Crono
08-08-2003, 01:37 PM
The Saga series is another one of Squaresoft's unknown series (along with Seiken Densetsu, Front Mission, among others). So I decided to give the game a try. Turns out, there is a good reason why no one should care about it.
Having played so many RPGs, it's hard to adapt to a game of this style. First of all, the presentation is horrible. Whenever you're in a town, you can't walk around, instead, there's a picture of it. You then select where you want to go, and you will be brought to another picture (did I mention using plain pictures for towns and the indoors of houses is a BAD idea?). As I said, you can't move around. If something is supposed to happen, a picture of a character (yes, a picture) will show up and a conversation will start.
On the world map, you also select where you want to go, but it's just a flat picture as well. Although flat world maps aren't much to complain about, it's the towns that bother me.
The next odd thing are the dungeons. Again... you can't walk around. Instead you use the analog to move screens, your character won't walk, but instead just appear on the next screen thing. Random battles will occur on randomly chosen screens (just like most RPGs, I guess).
That's the bad thing about this game. There is no freedom, you constantly feel trapped because your character can't really move, you're just using a cursor to select where to go it won't even show your character moving, another picture of the next location appears).
Thank God, however, the battles are at least somewhat different. They aren't pictures. The battle system is basically your bsic turn based system. In this game, however, you can elect 5 commands per battle (can be a combination of any characters you want). You can choose basic attacks as wel las certain skills and abilties that each character has. In this game, there is HP and LP. When your HP decreases to zero, you don't die, you have to wait until your LP decrease to zero. Characters have very low LP, but high HP. And even if you're LP goes down to zero before your HP, you'll die. The good thing is that LP is hard to get down to zero. I went through an entire dungeon riding on 11 LP. Most regular enemies wont take away LP, if they do, it's usually just 1, and in very rare cases, 2.
Another thing is that sets this RPG apart is the growth panel. After each dungeon you can select an attribute (like, hand to hand weapons, guns, etc), and put them in place on your character's growth panel so that they can become better in certain areas. I haven't used it too much, so I don't know everythign about it, but it looks like it could be interesting. Too bad it isn't enough to save this game from it's crapiness.
And finally, you can select between 7 characters. So, yes, that means there are seven different ways to play the game. All characters will meet up with each other somehow, because when I selected one of the characters, one of the others joined me rather early into the game.
Unlimited Saga has many good ideas, but they weren't done very well. A good idea gone bad is how I would sum up this game. The best part of the game is the Final Fantasy X-2 preview video which is available to view right from the main menu. A game which I hope will not turn out like Unlimited Saga. The absolute MAIN thing that makes playing US a rather bad experience is the inability to move around freely - at all. You can't move, period. You can only "move" when jumping screens in dungeons, but it's not really moving, at all. I would stay away from this game, especially if you aren't into RPGS -- it may scare you away from the genre.
Graphics - 6 (pictures and poorly designed character sprites)
Sound - 5 (music is nothing special)
Gameplay - 5 (good growth system, but horrible presentation of the entire game)
Control - 10 (well, it is an rpg, and you never have much control over anything anyway, which I gues s would make it easy to use).
Replay Value - 7 (well, there's seven ways to play through the game, which would keep people who like this game occupied for a good while. But the game sucks anyway, which is why I have to dock some points.).
OVERALL - 4.8 (worst PS2 RPG I have yet to play).
Having played so many RPGs, it's hard to adapt to a game of this style. First of all, the presentation is horrible. Whenever you're in a town, you can't walk around, instead, there's a picture of it. You then select where you want to go, and you will be brought to another picture (did I mention using plain pictures for towns and the indoors of houses is a BAD idea?). As I said, you can't move around. If something is supposed to happen, a picture of a character (yes, a picture) will show up and a conversation will start.
On the world map, you also select where you want to go, but it's just a flat picture as well. Although flat world maps aren't much to complain about, it's the towns that bother me.
The next odd thing are the dungeons. Again... you can't walk around. Instead you use the analog to move screens, your character won't walk, but instead just appear on the next screen thing. Random battles will occur on randomly chosen screens (just like most RPGs, I guess).
That's the bad thing about this game. There is no freedom, you constantly feel trapped because your character can't really move, you're just using a cursor to select where to go it won't even show your character moving, another picture of the next location appears).
Thank God, however, the battles are at least somewhat different. They aren't pictures. The battle system is basically your bsic turn based system. In this game, however, you can elect 5 commands per battle (can be a combination of any characters you want). You can choose basic attacks as wel las certain skills and abilties that each character has. In this game, there is HP and LP. When your HP decreases to zero, you don't die, you have to wait until your LP decrease to zero. Characters have very low LP, but high HP. And even if you're LP goes down to zero before your HP, you'll die. The good thing is that LP is hard to get down to zero. I went through an entire dungeon riding on 11 LP. Most regular enemies wont take away LP, if they do, it's usually just 1, and in very rare cases, 2.
Another thing is that sets this RPG apart is the growth panel. After each dungeon you can select an attribute (like, hand to hand weapons, guns, etc), and put them in place on your character's growth panel so that they can become better in certain areas. I haven't used it too much, so I don't know everythign about it, but it looks like it could be interesting. Too bad it isn't enough to save this game from it's crapiness.
And finally, you can select between 7 characters. So, yes, that means there are seven different ways to play the game. All characters will meet up with each other somehow, because when I selected one of the characters, one of the others joined me rather early into the game.
Unlimited Saga has many good ideas, but they weren't done very well. A good idea gone bad is how I would sum up this game. The best part of the game is the Final Fantasy X-2 preview video which is available to view right from the main menu. A game which I hope will not turn out like Unlimited Saga. The absolute MAIN thing that makes playing US a rather bad experience is the inability to move around freely - at all. You can't move, period. You can only "move" when jumping screens in dungeons, but it's not really moving, at all. I would stay away from this game, especially if you aren't into RPGS -- it may scare you away from the genre.
Graphics - 6 (pictures and poorly designed character sprites)
Sound - 5 (music is nothing special)
Gameplay - 5 (good growth system, but horrible presentation of the entire game)
Control - 10 (well, it is an rpg, and you never have much control over anything anyway, which I gues s would make it easy to use).
Replay Value - 7 (well, there's seven ways to play through the game, which would keep people who like this game occupied for a good while. But the game sucks anyway, which is why I have to dock some points.).
OVERALL - 4.8 (worst PS2 RPG I have yet to play).