Please Kill Me, a Romancing SaGa Analysis
I, INTRODUCTION or: Please Kill Me
Romancing SaGa is a Japanese role-playing computer game developed and released by Square in 1992 for the Super Famicom, only in Japan. The fourth game in the SaGa series, following the Game Boy SaGa trio masquerading as Final Fantasy games in the West, Romancing SaGa is the culmination of lessons learned from the Game Boy classics before it; an evolution of sorts, except the evolutionary mutation messed up somewhere along the way and no predator was around to correct for it. I know this because I broke the cardinal rule: I got bored, yet I kept playing.
In 1990, spurred on by the success of the SaGa titles for the Game Boy, Nintendo reached out to Square and requested a SaGa game for their new Super Famicom system. Akitoshi Kawazu, series creator and director of the first two SaGa games, eagerly seized the opportunity and, disregarding all development efforts for SaGa 3 on the Game Boy, focused entirely on Romancing SaGa. The result is vaporwave, a highly aesthetic thing influenced by cool things that ends up being a very stupid thing. Like vaporwave, you might as well just experience the stuff that influenced it: Dungeons & Dragons, jazz, Final Fantasy Legend II, and 80s television ads; glimpses of genius mixed with terrible decisions resulting in a highly unfun computer game reveling in time-waste.
Don’t get me wrong, Romancing SaGa is a game full of great ideas. These ideas are just executed very poorly. Square also recognized this, which is why they re-released a far more complete version for the Wonderswan Color in 2001, a version in which half the quests aren’t incomplete and several skills don’t just “not work as intended.” Square even went on to remake the game as Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song in 2005, the only version to get a Western release. The latter shares the same setting, characters, and gameplay ideas as the original but could easily be considered an entirely separate SaGa title due to the large amount of game-design and aesthetic changes. These changes were likely necessary to avoid inspiring a riot among western gamers or simply selling more than ten units, keeping in mind the top-selling games in 2005 North America: Madden NFL, Pokemon Emerald, and Gran Turismo 4.
*Three Style Siff: Romancing SaGa concept art, mobile game sprite, and Minstrel Song concept art, respectively; the aesthetic difference in Minstrel Song being obvious (and ugly)
As a disclaimer of sorts, I’m writing this article coming off a six-week leave from my “real job” due to paternity leave. My wife and I had a baby, well, my wife had the baby, and I merely participated a bit. Our baby’s name is Arthur. Baby Arthur. I am typing this paragraph on a Dell G15 laptop, which I purchased almost two years ago on sale (and will most likely need to return via warranty due to power issues), while my son lies pressed against my leg on the cushion next to me, and my wife watches an episode of Gilmore Girls on Netflix on our budget-friendly 4K television; a snapshot of a certain period in my life – and nothing else matters, because everything is great at this very moment.
Everything is great except for one thing: going back to work.
With that in mind, while reading this article, you may find it carries a tone of contrariness or mean-spiritedness that, in all honesty, is entirely genuine; however, these emotions, which are absolutely present in my everyday psyche, are exacerbated by the circumstances of returning to the world I escaped for six weeks; a world I traded for one of changing diapers, staying up until 5am so my wife could get some sleep, playing handhelds on the sofa with a sleeping baby on my chest, and watching every episode of Columbo multiple times.
Now, I return to a world of pointless video calls with executives discussing software they take way too seriously and paid way too much for. Software that does far less than what was promised by our sales team. Software that breaks way more often than expected. Software that, for all intents and purposes, is not very good; but it’s my job to pretend it is; it’s my job to string these executives along long enough that they sign another year-long contract with us just so we can string them along again to sign yet another almost-identical contract at a slightly higher price next year – because last year’s prices are not this year’s prices! And, of course, inflation – or something.
*my thoughts exactly
I traded a world of corporate deceit for one of pure innocent bliss, and now the rug has been pulled. The “tradeback” has occurred. I am, once again, in the corporate hellscape that, surely, Dante would have included in Inferno if this type of thing existed back in the 14th century. Maybe the Fourth Circle already covers this; maybe not. Either way, it’s Hell. The Divine Comedy: work for five days to pretend you don’t have to work for two days, and maybe take a vacation in a few months – just to repeat the process over and over and over. Maybe I’ll retire early, or maybe I’ll get hit by a car.
Maybe antinatalists are right.
Typically, these are feelings I consider counterproductive to sanity and, consequently, healthy living. So, I try to suppress them, but I will be removing the limiters here, exposing my power level for all our readers (none). After all, what would a blog be without some angst-ridden existential dread injected into every furiously typed word? You weren’t here just to read about Romancing SaGa, were you?
Oh, you were? Too bad.
II, EMULATION or: Your Bookshelf Full of Dumb Computer Games Is Not Impressive
The original Romancing SaGa is one of the few Japanese-only SaGa games, which wasn’t true until 2016 when Square Enix decided to remaster both Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 and release them worldwide on mobile and almost every console. I suppose this treatment was not needed for the original Romancing SaGa, as it was already, technically, available in worldwide lingua franca as Minstrel Song, but also because it’s just not a very good computer game – something (I swear) I’m going to get to (maybe).
As a good ol’ American boy, lazy and rebellious in my youth, I never bothered to learn stuff, including other languages. I was laser-focused on my hobbies providing immediate gratification: video games, music, and occasional drug use. So, of course, you may be wondering, “If you can’t read Japanese, how did you play the original Romancing SaGa?” The answer is simple: I downloaded an English fan translation ROM and played it on an emulator. The translation patch, credited to “Eien Ni Hen” in the readme file, was surprisingly competent, so thanks to that person for the great work. Not only did I play it in an entirely unofficial manner, but I also used entirely unofficial hardware. As I type this, I can feel my cool-retro-computer-gamer club membership card being revoked.
