Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Unlimited SaGa: Holy.Fucking.Shit.

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Lizard_King 07/23/2003, 1:18am PDT

So I played this game for a while today, after a friend purchased it on the grounds that it was one of the five non-bootleg video games available at the local store, and all his unmodded PS2 can handle (this being a third world country, copied games are sold in store windows in malls).

I imagined it would be one of those separate-plotlines-with-different-characters-type of RPG's, along the lines of Suikoden III, but with that addictive Squaresoft touch that has non-Japanese people everywhere inexplicably playing minigames obviously targeted at those looking to punish themselves for the war crimes of their ancestors.

It is the worst fucking crap I have played in a long time. It has what may well be the least intuitive interface ever, with the latest innovations in achieving a perfect balance of arbitrary complexity and blandness, all at once. It took me a long time to figure out that that the totally non-interactive screen before me, akin to what in other games would be the "status" window or some such, was actually the "world" or "adventure" screen, otherwise known as what you are supposed to stare at for half the game. You stumble about on a set path, periodically falling into pit traps, being attacked, etc, with no explanation of how to avoid either. Apparently, you are supposed to use skills periodically, based on instinct, since the screen gives you absolutely no information.

The other half of the game, of course, is filled with the most bizarre and backwards looking combat engine I have encountered. It seems to take all the failed attempts at innovation from RPG's before it and integrates them all into a disjointed mess. Timed slot attacks a la Final Fantasy overdrives? You bet, but ALL THE TIME, for ANY ATTACK. Actions per round set by an arbitrary number for THE WHOLE PARTY, irrespective of levels or number of party members? Got it. Primitive and unintuitive combo system premised around repetition and ultimately determined by luck, thanks to the aforementioned fucking slots? It's all here, waiting for you, along with animation and collision detection that would have been dated on the pilot episode of South Park.

Apparently there's a plot somewhere, but I'll be damned if I could tell where it was. You go to Inns in the towns, which consist of a static screen (yay! what else?) where you highlight exciting icons for locales like "Blacksmith" and "Inn", after which you are assigned the Fedex quest du jour, such as delivering a person somewhere. Problem the first being that there is no indication of where that place is or, for that matter, why you are doing it at all...you simply wander along a path that gradually appears before you, lurching your unmoving character, still in the midst of of the statusworldadventurescreen, falling into pits as monsters take away your hitpoints and...nothing happens. Because hitpoints are decorative in this game. It is apparently the Life points that really matter, but I couldn't figure out how to heal either of them, and nothing in the fifteen minute long battles with minor (I imagine) forest critters could kill me after I hit 0 anyways.

The tragedy of it all is that the game is invested with a soundtrack that, right from the beginning, is clearly outstanding, and has no place there. It is wasted on something that no one in any state of mind could play for any protracted period of time. Find my claim bold? Gamefags will confirm that as of this moment two (2) mini-faqs exist, for a grand total of 68k. Not even the usual poorly translated Japanese fanboy walkthrough is present, a warning sign if I ever saw one.

At any rate, who gives a shit? The mechanics of this game, the details, are largely parenthetical to the awful conceptual whole. Like Kabuki Warriors for the Xbox, it is a genre-destroyer that simply should not be played by anyone, ever, no matter how hard-up you may think you are for a new video game. SaGa is the sort of RPG that could easily make one yearn for the days when Xenosaga and Wild Arms 3 were the worst shit one had played.