SaGA Frontier (A remaster too far?)

Lost in the nostalgia

Do you want to play Final Fantasy but don't have a PS5? Well, you best start getting selling those redundant organs on the black market, because Square Enix are well and truly in bed with Sony for the long haul these days. Truly it's baffling for someone like me, who priorities the state of the games more than anything else, to acknowledge how this franchise of JRPGs has seemingly permanently stepped away from the platform best suited for RPGs. (PC) I mean sure, there's a small chance that FF7 Remake will see a drop this April, but that's about the same chance as threading a needle through the eye of a gnat whilst blindfolded. Yet even acknowledging that, I still want my fix of other-worldly role playing goodness in that iconic FF style, you know? Dragon Quest is too obnoxiously cutesy, Shin Megami Tensei is too intimidating, there's no game which hits quite the same itch that Final Fantasy does. Well, that is; except for the SaGa series.

SaGa, believe it or not, is a video game series that can trace it's lineage back to an entirely different series of games. The connection is, however, a little tenuous. You see the lead who created this series was a veteran of the very first two Final Fantasy games, with the second in particular being notable because it instituted many of the creatures, themes and mechanics that endured with the mainline series through untold  reiterations. Not long after those games released, the biggest handhold in the world at the time, The Nintendo Gameboy, started to grip the gaming populace with it's unique proposition of convenience, and the head of Square saw an opportunity to marry that with the RPG talent they'd recently become reliant on. Thus, Square Enix's first handheld title would be a game that went by the name of Makai Tōshi Sa Ga, Square Enix's very first handhold game. (Isn't that some history for ya?) A game which would become later known in the west under a much more familiar umbrella: "Final Fantasy Tactics". So the connection between SaGa and Final Fantasy might be a little contrived for marketing purposes, but even so it is there.

Of course, by the very nature of Japanese RPG's like Final Fantasy, the split of the franchises hasn't resulted in any split grand narratives, because both games renew themselves totally with every new entry. (Well, almost totally.) However, the split had resulted in some of FF2's long-lost features becoming key components of SaGa's identity in the current age, such as the levelling up system which is a spiritual precursor to Bethesda's Elder Scrolls system. (I always wondered where they got that idea.) Basically, in that respect I'm talking about stats which level from training of specific activities rather than general EXP-based levelling, which I always found to be thematic more immersive, although I can understand why some people find that 'grindy'. (Nothing beats crouch walking around your house for hours in order to level up the stealth stat in Oblivion. Good times.) There's actually innumerable little quirks to both Final Fantasy and modern SaGa that can be traced back to this shared heritage, and certainly those FF fans who respect the more tactical elements which are being slightly ironed out of newer entries will find something endearing and familiar in this series.

But what does any of this have to do with the price of Moogles on the Gold Saucer black market? Well, whereas aspirants to enjoying the bounties of the Final Fantasy franchise are doomed to beg at Sony's door thanks to stifling exclusivity deals, SaGa has recently been shown off on a Nintendo Stream for a wide release on everything! (Except Xbox, but I guess Sony had to get involved somewhere, didn't they.) However this isn't a new title we're talking about. Nope it's a remaster. One to go on the shelf next to all the other remasters. This here is a remaster, something which it feels Nintendo are becoming renowned for these days, of 'SaGa Frontier'. The very game which came out after the famous 'Romancing' subseries had run it's course. So why aren't we getting remasters of those games instead? Well, actually they all already got remasters. Yeah, you can play them pretty much wherever. 

You see, if there's one thing that the first rerelease of Dishonoured taught all of is, it's that literally anyone can do a remaster of anything. (Even when they're remastering literally nothing) But Nintendo have been doing this for literal decades at this point, they probably got started on remaking Super Mario the second after they finished the base game, so they aren't going to be showing off any old remaster at their show unless the Dev team deliver in a special way; right? I mean that's what they did with Link's Awakening. (Even if that was only in order to justify the ludicrous price point) They wouldn't turn just any game onto the market without a decent effort to renew everything would they? Well it seems like they would, because SaGa Frontier of 2021 looks just part of a bare minimum remaster. The trend these days is, afterall, of nostalgic reiteration where the final product is faithful but just better. (as contradictory as that very concept sounds and is.)

SaGa Frontier boasts the typical affair that sprite based RPGs usually get in remasters, a total sprucing up and cleaning that brings the aesthetic into the modern age, but in a very mechanical sense. We're talking an upscaling job which comes with recreation of the background and foreground sprites so that they fit a 1080p screen nicely. (With a possibility to be upscaled by fans even more, now that it's on Steam) I find it curious to note how, consequently, the general aesthetic is untouched, rather than being severely reworked like for the Mana remakes, making this game almost identical in visuals to what most fans rose-tinted memories of the original Frontier were like. Even the reference Art for the characters looked completely unchanged, so that everyone rocks this almost 90's anime-style to their designs. Additionally, there are some unannounced 'new features' coming to the game which should meld nicely into the already free-from storytelling system to bring even more replayability to one of those replay-friendly JRPG series' ever. It should do that, but we're unsure if it will because, bizarrely, Square have refused to comment on this concept which sounds like it would really be a trailer leader. The game's coming in less than a month, someone tell Marketing to wake themselves up.

This of course marks a remaster of yet another popular RPG for the modern age, and not even one of the really ambitious ones, but it's joining interesting company anyway. With 'Trials of Mana', Final Fantasy 7 remake, Shin Megami Tenshi 3, Legend of Mana, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and so on and so forth; doesn't it start to feeling we're falling to a pattern wherein this genre becomes too busy looking backwards to look forwards? Don't misunderstand me at all, I love a remaster when it's done for the right game, but at what point do we stop and start supporting new projects? Just look at the FF7R project which has swallowed several years worth of development and looks fit to swallow up several more years as it stretches on with episodic releases and DLC and impending repackages of every single piece of tangential content into one package, there's some pretty huge milking going on. Or the Legend of Mana remaster which isn't even going the distance of going 3D like Trials did, but still flaunts itself all over the trade shows like it's the new hotness. Heck, even SaGa Frontier is a title often overshadowed by the more popular 'Romancing SaGa' games, yet here we are in the middle of a remake.

Again, I don't want to be the one telling people they can't look forward to a little nostalgia; god knows I'd chew off my own arm for a quality remake of 'Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater', but I similarly don't think this industry is at the end of it's creative rope when it comes to what can be done with RPGs. So I don't see the need to perpetually retread the same steps. Perhaps a part of that comes from a thirst to forever experience new stories, I'll admit, but I also think it's more rewarding for a creator to make something of their own instead of dancing around the confines of another's story. (Watch that comment bite me in the butt months from now.) At the very least I can say that these remasters are beneficial to the video game preservation efforts, which is commend worthy on it's own. That, and this has reminded me that I haven't played 'Romancing SaGa' in forever, really should get on that.