Repulsed by the idea of playing Romancing SaGa on my desktop computer or laptop, too lazy to get it working on my PlayStation Portable (and not a fan of letterbox and black bars), and illiterate in Japanese, my hands were tied. Because of this, although originally averse to buying cheap Chinese emulation devices, I caved and purchased a Miyoo Mini Plus. I ordered the device in translucent-black-color mid-May, and it arrived from China well before its estimated arrival date that same month.
The Miyoo Mini Plus is a rectangle device of some-sort about the size of my hand with buttons and a nice 3.5-inch screen; modeled aesthetically on the Game Boy Color. With its 1.2GHz processor and aforementioned buttons running RetroArch, it can play almost any console era before 1995, ranging from NES to PSX, with varying degrees of success. Missing analog sticks, so games like Ape Escape are unplayable; but, it looks cool; an obvious contender for something one would play 8-to-16-bit Japanese computer games on. Plus, I can play it while lying on the couch with Baby Arthur on my chest, and that’s the most important thing: can I gracefully ignore my son while playing the computer games? With the Miyoo Mini Plus – yes, I can.
No, this is not a paid ad. Don’t buy this thing. I don’t care.
*Miyoo Mini Plus or Baby Arthur; which is more important?
There are some computer-gaming purists who may scoff at a device like the Miyoo Mini Plus. They may make arguments such as “the games don’t run like they should on those” or “that’s not how it’s meant to be played,” or some other dumb thing. According to these purists, my computer-gaming experience with Romancing SaGa is pure fakery, merely a pale imitation of the genuine enjoyment experienced by a true fan. They insist that unless I become fluent in Japanese, use my mouse to navigate to eBay dot com to purchase a Japanese copy of the game, and play it on a vintage 1992 13-inch CRT TV, I cannot truly claim to have played the game; my experience is invalid. Some might even insist that I “had to be there” in Japan when the game was originally released to get the true experience.
That’s because this stuff is very important – this stuff is the difference between unbridled joy and huddling in the fetal position in your super cool gaming room. The latter because you didn’t receive enough likes on the latest picture of your overpriced CRT TV adorned with the title screen of Romancing SaGa or whatever computer game you believed determined your self-worth that day; and while I wish these hypothetical (but completely real) people the best in life, I also hope they get trolley-problemed (in a computer game).
I warned you earlier.
I have been what they call ‘terminally online’ for a long time now. My mom bought me a Dell Dimension-something-or-other, a big black monitor and a big black tower, for my room in 2001, probably to get me to shut up about playing RollerCoaster Tycoon on her work laptop all the time. I had unfettered access during the wild west era of the internet. My first weirdo experience was at 11 years old when I made a phone call to someone I met on an anime forum. That person turned out to be much older than they claimed and wanted to know a lot more about me than I was comfortable providing, including which yaois I liked; somehow, I didn’t fall for it and learned from the experience at the same time.
Because of the aforementioned weirdo experience (and many other weird things), I can spot a crazy person online within four words of a social media post, and I can spot a narcissist within two, mostly because people make it far too easy, but also because I am one myself. Narcissists are everywhere, in every community. We all exist on a gradient scale, with a little bit of narcissism inside each of us. However, the communities with the most narcissists, by far, have to be the retro-gaming and game-collector communities; tied with the red-pill community for amount-of-people-I-would-never-be-caught-dead-associating-with.
Browse Twitter or Reddit for three seconds while the algorithm believes you’re interested in retro-gaming, and you’ll quickly realize: there are a lot of people who post pictures of their old TVs, bookshelves full of old computer games, and various console collections, many of which seem untouched. Unboxed NES collections. Rooms containing the entire Wii library with a Wii of every color, yes, even the ultra-rare light blue and red Wiis; collections worth anywhere between 10 to 50 thousand dollars, a cost that’s (apparently) worth 2 Reddit awards (whatever those are). There are even individuals who, in a thinly veiled attempt at modesty, will post their entire collection of unopened Final Fantasy games for the Switch; they gleefully emote, “Finally got the last one!” to their six thousand psychopathic followers.
While doom-scrolling past this apocalyptic consumerist hellscape, you may wonder to yourself – do they even play these games? How did they afford this? Where do they keep all this stuff? And if you’re (un)lucky enough, you may even see the occasional picture of four rare N64 cartridges with the caption of ‘which would you play first?’
*Well, which would you play first?
News flash: They don’t care which game you would play first. All they care about is you seeing the post, liking it, sharing it, and commenting on it. Nothing else matters except the recognition. Look at the collection and observe how much time and money I spent (wasted) on this collection. Witness how cool and expansive my taste in games is. It’s not a mystery why every collector insists on showing every person they meet their collection, including their sister’s obviously-uninterested boyfriend.
The number of dumb games collected is directly proportional to the self-worth of the individual. The bookshelves filled with rare Custom-Robo or Ms Pac-Man games, tables adorned with classic consoles, and cabinets brimming with odd computer game peripherals are not about the games themselves – they’re about the collector’s ego. It’s about status within a social circle comprised entirely of terminally online weirdos.
Multiple studies and real-life examples have long confirmed that narcissists are far more likely to engage in status-seeking behaviors, which include acquiring luxury items, in order to project an image of success to their social circle. Like a millionaire buying mansions they don’t spend any time in. This behavior is not limited to “luxury” items; rather, it extends to any item that would impress one’s social circle. This tendency is particularly evident in the retro gaming community, and a quick scroll through Twitter or Reddit is enough to witness it firsthand. If you have a modest sum of money to spare and lack any real talent, the easiest way to gain recognition is by purchasing old plastic and taking pictures of it for online clout.
