Welp. Thanks to this review, I have bought this game and completely fallen in love with it, and now thinking I need to play all the SaGa games. I love the open, TTRPG/CRPG-esque structure melded with the classic JRPG look and style. I’ve often wished for games like this-and unbeknownst to me, they’ve been around for decades, I just never gave them a shot. Great video, and thanks for covering this!
Champion video. Felt like there was still so much more that could've been talked about despite its length. And glad to see a remaster that has had such visible care given to it.
I normally don't replay RPGs much as well, but this game had me hooked and I ended up playing it four times in a row. Each time uncovering more of the quests and seeing how far some quest threads actually went when it came to events in a town. I cannot recommend playing Romancing SaGa enough, and it must be blind because there is a certain part of the experience you get from playing blind that you'll never get back. Not only finding quests, but figuring out how you're suppose to complete them makes this game feel like an actual adventure that many other games fail to convey. You really do get to make your own saga.
Great review! The game definitely deserves more attention for being a culmination of what the Romancing SaGa games are and for how it blends elements of JRPGs with traditional Western RPG features.
Great review! I had the PS2 game back in the day, though as you might expect of a 10 year old, I never really grasped the systems and couldn't finish. Excited to jump in and try it out again. Replaying the old Gameboy SaGa games and then this is next on the list!
Got into Minstrel Song (saga as a whole actually) from your channel and that first impression video, it's great to see a more in-depth review with that deeper understanding of the series. I love the remaster very much only issue is the Japanese and English Dubs being exclusive to the different language versions. Wanted a bit of a changeup with the voices it was a shame I couldn't do that on a console version.
Yeah, you can swap VAs with the Steam version through a workaround. Basically installing the Japanese region version, copying over the voice files. And then installing the English region version and overwriting the files with the JP ones. It's a trick that works for a few games. It's a shame it isn't just a toggle in a menu.
@@Aboveup Yeah, it's weird that the developers didn't put in the effort to implement an in-game option for this when it apparently works just fine with the files swapped. I haven't tested this myself, but the Switch version of Scarlet Grace has an undub patch on GBATemp that I've been told should work just fine with the PC version as well. One thing that really perplexes me is that even though the recent console remaster of The Last Remnant is based on the PC port, just about the only thing it supposedly removed is the option to change the language for the voice acting. Why would the developers go out of their way to remove an option that was already implemented?
This review is phenomenal, I had a ton of fun watching it. And it made me wanna go back and give the game another playthrough. I did one playthrough as Aisha on the ps2 and I started a remastered playthrough, but something came up and I put it on hold. Time to go back! Thanks for the great video.
Just bought this game on Steam for the Lunar New Year sale. I've always loved the aesthetic but never got a chance to play it on the PS2. Game is gorgeous and there are so many interesting systems built into the game. I can definitely understand how daunting this game would have been for JRPG fans that were used to more streamlined JRPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Thank you for you insight. Subbed and going to binge the rest of your Romancing Saga vids.
This is an extremely deep jrpg, and watching brings me heavy nostalgia of the early 2000's style jrpgs, I was hesitant to drop 20 on this but your video review has convinced me, thanks!🎉
Recovering from a wicked cold this morning, so this was an excellent way to start my day back at work. Any other reviews you want to revisit in the future?
excellent review my good sir. I played the ps2 version for a time but it was too difficult and open ended for me. I was overwhelmed immediately in the best of ways but I felt I should wait and delve in when I have the time, I never got back to it sad to say. This review has made me consider jumping back in. Loved the soundtrack and the squishy humor of the game. It doesn't seem to be raunchy or offensive its just a good time all around and it really helps to make a fantasy world one can get immersed in without getting burned or jaded.
Instead of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", we get "There's Always Something in the Melvir Sewers". Pretty sure there are some pubescent shinobi turtles and their rodent master down there somewhere, amongst all the pirates, cultists, and hellgates.
I remamber that one time i play albert,he want to find his sister and found her early but got gated than i sceam at the game"she right there why can't get to her!"
