romancing saga 3 remaster thoughts

[highimpactsex]

damn, this game played me like a fiddle and i fucking loved it.

a polished and more accessibke romancing saga 1?

people who've been following my saga journey will know that i hold romasaga 1 in high esteem, even if the game is pretty jank. romasaga 1 was a somewhat broken game with strange bugs that glitch out pretty bad in emulation. but there's something very magical about the game as you try your best to explore and understand what the fuck's in the game.

so when i first booted Romancing SaGa 3, i was hit by this heavy deja vu. returning from the first romancing game is a character selection screen, some random constellation stuff, and the characters' own minisodes. when you play the game proper, you are booted into the open world and it's up to you to craft your own adventure

and i went, "Hmm, isn't this gameplay loop similar?"

much of romasaga 3 is reminiscent of the first game except it's like actually a game and not some weird rushed experiment. in order to unlock towns and dungeons, you have to put in the energy to look for stuff to do. what's a bit different is that there's far more content, more clues, and just a variety of crap that helps you grow your party.

there's no dull moments in the game. you're always thinking of following up some dialog you read a while ago and trying to get what the game is trying to convey. this is a huge improvement from romasaga 1 without a doubt.

but as i did my beginning quests and tried to understand the world, i thought of the game as kinda like a chore. it's too deja vu for me. i know what i have to do: spark this, mikiri that... this is not to say i wasn't having fun with the game, but my expectations might have been too high from how original romancing saga 2 was.

i sorta daydreamed about how, if i played this game as my first saga title, i'd be amazed by the possibilities of this worldbuilding. but i've played five saga titles, so i expect something different each time. romancing saga 3 didn't scratch my itch for a while. the earlygame was honestly too similar to romancing saga 1, even if i acknowledge it's actually very good.

it's actually the elden ring of saga????

but my opinion of the game started to shift as i did some of the lategame quests and the remaster dungeon. the quests were varied and always surprising. while i found most of the game generally easy, these quests often force me to play in a certain way. i'm thinking of a certain tower you've got to climb and i won't spoil much about it, but what the game does there is great comedic genius.

i just started laughing alongside the game.

the world also started to become more interesting. you got some hot(?) professor in the forest who's got pets and formula one cars, then you have a MURDER CASE that you gotta solve, and also there's some island full of lobsters for some reason.

but what really changed my gears was the remaster dungeon. but first, i should provide some context that i didn't bring up in my romancing saga 2 post.

so the remaster dungeon in romasaga 2 is kinda weird lmao. it doesn't mesh well with the game at all and it seems more like an afterthought to get the old fans to play the game again. there's some very cool dialog at the end of each dungeon and the classes you do unlock are neat. however, i think in a game design and story sense it just doesn't work.

but romasaga 3 remaster's dungeon is pretty neat. it's actually directed and written by kawazu and the dungeon is littered with these memories and backstories of playable characters who don't get much attention in the main game. i was surprisingly moved by some of the stories in the game and it made me reconsider what makes the world of romasaga 3 so interesting compared to the other two romancing saga titles.

the first romasaga game is more like a random trpg setting of settings. the second game is carried by the ridiculous plot. but the third game feels more like a realized fantasy world with actual stakes. every playable character in romancing saga 3 has something going on with their life, even if it's vaguely defined as saga tends to usually do. but it's still a nugget worth holding onto and what it shows is that this world, while peaceful on the outside, can be pretty grim and hostile.

the third romasaga game feels more in line with what i like about the first saga gameboy game: these characters are outsiders who must travel because they don't feel like they can sit down. the first protagonist i played was ellen who gets dragged with khalid to go somewhere. that party sucked ass, so i restarted with catarina. she, a noble lady, was ousted from the palace after she accidentally gave a mcguffin to a villain because the latter dressed up as the hunkin' prince. since she doesn't want to explain what happened, she cuts her hair and decides to leave the castle to quest for that mcguffin.

pretty badass imo.

i stuck with her and rebuilt my party. while redoing the quests, i started to realize that perhaps this game is actually structured similarly to this niche game called Elden Ring. that's a game where you are free to explore the world and partake in their many activities because you're going to get walled by some silly boss. if you decide to drop the game, you wouldn't feel too bad about it because you've seen a good chunk of the game.

and i knew that romancing saga 3 would be going for something similar based on what people have said about the final boss on spaces like reddit and discord. the game's offering you the chance to check the world out and secretly make you grind your stats that way before you get owned by the boss. that insight made me go, huh, maybe i actually like this game.

then, i met the final boss.

