Patreon button  Steam curated reviews  Discord button  Facebook button  Twitter button 
3DS | PC | PS4 | PS5 | SWITCH | VITA | XB1 | XSX | All

Saga Frontier (PlayStation) artwork

Saga Frontier (PlayStation) review


"So, even though I only had to do all this “magic collecting” once, I wound up choosing to do it with the majority of the other characters. That got boring pretty quickly, as the hunts for mystical runes and tarot cards are the same regardless of who is doing them."

If something appears too good to be true, it probably is.

If I’d been keeping that timeworn proverb in mind one fine day many years ago, I never would have bought Saga Frontier. The back of that Square game’s case offers an orgasmic delight for RPG junkies. Seven completely different quests, each with its own main character! Over 100 hours of gameplay!! There was no doubt about it — this would easily become one of my favorite games of all time. Even if the graphics looked simplistic by PlayStation standards, the thought of seven diverse adventures on one disc was an intoxicating concept I couldn’t resist.

Unfortunately, that diversity was a myth. Sure, the core elements of each quest vary, but I still found myself doing so many of the same things time after time until I finally couldn’t stand the game and traded it in for minimal store credit.

Take the adventure of Blue, for example. His goal is to simply wander the many lands contained in the game to master many forms of magic. Oh, and since the presence of his twin brother, Rouge, is preventing him from maximizing his abilities, he’ll have to dispose of him, as well. Regardless of piddly details such as that plot point, nearly all the time spent with Blue will involve completing one quest after another to obtain rare and powerful magic spells.

In virtually every other characters’ quest, completing those same quests is pretty useful, as not only will party members gain a lot of stat enhancements and useful equipment from all the fighting and exploring they’ll be doing, but they’ll also get a number of great spells not obtainable otherwise. So, even though I only had to do all this “magic collecting” once, I wound up choosing to do it with the majority of the other characters. That got boring pretty quickly, as the hunts for mystical runes and tarot cards are the same regardless of who is doing them.

While that’s the worst example of repetition, it’s not the only one. While certain locations actually are specific to individual quests, most are mandatory visits in at least two of them and the vast majority can optionally be visited to fight monsters and get items in every quest.

And with some characters, it’s pretty obvious that players are expected to go everywhere (regardless of how many times some places have already been visited) for no reason other than to gain power. While folks like superhero Red and robot T260G are given plenty to do in their stories, others aren’t. Like I mentioned earlier, Blue’s “quest” is little more than the collection of magic-gathering sidequests everyone else can do. Another chap, Lute, is required to do ONE thing — infiltrate a ship and kill its evil captain — which means that virtually all of his adventure revolves around doing one sidequest after another until he and his companions are tough enough to handle this final destination.

The annoying thing was that I quickly realized a good number of the seven quests required me to do as many sidequests as possible regardless of how often I’d completed them with other characters. Not only are many of the game’s best weapons and armor given out as rewards for exploring out-of-the-way dungeons, but thanks to the Saga way of character-building, it was a necessity if I wanted a party capable of topping the game’s toughest bosses.

Humans gain stats after most every battle against comparatively powerful foes, meaning I had to engage in countless fights in order to build them up. Robots are improved by donning high-quality equipment, so I found myself going to all ends of the world to make them as powerful as possible. Monsters and Mystics both are aided in their growth by killing monsters and absorbing their abilities, so I couldn’t shy away from any encounter, as I might be neutering a character’s growth by doing so. To make matters worse, using monsters is a risky proposition, as they often transform into a weaker creature upon stealing an opponent’s ability.

After a while, I found myself mainly using humans with the occasional robot thrown in and only playing with monsters and mystics when I had to. It’s funny. One major failing of the first American Saga game, Final Fantasy Legend, was how unreliable monsters were because a strong beast could inexplicably transform into a far weaker one with no warning. Many years later, this problem still was present, which I found inexcusable — especially on those occasions where my powerhouse ogre suddenly became an impotent slime.