*the retro gamer council convening to revoke my membership
In a community full of left-leaning individuals (including myself), it is incredibly ironic that collecting computer games is so prominent among computer gamers, especially considering how expensive, materialistic, and incredibly consumerist it is. However, it does make sense, as most of us, myself included, don’t possess much real talent; therefore, the more cool garbage we can show off online, the higher our self-esteem goes; perhaps that’s why the website you’re reading this on exists? I’m willing to admit: it’s a possibility.
In the world of retro-game-collecting, it is impossible to overlook the role of the ego in compelling collectors to accumulate opulent portfolios of eco-waste. This is the ultimate consumerist wet dream. A business model in which all your local game stores are based. Not only are we participating in a racket market that actively gouges individuals, but we’re also actively competing with other individuals to do so. And in many cases, the collector who doesn’t unbox the game, instead leaving it to languish on a shelf, is robbing someone who would actually purchase that same game for the purpose of playing it (you know, its intended purpose). Computer game collecting for the sake of computer game collecting is pure undistilled capitalism at its finest, fueled by egotism and insecurity: after all, if you have more plastic than the other person, you’re cooler, more sophisticated, you’re better than them – at least that’s what we trick ourselves into believing.
What is the difference between someone like Donald Trump, who is obsessed with amassing earthly wealth through luxury hotels filled with golden furniture, and a Redditor compelled to post their complete collection of Pokémon games on r/gamecollecting? Apart from having millions of dollars in real estate debt, there isn’t much of a difference. Both individuals are signaling their wealth through materialism, albeit to different social circles. At least gold can be melted down and reused, whereas computer games and consoles just end up in a landfill.
*Can you spot the difference? I can’t
Of course, some narcissists are worse than others, with Donald Trump being one of the worst. We all exist on a gradient, with a little narcissism in each of us. However, it is important to recognize the origin of this desire to collect. If you have ever attended a garage sale with the intention of finding a box of old computer games that you will never play, and then proceeded to take pictures of those games to post them online with a caption that includes the word “haul” anywhere within the text, you might as well surrender your decent-person card because you are a full-blown narcissist.
So yeah, I emulated Romancing SaGa on a cheap Chinese handheld – who cares.
III, AESTHETICS or: All Build Up and Smiles
Romancing SaGa is one of those games that forum users like to praise in a “things were better back in my day” kind of way, which also implies, “I lack the ability for self-reflection and fail to realize that I am extremely biased by nostalgia.” The only plausible explanation for someone considering this their favorite game would be childhood hormones mixed with adderall. Plus, the English-speaking audience for this game is so small since it is a Japanese-only Super Famicom game, that any online loser claiming to have played it “back in the day” is most likely a liar seeking online clout by beating a now-dead horse. However, let’s suppose there is someone who genuinely considers Romancing SaGa their favorite game. How could that be? Let’s delve into this mystery a bit; perhaps we’ll uncover the truth (we won’t).
So, in an effort to uncover this mystery, let’s start with the good stuff. Firstly, the soundtrack: Kenji Ito returns as the primary composer for Romancing SaGa, taking the reins fully from Nobuo Uematsu. Kenji Ito’s first computer game composer gig was SaGa 2, and he has evolved into his own style here. Romancing SaGa’s soundtrack, while not the best SaGa soundtrack, establishes the unique sound of each game going forward.
In the time between Final Fantasy Adventure and Romancing SaGa, Kenji Ito developed his own personal style and established the SaGa style as a whole. This style is characterized by high-fantasy horn arrangements, melodic yet gloomily-erratic fanfares, hard pounding drums, and heavy basslines, creating a continuous build-up-like quality in every arrangement. These elements work almost too well within the realm of turn-based computer games, and Romancing SaGa’s soundtrack showcases Kenji Ito’s remarkable talent for composing truly great yet nuanced battle music that fits the genre perfectly; even if he can’t create a decent town or overworld theme to save his life.
*David Bowie as the Goblin King, Kenji Ito, and David Sylvian of the 80s band Japan (respectively); all will become relevant in time.
Standout tracks include each battle theme, with the boss theme “Beat Them Up!” being a highlight. It features what I will refer to as the “Kenji Ito Build-Up.” This method starts the battle theme softly with a pulsing build-up, somehow accurately estimating the time it takes for you to input your first series of character actions. Then, it crescendos at the moment your characters start performing those actions, creating an exciting feeling of things “kicking up a notch” just as the attack animations begin.
In a (poor) attempt to illustrate this in writing, the first 10 seconds of “Beat Them Up!” consists of a down-tempo melodic horn arrangement with a repetitive bassline accompanied by a strong rhythm-section build-up, creating a steady rhythm mirroring the energy of a player inputting menu options. It then bursts into an erratic crescendo at the 17-second mark, coinciding with your characters playing out the inputs you just selected, and then returns to the build-up after 20 seconds of excitement, only to repeat.
The genius of Kenji Ito lies in his understanding of how battles play out, leaving the impression that he actually plays the games before making the soundtracks. As an example, it is evident that he intentionally made the boss theme build-up longer than the normal battle theme build-up, anticipating that players typically mash the confirmation button quickly for normal battles but need more time to carefully plan out their actions for boss battles. Hence, there is a longer build-up period for the boss arrangement when compared to the normal battle arrangement. While not always perfect, when it works, it really works. The moment you start a boss battle and hear that build-up, you know it’s about to get serious. Even if boss battles end up being brain-dead damage races with little-to-no strategy, Kenji Ito’s soundtrack makes the dumb stuff worth it sometimes.
