The original SaGa was a bit of a mess, but I had a great time with the second and third installments.
Imagine a first gen Pokemon game but with three to six different leveling systems, depending on whether your character is a monster, human, mutant, beast, cyborg, or robot.
Imagine a first gen Pokemon game but with three to six different leveling systems, depending on whether your character is a monster, human, mutant, beast, cyborg, or robot.
This review contains spoilers
Review in progress: Updates to this review will occur as I beat each title and be formatted to review the collection as a whole up top when complete.
The Final Fantasy Legend: Start of a SaGa
This game is even better than I remembered as a kid. A lot easier than I remembered too. This bite sized, unique game holding the Final Fantasy name in west was actually started as Makai Toushi SaGa, and headed by Akitoshi Kawazu the designer of Final Fantasy I and II. The core of SaGa as a series is felt in this first title alone, focusing heavily on its unique leveling systems and party compositions, an early attempt at bringing RPG to the new gameboy platform devoid of such a staple like Pokemon even at the time, this game is doing its best to not sacrifice anything despite its platform limitations both visually, gameplay, and musically with Nobuo Uematsu having to learn an entire new platform to develop music for.
Story | Life is but a game
The story is straightforward at first. Theres a tower that leads to paradise and the world you know is in conflict as three kingdoms fight for each other national treasures while rumors surface of an even greater treasure protected by a divine fiend. The game starts you off intentionally very basic. Your world map is not very vast and your exploration is very small. Its only after you collect all the treasures and return them to a statue of a goddess does the game get more interesting. The heroes obtain a magical orb. One of 4, each protected by an elemental themed boss, much like the Final Fantasy of its name. The game quickly sets itself apart by expanding the players world by climbing the tower to reach paradise. Many worlds all about the same size as the one you start in are discovered among the way, all while climbing this treacherous tower. A favorite of mine being the post apocalyptic world not so different from modern day where traveling on the world map above ground makes you target of the worlds final boss you can only run from at first. Most of the story is told through dialog and subtle tells at certain parts that may only make sense in retrospect. Its not the deepest but I like how it tries to make your party members you recruited and created have character and dialog with each other instead of being purely silent heroes with nothing to say along the journey.
The Final Fantasy Legend: Start of a SaGa
This game is even better than I remembered as a kid. A lot easier than I remembered too. This bite sized, unique game holding the Final Fantasy name in west was actually started as Makai Toushi SaGa, and headed by Akitoshi Kawazu the designer of Final Fantasy I and II. The core of SaGa as a series is felt in this first title alone, focusing heavily on its unique leveling systems and party compositions, an early attempt at bringing RPG to the new gameboy platform devoid of such a staple like Pokemon even at the time, this game is doing its best to not sacrifice anything despite its platform limitations both visually, gameplay, and musically with Nobuo Uematsu having to learn an entire new platform to develop music for.
Story | Life is but a game
The story is straightforward at first. Theres a tower that leads to paradise and the world you know is in conflict as three kingdoms fight for each other national treasures while rumors surface of an even greater treasure protected by a divine fiend. The game starts you off intentionally very basic. Your world map is not very vast and your exploration is very small. Its only after you collect all the treasures and return them to a statue of a goddess does the game get more interesting. The heroes obtain a magical orb. One of 4, each protected by an elemental themed boss, much like the Final Fantasy of its name. The game quickly sets itself apart by expanding the players world by climbing the tower to reach paradise. Many worlds all about the same size as the one you start in are discovered among the way, all while climbing this treacherous tower. A favorite of mine being the post apocalyptic world not so different from modern day where traveling on the world map above ground makes you target of the worlds final boss you can only run from at first. Most of the story is told through dialog and subtle tells at certain parts that may only make sense in retrospect. Its not the deepest but I like how it tries to make your party members you recruited and created have character and dialog with each other instead of being purely silent heroes with nothing to say along the journey.
Not sure how much this justifies itself. Having had some more fun with Castlevania’s anniversary collection that packs so many more games and SO, so many more extras, I just don’t see the merit in a $20 collection of 3 Game Boy titles that marginally play exactly the same. If anything, I was impressed with how, between the first and second games, how much the spritework improves (only a year apart, as well). The border on iOS with the buttons and the smaller screen is also a nice touch that I think other old ports could benefit from, but either way you’re gonna get so much more out of other Square Enix releases at the same price. They even have more modern SaGa titles for cheaper on iOS. I give this a “Don’t Buy” amount of buckets of popcorn out of 10.
Played and beat all these back in the day on Game Boy. Two times speed is very good and these are fun simple hardcore RPGS to dip into. I'm a sucker for any retro collection and this is a particularly delightful bizarre one.
SaGa 1/FFL I: 5.5/10
SaGa 2/FFL II: 6/10
SaGa 3/FFL III: 7.5/10, very interesting story.
SaGa 2/FFL II: 6/10
SaGa 3/FFL III: 7.5/10, very interesting story.
I really liked playing through the SaGa games, as I had never had the chance to back in the day. They start off pretty rough, but by slowly figuring out the mechanics and systems of the game it becomes a wonderful challenge to overcome. There's definitely some limitations with them being gameboy games originally, still that didn't stop for making three solid games with some neat ideas. Each game has a myriads of places to visit and a somewhat decent story that follows along with it. Only downsides are the encounter rates which are hard to manage, the number of enemies on screen and somewhat clunky visual design here and there. While the third game is definitely the weakest one of the three, it is still a good game.
A surprisingly nice collection of games, it's main point is surely all the QoL improvements that make even these really old titles really nice to play. That's a fine example of what game companies should look for when they port old games in general. Good performance, nice tweaks and a good pack of content.