Despite all the faults I found with Saga Frontier, it still did keep me coming back far longer than one might expect. The few missions that actually give players plenty of things to do besides repetitive sidequest harvesting are enjoyable, even if they’re light on actual storytelling. Red’s quest was a personal favorite, as the superhero-in-training finds himself battling one bruising henchman of his nemesis after another. In this scenario, I was given enough to do that I never found it necessary to do a bunch of sidequests to be prepared for the final bosses.

Still, simply saying this game didn’t meet my expectations would be a gross understatement. There’s no point to having seven quests totaling roughly 100 hours when it’s only fun to play three or four of them before the game becomes unbearably tedious. Square would have been better served to eliminate the least enthralling adventures and spruce up the remainder. But they didn’t....and so I wound up being stuck with a game boasting a concept that was too good to really be true.



overdrive's avatar
Staff review by Rob Hamilton (September 06, 2007)

Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.

More Reviews by Rob Hamilton [+]
Shining Soul (Game Boy Advance) artwork
Shining Soul (Game Boy Advance)

Something this tarnished cannot be Shining.
Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition (PlayStation 4) artwork
Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition (PlayStation 4)

Personally, I'm just amazed I played all the way through one of these really complex RPGs.
Shining Force II (Genesis) artwork
Shining Force II (Genesis)

Another of those really good sequels to good games.

Feedback

If you enjoyed this Saga Frontier review, you're encouraged to discuss it with the author and with other members of the site's community. If you don't already have an HonestGamers account, you can sign up for one in a snap. Thank you for reading!

board icon
dagoss posted August 30, 2021:

I really wanted SaGa Frontier for years after seeing an add for it. The backgrounds looked so pretty and the promise of a "free form scenario" sounded just grand. After playing the original SaGa games on Gameboy, Alliance Alive, and Legend of Legacy, SaGa Frontier seemed like it would be all types of good.

Well I finally got the Switch remaster. About 10 hours into Red's scenario, I can only describe it as disappointing. The encounter rate is bananas, the dialog is about as nonsensical as NES-era stuff, the quests make no sense and really need a guide, and the difficulty is very uneven. I think the most frustrating part is how combos seem to be the big damage dealers but they aren't in the player's control. I feel like I'm just picking random moves that I've seen combo before and hoping for the best. I don't really feel like I have agency here, despite the promise of more freedom.

I'm going to attempt to finish Red's story and then try another on NG+ and see if it's more tolerable. There's some interesting ideas here, but it feels really sloppy and half-baked.

Kudos to you for actually playing the original version. I can't imagine playing this game without being able to flee combat or see descriptions of what abilities do.
board icon
overdrive posted September 01, 2021:

It's been forever since I played the PS version and I recall the difficulty to be very all-over-the-place. A couple scenarios (including Red) were pretty easy overall, while others were brutal. Don't think I finished Blue's, the monster's or the woman looking for her boyfriend's because they got insanely tough. Or at least, I'd powered up enough that the monster encounters hit a whole new level of brutal.

My main hatred point for this game came from repetitiveness. You have 7 different stories is a great idea, but loses its luster when you cover the same ground in so many of them. If you want good magic, you have to do Blue's magic-acquiring quests every single time and Lute's quest is so short that you'll find yourself doing every quest you've done in every story just so you're not comically under-powered when you take on its main dungeon.
board icon
dagoss posted September 02, 2021:

The remaster as a NG+ feature (that I haven't utilized yet since I haven't finished a scenario) that let's you carry over stuff from another scenario. It's not clear to me if you'll keep learned spells and such or just equipment/stats though. That probably eliminates most grinding and need to complete side quests (unless required by the main quest).

If I could change one thing it would be to swap in traditional random encounters (seriously). The enemy sprites are hard to avoid on the map and respawn every time you leave/enter a screen. There lots of areas were you just get hit with like 3 encounters in a row and can't move. I just finished the Tanzer monster sidequest and the combination of "where am I supposed to go?" with constant, literally didn't take a single step forward, encounters really drained the fun out of it.

You must be signed into an HonestGamers user account to leave feedback on this review.

User Help | Contact | Ethics | Sponsor Guide | Links

eXTReMe Tracker
© 1998 - 2024 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors. Staff and freelance reviews are typically written based on time spent with a retail review copy or review key for the game that is provided by its publisher.