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A Great RPG That Let's You Lead It Your Own Way!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

A quick introduction to Romancing Saga and why you should have it!

Romacing Saga is a non-linear RPG game set in the world of Mardias. Mardias is made up of 10 lands with thier own people, religions, and, cultures. The ruler of all gods, Elore, once took down the Three Evil Gods Saruin, Shirach, and Death and locked them away. Death and Schirach were stripped of there powers and sent away. But now Saruin is returning and it is up to you to stop him. There are 8 players to choose from with their own unique skills and powers. I won't get into great detail about them but I think you should definetly go study up on this game and see what it is about yourself.

Just to let you know, this game might not be for you! If you are a person who likes straightforward games that tell you exactly what to do step by step this is notsuch a good game. But if you like adventerous games that let you explore and do what you want, like me, then this is a great game for you! This game does lead you through a little bit at a time by letting you go through a variety of quests. It has awesome graphics and... THE MUSIC IS TO DIE FOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think the director did a wonderful job! If you decide to buy this game I would go look at a couple walkthroughs for a little bit help though! I should know, I've looked a couple times.

Now if you are ready, click that BUY button, pop it in your PS2, and step into the world of Mardias!!!

Remake of a Classic

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This review was written by my son, James Shea

A remake of the 1983 Square RPG classic, "Romancing SaGa" for the PS2 attempts to recreate the old-timey charms and deliver them in a new graphic system. While many of the game's story segments seem cliche now, since this is a remake of such an old game these can be forgiven.

The game takes place in Mardias, a mystical world. Long ago, a battle raged between the dark gods and the light gods. The light gods gave 8 "fatestones" to heroes, who then died in battle defeating the dark gods. Now those dark gods have risen again, and 8 new heroes must rise up. The player (who enters his name and gender) must lead the 8 heroes through battle; during the course of their stories, the heroes' paths intersect, and the final chapter is the united group fighting against the dark gods and their avatars.

The 8 characters come from 8 different parts of the globe. Albert is a young knight with a naive viewpoint. Jamil is a vagrant accustomed to stealing. Claudia is a ranger in the deep woods. Aisha is a nomadic herbologist for her tribe. Hawke is a famed pirate. Sif is a powerfully built barbarian warrior woman. Gray is an amoral adventurer who desires freedom above all else. Barbara is a traveling dancer. These 8 characters are drastically different in terms of their abilities, their viewpoints, and their adventures. Because the characters are not united until late in the game, the characters also have their own companions, ranging from story characters to mercenaries recruited in taverns to secret characters that must be unlocked by doing quests. These companions also have their own ability sets.

The gameplay is of an RPG style. There are some magical elements, but these vary depending on the character. Certain characters are better with certain weapons, and can learn a wider variety of moves with those weapons. Picking the right people for the right job is an important part of the game. Because it is based on such an old system, it is only expected that it would take this relatively simple path.

The designs are, stylistically, incredibly neat, but the big-heads/small-bodies mismatch of proportions (seen also in Final Fantasy IX, but it was a little more cartoony there) throws it off. The costumes and character designs are very well done, with unique styles for each civilization (more than just "these guys are European", for example), but the characters themselves look sort of weird because of their mismatched proportions. The music is pretty good for an RPG of this type. For the most part, it is well-composed. The voice acting, especially on the part of the Minstrel who tells the story, is also surprisingly good.

Despite the drawbacks of remaking such an old game, Romancing SaGa for the PS2 has managed to pull it off pretty well. Even though elements like the story and gameplay are now cliche, the remake manages to do a decent job of bringing that spirit into more recent terms.

Rating: 7/10.

bad rpg

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I don't like this game chiefly because the music sucks. On top of that, the story is not very dynamic. I hate slow movements and boring conversations. :(

WOW ... SUPER GAME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Thanks for such great service. Item was well packed and shipped quickly. I will be back!

Romancing Saga looks good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: August 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I own most of the Square(Square Enix) games and this one looks as good as the rest. I took it for a test ride, and didnt see anything to complain about. Unfortunatley, I didnt get too much time logged in on it, for i have games coming out the wazoo, and not enough time to play them all 8).

frustrating, confusing, boring

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 13
Date: February 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

after watching the trailer i thought this game would be a beautiful and fun epic, but it is far from that. the graphics are weak, story is very weak, and theres really nothing that sets this game above anything else. save your money and time for ffxii.

