understand, so if thats a turn off I would avoid those.

This is aways the things that's made me wary. Are any of them less focused on this? I know it's kind of the staple of the series.

Trying to broaden my horizons, but I've always been more fond of linear experiences in RPGs.

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All SaGa games have opaque systems. Its uhh, part of their charm!

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I loved Final Fantasy Legend 3

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I loved Final Fantasy Legend 2

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Was browsing vids and realized I played like 5 hours of Unlimited Saga in Middle School which may have been a traumatizing experience.

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I played a rom of romancing saga 3 a long time ago. I don't remember much about it, except one of the characters had some sort of strategy metagame and i think there were hardcore elements? I recall starting new games a lot and I never got very far.
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Thanks for this notice. I picked up Frontier for a whole $5 off. If nothing else, I really liked the theme music.

Romancing SaGas are great, but also an acquired taste. Like said above, you really need to be ready for the games not telling you how they work and approach them from the angle of learning to understand them.
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The Final Fantasy Legend games were neat back in the day for providing more portable RPG options in an era in which we didn't necessarily get a ton of those released outside of Japan but by the end of the GBA era we'd gotten enough games that their merit had kind of expired. FFLII still exceeds my personal minimum standards while being different enough from normal RPG systems to still be sort of worthwhile but FFLI is absurdly unpolished and short enough to feel generally insubstantial while FFLIII standardized too much and thus feels more like just another deeply mediocre early 90's JRPG.

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Generally speaking, SaGa is fairly nonlinear, and has a heavier element of uncertainty with sparking skills and random stat growth instead of levels (with higher chances of sparking/raising stats when you're fighting stronger monsters). Less emphasis on cutscenes, and more on lore/implied stuff. Most of the games are rough around the edges/lower budget, but you play them for unconventional gameplay/systems that you wouldn't otherwise get in mainstream Square games.

Romancing SaGa 2 is good, but it's pretty brutal (a good contender for the most difficult rpg on the snes). Also I'm going to assume that you'd probably hate it since you've said that you don't like roguelikes in the past, since the concept is kind of similar (you have a party of generics, who pass down their skills and stats somewhat to the next generation when they die, or you complete a major quest).

Romancing SaGa 3 is a little less good, but is easier to get into and complete than 2 (probably the easiest of the games here, other than fighting the true final boss at full power). Kind of unfinished, although in a way that's not as noticeable until you start digging into it. Not much point in playing through multiple times with different characters since it's a medium length game and there's very little unique content/differences between them.

SaGa Frontier is probably the most jankiest/thrown together in some ways since it had a lot of unfinished stuff and a kitchen sink style setting., but a lot of people find it charming because of it. Probably benefited from the remastering the most, adding back in some deleted content and some qol updates. It's the SaGa game that's most worth replaying with different characters, since each playthrough's like 5-10 hours once you know what you're doing, most characters have some degree of unique content, and you can try out different characters and strategies since each race has different growths/abilities. A bit harder than RS3 since there's a few weird tricky/sticking points, but still pretty accessible (particularly with the qol stuff introduced in the remaster).

Scarlet Grace is also one of the more difficult games in the series. You will probably have to fight defensively, use status effects/cancel turns, and choose targets strategically even in easy ranked fights to minimize damage. It's also pretty easy to break quest or character recruitment flags, and fail them. Though it also has a bit more transparency/tutorials than other SaGa games, due to being a more recently made game. However since it may be an issue for some people I should also point out that it's basically 99.99999999999999999999999% combat - there's basically no towns or dungeons.


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Hmm, Scarlet Grace is only $9...

I have a backlog though and I feel like there'd always be another game I'd choose to play over it.

Decisions, decisions...

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I'm still contemplating. The deals are great, but I buy so many old RPGs I don't don't. I just know that if they stealth drop the FF pixel remaster on consoles there's no way I will get to them anytime soon, but it may be good to have them.

I'm a hell of a lot more likely to play them than touching, like, Last Remnant HD or Resonance of Fate HD or shit like that.

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I bought RS3 because I heard it's the best entry point for the series.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

I'm a hell of a lot more likely to play them than touching, like, Last Remnant HD

I regret to inform you that The Last Remnant is more or less a SaGa game.

Although if it's the complex battle system that's putting you off, most SaGa games won't have that, at least (maybe Scarlet Grace, I haven't played much of it yet.)

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well, with scarlet grace the basics of the battle system is that you have so many action points to spend each turn and it's pooled between the entire party. So you have to weigh out using high cost attacks vs. using other defensive or support skills. Spells also take at least two turns to cast, so you have to plan ahead and anticipate when you might need healing.

The timeline/attack is also displayed at the bottom of the screen, including what attacks the enemy is going to use as well as how whatever attack you're going to use affects the turn order. When you knock out an enemy or have a character knocked out, it pushes everything else together and if your party/a group of enemies gets pushed together it gives them an additional combo attack and reduces their action cost for the next turn. So you need to pay attention to what you're targeting.

These rules also apply to enemies as well, so it's often helpful to try to stun or put a status effect on an enemy that's casting something before its spell goes off, or is using all the enemy party's action points on a high cost attack.

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