Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Hands-On

TOKYO--At the Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix was showed off Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, which is a PlayStation 2 remake of the classic SNES/Super Famicom title from 1992. Romancing SaGa has gone full 3D in its transition to the PS2, though the game features characters that have roughly the same miniature proportions as those in the SNES original. However, they have realistic-looking faces--so it's questionable whether you can consider the characters to be cute despite their size. It's an odd look for an otherwise familiar role-playing experience.

All eight main characters from the original SNES game will be in Minstrel Song. They include Albert, Claudia, Jamil, Hawk, Aisha, Gray, Sif, and Barbara. We were also able to confirm that the subparty members, such as Knightheart, Geraha, and Miriam, will be in the game as well. All the characters in Minstrel Song have renewed designs, which seems to have resulted in them becoming summarily tougher-looking than their counterparts from the SNES original. Admittedly, some characters, such as Albert and Aisha, haven't really changed, while other characters, such as Hawk, Miriam, and Sif, look like totally new characters. Back on the SNES, Hawk looked like a young man in his 20s, Miriam wore a rather simple-looking red dress, and Sif was a blonde-haired female warrior who wore blue armor. In Minstrel Song, Hawk is a rugged-looking bearded man with an eye patch who seems like he's in his 30s, Miriam looks flashier than before, and she wears a witch's hat, and Sif looks more buff than before and has horns on her head. These types of stylistic changes should definitely give fans of the old game something to talk about.

Minstrel Song will feature at least two new characters that will play key roles, although it's unknown for now if they'll be party members or if they'll appear in some other form. One is a mysterious man in a black costume named Dark, and the other is a bard with long hair (who can be seen in the TV commercial for the game at Square Enix's Web site).

From what we know and saw, Minstrel Song won't be a direct port of the original SNES version of Romancing SaGa. Instead it'll have a number of updates and features from later releases in the SaGa series. For example, we also saw that Minstrel Song took advantage of the "sketch motion" rendering technique from Unlimited SaGa, which was used for cutscenes in that game when you moved from one area to another.

In the demo of Minstrel Song that we played, we started off from the middle of an event where we had to confront a fake king at the Sekhet Palace and then go off to rescue a girl who'd been taken away to a waterlogged shrine. What's interesting to note is that the dialogue in the game has not just been updated and lengthened, but also dubbed in full speech.

Similarly to the original SNES release, we went into battle when we collided with enemies on the field screen. We fought with a party of five members, and the basic method of battling was the same as in the original Romancing SaGa. You give commands to all your characters at the beginning of each turn, and then you watch as the attacks and spells pan out. However, instead of playing exactly the same as the original Romancing SaGa, Minstrel Song adopts a few battle systems from other releases in the SaGa series.

For example, the game adopts the learning system from Romancing SaGa 2 where you can learn new skills by continuously using a certain attack, and it also adopts the combination-attack bonus system from SaGa Frontier, which is a system where you can do more damage than usual by concentrating your party's attacks on one enemy. The game also adopts the LP (life point) system from Romancing SaGa 2. However, it's unknown if the LP in Minstrel Song will work in exactly the same way that it did in Romancing SaGa 2, where you'd lose your character for good when its LP drained to zero. During the battle, we also noticed a nice arranged version of the nostalgia-inducing fight-scene music from the SNES game.

So far, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song looks to be a promising game. While the SNES/SFC original was well known, it's also true that a lot of players weren't able to beat it 12 years ago due to various bugs and balance issues in the game. Hopefully, with the PS2 version, players will be given a better shot. For more updates, be sure to check GameSpot's coverage of the Tokyo Game Show 2004.