Another positive aspect lies in Tomomi Kobayashi, a Japanese illustrator who had no prior experience in the computer game industry before Romancing SaGa. Yet, she ended up playing a significant role in the SaGa series by establishing the overall SaGa aesthetic going forward. Her contribution involved creating all the concept art for the series, shaping its visual identity. There are various stories surrounding her initial recruitment, but the general idea is that Square approached her after being impressed by one of her 1990 artbooks. Her shojo (“girls’ comics”) styled artwork a better fit for the new vision Akitoshi Kawazu had for the SaGa series, which moved away from science fiction and embraced a style or pure medieval fantasy, reminiscent of Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons.
Easily up there with legends like Yoshitaka Amano, whose almost psychedelic yet classically Japanese style artwork has captured the attention of Final Fantasy fans for ages, Tomomi Kobayashi’s work, equally unique and wondrous in its own right, often goes overlooked despite its beauty. One could argue that this is due to societal attitudes around gender in Japan, but it’s more likely because the SaGa series is not as popular as Final Fantasy, especially in my native land of trucks and guns.
*smiles and frowns; Kobayashi and Amano
Tomomi Kobayashi’s artwork is swirling with watercolor busyness that somehow manages to be clearly interpretable even though a million things are going on at once; often vivid and full of warm colors with a sense of merriment even when the situation presented in the piece seems dire. While it can be easily compared to Yoshitaka Amano’s artwork, there is something more grounded and jubilant going on with Kobayashi’s work, in stark contrast to Amano’s colorful melancholy; two sides of the same coin; darkness to light. A clear illustration of this difference can be found in the faces of the characters themselves. In Amano artwork, one will rarely ever see a character smiling; the closest thing being a smirk or malicious grin, and the occasionally twisted, insanity-driven flash of teeth. On the other hand, Kobayashi’s work is overflowing with bright, bubbly smiles and confident, summer jubilance.
One gets the impression that, being new to the computer gaming artistry scene, Tomomi Kobayashi took after Amano, adopting his style due to the success of Final Fantasy, but putting her own spin on it. As such, SaGa’s art is more akin to David Bowie’s cheerful Berlin-Era album “Low” than his dark cocaine-fueled romp of “Station to Station”. It’s a weird comparison, but not so weird when you consider that many Japanese computer game characters are, memetically, modeled on David Bowie, even some of Kobayashi’s artwork. The emperor in the image above is clearly based on David Bowie’s Goblin King, or perhaps pop singer David Sylvian during Japan’s “Adolescent Sex” era (told you that picture would become relevant in time). I’m about to go off on an 80s pop music tangent, so I’ll quit while I’m ahead.
While not an uncommon practice, Akitoshi Kawazu described the characters of Romancing SaGa to Tomomi Kobayashi, who then illustrated them based on those descriptions. Similarly, Kazuko Shibuya, the graphic designer and sprite artist for Romancing SaGa (and all of the classic Final Fantasy games), followed a similar method. Shibuya and Kobayashi worked together to create the in-game character representations; this process contrasting with the one employed by Yoshitaka Amano, who, contrary to popular belief, did not design the characters for the Final Fantasy series; instead, it was Kazuko Shibuya and the writers who created the character designs, and Amano subsequently drew them based on Shibuya’s designs.
In the case of Romancing SaGa, Tomomi Kobayashi often took the lead in character design or collaborated directly with Kazuko Shibuya to develop the characters. This approach results in a more consistent portrayal of the characters between the concept art and the in-game sprite work, even though such consistency shouldn’t necessarily be an issue with either method; Amano is known for deviating from established designs, possibly due to creative differences or simple rebellion. This, however, is not the case with Romancing SaGa, which maintains almost one-to-one parity between concept art and sprite work.
*Tomomi Kobayashi concept art compared to Kazuko Shibuya’s sprites; also Mime Bartz sprite from Final Fantasy V (bottom left) to illustrate just how similar both games look
While chainsaws and laser beams are all well and good, and frankly something I prefer over pure medieval fantasy, especially when the genre is spliced, the decision to replace the previous concept artist, Katsutoshi Fujioka, was likely a beneficial move. Not only do Tomomi Kobayashi’s works exhibit a significantly enhanced visual aesthetic compared to Fujioka’s previous contributions to the SaGa series, but the shift in artistic style also aligns well with the transition from science fiction to the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy setting.
The setting shift itself is fine (I guess) and works for Romancing SaGa, but ultimately, a continuation of the sci-fantasy genre mixing from the first three SaGa games would have been preferred. It’s something that won’t be revisited until the release of SaGa Frontier for the Sony PlayStation in 1997. The sci-fantasy setting is what set the SaGa series apart from other role-playing games of the time, and the shift to pure fantasy makes Romancing SaGa feel far more generic than previous SaGa titles, losing some of the series’ aesthetic magic.
And that’s an okay-ish segue into why this game just isn’t very good.
IV, VAPORWAVE or: Worse Than the Sum of Its Parts or: The Actual Analysis
To say that I had no idea what was going on while playing Romancing SaGa would be an understatement. My memory of playing the game is like a bootleg vaporwave track only found on YouTube, all swirly and vacuum-cleaner-esque; kind of like a My Bloody Valentine song but not good. Stuff just “happens” after wandering around for a few hours, with no real sense of direction or focus – a computer game that encourages exploration and chilling out, better suited as background entertainment; however, the game demands so much from you that you cannot treat it as background entertainment.
