There is nothing like an old friend stopping by to remind you of who you were.
It is certainly a cliché, but I was a different person in 1998. I was a gawky teen/band nerd that mostly assumed women were another, significantly alien species; and, more importantly, I had just let my Nintendo Power subscription lapse. It was a long, N64-based time coming, but, for the first time in my life, I was no longer “connected” to the gaming world. There would not be a monthly periodical arriving to inform me of all the grand games coming to my favorite console anymore, and, as a result, I was lost in the wilderness of Electronics Boutique during every visit. SaGa Frontier caught my eye for one simple reason: it was the same color as Final Fantasy 7. Overwhelmingly white CD case with some Amano-looking wispy dude wearing a patently ridiculous clothing/amulet combo? Sign me the hell up. Final Fantasy was a known quantity, Squaresoft was where Chrono Trigger originated, and a return to “sorcery” (an aspect of older Final Fantasy games that had been gradually given over to techno worlds at the time) was all that I needed. I had no idea what SaGa Frontier had in store for me, but I did have forty bucks of Summer spending I could spare for the experience.
And, yes, SaGa Frontier is certainly an experience.
SaGa Frontier was directed and produced by Akitoshi Kawazu. And, while the SaGa franchise was familiar to fans in Japan, over here in America Town, Kawazu had only shown his hand in the Final Fantasy Legend series. And you only played that franchise if you had a Nintendo Gameboy and a really high tolerance for staring at a tiny, pea-green square’s worth of text (and a similarly high patience for banana smuggling). What’s more, the origins of practically everything involved in SaGa was introduced in Final Fantasy 2… a game that never saw release/a strategy guide in the West. And it is hard to describe just how different Kawazu directed games can be at times. Like, to attempt a terrible metaphor for the masses that might not have grown up farming cactuars on remote islands, it would be like… Hm… Imagine if Kawazu made cars. These Kawazu Cars would seem completely normal, but you could only use the brakes by licking the steering wheel in just the right way. Would plenty of people die thanks to this vehicle? Yes, obviously. It would lead to global catastrophes. But can you imagine the tongue-dexterity of those that survived? They would be able to lick-brake in amazing ways! And they would probably be better at parallel parking for some reason! Kawazu games will make you better at all games, because they encourage creative thinking and cultivating skills you might leave to languish elsewhere… but these games are also notoriously brutal in their learning curves. If you get it, you get it, but if you don’t, your protagonist is pudding.
And, gentle reader, let me tell you that, in 1998, I was not ready for SaGa Frontier. I tried to approach the game as a traditional Squaresoft jaunt, and I was rewarded for my hubris with a number of dead heroes and heroines. What I projected would be a simple “mindlessly kill monsters, get stronger” experience required far more nuance than I ever anticipated. Robotically “grinding” in SF means the encounters get stronger, but your characters do not necessarily gain the new skills to meet these challenges. Actually succeeding means learning the abilities and aptitudes of your chosen warriors, training them in those specific areas, and then whipping out a Dream Super Combo after hours of hoping you chose the right martial artist for the job. It requires thinking, planning, comboing, and a full grasp of SaGa Frontier and its myriad of gameplay systems. And if you fail? Well, a collection of my own save files parked right before the final bosses, but with no possible path to victory seems to indicate that making the game “unwinnable” is a perfectly valid outcome for a SaGa title.
And, when I was 15, that seemed… reasonable? Like… maybe I deserved it?
I mean, I did deserve it, right? I played the game wrong, and my punishment was an incomplete experience that could only be rectified by starting over. Memory card space was at a premium at the time, so it was not like I could simply reload from an earlier point where maybe I could have constructed a more useful party or learned a more useful skill. There are a thousand options in SaGa Frontier, and I chose the wrong options. And, in a way, this was not a big deal. SaGa Frontier was likely to be my “big JRPG purchase” to last me until Christmas, so I had time. This would be “my game” for the next few months, and if I had to restart, I would simply do that. Start all over armed with the knowledge I had sparked from an aborted playthrough and do better this time. Hell, the multiple characters/scenarios seemed to even encourage this: I failed with Emelia, and I could go back to her, but why not try Asellus this time? And, if I was really trying hard, I could hit the generally accurate advice of Gamefaqs, or shell out a few more precious dollars for a strategy guide. Now I was on the right track! I could handle seeing at least one aqua-colored sorcerer’s ending (or what passed for such). I might never see that all important dev room that required the full dedication of a player and memory card, but I could come close.
