By now, most gamers realize that all the Final Fantasy games that appeared on Game Boy 20 years ago — Final Fantasy Adventure and the Final Fantasy Legend trilogy — weren’t actually Final Fantasy games, but rather just oblique offshoots of the NES RPG. Of the quartet, Final Fantasy Adventure is probably the most beloved among Americans: A Zelda-inspired action RPG whose sequel, Secret of Mana, established the Mana games as a distinct franchise in its own right. In Japan, however, the most popular of Square’s Game Boy adventures was Final Fantasy Legend II, known there by the name SaGa 2. That’s “SaGa” as in SaGa Frontier and Romancing SaGa, of course. The series has never quite caught on in the U.S., but the Japanese remain forever fond of Akitoshi Kawazu’s obtuse and challenging RPGs. Much of the franchise’s enduring popularity can be traced back to SaGa 2, the first truly epic portable RPG.
Given the original’s lasting appeal, it’s hardly surprising that Square Enix has decided to revisit the game with a remake. What is surprising is that this new remake is no slapdash cell phone game, but rather a full-on DS game with gorgeous 3D graphics and stirring audio quality. SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny marks the first time a Game Boy title has been reworked to this degree — and it’s an impressive reworking indeed.
The core game experience remains the same in this port, of course. SaGa 2 gave players the ability to create their own party from one of six different character types: male or female warrior, male or female esper (oddly called “mutants” in the English translation), monster, or mech. Each character type played and evolved differently and through different means than the others. Warriors experienced rapid power and HP growth, while espers suffered from lower stats and learned (or lost) new spells in a random fashion. Monsters didn’t level up directly, but rather gained or lost power by eating the meat of defeated creatures and evolving into their forms. And mechs gained stats strictly based on the gear that was equipped to them. Complicating all this was the fact that all weapons, abilities, and gear were finite resources; abilities could be replenished by sleeping, but use up a weapon and it was gone forever.
User-friendly? Not really. Yet it was indescribably appealing to many RPG fans, a unique system that demanded players approach the game on its terms and learn to master its nuances. Plus, the experience was rewarding: Proper exploitation of the mechanics could make for a godlike party, and it was always fun to see what new forms your party’s monster would take after chowing down on a hunk of meat. And it’s these things that SaGa 2 plays up in its DS form, which makes it one of the more impressive remakes to have come along lately.
Despite its vastly overhauled graphics, the new SaGa 2 doesn’t change the game’s core mechanics too terribly much. Combat remains turn-based, players still roll their own party at the outset and develop them through their own distinct leveling processes, and it still feels rather unlike any other RPG out there. And then it goes the extra mile: There’s no in-game bestiary, but there is an in-game “meat dictionary,” a flowchart to help determine how your monster will improve or devolve according to its diet. It also plays up the frequently large-scale nature of enemy encounters; the Game Boy version would often force players to battle parties of ten enemies represented in a very simple fashion. The remake includes even larger fights, but it uses the system’s dual screens to depict both 3D and 2D representations of the enemy combatants to provide players with an intuitive, at-a-glance sense of the odds.
Also new to this version are a special combination system that plays off the “tangled skein” of the three Fates. Players can use MP (Muse Points) earned in combat to purchase threads of Fate from the goddesses and use them to literally string together combination attacks. This adds an interesting wrinkle to combat, because the threads are entirely too expensive to use in every battle, and characters who chain attacks together develop a strong affinity for one another. Knowing when to use these combinations is essential to effective combat, as it’s more than just a matter of what enemies you’re fighting but the order of your party’s actions as well.
Such advanced techniques aren’t really necessary in the game’s opening hours, but I’ve already found the game’s choke point, the moment at which players must demonstrate mastery of advanced combat techniques in order to have a chance to survive. This boss, Ashura, is actually balanced to be considerably more difficult than she was in her already vicious Game Boy incarnation; capable of dealing powerful attacks against the player’s entire party, defeating Ashura is effectively impossible without skillful use of chained attacks.
SaGa 2 includes further tweaks that help modernize the game. Random battles have been discarded in favor of a system that’s actually quite reminiscent of The Last Remnant (which makes sense, as that was more or less a SaGa game in disguise). Enemies roam the dungeons and world map, pursuing players when they stray too close. These foes can be evaded, but they’ll continue to give chase… and if one should catch up with the party while other monsters are in pursuit, the enemy groups will link up and flank the heroes for a massive battle that can be far more harrowing than a regular fight. These fights still play out like a regular fight, but they can pit the player against a dozen enemies or more, divided into groups that generally have to be attacked individually.
SaGa 2′s comprehensive visual overhaul and its modest mechanical tweaks definitely raise the game above its humble 8-bit roots. It’s certainly recognizable as the 20-year-old Game Boy classic, yes, but it looks and plays like a work of far more recent vintage. It’s gorgeous, challenging, and quirky — a fine combination in any RPG. Unfortunately, Square Enix hasn’t announced any plans for a U.S. release, but with luck we’ll hear something in the coming months.
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