Too many characters, not enough sense, boring & played out RPG

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: February 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

What a mess this game is. There's hardly one element of Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song that rubs against another element without creating some kind of distorted havoc. The latest train wreck by acclaimed producer Akitoshi Kawazu, the closest thing videogames have to an Ed Wood, Minstrel Song represents two years in production during which the team played a score of better games and came away not understanding a whit of what made any of them good.

If you haven't followed the Final Fantasy SaGa games for the original Gameboy, Akitoshi Kawazu was given a promotion and his own team of producers following Final Fantasy II's success. Games came out for the Gameboy and in Japan, for the Super Famicom. The SaGa series seems to take a backseat to Final Fantasy, but shares the same first name. Believe me, the games could not be any different. It shows in this PS2 game. Romancing SaGa is as wishy-washy as it is dirty.

Let me say the art of this game is really beautiful. Well, the characters in Minstrel Song are huge-headed veritable monsters of people who run with Muppet-like bobbling waddles. Sometimes the graphics glaze over into a fine and utterly amazing hard-edged watercolor-and-pen-drawn visual style that resembles a breathing painting. It'd be nice if the entire game looked like this, and it'd be a perfect explanation as to why the game sold so well. Only it doesn't, and it isn't; the game most of the time resembles an RPG with a mildly moving three-dimensional camera that follows characters with larger heads than usual. The occasional interludes of the moving-watercolor style make one wish the game had some other underlying ingenuity which it clearly doesn't.

The story of Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is that there's a mythical world, and it's in danger. Eight brave people from eight different nations each rise to eight different challenges and set out on eight different quests with eight different goals, all of those goals in the context of this world where things are, they say in the Bible, "going wrong." The game uses LifePoints in place of Hit Points and the entire structure leaves a lot to be desired. The game almost tries to defeat you at every turn; I have this feeling that the game makers strived to create challenge but instead made the gameplay disturbing and depressing at times. I don't want to spoil things, but the more you learn of the games "innovation" you become more annoyed of the complexity and the really hampered battle system.

Many of the town have NPCs that aren't relevant to your character and their story at all. Because of the way the game is set up, you could spend hours talking to these NPCs and it doesn't do you one lick of good, then figure out that your present choice of character is unrelated to what the NPCs are talking about. It's almost as though these NPCs were placed here to confuse you. If you're lucky enough to have the correct character for this group of NPCs, the story moves forward. Otherwise, you're left scratching your head.

The voices in the game, for the most part, are brassy and obnoxious. Old men speak lowly and slowly and humbly and rumbly, with gravel in their throats and pain in their syllables. Girls talk like kids in rooms full of helium. The heroic males all speak with this overbearing and honestly shocking lisp that makes them all sound like cartoon homosexuals. It's safe to say someone found this funny. After a while, I found it ridiculous, insulting, and tiresome. Albert is particularly an offender. The poor guy can't pronounce an "S" to thave hith thoul. This is all well and good; that the game escalates and repeats thentences where he would have to articulate himself resembles torture.

Storywise, the game would be a real winner if the gameplay were sensible and the interactions between your character and NPCs amounted to something. This game is obviously not character driven yet the whole point of replaying it is to see how each of the eight characters finishes their particular quest. After forcing myself to play through the game two times, I have no desire to play through with the other six characters.

There is enough here for you to get an idea of the disappointment at the game in general. The graphics look nice, but they can't make up for the absolute lack of a coherent story. I give this game 2/5 stars.

Strike 2 for the Saga Series

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Romancing Saga is a mediocre RPG with bad graphics that attempt to be artistic combined with obscure objectives and long boring dialogs.

The combat system is pretty standard fare as far as console RPGs go. It is turn based, and starts you out with a good variety of options as far as what commands you can execute in combat. The music, while uninspired, ranges from atrocious to something that sounds like Aerobiz for the Sega Genesis.

If you have a friend who will let you play at his house or let you borrow it for a while, and you are a fan of RPGs in general, you may find a little amusement out of this game. Otherwise, I would not recommend wasting your time as there are plenty of better RPGs out there.