Romancing SaGa allows you to start the game as one of eight characters, each with their own introduction story. This introduction lasts about two to three hours and is unique for each character. This, in itself, is a creative innovation in the fairly linear story-telling medium of Japanese role-playing games at the time. But, it is only the first step. The game doesn’t really present the characters as separate characters; rather, they are more like nameless “classes” with unique sprites, and each story is very rudimentary, reminiscent of “my little brother’s first Dungeons & Dragons campaign.” I played a few of these introduction scenarios and eventually settled on Albert’s. He is, for all intents and purposes, the main character of the game, being the son of Lord Rudolf and the prince of Isthmus. His introduction scenario is to purge a local cave of monsters that are attacking Isthmus Keep. Truly riveting stuff.
The first thing you’ll notice when stepping outside of Isthmus Keep is the vibrant world; actual colors being a significant improvement over SaGa 2. This improvement is only natural considering that SaGa 2 was a Game Boy game. Yet, SaGa 2 still manages to look better in terms of overall presentation, despite its green-tinted Game Boy goofiness; the shading, shadows, and creative tilesets of SaGa 2 make Romancing SaGa seem like child’s play in comparison. One gets the impression that the developers were learning how to program for the Super Famicom as they were creating the game, and this is indeed the case, as Romancing SaGa is the first game Akitoshi Kawazu and his team worked on for the Super Famicom.
One would imagine that the graphical differences between SaGa 1 and 2 mirror those of Romancing SaGa 1 and 2, representing more of a “we know what we’re doing now” improvement rather than a graphical leap. Regardless of the excuses, Romancing SaGa looks and handles very similarly to Final Fantasy IV, a game that came out a year earlier, even using suspiciously-similar tilesets in some areas. This similarity is acceptable on its own since there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when starting out; however, there is an overwhelming sense of familiarity that begins to give the impression of an “off-brand” knockoff, contributing to the game’s overall bland presentation. If Final Fantasy IV is “Honey Nut Cheerios,” then Romancing SaGa is “Honey Nut O’s.”
*Final Fantasy IV, Romancing SaGa, and SaGa 2 compared
The second thing you’ll notice after stepping out of the castle is the ridiculous number of monsters surrounding the walls of the keep. If you’re familiar with the previous SaGa games, you may find it intriguing to see the monsters moving about, seemingly tracking your every move even though they are behind a massive wall that they couldn’t possibly see through. This illustrates the first significant change from previous SaGa games: the absence of random encounters. Instead, monsters roam around on the map, and bumping into a monster sprite triggers a battle – something fans of the genre are all too familiar with in 2023, but this was an innovative idea for turn-based games in 1992.
In theory, this is really cool – the idea that, with the elimination of random encounters, players have more control over which battles to engage with. Chrono Trigger, released in 1995 (three years after Romancing SaGa), executed on-screen monsters very well. Unlike Chrono Trigger, which I find myself mentioning frequently in many of my articles, Romancing SaGa did not handle on-screen monsters well at all. In fact, it’s one of the worst aspects of Romancing SaGa and a primary reason why it’s such a frustrating computer game.
Maybe the developers thought that the removal of random encounters would facilitate laziness and result in underleveled characters, thereby making the game too difficult. Or, maybe the developers were simply sadistic individuals who intended to drive the unfortunate souls who paid 8,000 yen for this game in 1992 insane; after all, there is a monster lurking on nearly every tile of every map.
Monsters are ubiquitous, and narrow pathways are frequent. This leads to numerous “hell zone” situations where fighting multiple packs of monsters back to back is unavoidable. Entering a new room? Six monsters await just outside the door. Trying to leave that room because you don’t want to deal with that at the moment? Four monsters have huddled around the opposite side of the door. Entering a narrow one-tile-wide, twelve-tile-long hallway? Monsters have lined up on all twelve tiles. The main issue here is that every dungeon features narrow pathways that are designed, hopefully by accident, to render monsters unavoidable. This results in being forced to engage in back-to-back battles as the monsters position themselves in such a way that avoiding them is impossible. To top it off, monsters on the map move just as fast as you, and in some cases, faster, so good luck outrunning them.
Ultimately, you are fighting battles for what feels like an eternity before you get a break, which ends up being worse than any random encounter rate I have experienced in a Japanese role-playing computer game – and I’ve played a lot of them. Romancing SaGa’s monster-on-the-screen method defeats the purpose of eliminating random encounters because it ends up being worse in every way imaginable. There is nothing worse than seeing a line of six monsters, knowing you will have to battle each pack, bashing the action button over and over for the next ten minutes without any significant use of brain power, just to progress a few steps to do it again; and while this results in a lot of skill-ups, it’s just not fun – it’s suicidal.
And to make matters worse, dungeons are very big, often taking several hours to traverse. This is partially due to the influx of monsters, but also because the design of each dungeon is vast and maze-like. The tilesets often look so similar from one room to another that, after three back-to-back battles, you forget which direction you should be going and end up going the wrong way. This results in accidentally backtracking, wasting twenty minutes before realizing you’re heading in the wrong direction. And yes, monsters respawn, so all that backtracking provides more hell zone opportunities.
So yes, I broke my own rule: I got bored, yet I didn’t put the controller down.
*two of many “hell zones”, areas you need to go highlighted in red; blocked up by monsters, each you will have to defeat, no exceptions.
The battle system is straightforward enough, picking up where SaGa 2 left off with some minor yet important changes. Battles take place on a 3×3 grid, which represents a front, middle, and back row. This system serves as a precursor to the complex formation systems used in later SaGa games and is itself an innovation on Final Fantasy’s front and back row system. SaGa simply adds a third middle row. You position your party members based on their roles, with melee fighters typically occupying the front row since the majority of weapons, aside from spears and bows, can only be used there. On the other hand, magic and certain special attacks can be utilized from any row; but it is generally preferable to place mages and polearm users in the middle or back row, as it keeps them out of arm’s length of monsters. Characters can also use a turn to reposition themselves in battle, which is something that comes in handy when monsters engage you from behind which breaks your set formation.
