Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
The first time you hit a major stumbling block in SaGa Frontier Remastered—Square Enix’s latest effort in its seemingly endless crusade to rehash its back catalogue on behalf of an audience either too damn young, or too damn nostalgic, to know any better—you’d be forgiven for thinking, “Woof, that must just be how they made them back then!” “Thank god,” you, a hypothetical incorrect person, will subsequently think. “We’ve moved past an era where it was acceptable for an RPG to leave major game mechanics woefully under-explained. Or to give players zero indication of where their next destination in the massive game world should be. Or to let huge chunks of a game’s mechanics—difficulty, character growth, the placement of boss fights, etc.—be determined randomly, turning every potential battle into a vicious and dispiriting roulette wheel of death!”
But do not be fooled, hypothetical incorrect person—despite that being your designated and only role in the hypothetical thought experiment in which you exist. SaGa Frontier is not an indictment of the game design trends of 1998, the year it arrived in American homes cloaked in the still-glimmering halo effect of Square’s massively successful Final Fantasy VII. No, SaGa Frontier—Remastered or otherwise—is only and ever a SaGa game, the strangest tributary of all of the little rivers running off Square’s wildly popular Final Fantasy franchise.
(A history, in brief: When designer Akitoshi Kawazu, fresh off the warm reception his battle system received after being implemented in the original Final Fantasy, sat down to create its successor for Final Fantasy II, he decided to get a little innovative. Aiming at realism, or at least “realism,” Kawazu implemented a system where characters gained stats based on the specific actions they took in fights: Attack a bunch, raise your Strength; cast a bunch, raise your Magic; get hit a bunch, raise your maximum Health. This idea turned out to be a) neat, and b) badly broken, a mantra that would become the watchword for basically all of the SaGa games that Kawazu was eventually given to keep him from getting dangerously “creative” with the company’s bread and butter Final Fantasy franchise ever again.)
The deeply irritating thing about the SaGa games, then and now, is that they’re usually too interesting and ambitious to just write off as “bad.” (With the exception of 2002’s Unlimited SaGa, which is literally played by running a slot machine for every single thing you do, and is correspondingly infuriating.) And SaGa Frontier, which claims as its major innovation the ability to choose from one of several protagonists to take through individual stories set in a staggering array of shared locations, is not a bad game. But it is a frustrating game. And a grindingly difficult game. And an almost malevolently obtuse one. It’s worth noting that Remastered, arriving this week on Windows, PS4, Switch, iOS, and Android, contains new tools clearly designed to make its story easier to follow and its hidden array of trigger events more clear, and it’s still damned easy to lose your way. The actual world is beautiful and weird—if also still pretty poorly translated— and the incredible chunkiness of the game’s battle mechanics manages to be compelling, even as it kills you with seemingly cruel and random indifference. But a few quality of life improvements (including on-demand quick-saving, speed controls, and a few other welcome additions) can’t make up for all of SaGa Frontier’s sometimes maddening quirks.
The other improvements in the package are more subtle. One of the seven original scenarios gets a few new scenes, an additional character planned for the PS1 version gets added back in, and the game’s visuals have been given the standard clean-up. The most notable improvements come in the fights, where the monsters—whose bright, glossy 3D models carry the look of beautiful and bizarre stop-motion figurines—absolutely shine, even as they’re cheerfully kicking your teeth in. But really, the most impressive(?) thing about Remastered is how hands-off it is; there have been very few concessions to what a strange, broken, occasionally thrilling game Kawazu and his team crafted 20-plus years ago. If you want to stick your head in this particular hole—and god knows plenty of people did, back in the day—then a certain kind of reward is available to be reaped in abundance. Just don’t blame its frustrations on the era in which it was made. SaGa Frontier’s weirdness is, and was, a beast all its own.
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Bloodborne update: I have reached Father Gascoigne! He is kicking my ass six ways to Sunday but it is a fun fight at least. I can get to his second form, but not consistently. Could be here a while. So I am also thinking about finding a chiller game to play in between learning this. I’ve got plenty so it’s just a question of what.Also made some progress in OG Dark Souls. Defeated the Taurus Demon at long last, managed to cheese the metal boar, I’ve explored a lot of that area and opened up a few things. I’ve set it aside for a bit but these games do scratch a very particular itch.
