Sigma Star Saga has many interesting ideas, but unfortunately fails to put these ideas together into a compelling game.
Unfortunately, while the idea sounds great, and it really is a sweet idea, the way that the developers chose to use the idea is counterproductive.
Gameplay: Well I think I'll just dive into it, the gameplay is flawed. Badly.
While at first the battles in ships are quite fun, you quickly realize how incredibly cheap the game is in an effort to up difficulty. For example, some of the random battles have slight outcroppings that if you so much as touch a pixel of them with your ship, you die.
Furthermore, you don't even get to choose what ship you are in. I would be much more forgiving on the score if the game let you get used to flying one ship at a time, or let you slowly upgrade your ship. It does not. Instead, you are forced to deal with whatever ship the game decides to randomly place you in, which doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but then one time you might get a super agile, super sleek ship, and the very next battle be put in a ship that basically handles like a flying box. This ship you have to maneuver through levels that dont forgive even the slightest touch of the top or bottom walls.
Sure, you respawn, but every death takes down your health, putting you one step closer to going back to the nearest save point, which sometimes sets you back 10-20 minutes. For a handheld RPG, this is a nearly unforgiveable trait.
RPGs in general should be easily accessable and not punish players for lpaying them, but handheld RPGs in particular need to be divided up into concise portions in order to allow for 4 minutes here, 6 minutes there gaming. Sigma Star Saga almost always requires you to sit for around 20+ minutes before even exposing you to a save point.
The walking speed of the main character is also atroscious. It seems like so many things were added into the game to artificially lengthen it.
The customization allowed by the gun data is interesting, but hardly worth adding any sort of good score to the gameplay. In most, if not all cases, the forward firing gun is best, and combine that with whatever of the other styles you want, as you just blast your way through the levels as fast as possible.
The storyline is the only good point of the game. It is suprisingly quite good, and amazingly has some solid plot twists in it. Unfortunately the characters are rather lame. Even with a slightly compelling story it is hard to get involved when some of the characters are so extremely annoying.
Graphics: Sigma Star Saga's graphics are one of its better points. While not even close to the best on the GBA, they are good. The reason I knocked off some points here too though is because of the boring level designs and rather lame designs of many different things in the games (many enemies are exceedingly boring looking.)
Sound: The music in the game ranges from some truly incredible tracts to other music that will grate on your nerves the whole time you are forced to listen to it. It is shocking the diversity in quality of the music. One area will have you happily jacking up the volume, while the next will make you turn it off and popping in a CD or something as you play. The sound effects are also quite bland. Not to mention the absolutely awful voices when they are featured in the (thankfully) rare times.
Value: Again, the game seems like it was artificially lengthened. The random battles are time consuming borefests, and simply getting from once place to another takes far longer than it should have to.
Tilt: It is hard to recommend this to even the most enthusiastic RPG player. I honestly would not even come close to recommending this to anyone. The story, while being good, is hampered by paper thin characters.
The bottom line is that the game has some truly incredible ideas, but fails miserably to pull them off