Most of you that aren’t familiar with Japanese RPG’s probably don’t know the befuddlement that is the SaGa series (yes, they thought it would be keen, far out, and groovy to capitalize each consonant).  Unlike your Final Fantasies, SaGa never really made its’ mark with so much as a cult following the way other titles of the genre such as Suikoden and Star Ocean did with Western audiences.  And if you ask any of us longtime grizzled RPG gamers that embraced their free copy of Dragon Warrior on NES that came with their subscription to Nintendo Power, most of us are going to tell you different reasons; the series was unrewarding, confusing, unpleasantly unbalanced, or simply boring. 

All of these are true, to a certain degree.  The first three SaGa games debuted on the Game Boy, which Square’s US branch renamed as the “Final Fantasy Legend” series to market the games a bit easier (the first “Legend” game was released shortly after the first FF game was localized in North America by Nintendo, so it was not the household name it is now), are heralded as some of the most insanely difficult games on the system.  These games were a slightly different breed, not using a true experience system that almost every console RPG at the time used, but what seemed to be individual stat boosts that occurred post-combat based on some unbalanced algorithm based on character participation and sheer insanity.  While Japan would see three more games in the SaGa series on the 16-bit Super Famicom (Super NES) that all received much higher critical acclaim by gamers everywhere, the series would not rear its head in America until after FF VII hit it big, when SaGa Frontier was released on the PlayStation.  Reviews were abysmal, and rightfully so; it was, like the games we played on GameBoy, an unbalanced mess fogged by sprites clashing with horrible CGI renders, and an attempt at non-linearity that left everyone who just got back from three CD-Roms of Cloud Strife’s journey just totally in the dark as to why they should even bother.  Its sequel, SaGa Frontier 2, met with a bit more nicer words from critics, but commercially had not found its place outside Japan. 

Sadly, SaGa would forever be considered damaged goods when the insane crossbreed of board game, water color slideshow, slot machines and psychedelic turn-based combat called Unlimited SaGa was released on PlayStation 2.  Unlimited was such a dismal failure that when Square-Enix tried to redeem itself by remaking one of the titles from the series’ prime during the 16-bit era (back when the American SquareSoft had too much on their plate to consider localizing the unorthodox series), many were still recovering from the burns to really give Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song a fair chance.  Having played Unlimited, I sympathize when even the most hardcore grinder takeS this frame of mind, as playing it more than an hour has made me physically ill (a feat no game has accomplished since… coincidentally, Square-Enix and Disney’s very own Kingdom Hearts.)  But because I knew that the Romancing set was some of Square’s best work after playing RS 2 and 3, I was willing to forget about Unlimited long enough to give a fair analysis to this enhanced revision of the first SaGa game that English speaking audiences were unfortunate to miss out on.