Using the graves for leverage helps. It’s not an easy fight – Papa Guac is very aggressive and it’s not hard to get caught up in his shit – but the environment can be your big friend. On the plus side, his last phase is generally easier to manage despite being intimidating. There’s also an item that can help you get some free hits in.The best thing about Soulsborne is that those instincts survive between games in the genre. The controls and tempo may vary, but once you get alright at one of them you’re basically all set – they’ll still kick your ass, but it’s a more even fight now.I barely finished DS1 years ago and was terrified of Bloodborne, but after Sekiro beat my ass into submission and taught me that AGGRESSION. IS. KEY. I was fuckin’ cruising through the DS trilogy after BB and moving on to the non-From Software games. IMO the worst thing people can do is defaulting to turtling and defense – playing defensively is absolutely a valid tactic in most of them (except Sekiro), but I found that getting greedy is much less dangerous than hanging back.
It was weird learning this in DS3, as DS2 rewards caution and in some places outright punishes aggression (Shrine of Amana outright mandates bringing a bow).Bloodborne oddly this wasn’t a problem for me, I guess it was distinct enough that I could get on its specific wavelength better.
DS2’s generally a messy case because Scholar of the First Sin fucked enemy placement, making the game feel like some sort of Kaizo Mario-style ROMhack. Going through locations like Iron Keep or Forest of Fallen Giants feels like you’re buddy came in to mod your game when you were asleep to make an asshole prank. The aggressiveness rule still applies to bosses, though, particularly in the (generally excellent) DLCs.Amana is doable without a bow – I did it fine – but I’ll admit I had a route at the ready because falling into water is the fucking worst. Nioh 1 is still the worst about it, because that game loves its bullshit traps and narrow walkways over the ocean. Especially jarring after returning to it from Nioh 2, which has excellent level design without ANY of the bullshit that plagued the first one.
Maybe it’s just because I never played vanilla that Scholar felt fine to me. Only bit that really felt like a gotcha was the exploding hollows in the Bastille. Iron Keep was annoying, but not difficult – it’s easy to pull the knights one at a time, just time-consuming to clear a path to Smelter.Melée in Amana is totally doable, but the intent is pretty clear. I actually really like the level design there – you’re slowed down and imperilled if you rush, but there’s also cover placed so that you can pick off the casters at your leisure. It tells you how to play it, and if you get on its wavelength it’s a wonderfully chill zone :)I’ll cop to being a little defensive of the game, but that’s mostly because it’s hard to reconcile complaints over difficulty with the fact that it was the easiest game in the series for me; and I see so many complaints that amount to “this is bullshit I can’t charge into a crowd” or “wtf nobody looks up” 😛
As someone who typically plays a ranged caster Shrine of Amana was a punishing slow slog. I can’t even imagine the experience for melee characters.
I actually found his second form generally easier. Overall, I found the “beast” bosses easier (relatively) since the bigger size means a bigger windup/telegraph to their moves (all the better to gun-parry). Conversely, the Hunter bosses tend to be quicker and harder to predict/parry (for me, at least). And Papa G is both of those types in one boss, so he’s kinda the perfect intro boss.
The humanoid bosses get way easier once you get the Auger of Ebrietas, which allows for instant backstabs (and parries with 2h weapons).
Did you get the music box? Papa Gas Can is a joke with the music box.
