i have so many things to say about SaGa Frontier 2 i barely even know where to start. i think i might start with how the series carries itself.
i see so many people, on this page even, saying that SaGa's and this game's weakest point is the combat and it makes me feel like i played a completely different game from them. if anything, SaGa always prides itself an immense amount on how intricate and how unpredictable its combat is, on how it's almost impossible to penetrate it's mechanisms aside from the most dedicated player that might be willing to spend hundreds of hours just to understand what's going on. SaGa is what i call a "guidebook series" and being unable to engage with this new paradigm is probably what keeps out most people from it.
"hold on Luci, isn't the need for a guide at all times just a sign of poor design?" you might say. i don't think so! i think complex, convoluted, pretentious, high art (these adjectives are being used as compliments, despite how people use these nowadays) games are some of the most beautiful things this medium has offered to us. SaGa does not overwhelm by a lack of finesse in presenting it's mechanics, nor is it on accident, you're simply meant to be lost, you're meant to not understand any of the complex calculations that go behind each action, its complex mechanics forever out of reach, no way of knowing that Soul Hymn, one of the best spells in the game, has a infinitely small chance of being learned with a specific character, using specific elements, late into the game. SaGa always felt like a game meant to revolve around oral tradition, you hear from someone they got this skill, or did this and that that you never saw in your game, and you tell them your story. put some nerds together and soon they'll be dissecting the game to its most basic components.
guides and decades old GameFaqs forum posts are our Library of Alexandria. an immeasurable amount of human knowledge and chronicles from a time where information needed to be shared, then compiled. of course official guides released alongside the game, be it before or post the fact, but the sheer amount of volunteer work people have contributed just so that other people could play a specific game with written help makes me think on how much would be lost if these archives ever went down. this is simply way bigger than any of us and any game, this is chronicled human history.
as for whether or not using guides suck out the fun out of games, for me it wholly depends on the type of game i'm playing. i'm not bringing out a huge guide to play a game like Final Fantasy IX, but most SaGas I will have one handy, at least for some parts and some aspects of it. for example, i like seeing skill tables and try to spark them, i think it's fun! for this one having the chronological order of events handy might have made this a bit less special (the game keeps track of what you've done or not and then show you what you did at the end) as jumping between time periods without knowing when anything is happening in the timeline sound like a fun time. but i also personally didn't want to lose on seeing any events, because i'm usually very invested in these games and this one, a surprisingly story heavy SaGa game, felt like it would benefit from seeing everything (it did!!! but i also kind regret not giving myself more freedom). i think that guides when not used in some weird FOMO manner can bring us all kinds of joys when engaging with games, it's such a unique experience to the medium and i would be narrow sighted if i ever dismissed it as something that primarily ruins an experience.
SaGa Frontier 2 is honestly way too beautiful, with stunning hand drawn backgrounds and cute sprites based on Tomomi Kobayashi's designs that make me wonder how much of this game shared its art workflow with Legend of Mana. the soundtrack is led by now famous composer Masashi Hamauzu and as much as i love Kenji Ito, what Hamauzu brings to the table is out of this world, I have no idea how this man does it but a samba inspired remix of the main battle theme is not what i expected from him at all.
SaGa Frontier 2 simply reinforced to me that even when i don't think i'll fully vibe with a SaGa game i'm always proven wrong somehow. i don't know how they kept this high consistency and quality since Romancing SaGa 2 but i just might have to admit that Akitoshi Kawazu is an incredible genius.
i see so many people, on this page even, saying that SaGa's and this game's weakest point is the combat and it makes me feel like i played a completely different game from them. if anything, SaGa always prides itself an immense amount on how intricate and how unpredictable its combat is, on how it's almost impossible to penetrate it's mechanisms aside from the most dedicated player that might be willing to spend hundreds of hours just to understand what's going on. SaGa is what i call a "guidebook series" and being unable to engage with this new paradigm is probably what keeps out most people from it.
"hold on Luci, isn't the need for a guide at all times just a sign of poor design?" you might say. i don't think so! i think complex, convoluted, pretentious, high art (these adjectives are being used as compliments, despite how people use these nowadays) games are some of the most beautiful things this medium has offered to us. SaGa does not overwhelm by a lack of finesse in presenting it's mechanics, nor is it on accident, you're simply meant to be lost, you're meant to not understand any of the complex calculations that go behind each action, its complex mechanics forever out of reach, no way of knowing that Soul Hymn, one of the best spells in the game, has a infinitely small chance of being learned with a specific character, using specific elements, late into the game. SaGa always felt like a game meant to revolve around oral tradition, you hear from someone they got this skill, or did this and that that you never saw in your game, and you tell them your story. put some nerds together and soon they'll be dissecting the game to its most basic components.
guides and decades old GameFaqs forum posts are our Library of Alexandria. an immeasurable amount of human knowledge and chronicles from a time where information needed to be shared, then compiled. of course official guides released alongside the game, be it before or post the fact, but the sheer amount of volunteer work people have contributed just so that other people could play a specific game with written help makes me think on how much would be lost if these archives ever went down. this is simply way bigger than any of us and any game, this is chronicled human history.
as for whether or not using guides suck out the fun out of games, for me it wholly depends on the type of game i'm playing. i'm not bringing out a huge guide to play a game like Final Fantasy IX, but most SaGas I will have one handy, at least for some parts and some aspects of it. for example, i like seeing skill tables and try to spark them, i think it's fun! for this one having the chronological order of events handy might have made this a bit less special (the game keeps track of what you've done or not and then show you what you did at the end) as jumping between time periods without knowing when anything is happening in the timeline sound like a fun time. but i also personally didn't want to lose on seeing any events, because i'm usually very invested in these games and this one, a surprisingly story heavy SaGa game, felt like it would benefit from seeing everything (it did!!! but i also kind regret not giving myself more freedom). i think that guides when not used in some weird FOMO manner can bring us all kinds of joys when engaging with games, it's such a unique experience to the medium and i would be narrow sighted if i ever dismissed it as something that primarily ruins an experience.
SaGa Frontier 2 is honestly way too beautiful, with stunning hand drawn backgrounds and cute sprites based on Tomomi Kobayashi's designs that make me wonder how much of this game shared its art workflow with Legend of Mana. the soundtrack is led by now famous composer Masashi Hamauzu and as much as i love Kenji Ito, what Hamauzu brings to the table is out of this world, I have no idea how this man does it but a samba inspired remix of the main battle theme is not what i expected from him at all.
SaGa Frontier 2 simply reinforced to me that even when i don't think i'll fully vibe with a SaGa game i'm always proven wrong somehow. i don't know how they kept this high consistency and quality since Romancing SaGa 2 but i just might have to admit that Akitoshi Kawazu is an incredible genius.
Might have to kill myself