Square Enix’s SaGa games, and indeed most of the works of their creator Akitoshi Kawazu, are like the blue cheese of the JRPG genre. To many players, the inscrutable mechanics, emphasis on random elements, and complete lack of interest in the norms of the genre make the SaGa games complete turn-offs. And yet for a certain type of player, there’s really nothing else quite like them. There’s a special zing to them that can excite even the most exhausted of taste buds. Luckily for Kawazu and his fans, there have typically been enough of those players to keep the series going, albeit by a hair at points.
Indeed, things seemed awfully grim after the one-two punch of Unlimited SaGa and Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song on the PlayStation. The former pulled off the unlikely trick of turning off even a lot of SaGa fans with its awkward design, while the latter was a humble late-gen remake that seemed to suffer from both poor timing and the ill reputation of the prior release. Kawazu was called in to help guide the troubled Final Fantasy XII to the finish line, and SaGa went dark for several years. Its ideas lived on through games like The Last Remnant ($19.99) and The Legend of Legacy, but SaGa itself seemed like it had finally burned through all of its chances.
That said, the series had been quite popular in its time, and Square isn’t the sort of company to leave nostalgia untapped if it can help it. When the 25th anniversary of the first game’s rele...