I don’t think I’ve played a SaGa game since they were the “Final Fantasy Legend” subseries for Game Boy in the US. I loved the third one dearly, rented it from the same video store several times, stuffing a piece of torn notebook paper in the box that said “DON’T ERASE SAVE 2,” as 10-year-olds do, as if there were a whole lot of people renting Game Boy RPGs in 1993. And I knew that then, but I didn’t want to chance it. I was invested.Part of me wants to throw more money at Square for SaGa Frontier to see if that sort of thing is still my jam, but god damn, do I have a ton of RPGs weighing my backlog down. I can’t keep buying turn-based slashy games if I’m only in the mood for jumpy and shooty games.The past week’s gaming progress has largely been reuniting the disparate elements of each of my consoles’ game libraries, moving them to my new apartment, and arranging them so they look like I’ve always cared enough to keep them displayed prominently together and would never messily shove them into whichever of 9 junk drawers had enough space, and then leave them like that across half a dozen moves. I would never.It’s all very pretty now, and I’m gobsmacked that I actually have the shelf space to similarly organize all my books, movies, board games, and video games, even before I’ve moved my bookshelves and dressers in. Like, I can keep adding. And that luxury’s aided by how much shit I’m throwing out this week.And every day after work, after all the lugging and unpacking and organizing, I’ve relaxed with a beer and a few stars in Super Mario Galaxy. I hit 120 stars with Mario, froze, considered which game I wanted to move on from there, and… well… now I’m at 20 stars with Luigi. We’re doing it. We’re going completionist on 3D All-Stars. All 482 stars. All stars.And when I’m not accidentally making Luigi slide uncontrollably over a ledge and into a black hole, I think it’s high time I got past the “welcome to your new home” part of Harvest Moon: Magical Melody. I like Harvest Moon. I like achievements. What if they made a Harvest Moon game where you beat the game by earning achievements? Whoa. I’m not sure how it took me 15 years to circle back to this one, but after a particularly hectic week at work punctuated by all my moving and cleaning, I think I just need to plant some corn. If I do nothing but plant corn this weekend, it will feel incredibly well-earned.
I never played any of the Final Fantasy Legends games, but I remember seeing dungeon maps of one of the games in Nintendo Power that formed a human body. I guess there was a Fantastic Voyage/Innerspace/Osmosis Jones thing going on? Anyway, it always fascinated me.The only place I knew that rented out Gameboy games was a grocery store by my cousin’s house. Unfortunately he lived about an hour away from me, so it wasn’t something I could take advantage of. I wanted nothing more as a kid than to be able to rent GB games.Good luck with Super Mario Galaxy. I think there were one or two sidescrollers where I managed to get all the special coins, but I’ve never been able to collect all the stars or whatever in the 3d games.
This weekend is for more Demon’s Souls! Which plays pretty nicely with a PS2 controller, as it turns out. I’m at the stage where I’ve done all the easy levels, farmed a bunch and powered up, so I’ve got the tougher middle areas to choose between and no recourse if get stuck but to get good enough.I’m also playing Binding of Isaac, in which I’ve unlocked the expansion’s new content. So far the “puzzles” to progress in that are infuriatingly unintuitive, I suspect it’s like Dark Souls wherein the community is supposed to figure it out over time. And they wonder why people datamine.
Yeah, TBoI is very much a community affair. It had a truly MASSIVE alternate reality game tied into it at one point which required not only figuring out a long-winded in-game puzzle but actual real life stuff, which culminated in a bunch of wackos on Reddit finding a buried statue at some lot in Santa Ana which THEN lead to a secret Twitter account accessing which unlocked content for all players.It was so insane that I can absolutely forgive it.
I remember the AR game. That one didn’t bother me so much because it unlocked via a patch, rather than “do this specific thing you’d have never thought to do on purpose in literally 200 hours, but only while holding that specific item, with no hints to do so, but multiple times”.
I played Demons Souls all the way up to the highest level NG+, and I basically planned my runs by putting levels like 4-2 and 5-2 at the beginning. They can be so punishing and can be like banging your head against a wall so I try to get rid of them first. Best of luck!
Days Gone continues to entertain. It’s a very good game in general and it’s scratching that open world itch. Some apparent technical stuff aside, I think the game’s biggest sin was coming out shortly after Red Dead 2. If this was an early 2018 game or even a 2020 one, it would get solid reviews across the board.Like, it’s not here to revolutionize the genre, but neither is critical darling Horizon nor last year’s massive hit Ghost of Tsushima. The only thing it’s seriously lacking in is the story. It’s fine and there are some good moments – the pacing is also much better than usual in this genre, with the game doing a good job of throttling story alongside side content – but it’s a bit too scattered. Sam Witwer’s Deacon is cool, though. It’s refreshing to see a post-apocalyptic protagonist who is very much not used to the proceedings; Deacon may be a badass but he’s also a PTSD-ridden, jittery mess who mutters to himself all the time, can barely finish a sentence without backspacing himself all the time and clearly doesn’t cope well with having to fight zombies. The way he sounds like’s about to piss himself when he has to fight a horde is great.Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition is, so far, fantastic. I’m very early on, but it blows my mind how comfortable this game is to play. The combat menu etc. may seem overstuffed at first glance, but there’s so much quality of life stuff in the game that it’s staggering. I don’t think I’ve seen a jRPG which would have so much of its shit together.The music is also phenomenal. This one overworld track is so rich and dense that it’s going on my acid playlist.