The battles themselves are more engaging than in previous SaGa titles, but not enjoyable enough to endure for thirty minutes straight without a break (which happens frequently). Like the SaGa games that came before it, Romancing SaGa utilizes a basic turn-based system, with certain special attacks and spells influencing turn order. There’s nothing revolutionary here, and the battle animations themselves are a bit slower than they should be, or perhaps modern re-releases of classic role-playing computer games have spoiled me with their ever-present “speed up” functions, which Romancing SaGa would have benefited from.
Considering that I played Romancing SaGa on an emulator, I could have used the emulator’s native speed-up functions. However, emulator speed-up is not great: the music speeds up, and the gameplay becomes choppy – it’s just not ideal. So, I ended up playing the game without speeding it up at all, experiencing it in the way the developers intended. Initially, it felt painfully slow, but like all unpleasant things in life, one eventually reaches a state of homeostasis. That does not excuse the slowness, however, which is real and jarring since Romancing SaGa doesn’t even include a simple “run” option, making the default speed of movement a very leisurely walk.
Battle strategies themselves are reminiscent of SaGa 2, meaning there isn’t much strategy at all, with the only exception being the final boss. A typical normal encounter consists of three to five monsters, each with their own various tricks, but essentially ends up being a simple damage race. If you outspeed the monsters and attack first, and you’re not severely under-leveled (which is basically impossible thanks to all the monsters), you’ll defeat the enemies before they defeat you. Magic helps with this, as it is slightly overpowered early on, being one of the few means of damage to multiple monsters at once; however, weapons eventually unlock powerful attacks that do similar area damage at a much higher rate, making physical weapons and bows the far superior choice when it comes to dealing damage later on; a big difference from previous SaGa titles where magic ruled over all.
*Red dragon battle; notice the characters lined up in rows and the awesome sprite work on the drago
Tangentially related, let’s talk about character progression. Romancing SaGa, unlike SaGa 3, returns to its roots by utilizing a skill-up system where your characters’ actions in battle determine their proficiencies. An Akitoshi Kawazu signature. Similar to mutants and humans in SaGa 2, if your characters use physical attacks frequently, their strength will increase frequently. Conversely, if you have them use magic often, their intelligence will increase more often. Stats also increase randomly after battles to ensure no character is completely underpowered, maintaining a semblance of balance; however, the specialized nature of “using lots of magic makes you better at magic” is very apparent, particularly in the end-game when your characters are masters at what they have consistently used throughout the game.
One major difference that Romancing SaGa pioneered, and something that has remained a staple in the series ever since, is the weapon proficiency system; representing a natural evolution of the skill-up system, where not only do individual stats improve based on your actions, but the weapons used also gain skill-ups. This means that your characters become more effective with the weapons they use most and unlock new special skills after every couple of weapon skill-ups.
This weapon skill-up system is still in its nascent stage, as skill-ups only pertain to individual weapons rather than groups of weapons. For instance, leveling up an Iron Sword to its maximum proficiency will allow your character to deal significant damage with that specific Iron Sword and unlock special attacks for use with that specific Iron Sword. However, if you come across a more powerful sword, you must level it up separately. The proficiency level achieved with the Iron Sword does not “carry over,” despite the fact that both fall into the sword category.
Additionally, if you accidentally unequip the Iron Sword, you will lose all the proficiency levels you gained with that Iron Sword, and you’ll have to start over. The game appears to have no memory of the characters’ specific levels with specific weapons, wiping the slate clean every time a weapon is unequipped. These quirks may lead one to think that additional grinding is necessary to “catch up” every time a new weapon is found, but that’s not really the case; due to the excessive amount of encounters, grinding isn’t an issue.
Personally, I only had to grind once at the end of the game to level up the final sword, the Left-Handed Sword, for Albert. The rest of the weapon leveling handled itself through the unavoidable and mind-numbingly infuriating endless battles found every step of your adventure.
*skilling up after winning a battle; weapons skill up in the same way
Curiously, some of the weapon skills just don’t work, which is a recurring theme in Romancing SaGa, a game often regarded as “incomplete.” For instance, the skill “Dragon Slayer” for the Iron Sword only inflicts 1 damage and fails to slay dragons; a comprehensive GameFAQ guide written by Fox73 mentions that it is “bugged” and “does not work as intended,” statements I encountered multiple times in various guides.
Unlocking and using unique special attacks is a highlight, but there are only two types of attacks that actually matter: powerful single-target attacks and powerful area attacks. Multiple skills just aren’t useful because they don’t fulfill either of these roles. This contributes to the “damage race” nature of combat, especially considering that status effects and stat buffs are more beneficial for the enemies you face than for yourself, since status effects rarely land on enemies.
Additionally, since weapon skills have usage limits, you will often find yourself resorting to using only normal attacks throughout a dungeon crawl to conserve weapon skills. There are simply too many encounters to utilize your best skills throughout the entire dungeon, and you don’t want to get stuck without weapon skills when facing a dungeon boss.
In Romancing SaGa, every boss essentially becomes a damage race, where you need to spam your hardest-hitting attacks before the boss strikes you. If executed correctly, the majority of bosses can be defeated in one to two turns. However, if executed incorrectly or if you find yourself with few weapon skills left, you can easily get stuck in a cycle of reloading saves, trapped in a frustrating loop of attempting to defeat the boss only to be defeated repeatedly, the dreaded savestate ouroboros.
Counter-intuitively, despite the game containing spells like “quicken” and other status-buffing spells, using these during a boss fight typically results in death after the first turn; this is because many late-game bosses can kill any character in one to two hits, regardless of their skill level. Of course, you could have your back-row mages cast buffing spells, but then they wouldn’t be dealing any damage, which ensures the boss survives longer, which ensures the boss wipes out your party.