And now it is 2021. After 23 years, things are… different.
SaGa Frontier was once the only game I purchased within a whole season. Now, SaGa Frontier Remastered is one of many games I purchased within that same time period. Hell, it’s not the only game I purchased within one month. Double Hell, it’s not the only Square-Enix remaster of a game I already played that I purchased within a period of two weeks. By Blue’s Eternal Hell, I have some entertainment options now!
But that doesn’t do me as much good as my inordinately jealous 15-year-old self would believe. I have the income to purchase a game every seven seconds (and the Nintendo eShop alone produces new content apace), but, bad news, I have no time to actually play these games. Where once a game that touts seven or eight different scenarios that can take about ten hours each seemed like an unbelievable boon for the boy that could clear Donkey Kong Country before even opening his second Christmas present; now “you will lose 80-90 hours of your life” sounds like a goldarned threat. And it is “only” ten hours a scenario if you know what you’re doing. The idea that I could squeak through nine hours and then have to do it all over again because Hour Ten was too much? Preposterous! I could be playing every Mario game ever made right now, why would I ever bother with escorting some spoony bard to halfheartedly avenging his father? Dude can write a ballad about it, and I’ll listen to that. I do have three minutes to spare for a song sometime around next week…
And, while replaying SaGa Frontier does continue to give me the warm fuzzies, it also makes me think the game is a complete mess. SaGa Frontier offers new frontiers in freedom, and you can often go anywhere in its world, and visit areas that are made “for” a character that you are not using. And in any other JRPG with the premise of multiple playable characters/scenarios, you would arrive at an abandoned temple meant for Riki, but Red would say “there’s no reason we have to be here” and walk away. Or there would be a permanent “guard” outside. Or you wouldn’t even be able to select the area on the map. Or something. SaGa Frontier gives you the autonomy to say “hey, you want to explore here? Go ahead!” And that was sorely lacking from other JRPGs in its day! And our today, too! How many people would get excited yesterday or today by trying to squeeze one character into a place they “shouldn’t be” just to see what would happen? (“Hey, I got Gogo to work in the World of Balance!”) But, that said, the answer here is sad, because you can bring T260G to somewhere she is not supposed to go… and the best you see out of it is maybe some decent treasure. But more likely it is just a literal waste of time. A throne room with no king, or a secret passage leading to no secret. You went to the wrong ruins, buddy. And did that feel worth it for you? Maybe! But more often than not, when an area doesn’t have a distinct reward, it feels like you did something incorrectly. It varies from player to player, but it is very easy to do a lot in SaGa Frontier, and feel like the end result of those adventures is a whole lotta nuttin’. And exploring an area meant for Riki during Emelia’s campaign, finding nothing, and then revisiting it for the “real” scenario with Riki feels less like “I got this” and more like “Oh, heck, now I have to fight this stupid squid again”.
When there is the possibility that you can explore 90% of the whole game with one scenario, there is the distinct danger that the player is going to become too exhausted/frustrated trying to play 630% of the game. And never mind “knowing” that, like, one goofy NPC or dungeon is going to be a silly diversion in six scenarios, but absolutely essential in scenario seven…
Which brings me to a conclusion that my 15-year-old self never would have even considered: SaGa Frontier was a little too understood by its authors. There are a lot of design decisions that can absolutely make sense in SaGa Frontier, but only if you really appreciate the whole of the game. You must understand every scenario, every sidequest, and the importance of knowing the difference between the two before you burn out on experiencing everything. Or that, narratively, the fact that, say, Blue is very much just a jerk, and isn’t like another PSX Final Fantasy-esque “he’ll be less gruff eventually” protagonist is super important to his ultimate fate, but you really can’t understand the full scope of that until you realize Blue’s counterpart, Rogue, was “the good twin” all along thanks to encounters in other scenarios. And the whole of the game (once again: thanks memory cards) is not the easiest thing to grasp under the best of circumstances. A lot of these decisions make sense in the fullness of understanding all of SaGa Frontier, but in the individual moments of it, it is all over the place, and likely to “offend” a player with its very distinct choices.