Your video made me buy this on Switch. I’ve only played 2, 3. And the Gameboy ones. I was excited when it was announced because it looks good I love this era of gaming. I was just busy with my backlog. Now I was looking for a new game and decided to see a review (this) and it has me excited for the download to finish
I remember playing the OG OG on NES....it was very very hard. I still remembered I completed "Ailing Emperor" quest once. I had no idea how that happened but the reward was very underwhelming lol .
Love this game and it’s great to see this game get the review it deserves. The combat is great and has a ton of depth the soundtrack is epic. Also if we never got this game we would have never gotten the Hito-Ookami Eurobeat remix of Battle 2 which was used in Michael Quest III. This track is a banger: ua-cam.com/video/mQ31CjQyhaY/v-deo.html Edit: Love the title card BTW 😊
My only note. The lizards are as easy as the slimes to deal with cause you can use them as a barrier from other monsters. They stay still if you look at them for a second and so you can use them to block other monsters while you get proficiencies ready etc etc Edit: Oh my god the Mullock drop changes oh thank GOD Im now excited to play Gray again! Edit2: I like that I can make my characters stronger and carry over their stuff. It means if I really wanna I CAN fall back on them but Im trying to use everyone I like at least once with very minimal overlap. Like my next run I wanna do royals. Albert, Neidhart, Raphael, Flammar and Patrick.
It's interesting you mention that the NG+ might pigeonhole you into the same members. I found it did the opposite. The same was true for SaGa Frontier Remake. Because I knew I had strong characters somewhere I could always call upon in a bind, I experimented MUCH more!
39:30 : Things to uncheck for a new playthrough The game is coming out physically in Europe :) Loved it on PS2, finished 3 or 4 characters, I don't remember. Used a guide for a perfect playthrough but I failed I think I only got 9 fatestones to give Saruin. What an epic game, and Passionate Rhythm is in many of my playlists even to this day.
It's still so weird to me how Squeenix is handling their remasters. Not to imply the SaGa series doesn't deserve it, but I'd have assumed Final Fantasy would have received premium treatment, but no - the SaGa ports are where the majority of effort went for some reason. Odd. Cool! But odd. In any case, my attempts to get into the series continue with this one next, I suppose! Romancing SaGa 2 sent me running scared with its confusing systems. Hopefully I'll be able to wrap my head around this one! EDIT: Oh also - looking forward to your eventual Emerald Beyond review. From what I can tell even the SaGa fandom seems sort of divided on that game.
Don't be too afraid! My first time playing I got into a ton of fights. You'll raise the event rank fast and surely miss some quests, but there are *lots* of quests to do, and you aren't meant to do them all anyway. One thing this video gets wrong is chain battles. A chain battle with, say, three enemy sprites only counts as a single battle for event rank, so you can fight more enemies efficiently by luring them together into chains. The most important thing is that once you hit max event rank, there is nothing stopping you from fighting as many encounters as you want. So if you really like fighting, end game is your time, and end game enemies are super rewarding to fight and often have excellent drops.
i got the remaster recently, I love it. I started with Albert this time, as I started with Gray when i played the emulated ps2 version. I think this is the absolute hardest SaGa game at the start. But i'm at a point in the playthrough where I've already completed pretty much every available quest so far as I'm on event rank 14 (i only missed a couple quests that fail by ER 05). I wish money wasn't so hard to come by in this game. I highly disagree about the New Game + options. I don't have as much time to put into videogames now and I apreciate the ability to carry over what I want and need since, like I previously stated, I believe this to be the absolute hardest SaGa game at the start, harder even than Scarlet Grace (which I beat recently with Urpina, and then i started a Leonard playthrough but took a break to avoid burnout). I for one am gonna try to build up new characters even as I take my accrued power, money, skills, proficiencies, and jewels into NG+1 when I beat Albert's playthrough.
Annnd yet another retro game I bought shortly before finding out about a rerelease lol Edit: Having played both, the remaster's mobile game UI is... disappointing. But the quality of life improvements are huge, especially the 2x/3x game speed boosts.
Are you going to be reviewing Legend of Legacy and/or The Alliance Alive? They're very much in the same vein of the SaGa games. The developers actually being involved in the earlier SaGa and Final Fantasy titles before branching off doing their own thing.
If I'm not mistaken, Alliance Alive's combat director is the same as Minstrel Song's. They're definitely similar enough for that to be likely. It is something that's on the list to maybe get to at some point if the time feels right.
Not so much afraid as other things getting in the way, but Koudelka's one I've wanted to do. No interest in becoming the 500th SMT channel, so I'll leave that IP to all those guys.
I may give this one a go. I had a bad experience with Romancing Saga 3, but this one looks modern enough for me to ease into the series. I guess I should play in reverse release order?
Sif is a giant badass viking muscle lady. That alone makes her a frontrunner in my book. Going to be hard choosing between her or Hawke for my first run. Hawke does seem to have abit more stuff going on though with a cool beastman party member aswell. Albert has too much generic JRPG lead energy for me to ever consider him. Out of all these characters, he's the one that just seems like a stale loaf of bread.
Event Rank is one of the most godawfully stupid mechanics I've ever seen in a video game. It's especially annoying if you're a 100% type who wants to do everything. No RPG should ever require you to avoid getting into combat, *ever.*
Welp. Thanks to this review, I have bought this game and completely fallen in love with it, and now thinking I need to play all the SaGa games. I love the open, TTRPG/CRPG-esque structure melded with the classic JRPG look and style. I’ve often wished for games like this-and unbeknownst to me, they’ve been around for decades, I just never gave them a shot.
Great video, and thanks for covering this!
Hey, fancy seeing you here!
ミンサガを楽しめて良かった！ サガシリーズ大好きだから嬉しい
Champion video. Felt like there was still so much more that could've been talked about despite its length. And glad to see a remaster that has had such visible care given to it.
I normally don't replay RPGs much as well, but this game had me hooked and I ended up playing it four times in a row. Each time uncovering more of the quests and seeing how far some quest threads actually went when it came to events in a town.
I cannot recommend playing Romancing SaGa enough, and it must be blind because there is a certain part of the experience you get from playing blind that you'll never get back. Not only finding quests, but figuring out how you're suppose to complete them makes this game feel like an actual adventure that many other games fail to convey. You really do get to make your own saga.
A game so good even the remastered reviews kick ass.
This video convinced me to pick up the game.
Thank You Guella Ha
Here's a neat little tip to avoid reptile enemies: simply turn toward them and they'll freeze.
You're kidding me.
excited for emerald beyond, and waiting for the day Square Gives the Saga team the budget for Romancing Saga 4 or a Modern Romancing Saga 2 remake
Great review! The game definitely deserves more attention for being a culmination of what the Romancing SaGa games are and for how it blends elements of JRPGs with traditional Western RPG features.
I've been looking forward to this! Thanks so much for your hard work!
Great review! I had the PS2 game back in the day, though as you might expect of a 10 year old, I never really grasped the systems and couldn't finish. Excited to jump in and try it out again. Replaying the old Gameboy SaGa games and then this is next on the list!
Been waiting for this! Thanks for the amazing content as always!!
Got into Minstrel Song (saga as a whole actually) from your channel and that first impression video, it's great to see a more in-depth review with that deeper understanding of the series.
I love the remaster very much only issue is the Japanese and English Dubs being exclusive to the different language versions.
Wanted a bit of a changeup with the voices it was a shame I couldn't do that on a console version.
Yeah, you can swap VAs with the Steam version through a workaround. Basically installing the Japanese region version, copying over the voice files. And then installing the English region version and overwriting the files with the JP ones. It's a trick that works for a few games. It's a shame it isn't just a toggle in a menu.
@@Aboveup Yeah, it's weird that the developers didn't put in the effort to implement an in-game option for this when it apparently works just fine with the files swapped.
I haven't tested this myself, but the Switch version of Scarlet Grace has an undub patch on GBATemp that I've been told should work just fine with the PC version as well.
One thing that really perplexes me is that even though the recent console remaster of The Last Remnant is based on the PC port, just about the only thing it supposedly removed is the option to change the language for the voice acting. Why would the developers go out of their way to remove an option that was already implemented?
This review is phenomenal, I had a ton of fun watching it. And it made me wanna go back and give the game another playthrough. I did one playthrough as Aisha on the ps2 and I started a remastered playthrough, but something came up and I put it on hold. Time to go back! Thanks for the great video.
Just bought this game on Steam for the Lunar New Year sale. I've always loved the aesthetic but never got a chance to play it on the PS2. Game is gorgeous and there are so many interesting systems built into the game. I can definitely understand how daunting this game would have been for JRPG fans that were used to more streamlined JRPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Thank you for you insight. Subbed and going to binge the rest of your Romancing Saga vids.
This is an extremely deep jrpg, and watching brings me heavy nostalgia of the early 2000's style jrpgs, I was hesitant to drop 20 on this but your video review has convinced me, thanks!🎉
Recovering from a wicked cold this morning, so this was an excellent way to start my day back at work.
Any other reviews you want to revisit in the future?
Not particularly, though I do want to finish up Deception now that I can actually record 4 again.
My favorite part of the video was when you made me feel not alone in hating squares remaster font choices 😂
Nice and long just how we like them nice work bro
excellent review my good sir. I played the ps2 version for a time but it was too difficult and open ended for me. I was overwhelmed immediately in the best of ways but I felt I should wait and delve in when I have the time, I never got back to it sad to say. This review has made me consider jumping back in. Loved the soundtrack and the squishy humor of the game. It doesn't seem to be raunchy or offensive its just a good time all around and it really helps to make a fantasy world one can get immersed in without getting burned or jaded.
Instead of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", we get "There's Always Something in the Melvir Sewers". Pretty sure there are some pubescent shinobi turtles and their rodent master down there somewhere, amongst all the pirates, cultists, and hellgates.
I remamber that one time i play albert,he want to find his sister and found her early but got gated than i sceam at the game"she right there why can't get to her!"
Your video made me buy this on Switch. I’ve only played 2, 3. And the Gameboy ones. I was excited when it was announced because it looks good I love this era of gaming. I was just busy with my backlog. Now I was looking for a new game and decided to see a review (this) and it has me excited for the download to finish
Amazing review, thank you so much!!!!
I remember playing the OG OG on NES....it was very very hard.
I still remembered I completed "Ailing Emperor" quest once. I had no idea how that happened but the reward was very underwhelming lol .
Love this game and it’s great to see this game get the review it deserves. The combat is great and has a ton of depth the soundtrack is epic. Also if we never got this game we would have never gotten the Hito-Ookami Eurobeat remix of Battle 2 which was used in Michael Quest III. This track is a banger: ua-cam.com/video/mQ31CjQyhaY/v-deo.html
Edit: Love the title card BTW 😊
Amazing review ! Thanks a lot
My only note. The lizards are as easy as the slimes to deal with cause you can use them as a barrier from other monsters. They stay still if you look at them for a second and so you can use them to block other monsters while you get proficiencies ready etc etc
Edit: Oh my god the Mullock drop changes oh thank GOD Im now excited to play Gray again!
Edit2: I like that I can make my characters stronger and carry over their stuff. It means if I really wanna I CAN fall back on them but Im trying to use everyone I like at least once with very minimal overlap. Like my next run I wanna do royals. Albert, Neidhart, Raphael, Flammar and Patrick.
It's interesting you mention that the NG+ might pigeonhole you into the same members. I found it did the opposite. The same was true for SaGa Frontier Remake. Because I knew I had strong characters somewhere I could always call upon in a bind, I experimented MUCH more!
39:30 : Things to uncheck for a new playthrough
The game is coming out physically in Europe :)
Loved it on PS2, finished 3 or 4 characters, I don't remember. Used a guide for a perfect playthrough but I failed I think I only got 9 fatestones to give Saruin.
What an epic game, and Passionate Rhythm is in many of my playlists even to this day.
I bought this twise lol, I love saga games so much
It's still so weird to me how Squeenix is handling their remasters. Not to imply the SaGa series doesn't deserve it, but I'd have assumed Final Fantasy would have received premium treatment, but no - the SaGa ports are where the majority of effort went for some reason. Odd. Cool! But odd.
In any case, my attempts to get into the series continue with this one next, I suppose! Romancing SaGa 2 sent me running scared with its confusing systems. Hopefully I'll be able to wrap my head around this one!
EDIT: Oh also - looking forward to your eventual Emerald Beyond review. From what I can tell even the SaGa fandom seems sort of divided on that game.
I want to try this but not being able to fight every single encounter rubs my ocd wrong :(
Don't be too afraid! My first time playing I got into a ton of fights. You'll raise the event rank fast and surely miss some quests, but there are *lots* of quests to do, and you aren't meant to do them all anyway.
One thing this video gets wrong is chain battles. A chain battle with, say, three enemy sprites only counts as a single battle for event rank, so you can fight more enemies efficiently by luring them together into chains.
The most important thing is that once you hit max event rank, there is nothing stopping you from fighting as many encounters as you want. So if you really like fighting, end game is your time, and end game enemies are super rewarding to fight and often have excellent drops.
i got the remaster recently, I love it. I started with Albert this time, as I started with Gray when i played the emulated ps2 version. I think this is the absolute hardest SaGa game at the start. But i'm at a point in the playthrough where I've already completed pretty much every available quest so far as I'm on event rank 14 (i only missed a couple quests that fail by ER 05). I wish money wasn't so hard to come by in this game.
I highly disagree about the New Game + options. I don't have as much time to put into videogames now and I apreciate the ability to carry over what I want and need since, like I previously stated, I believe this to be the absolute hardest SaGa game at the start, harder even than Scarlet Grace (which I beat recently with Urpina, and then i started a Leonard playthrough but took a break to avoid burnout). I for one am gonna try to build up new characters even as I take my accrued power, money, skills, proficiencies, and jewels into NG+1 when I beat Albert's playthrough.
Annnd yet another retro game I bought shortly before finding out about a rerelease lol
Edit: Having played both, the remaster's mobile game UI is... disappointing. But the quality of life improvements are huge, especially the 2x/3x game speed boosts.
Are you going to be reviewing Legend of Legacy and/or The Alliance Alive? They're very much in the same vein of the SaGa games. The developers actually being involved in the earlier SaGa and Final Fantasy titles before branching off doing their own thing.
If I'm not mistaken, Alliance Alive's combat director is the same as Minstrel Song's. They're definitely similar enough for that to be likely. It is something that's on the list to maybe get to at some point if the time feels right.
Is there certain jrpg series you've wished to dive in but afraid of? Like maybe something from Megami Tensei or Koudelka?
Not so much afraid as other things getting in the way, but Koudelka's one I've wanted to do. No interest in becoming the 500th SMT channel, so I'll leave that IP to all those guys.
Gosh thos is a dense game! And to think i got it for a mere 20
I may give this one a go. I had a bad experience with Romancing Saga 3, but this one looks modern enough for me to ease into the series. I guess I should play in reverse release order?
Depends on why you had a bad time with it
If its for difficulty, this one is a bit harder than that one
Sif is a giant badass viking muscle lady. That alone makes her a frontrunner in my book. Going to be hard choosing between her or Hawke for my first run. Hawke does seem to have abit more stuff going on though with a cool beastman party member aswell.
Albert has too much generic JRPG lead energy for me to ever consider him. Out of all these characters, he's the one that just seems like a stale loaf of bread.
Guella Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Do you like octopath traveler then? Since that game is a copy of the saga games
Event Rank is one of the most godawfully stupid mechanics I've ever seen in a video game. It's especially annoying if you're a 100% type who wants to do everything. No RPG should ever require you to avoid getting into combat, *ever.*
I hate this artstyle so so much
Y tho
Would you ever review Unlimited Saga?
Gonna play the game just from the look and sound of gray as a bad ass!