If I’m making Romancing SaGa sound like a difficult game, let me assure you: it’s not. Due to the frequent and monotonous battles, you will find yourself overpowered for most of the game; able to effortlessly tear through normal encounters and most bosses as long as you use your strongest attacks consistently and never deviate. This gets old quickly. In fact, the only boss that presented a challenge, aside from one where I ran out of weapon skills prior to the battle (due to my own poor decisions), was the final boss; and while this is how it should be in role-playing games, even the final boss was a glorified damage race, albeit a slightly more strategic one that required creative use of healing magic and a lot of trial-and-error.
*What happens when you get to the boss without any weapon skill uses left and a previous save file that would erase three hours of play; this boss took me 20+ reloads to defeat, finally getting lucky on the final try with a low-success rate 1-hit kill spell with 1 charge left.
For the second time, I had no idea what was going on in Romancing SaGa. If you were to ask me what happened between the intro and the defeat of the final boss, I wouldn’t be able to tell you much. Something definitely happened because I did a lot of stuff, but the haphazard narrative progression system, while aiming to make each playthrough unique, ends up causing more confusion than anything remotely enjoyable or coherent.
Romancing SaGa utilizes what Akitoshi Kawazu calls a “free scenario system” to advance the story. Essentially, random events occur at random times, and you just have to go along with it – not really the case but that’s what it can feel like. The system operates by employing a hidden “battle counter” that keeps track of the number of battles you’ve fought. At certain thresholds, different scenarios can be accessed. For instance, the “Knights of Mirsaburg” scenario, which involves assisting two knights in defeating monsters, can only be done very early in the game and is only available if you have completed fewer than thirty or so battles. Once you exceed this number, the scenario is lost forever. Some of these scenarios lead to unlocking other scenarios later in the game, with “Knights of Mirsaburg” being one of them; therefore, if you miss it, you miss out on two additional scenarios and the opportunity to recruit a specific character by completing those scenarios.
Like the bugged weapon skills, there are a number of scenarios that you can start but inadvertently lock yourself out of completing. Some scenarios can be started despite already meeting the prerequisites to lock yourself out of completion; jury is out on if this was by design or a development oversight. One such scenario is the Elder Dragon quest-chain that involves gathering relics for each legendary dragon in the game. If you fail to recruit a certain character early on, an area where you gather one of these relics will never be unlocked, rendering the relic unobtainable; as such, you were doomed before you even started.
Some scenarios are undeniably unfinished, like the “Island of Evil” scenario, where you ascend a tower to rescue kidnapped sailors. Upon reaching the tower’s summit, the kidnapper casually dismisses you, making a swift escape through the window, leaving you with no meaningful reward except for the skill-ups acquired along the way. This peculiar occurrence unsettled me to such an extent that I promptly resorted to online research, fearing that I had made a crucial error at some point. To my surprise (actually not that surprising), the very same guide I consulted for the glitched Dragon Slayer skill confirmed that the scenario had never been fully completed during development, thus dooming the unfortunate sailors to perpetual captivity.
*boss at the top of the tower on the Island of Evil; climbs out the window shortly after this interaction
True to the enigmatic SaGa style, the game doesn’t explain any of the scenario systems to you. Instead, it relies on you talking to every NPC you encounter, many of whom will subtly hint at the existence of these scenarios if you meet the battle counter requirements. This vague progression system leads to a distinct experience with each playthrough; and since character recruitment and story progression are intertwined with this unique system, every player’s save file is likely to be significantly different. Thus, Romancing SaGa earns a high score on the “Save File Test,” a test I created a few weeks ago and extensively discussed in my article on Final Fantasy Legend III. This test doesn’t provide any real insight other than being a good indicator that the game you’re playing is not Crash Bandicoot.
In this way, Romancing SaGa feels somewhat like a 1992 Japanese role-playing version of the Elder Scrolls, just without the extensive character customization or depth of choices found in that series. Often, after completing a scenario, you find yourself lost, wandering from town to town in an attempt to figure out what to do next, only to be approached by a random NPC who informs you that King Thoedore has gone mad and suggests you investigate; one can imagine a mini-map and quest compass appearing after speaking with such an NPC, but Romancing SaGa lacks such features – which is undoubtedly a good thing.
There’s a sense of randomness present in Romancing SaGa, and a feeling that everything is a side quest, without a cohesive narrative in sight; reminiscent of Daggerfall, particularly if you ignore the main questlines and simply wander through all the similar-looking towns, talking to people in the hopes of finding something to do. Some players may enjoy this style, but a game like Daggerfall executes it much better, as there’s almost always something to do, even if it’s partially randomly generated content. Romancing SaGa, on the other hand, lacks randomly generated content and instead relies on hand-crafted content; a good thing, but not when there’s a disappointingly small amount of content, and what is there tends to be more melatonin than caffeine; out of the thirty or so scenarios more than twenty of them are about clearing monsters out of caves.
If only I could make Baby Arthur play Romancing SaGa, maybe he would get some real deep sleep. The most exciting scenario I completed involved being awakened in an inn by an assassin attempting to murder me in my sleep, only to discover that I was wanted by the assassin’s guild (or something) and had to defeat them; the Elder Scrolls did this same questline ten years later in Morrowind – a random fact that doesn’t add much to the article.
*marked for death by the Assassin’s Guild, or something; kudos to Eien Ni Hen for the great translation work
Romancing SaGa’s story can be summed up in about one sentence: you inhabit a world called Mardias and you have to stop an evil god named Saurin from returning to the world. There’s no cohesive overarching plot beyond this, and no real mystery to uncover. Romancing SaGa is sparse; nothing to write home about; nothing to write here about, really, but I continue to type – why?
