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I came, I saw, I fought a pack of wolves underwater. This is SaGa. (Demo Review)

  • nurvuss
  • 02/22/2015 11:24 AM
  • 1751 views
SaGa 4, or "Dumb SaGa Clone" as the game's window reads as it is played, is an homage to Square's long-running RPG series. Particularly, it is an homage to the original trilogy that kicked off on the Nintendo Gameboy in 1989. Known as The Final Fantasy Legend in the west, the series was known for its unique stat progression system and its multitude of character choices available. It was also remarkable for being the only portable JRPG available on the Western market at the time of the first game's release.

psy_wombats and bob_esc have taken it upon themselves to lovingly and faithfully recreate the systems found in the trilogy, resulting in a demo that feels like a "Best of SaGa" compilation. How'd they do? Let's have a look.

The story is similar to those present in the original trilogy: Legend has it that a gate to another world lies beyond the sealed Town of Hero. The protagonist's friends set out on a journey to the Gate many years ago, but never returned. Now that the protagonist is of age, he/she/it sets out on their own journey, to find their friends and uncover the secret of the Gate.

It's pretty par-the-course for 8-bit JRPGs, but the player will quickly notice that something is amiss in this world when they are tasked with obtaining magical artifacts. For example, the party obtains a Seeing Stone for communicating long distances, an Air Seed for breathing underwater and an Everburning Torch to see in the dark. The inventory, however, describes these items as a Radio, Scuba (Helmet) and a Flashlight, respectively. The party themselves remain oblivious to the true nature of these modern conveniences, and it's a nice little twist that adds intrigue to the story.

As somebody who spent dozens of hours playing these games as a youth, I can tell you that the SaGa 4 demo is an impressive proof of concept that is nearly indistinguishable from the series' previous Gameboy outings, right down to NPCs blocking doorways for extended periods of time, and battles in which the player characters do nothing if their target has already perished. Frustrating? A little bit, but definitely nostalgic enough to bring a smile to my face.

Effects such as room transitions have been replicated perfectly. The only thing that's noticeably absent is the well-known traversal noise found in many 8-bit RPGs that is heard when the player passes through doors or stairs. I always expect to hear it, and it's an odd omission especially since the rest of SaGa's trademarks are nearly down pat. Some of the more complicated functions are absent, such as re-ordering the party and re-arranging equipped items, but these aren't necessary features for the demo, and I'm confident that the developers will find a way to implement them eventually.

What is possibly the most impressive feat is how the developers have recreated SaGa's trademark party system: In the first two games, the player selects four characters from a table of different options: Human, Mutant, Robot, or a variety of Monster characters. Each of these character types works differently, following a different stat progression system. For example, Mutants gain stats through post-battle mutations, Robots gain stats based on the items they hold, and Monsters transform upon eating the meat of other monsters. It was a unique system at the time, and one that has been replicated very faithfully here. It couldn't have been an easy task to manage all of these different systems, and my hat is off to the developers for making it work.

A rather serious issue that needs to be addressed is the player's ability to discard any item, plot important or not. I accidentally discarded the scuba helmet, a unique one-of-a-kind item that is required to access an underwater dungeon. Fortunately I had made a save just before doing so, but other players may get themselves into some frustrating scrapes accidentally if this is not addressed. Humorously, I discarded the scuba helmet while I was underwater. Oxygen be damned! This had no effect on my party's health, but if I was to leave the dungeon I would not be able to re-enter, causing the game to enter an unwinnable state.

I also encountered another bug when attempting to access the second underwater dungeon, the one that requires a torch as well as a scuba helmet. If one enters without the torch, and then attempts to leave because they cannot progress, the player ends up stuck in a wall and the game needs to be closed.

It also took an abnormally long time for my mutant party member to be presented with the option to raise his max HP--right at the tail end of my playthrough. As a result, he was constantly on the verge of death. Bizarrely, he began to surge ahead during this late stage of the game, with enough chances to upgrade his max HP from 20 to 75. I'm not sure what that was about, I suppose the RNG had simply frowned upon my playthrough.

A personal nitpick is that SaGa 4 makes a heavy reliance on music from SaGa 3, which I felt was the weakest soundtrack of the original trilogy. Though Ryuji Sasai went on to compose some amazing soundtracks (FF Mystic Quest, Rudra no Hihou), I feel that he hadn't quite hit his stride here and his pieces don't quite compare to those put together by Nobuo Uematsu and Kenji Ito in the series' earlier instalments. Of course, your mileage may vary here.

All in all, psy_wombats and bob_esc have proved that they are capable of faithfully recreating the magic of the 8-bit RPG. I love 8-bit RPGs! I love the way they look and I love the way they sound. However, I'm not sure how much I'd like to play another SaGa game. The demo hits all of the right notes, but I think it would be even better to see this idea and style spun out into an original game; one that is able to break free of the constraints of being faithful to the SaGa series.

Regardless of my personal preferences, psy_wombats and bob_esc have done a remarkable job here, in Java no less, and deserve a pat on the back.

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Thanks for this by the way. It's been a good guide for balance changes and other things we've been tweaking in the months since this has come up, especially changes around the intro and balance issues with mutants. And the bug reports are always appreciated!

Other stuff we've addressed:
- Plot items are always recoverable. True to the orignal airseed though, chucking it while underwater is 100% a-okay
- A bit more music variety, at least later on. Each world is themed differently, so world 2 has FFL2's bgm and battle theme, for instance

About working with constraints, as I've put some more time into the project, I think they can be useful. Whenever one of us gets an idea about some oddball item or ability, we have to answer two questions: 1) does it help our theme? ie, SaGa faith, or 2) is it strategically relevant or important from a player quality-of-life perspective? It helps keep things focused and the game is turning a lot more streamlined because of it. It's also keeping me from getting too wordy in the cutscenes; part of the original FFL1 I really enjoyed was the sparse, almost terse dialog.

We'd like to maybe use the systems and the aesthetic to create an original game, but to be a really original game I think it's important to use original art and bgm as well, not just rips. While art by either of us would definitely be authentic, the quality would be a little more eh, questionable. (bob_esc's doing a great job with original tiles though!) Until we really deal with the root of that problem, I'm pretty happy to make a tribute for now.

Thanks for the feedback.
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