The Final Boss

i think it's hard to describe the final boss of romancing saga 3 to most people, even people who played romasaga 2 and older. that's because romasaga 2 is just balls hard from the getgo. you are supposed to restart the first few hours a number of times to get a feeling for that game. romasaga 3 never felt like you had to.

of course, i don't know what a first time saga player would feel about playing romancing saga 3. all the written experiences i've read are pretty alien to me, but they seem to agree with me that the Four McGuffin Bosses are easy once you know what to do. you might want to equip stuff to prepare ... or in my case, i did most of the sidequests and had some of the best skills in the entire game. so all the Four Story Bosses lasted for a minute more or less lmao.

so i got ahead of myself and thought, "Heh, I guess the final boss must be something similar. Probably easy."

then, i met the final boss and it's like ten times more difficult than anything romancing saga 3 has presented before.

now, i don't want to overplay romasaga 3's final boss. romasaga 2's final boss is WAY, WAY TOUGHER and requires far more prep work. with 3, you can abuse the remaster dungeon and so on as long as you have a save before the point of no return. but there is no doubt that 3's final boss is a SaGa Final Boss.

and it was there where i realized how i was half-correct about the game being similar to Elden Ring. while it is true that the game lets you explore as much as you want, for the people who want to complete the game, this entire exercise is to help you prepare for the final boss.

the preparation is not as deep and meta as romancing saga 2's. even if you are locked out of some quests in 3, there's still places you can grind for stats and skills. but it's still a daunting task. i laughed my ass off when i realized what the fuck i had to do.

but i didn't want to just grind. i'm one of the players who pride themselves in underleveling. i saw all the first time players finishing the game with 800-900 hp. my brain started computing epic math and i didn't want to waste time grinding random stats to not be worthwhile.

i needed to get deeper into the saga mechanics. i needed to understand sparking, mikiri/evade, and all that shit.

and i stumbled upon what i think is the genius behind the entire SaGa series. unlike 99.9% of jrpgs, saga wants to teach you to grind more efficiently. there are certain locations and enemies that make you grinding exponentially grow. you need to have The Saga Player's Eye to understand what's a great situation to grind in preparation for a boss.

and this is doubled by the fact that in all saga games, you're always preparing for a final boss you don't know and will get inevitably owned. you have to spend an hour or so understanding what you're currently lacking against the final boss, so you should spend the time preparing for the encounter. it's always an exhausting proposition, but every time it happens, i love taking the challenge.

so i spent an entire day preparing this while talking to people on discord lmao...

maybe it's just me, but it's fun to theorycraft and look up guides to understand the mechanics further. the saga series has consistently made me put on my Gamer Mode Hat and puzzle the final boss out with the mechanics you have. in a way, i think the SaGa games are like this giant puzzle games where you have to figure out how to solve The Final Boss.

i know i'm sorta rehashing my thoughts on knowledge checks in abrasive/dialogic game design here, but every time a SaGa game does it, it just feels great. when you beat the final boss, you've just solved one of kawazu's more ridiculous puzzles. and it's so fun.

concluding thoughts

i like romancing saga 3 a fair bit. i don't think it's a favorite of mine, but i wouldn't mind recommending this game to people who want a more traditional saga experience whatever that means. i can see why this is revered as a classic in japan and why the ReUniverse gacha game is based off its mechanics and story. it's an Objectively Good Game and i don't have much complaints about the game.

but that said, i do want something as ridiculous and ambitious as romancing saga 2. while i appreciate challenging video games all the time, i seek something more than that from the SaGa series. perhaps, that's a reflection of the profound appreciation i have for kawazu and his staff as creators. i find their stories and settings so utterly compelling that i wanted more.

like don't get me wrong, the story bits and pieces i've seen of romasaga 3 are wonderful in the end. the context of the final boss battle gives the entire fight some weight that many final boss battles in jrpgs of that era lack. there's much i appreciate.

but i also want to see something wilder. i want to see the weirder sci-fi crap, danker mechanics and bosses, and a World to explore. based on what friends like vox have said, i think i can look forward to the next SaGa game i'll be playing: SaGa Frontier.

i'm sure it'd be a normal and cute game.