And Time Lord knows it offends this modern-day Goggle Bob.
SaGa Frontier is a good game. SaGa Frontier Remastered is a good game made even better. But playing the two games at two very different points in my life has reminded me how much things have changed over the last few decades. A game that was once “difficult” can now be safely judged as “difficult to understand”. And, while this does not detract from the experience, it may impress upon this player that, at an age when time is valuable, maybe learning the ins and outs of an extremely unique JRPG is not the best use of the day.
SaGa Frontier, it’s not you, it’s me. I’ve changed. And you’re better, but still too the same.
FGC #599.1 SaGa Frontier (Remastered)
- System: Playstation 1 for the original, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, and various contemporary computer platforms for the modern player. Was it ever a PSN release? It could have worked on the Vita…
- Number of Players: Fuse makes for our eighth playable character in the remaster, but you still can only control one at a time.
- I’m not racist, but: I do not care for monsters. A lot of effort for very little return. Though I do appreciate how lummox and skeleton king alike can turn into a slime pile thanks to a bad chunk of monster meat.
- Make your choice: Choosing Rune Magic means you will go to prison. Arcane Magic means you will get tipsy as hell and drunkenly stumble through a jungle of deadly, sober monsters. I know my choice.
So are you still just super bitter about being locked out of the Emelia “good ending” because you decided to follow a lead when you should have just immediately given up? No, of course not. That would be silly. That is totally not the reason I harbor resentment against the entire SaGa franchise. I don’t know why you would ever think such a thing.- Reading is fundamental: Yes, I still have the strategy guide from the late 90’s. Yes, it is still useful for about 90% of the game, as full-color maps and a bestiary are always valuable. And, hey, it is generally nice to be reminded of which characters can recruit which other characters. Did you know Emelia hates robots? I think it comes up somewhere…
- The times change: I remember finding Red’s scenario as a mock Power Ranger so exciting and unique back when I first played SaGa Frontier. Now I am tired of sentai sendups, and SF’s version of the trope isn’t even all that interesting (is M Black supposed to be sympathetic because of, like, two bits of dialogue? Really?). Move along, Red, Viewtiful Joe has taken your place in my heart.
- Did you know? There are three characters in SaGa Frontier named “Red”. Red is a main character that fights against Black X. Rouge (French for Red) is the twin rival of Blue the Magician. Red Turnip is a turnip with a poor sense of direction. Find some new colors, SaGa!
- Would I play again: Funny you should ask that…
What’s next? We’re not done with SaGa Frontier just yet. Come back on Friday for a deep dive on my favorite SaGa Frontier story. Please look forward to it!
Thanks to a witch’s curse, I am obligated to write about any videogame I have played for longer than a half hour, so let us contemplate World of Final Fantasy.
I know a lot of people reading this have been gaming all of their lives, right there from the advent of the Nintendo Entertainment System. And that likely means you’re damn well near forty. And you know what that also means? You’re old! There were an awful lot of people that were born in the intervening four decades! And they might like Final Fantasy, too! Except, you know, their first Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy 7. Or Final Fantasy 10. Or, wonder of wonders, they may have played their first Final Fantasy game this year, and it’s a MMORPG involving a strangely high number of cat boys. And that’s before we even get into the people that got into gaming later in life, or just recently decided it was time to see what this “Final Fantasy” was all about, or just picked up Final Fantasy 6 because it came with the Super Nintendo Mini, or even they’re interested in finding out the deal with these weird dudes from 
And, to be absolutely clear, it is in Square-Enix’s best interest that you have not only an affection for the whole of the Final Fantasy franchise, but that you also know it inside and out. Easy example? 
But there is a bit of an issue with using the “Kingdom Hearts approach”. No one is going to mistake Pinocchio for Aladdin for Jack Skellington. However, when you hit the FF games, well… Squall is a competent SeeD “hero” that has some issues with confidence. Cloud is a competent SOLDIER “hero” that has some issues with confidence. Lightning is a competent… ah, crap, we’ve already hit a wall. A lot of Final Fantasy characters kind of boil down to the same character once you remove them from their more complicated home plots. Squall and Cloud are very different protagonists in their respective adventures, but, in the limited World of Final Fantasy, they’re practically the same as Tidus. In fact, in a weird way, the “knights” of World of Final Fantasy become something approaching a boy band. Tidus is the funny one, Lightning is the serious one, and Squall is the one that is interested in gardening for some reason. They are only graphically distinguishable, and, frankly, the funko-ization of the gang doesn’t help in that department either.