MARVELOUS

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 16
Date: November 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Okay, I've been following people review for Star Ocean (the game was really linear and people were asking for less linear game), and after Radiata Stories which was a linear+sub quest... but people were complaining. Now, it's a FULL NON-LINEAR GAME WITH QUESTS. Anyway, Romancing Saga may not be the best game in graphical ways but it sure have a lot of details and gorgeous colors. Yes, the big head seems a little weird but it change from all the others RPG. Too, the complexity of the battle system don't bother me. Again, people were complaining that Radiata Stories was too simple in the battle system... and now... Arw... ! Anyway, it's like a traditional RPG and it got its style. The voice are beautiful too and the world is very complete. I hope that some of you won't listen to those who always find a trouble in a game because Romancing Saga is very interesting. Anyway, it's up to you to judge it.

Awesome game - For those who like the style.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: February 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is everything it promises to be, and more - But what it promises is not for everyone. There are several points that are extremely well done, but only a certain kind of gamer will enjoy.

Firstly, the world itself. It is rather large, but moreover, it is ~alive~. It changes. The various characters in the world follow their own paths, and events will happen in the world, whether or not you are present. This is great, the world feels like it's a changing place. However, it has the disadvantage that you cannot complete all of the quests in the game in one (or even several) play through. If you're the kind of person that needs to complete every quest and side quest, probably shouldn't play this. If you like the living world, you'll love it. I remember completing one quest to help someone do some grave robbing, and from that point forward, he followed me from town to town, trying to sell his Mummy. :-D

Scaling. The monsters automatically scale to the relative power of the party. It makes "power leveling" a non-issue. If you like becoming the most powerful party on planet, you'll be disappointed. Furthermore, the time spent 'grinding' means you'll miss that many more quests. That said, bosses seem to not scale in the same way, so you have to gauge how much time you spend leveling with the difficulty of the bosses. You can walk straight to bosses way too difficult for you, though, so you have to be careful (I got juiced by a massive hydra deep in some dungeon after less than 3 hours of play)

You can't do everything. Seriously, you can't. Even with a party of 5 uber characters, you just can't do everything at once. The Proficiency system in R.S. forces you to only have a subset of your adventuring abilities accessible at once. For example, you're going to a dungeon, so you want to have the 'find chests' skill, and since you're concerned about locks and traps, you need 'pick lock', 'find traps', and 'disarm traps'. You also think there might be some walls to climb, so you equip 'climb' as well. That's it. You find a treasure map, or a rich vein of ore, or a pit you want to jump over, and you'll have to go back to the dungeon again later with a different set of skills to handle it. It makes you want to do more in the world than you possibly can. If you decide that the reward on the other side of the pit is worth getting, that means that the game world will have continued on while you made another trip back to the dungeon.

Quest Notes: Quests are extremely open in this game. You don't get a map pointer that tells you where to go or what to do. you have to figure it out. Sometimes, you won't know where to go, or what to do to complete a quest, and you'll fail it - the game won't wait, events in the game continue whether you join in or not. Still, if you just want some action RPG with a linear or well defined system to tell you what to do next, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Complexity: This game has a lot of complex features. Proficiencies, Techniques, Abilities, Classes... there's a lot of stuff for you to look at. It can be pretty overwhelming. If you prefer relatively simple Action RPG esque stat systems, you won't find it here. There's just a vast amount of information about each character, and tons of ways to advance each one. Fortunately (or so I think, anyway), you don't have to fully understand it to enjoy the game - Progression is more or less automatic as you're fighting, and you can easily just pick a couple of skills for each character to train up without losing anything. I'm not the kind of RPG player who makes in depth technical guides for games and considers them a necessary tool to play the game. (on a side note, have you seen the one someone did for all of the formulae and stuff for FFXII? some people have WAY too much time on their hands!) Lots of complex stuff, if you want to study it, but it really isn't necessary to understand it all to play.

So, in Summary, you need the following to enjoy the game: 1) some experience in playing an RPG. It's complex enough that this should not be your first jump into the genre. 2) an appreciation for a world that's vast enough that it doesn't let you do everything. Tangent to that, a tolerance for missing out on large portions of the game the first time through, because you certainly will. 3) Ability to enjoy a game without needing constant direction. I know I like a mindless Action RPG as much as the next guy, but this certainly is not one.

That's it. you have those 3 traits, I bet you'll really like this game. If you're not sure you qualify on any of those accounts, you may be disappointed.

Oh, one more thing. If you remember Romancing Saga 3 for the Super Nintendo (available only as a fan translated ROM, I seem to recall), this game is extremely similar in it's scope and style. If you liked that, you'll definitely like this.

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