Anyways, you encounter a minstrel in every town; sometimes this minstrel provides hints, but mostly he just asks if you want to hear a cool song and changes the background music to one of Kenji Ito’s boring town themes if you say yes. At a certain point, however, when you have completed an arbitrary number of scenarios, the minstrel (spoilers for a 30-year-old computer game) reveals himself to be the God of Light (or something), the mortal enemy of Saurin, and opens the path to the final dungeon. The path he puts you on is determined by your actions throughout the game; with certain good deeds earning hidden “charity points,” and negative actions earning “evil points.”
Depending on the accumulation of these points, you will be set on a good, neutral, or evil path. There are only a few scenarios that grant these points, through extremely obvious or extremely ambiguous dialogue options; and in true old-school computer game fashion, each path locks you out of powerful equipment, and with no “new game plus” option (a feature that probably didn’t exist in any game at that time), there’s no way to obtain all equipment in one playthrough, which is more of a simple fact than a negative drawback.
*Hmm, I wonder which option would award evil points?
The “free scenario system” and different endings draw significant inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons in their structure, as the randomness of events often feels like an invisible dungeon master pulling the strings on your adventure. It is evident that Akitoshi Kawazu aimed to create a Dungeons & Dragons style game that would also resonate with Japanese audiences, who were more enamored with the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series than western tabletop games; and as a result, we have a Japanese computer game with several partially developed D&D-inspired ideas yet bearing a stronger resemblance to early Final Fantasy games. Although half-baked in execution, these ideas served as precursors to more refined and fleshed-out concepts found in later SaGa games.
When all of these elements combine, the whole package is something akin to a computer game. Not a very good computer game, but a computer game nonetheless. A computer game that is worse than the sum of its parts; like vaporwave, just listen to the stuff that inspired it instead.
V, CONCLUSION or: The End of an Era
Last week, I had seven WebEx conferences, five Microsoft Teams meetings, and two Zoom calls. I created four quotes, composed eighty-three emails, boiled five bowls of ramen, and bought two boxes of cheap wine.
That’s because no one has killed me yet, so I’m back at work. This article took longer than normal because of that. I started writing this a day before my impending return to work and finished it a week later. I haven’t played any computer games during that time.
It’s funny how quickly six weeks go by when you have nothing to stress about. Six weeks at work feel like six years, whereas my parental leave felt like two days, reminiscent of summer breaks during childhood. At the time, especially in the early stages, it seemed as if I had an infinite amount of time before I had to return to work, but in hindsight, it slipped away faster than a shooting star. It slipped into a nostalgic place in my mind, destined to resurface in fleeting moments of feelings, smells, and sounds that briefly remind me of that short era where diaper changes and baby pats were all that mattered. Perhaps playing Romancing SaGa a year from now will transport me back to that place, but for now, it remains lost in time – the end of an era. The divine comedy starts anew, and the ouroboros continues to consume itself.
That’s not to say my life is terrible. It’s fine. Sometimes, it’s even really good. It’s just that I have to do things I hate to get to the good parts. Those things I hate enable me to sit around for hours at a time and play thirty-year-old computer games on cheap Chinese handhelds while bouncing a baby on my knee. And yes, I’m aware of how immature all of this sounds. My father always told me that I have to do things I don’t like in life, and I’m sure his father told him the same thing. I even tell my own daughter this. But it’s my blog, and I will cry if I want to.
*somehow Square captured the vaporwave aesthetic thirty years before its inception
So, if given the choice, would I choose Romancing SaGa over work? Absolutely. Would I choose any other computer game over Romancing SaGa? Also, absolutely.
Romancing SaGa is best admired from afar: through art books, fan-sites, and this article, for starters. Perhaps watching a longplay. While it has an excellent soundtrack, fantastic art direction, and much-improved battle mechanics compared to its predecessors, it can also be frustrating, backward, and almost as tedious as writing about subpar computer games.
It is frustrating due to the overwhelming number of unavoidable battles that can lead to hair loss. It is backward because of the strange scenario system that constantly makes you second-guess your actions while wandering around in a confused stupor. And it is tedious due to my inability to think of another adjective and lazily using a synonym for the word “frustrating,” and also because of the overwhelming amount of unavoidable battles.
Really, the battles are what make this game so frustrating. If only I didn’t have to fight something every step; and while the battle system is better than the Game Boy SaGa games, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. The free scenario system, while adding a layer of uniqueness to each playthrough, is more akin to a chicken running around with its head cut off than to an engaging storytelling vehicle, often resulting in accidentally missing a lot of the better content that the game has to offer.
Romancing SaGa sabotages itself.
But things aren’t all bad. The large number of playable characters, weapon skill system, soundtrack, and overall art direction elevate this otherwise poor computer game to something beyond truly bad vaporwave. Many of the gameplay systems present in Romancing SaGa will be refined in future SaGa games, all of which are much better than this game.
A much more complete version of Romancing SaGa is available on the Wonderswan Color, which is the recommended way to experience a close-to-original version of the game. However, it’s worth noting that no English translation is available for that version. There’s also the remake, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, a modern retelling of the game with enhanced gameplay and graphics, although only vaguely reminiscent of the original.
Would I recommend playing Romancing SaGa? If you’ve read this article, then you already know the answer: no, I would not. After a thirty-hour playthrough, the most rewarding thing the game can offer you is the credits screen and more free time to play a better game.
Don’t be like me. If you get bored, put the controller down and play something else. Life is too short, and you have to go back to work.
(originally published 6/11/2023)