So World of Final Fantasy is shallow as an introduction to Final Fantasy characters, and even shallower for anyone that wants to spend more time with particular protagonists. But maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree! Maybe it was never supposed to be about the “cameo” characters, maybe…
And a reminder that this game is from the same people that brought you Kingdom Hearts 2, which somehow made the fans demand an entire Kingdom Hearts “miniseries” game based on some dork from the opening skateboarding tutorial or whatever. KH2’s Roxas is a fully established, sympathetic character inside of like seven seconds. His own featured game made him a tragic hero that could rival the likes of Shakespeare (or at least anything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Lann and Reynn never come close to that over the course of an entire game.
The ultimate punchline to the lore of World of Final Fantasy is that there are some people that merge with powerful summons to ascend to godhood, and, once they have established their nigh-omnipotent powers, they can create worlds. So there are worlds of fantasy, there are worlds of sci-fi, and (since some people are jerks) there are worlds of death-spewing dragons. And some worlds are proper Final Fantasy games, some worlds are obviously implied to be the spin-offs, and some worlds are like this one: where there’s a little sprinkling here and there of the familiar, “main” worlds, but they’re still fairly bonkers. And, of course, sometimes the worlds fight. And, end of the day, that’s that. There are infinity worlds with infinity permutations, and World of Final Fantasy 2 could have equal odds of being another adventure in “this” world, or one where you’re piloting a space ship in a shoot ‘em up (
There are 100% funny moments in World of Final Fantasy, and a lot of lesser jokes that could conceivably be funny to an audience that has not become jaded after years of watching Poshul die on the cross in complete earnestness. There are also some amazing mirage entries that are hilarious, and a few that are… well, that one where they keep trying to make "Lich" rhyme with a naughty word. And the twins really are the classical "straight man and goofy man" partnership.
This game was intended to be comedic. And there are funny bits! World of Final Fantasy sincerely tries. But, end of the day? There were more genuinely funny bits in Final Fantasy 7 Remake than World of Final Fantasy. And, in some cases, it came from the exact same characters! It can be done! Just WoFF doesn’t seem to know what it wants enough to stick to it.
Of course, if World of Final Fantasy is biting on Pokémon for this gameplay, they missed one key feature in that experience: being able to switch Pokémon on the fly. Like in Pokémon, you have a limited number of mirages that can be on your belt at one time; however, unlike the Gamefreak original, you absolutely cannot switch your mirages in the midst of a battle. Whatever you chose to start this battle with is stuck until you either win, run, or die. And, while it’s not difficult to solve the puzzle of maybe you need an electric team in the robot-based dungeon, many of the later areas are more generic, and require a greater swatch of abilities and resistances. And there is nothing worse than facing down a gigantic behemoth, knowing you have you the proper instrument in your toolbox right over there, but, sorry, you’re stuck in this battle right now, and you’re going to have to whittle down those health points in the most boring, least satisfying way possible. And then you switch in your trump card for the next behemoth battle, only to face a mag roader team that requires a totally different solution. It’s exhausting, and another place where World of Final Fantasy falls just short of being a great game. It’s not terrible! It’s just… close enough to great that you can see exactly what went wrong.
And speaking of the Train Graveyard, that was a dungeon that absolutely required bringing particular mirages with particular abilities (in this case, “zap” and “smash”), whereas previous dungeons only relied on the “map screen abilities” as a way of accessing extra treasure. Was there some warning that I absolutely had to bring a smash-based mirage to this dungeon? Not that I saw. So did I waste a solid half hour trying to figure out if I could solve this “puzzle” without needing a specific mirage, like I had in every dungeon prior? Yep! And that doesn’t leave an impression at all.
