So what is this gaming challenge? , and I decided to do something fun involving games.. so I picked a game for Jenx, Denny picked a game for me and Jenx picked a game for Denny and we play for a week then post impressions and stuff.

Denny picked SaGa Frontier for me which is a RPG made by Squaresoft, you know, before they only did Final Fantasies and abandoned their (forgive me FF fans, hey I do like Tactics and 9) better RPGs (Chrono Trigger, SaGa Frontier, and probably others).

First of all I played this game on an emulator so I had some problems that aren't the games fault such as hard to read dialog and bad direction movement (lack of controller) but otherwise the flaws in the game aren't that bad and the good outnumbers the problems.

So what exactly is SaGa Frontier about? Depends on whose scenario you choose. The stories are all unique and range from an awesome story of rebellion against your lord, murderer, and kidnapper (Assellus), a tale of justice and super heroes (Red), an FFtastic story (Blue), and so on.

This game even resembles Kartia a bit in that although there are different scenarios they all cross over in some way. For example, you can recruit main characters of other scenarios to join you on your adventure. Or how several events seem to go together such as a pirate scene in Red's scenario later becomes a scene seen in side quests and other people's scenarios. It's pretty interesting to see all the different point of views as well as seeing further development of characters.

Now where SaGa Frontier truely shines is in its battle system. It just doesn't seem to get old or boring too fast. There are a variety of reasons why this works out so well.

First of all, the skill learning system is pretty fun. Instead of learning skills by level like most RPGS (since well there is no existence of levels in this game) you learn them based on a stat called "Will", if you have enough slots available, and how strong the enemy is compared to your character.

What I mean is if you have your enemy do a regular attack against an enemy that is quite a bit stronger than you, the character will make up for it and suddenly learn a new and usually stronger technique to use on the enemy. He now forever knows that technique and you can use it on your own instead of waiting for it randomly.

Now thats only how to learn Sword and Fighting techniques. (There's four different combat styles for humans and mystics: Sword, Fighting [its like wrestling and it has the funniest animation of suplexing giant bosses and such], Guns, and Magic. )

Gun Techniques are pretty easy to learn and usually can be learned the fastest. They are learned by simply using guns in battle and eventually will learn after the battle.

Magic is similar to guns except you learn by using magic you have the gift for. Some characters already have the gift for certain magics while others must learn it through side quests. All these various types of magic are pretty cool too with my personal favorites being runic, time, and light (in that order).

So since there is no leveling how do characters boost up then? It depends on the character's race. Humans level up similar to how skills are learned. You gain stats based on what you do in the actual battle. If you use magic, you will increase in intelligence and JP (magic points). If you use Swords or fighting you gain strength and vitality. If you use guns you increase in quickness and thus gun users usually get the first turn.

Will and HP and other stats also increase randomly after battle.

Mystics are similar to humans except they rarely develop any stat other than HP or skill/magic points. The way to get their other stats is to absorb monsters into their equipment (armor, glove, boot, and sword). This is how they also gain new skills.

Monsters are more similar to mystics in that they level up and gain skills by absorbing monsters. However this is their ONLY way of gaining any kind of stats. WHen they absorb monsters, based on the skills they collected, and the HP of their current form, they will transform into a new monster. This can be very frustrating as you will usually encounter a lot of weak forms before you become a strong one. There are so many choices of monsters however that it can be entertaining when its not making you scream at the game.

Robots are probably the easiest characters to develop and as such probably end up the strongest other than well-developed humans. Why? They don't level up or learn skills. But you raise their stats (dramatically) by simply equipping them with tons of gear. You want to do this anyways to give them better weapons!
Robots do get skills however in a similar manner as monsters. They can absorb other machines to get new skills but unlike monsters, they can't lose any of their skills.

Anyways I rather enjoy the game and have completed one scenario so far, Red's. He really reminds me of our friend Moonshade with that heroic theme and justice going on. Except there's the obvious difference Red is Red while Moonshade is Blue. THough Red does have blue hair.... hmmmm.......

Anyways I'll definitely keep playing until I beat all the scenarios. I love the game thank you for suggesting it Denny. I'll give it an 8.5/10 since the lack of removing characters bugs me (I hate having to wait to get people just to be sure I dont get stuck with someone lame on accident >>. It's kept me up until 3 am playing so yeah.... its definitely good, not many games keep me up that late.



+ Several Different Scenarios each with their own unique story that merges at some point with other peoples' stories.
+ Many different characters to choose from
+ Great Music
+ Interesting Battle System
+ Different Leveling systems based on the different races: Human, Mystics, Mechs, Monsters


- Side Quests can get a bit repetitive if choose to do them every scenario (best way to level up and all)
- No way to remove characters except one of the best magicians in the game.
- Lute's scenario is pretty pointless and can tell the programmers rushed the end of the game even dropping what would have been a far better developed and interesting scenario (Fuse, a policeman)

Good stuff!

Jenx` gaming week impression - [link]
Denny's gaming week impression - [link]


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