The Good: Deep and always challenging combat The Bad: Unlocking locations and quests tedious and counterp
Right from the start, I was surprised by the bland, low-res graphics of the game's 3D engine. The environments aren't very interesting to look at most of the time, and the framerate, while consistent throughout, isn't exactly smooth. The character art makes up for this somewhat, with their slightly bloated heads and colorful outfits. The characters are also animated well, which contrasts with the bland backgrounds in a way that is perhaps intentional. Contrasting also are the visuals of the most powerful combat techniques in action, which look typically Square: spectacular. No less spectacular is the game's remarkable soundtrack, which seems almost out of place in a story with little epic narrative and even less focus.
The story is where Romancing Saga stumbles a bit, and it is ultimately what will keep this RPG from appealing to mainstream gamers. Each of the eight main playable characters has a prologue, and it is told very well in the form of surprisingly good voice acting. But beyond a certain point, the linear part of the character's story ends and the game becomes completely open-ended. In other words, you are completely on your own. There are few clues as to where to go next, and you will find yourself essentially completing quests at random to become strong enough to face the endgame battles. This wouldn't be so bad if you could access every quest regardless of the order you tackle them, but you can't. Some quests become locked once you complete certain other quests, and others become locked when your event ranking grows too high. Which quests close doors to others is never made clear, as your only goal after the prologue events is simply to make your party stronger. Your event ranking represents your party's overall strength, which is increased by - you guessed it - fighting. The problem is that you get into so many fights (even though there are no random encounters) it's hard to keep your event ranking under control. It is possible to achive endgame event ranking while completing only a handful of the 50+ available regular-game quests. (This happened to me during my first playthrough with Albert.) Unfortunately, your event ranking isn't listed in any in-game menu, and only the Volunteer Brigade (a cult of informative and snobby children) can give you a vague idea of how strong you are. (by listing more tutorial questions)
Confused yet? It gets better. You need to complete quests in order to aquire jewels, which is a special currency used to improve skills by talking to certain mentors scattered around the world. Improving skills is absolutely vital in making your life easier, as it reduces the cost of using special techniques in combat. This requires you to actively search for quests to complete, lest your party become unbalanced with high-level stats but low-level techniques. This tedious search is another area where Romancing Saga stumbles. You never know which quests and locations are best suited to the current strength of your party. And sometimes you need to recruit someone temporarily just to unlock a new location to visit. This is a problem because your party only has five slots, and when you dismiss one character to make room for another it is often very difficult (sometimes impossible) to get them back. This is a needless hassle. Why couldn't they use an active party character swap system like Saga Frontier? Ugh. In these ways, Romancing Saga is a lot harder than it needs to be, and I haven't touched on even half of the things that make this game strictly hardcore. One shouldn't need a hint book in a first playthrough of any RPG, in my humble opinion, but you WILL need one here.
Yet, even with all these glaring problems, I still find it difficult to put down Romancing Saga. The reason lies in the deep and always challenging combat, which is the meat and potatoes of the Saga series. Your event ranking, in part, determines the kinds of enemies you will be facing when you touch a roming monster on the field, and since your event ranking increases as you get stronger, you will seldom be fighting wimpy opponents. These engaging encounters force the player to stay on his toes and strategize in a way that targets the foes most likely to lay waste to the party. The drawback to this is that, too often, the monsters actually win these regular encounters - necessitating a humiliating reload. Fortunately, a quicksave option enables you to save the game anywhere you want, so there are no excuses for backtracking. Expect to save often.
Combat, like in previous Saga titles, revolves around using spectacular combinations to finish off powerful foes as quickly as possible. Combos occur at random, but some techniques are more likely to link together than others, so it is worth experimenting with different techniques to find the most reliable sequence of commands to dispatch your foes. Your options in battle are many. There are 15 weapon proficiencies to master and 10 spell classes, each with many techniques to learn. Your character's class can also grant special bonuses to certain attacks, such as spell synthesis. The trick in getting through long dungeons with minimal worry is to use the most efficient attacks to deal with minor foes and save the high-cost techniques for only the strongest opponents. How this differs from other RPGs is that in Romancing Saga, the strongest opponents you face often are NOT the bosses. Depending on when you tackle a certain quest, the boss could be the weakest enemy in the entire dungeon. Didn't I tell you to save often?
Veteran Saga players will be familiar with the level-up system, but newbies may be put off. Instead of leveling up through experience points, a character's stats increase by 1 at random after every victorious encounter. In a sense, it is a more realistic system in that your character's strength increases gradually instead of all at once through an experience level, but it takes a while to get used to, and the lack of experience levels leaves the player wondering how strong he really is in relation to the entire game.
Romancing Saga is no Final Fantasy in terms of story and presentation, but there are enough other Square-Enix qualities, like great music and voice acting, to keep this game from going into the bargain bin right away. Casual gamers will weep at the level of challenge and the unforgiving rigors of questing, but hardcore gamers will appreciate much of what the latest Saga has to offer - if they buy the hint book.
Overall rating: 7 / 10