But my theory has always been that if you’re going to do it, you should do it right. That’s why everything I have ever written, including this article, is absolutely prefect. Final Fantasy is a pedigree in the gaming sphere, and this Final Fantasy product falls short of its forbearers. It’s still a fun experience, but it is also flawed in some very obvious ways. Maybe a World of Final Fantasy 2 will correct these problems, or maybe a third World of Final Fantasy released seventeen years later will address the issues. Maybe it will always be a weird, one-off “quirky adventure” in the Final Fantasy pantheon. Whatever the case, the game we have here, even in its expanded state, is still just “good”, and far shy of flawless.
I feel like I’ve been tricked so many times, I’m sad when I’m not being tricked.
But we live in a world where no game can ever truly be finished, so Pokémon Sword/Shield earned two whole new “campaigns” in the name of downloadable content. In the Isle of Armor, your trainer visits a hitherto unexplored island that is vaguely Eastern-themed, trains in a Pokémon dojo, and eventually defeats the grandmaster while earning a new, karate-based Pokémon. Meanwhile, in the Crown Tundra, your customized protagonist goes on a quest in an occasionally frozen wasteland to discover a host of legendary Pokémon, and maybe help out some manner of telepathic deer with popularity problems. In both areas, there are new whacky characters to encounter, challenges to overcome, and, of course, Pokémon to catch. Pokémon Sword/Shield started with what many claimed was an insultingly low number of Pokémon available to the player, and, while the expansions don’t fill in the entire pokéroster, you certainly have more of a variety available now (still no sign of Drowzee, though). And that’s great! Sure, you can just airdrop your entire living pokédex from Pokémon Home straight into Sword and claim you’ve completed the ‘dex, but it’s a lot more fun to pedal out into the ocean, and discover a tenacool for the first time all over again. This is bloody Pokémon, dammit, go out there and catch ‘em all.
“mainline title”, that is every Pokémon game to a T. There have been some tweaks over the years (some were amazing, some should have been there from the start [looking at you, Wrap]), but every Pokémon title works like good DLC. So it should be absolutely no surprise that the DLC for Pokémon Sword/Shield is magnificent: it’s exactly what we expect from a Pokémon game!
And, whether this was inspired by the success of Yellow or a general need to always see improvement, nearly every following Pokémon generation published a “Yellow Version” of its own. 
And, God help me, if we don’t see a Pokemon Sword/Shield 2, I’m going to miss buying the same game again. I’m going to miss forking over money that could be better spent on literally anything else (including another, whole new game), and settling in for more of the same (but with a new hat). I’m going to miss battling through the exact same fights, but slightly rearranged, so I can finally battle a champion that now has a Blastoise for some reason. I’m going to miss wasting my time on something that already consumed hours and days of my life, all in pursuit of one extra Technical Machine that teaches Earthquake. Or maybe a Gigantimax Hypno? I would waste so much sweat for such an opportunity…
Goggle Bob Fact: This expansion was first announced/revealed last year when I was vacationing in Poland. I will never forget being hunched over a laptop in my (now) wife’s childhood bedroom, desperate for Pokémon news… Or maybe just excited to hear something 100% in English. I may or may not have been homesick, so the prospect of a new kind of Articuno is always going to hold a special place in my heart.
In 1938, Thornton Wilder released Our Town. For anyone that has not seen or read the play, it is a deliberately simple production that showcases three different stages in the lives of the residents of Grover’s Corners. It begins with a focus on “daily life”, like children going to school and milk being delivered, proceeds to “love & marriage” with a joyous and stressful wedding day, and finally ends with “death and eternity”, a supernatural visit with the spirits literally haunting the local cemetery. The whole while, the play is hosted by the Stage Manager, a character that bleats his dialogue against the fourth wall. This “manager” separates their role between being a character in Grover’s Corners, narrator, and a congenial guy (or lady) that addresses questions from the audience. The Stage Manager and the general tone of the whole production was a result of Wilder acknowledging that he didn’t like the direction “the theater” was taking at the time, and Our Town was intended to drop intricate sets and impersonal narratives for a simple setup and direct interaction with the audience. Possibly because of this, Our Town has been popular since its premiere; however, Wilder often said the play was rarely performed correctly, as, in his own words, it “should be performed without sentimentality or ponderousness–simply, dryly, and sincerely.” Good luck with that, Thorn, as the final act of Our Town contains one of the most beautiful and insightful exchanges ever directly lifted by Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch: