We, long-suffering SaGa fans, have been utterly inundated with the franchise over the past 12 months or so. First, there was SaGa: Emerald Beyond. Then there was the remake of Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven (and arguably the finest SaGa game of all). And now we have the surprise drop of SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered, which was a highlight of the recent Nintendo Switch direct, and a game that is almost shockingly good, 25 years after its initial release.
The first thing you need to know is that SaGa Frontier 2 follows the overall series’ penchant for experimentation with both narrative and gameplay. On the narrative side, you’ve got two timelines to follow. One features Gustave XIII, and the other William Knights. You get to see Gustave grow from being a (deeply) troubled child and exiled heir on a quest to reclaim his throne, while William is off on an adventure to understand why his parents died.
You play these timelines through as chapters, with key moments given a date and time for you to step into, and eventually, the two distinct narratives start to draw together, and it’s clear that Gustave and William are bound by their fates. Or, at least, their next generations are. SaGa looks somewhat modest at first, but has a lengthy and epic narrative filled with memorable characters to encounter, love, and loathe.
It is worth noting that compared to some other SaGa titles – Emerald Beyond, I’m looking at you – Frontier 2’s narrative is more coherent, straightforward, and linear. The complexity with which the two initially disparate timelines interact is both rich and interesting, but for the most part the narrative riffs on familiar fantasy storylines in an appealing way – one illegitimate royal child struggling to find their place in the world and come to terms with their heritage, while the other ends up on an all-consuming holy grail quest. As far as narrative goes, SaGa Frontier 2 is one of the more accessible of the entire series.
Gameplay, meanwhile, features several of the SaGa series traditions, including the iconic life points that deplete every time a character gets knocked out (and you can choose to deplete one to immediately recover a character’s health to full). Likewise, characters learn new skills somewhat at random by continuing to use the same pieces of equipment for attack and defence.
There are two big innovations that were brought into this game, however. One of these is the Duel system. At certain narrative points in the game (and occasionally when fighting random enemies), you will have the option to forgo the normal party combat to instead resolve things one-on-one. In a duel you’ll be able to stack up several of your character’s attacks, potentially unlocking some brutally powerful combos, and preserve the rest of your characters while doing so. This mode really allows you to unleash your most powerful character and feel validated that you’ve fitted them out well and managed their growth.
Then there’s the strategic mode. These are less common, but these battles play out like a Fire Emblem, when you have a small squad of soldiers that you’ll move around in a grid fashion. When two soldiers meet one another, the perspective shifts to a kind of Ogre Battle (or, more recently, Unicorn Overlord) turn-based combat between small groups. I personally would have liked a whole lot more of this, but then again this is my favourite form of JRPG, so I might be biased there. The relatively few battles that you will fight this way tend to be connected to narrative high points, though.
What helps this game truly stand out, however, is the approach that the original team took with the art, nearly three decades ago. SaGa Frontier 2’s art style was created with artwork drawn on canvas and then scanned and digitised. This gives them an authentic painterly quality that hasn’t lost any of its vibrancy in the years since.
In fact, this is a very good example of a drum that I constantly beat. The previous SaGa Frontier used CG full-motion cut scenes and computer graphics to drive its aesthetics, and while it remains an excellent game in its own right, on a technical level it looks decidedly less vivid and fresh than Frontier 2 does today. So often in the video game industry, developers jump on whatever looks the most “realistic” or “detailed” capabilities are, but inevitably this results in the game dating itself the moment something more detailed or more “realistic” comes along. Look at Sony’s remasters. All that work to take an engine that looks dated after a decade only to produce a game that will look dated a decade from now again.
Games with compelling art direction and made using actual artistic techniques, that rely on abstraction rather than “realism” will never age, and that’s SaGa Frontier 2. Having never actually played the original game, I found myself every bit as invested in exploring the environments and seeing what was around the next corner as I have been in any new JRPG released today.
While we are talking about the aesthetics, the soundtrack was the first in the SaGa series written by Masashi Hamauzu. I happen to be on a replay of Final Fantasy XII (the first in that series that Hamauzu was lead composer on), and I can’t help but feel that this guy’s talent is a little unfortunate because he came to both series’ after their respective legends (Kenji Ito, in the case of SaGa) stepped back from them. Hamauzu is not Ito, but he is a prodigious talent and the soundtrack of Frontier 2 is one of is a real highlight.
As mentioned, I didn’t play the original release of Frontier 2, so I have no frame of reference here, but it does seem like the Remaster does have a healthy depth of additions, including new events, the ability to transfer stats from one character to another, more difficult bosses, as well as a New Game+ and ability to speed up the gameplay. Square Enix has even emulated the “Dig Dig Deeper” feature which was originally implemented as a PocketStation bonus minigame.
I’m not sure why Square Enix has decided to become so prolific with the SaGa property. Three games in a single 12-month timespan is the most ambitious release schedule we’ve ever seen for it. But I’m also not complaining. SaGa has always been something of the forgotten child of Square Enix’s JRPG properties. With any luck, that’s changing now, and a whole bunch of people are going to realise just how good Frontier 2 here is for the first time.