So I found Horizon dull and derivative, but loved Mad Max. Based on that, does it sound like I’d enjoy Days Gone?
I think so? I wasn’t particularly into Mad Max myself, but I haven’t played enough to form a proper opinion.Days Gone is essentially a mix of The Last of Us-style stealth with a more methodical open world in the vein of Red Dead Redemption 2 (caring for the bike requires you to scavenge fuel, for one – and generally fuel management influences how you ride, since until about the midway point you’ll be looking for slopes to cruise on those without using gas). There’s less collectible bullshit, more open ended activities like taking out camps or zombie hordes (which is GREAT fun because it can go wrong very fast and is hella stressful), a bunch of scavenging for stuff. It’s not sim or proper survival-style hardcore – just enough to make you sweat. The stealth is also pretty tight.While the plot is largely eh, I do appreciate the overall pacing. It’s slow, but the game is very good at feeding you quests. A lot of open world titles fall into that trap where they give you a bunch of achievable sidequests to finish before the main quest, which contributes to being painfully overpowered for the mandatory content and overall burnout. Days Gone flows from mission to mission in a pretty natural manner.I gotta say I liked Horizon a lot, but that game’s first act/region is pretty unremarkable. The game takes slightly too long to introduce its systems and tools to make things fun. I was pretty set on dropping it for later but I stuck around until I got out of the Nora territory into the “proper” open world and I found it very fun.
Thanks, sounds like it’s worth at least trying. I’ll probably get to it eventually 😛
Fuse’s new quest is just rehash central, isn’t it? Because if there’s one thing Saga Frontier needed more of, it’s unmotivated redundancy.
I’m playing the Kingdoms of Amalur remaster on switch and am honestly amazed that I sunk so much time into this game when it originally released. There is absolutely nothing compelling or artful to this game, it’s just a series of fetch quests in an indistinguishable fantasy setting. I fire it up for 10 minutes and quickly get bored with the gameplay because it reminds me there are so many better ways I can be using my leisure time than slogging through another quest line of unremarkable dialog with wooden NPCs that’s probably going to crash to the homescreen anyway at some late quest stage.It’s fascinating how little resonance Amalur had as a fandom; nobody cares about the game or lore enough to write extensive articles for a wiki like even Mass Effect: Andromeda got.At least my frustration with Amalur Re-Reckoning got me to do more reading in the evenings.
I remember playing SaGa Frontier back when it came out, enticed by the premise and of the belief that SquareSoft could do no wrong. I can’t quite remember why, but I soured on it fairly quickly; it still lies unfinished.On the subject of old-school RPGs, I’ve been playing through the Mother series, through the magic of emulation and kindness of fan-translation patches (of the three in the series, only the second title was released in the US, under the name Earthbound). I’m pretty close to finishing Mother 3 and I am genuinely puzzled why these haven’t seen a rerelease. Two of the series protagonists—Ness and Lucas—are in Smash Bros, after all! (Wasn’t it the inclusion of Fire Emblem characters in the Nintendo’s flagship fighter the impetus for bringing that series stateside?)
I also quickly learned that Saga Frontier wasn’t the game for me. It was pretty much for the reasons pointed out in the article. Seemingly random difficulty in each battle. Never knew where to go. My little brother liked it though.I think the first game in the Mother series had a Virtual Console release on either Wii or Wii U. I’m disappointed that it never had any other US release, whether as a collection or as part of Nintendo Switch Online service. Same goes for Mother 3.
Mother 3 was considered to have some…problems for the US audience.
You’re talking about the Maygypsies, right? (Or possibly the “tripping on ‘shrooms” bit in Chapter 7?!?) I have given some thought to them, as I played. On one level, it feels like a heightened version of the “eternal magical race” fantasy trope (see also: elves, fairies, pixies, etc.). As a portrayal of queer-coded trans/androgynous/genderfluid characters, I have certainly seen much worse in popular media (or even just in video games!). Apart from a weird scene in Chapter 4 where it is *suggested* that one of the Maygypsies molests the protagonist off-camera as part of a ritual to increase his PSI power—OK, that one probably could be changed or excised—they seem to shown in a positive light, not in a mean-spirited or gay-panicky way.Then again, there may be some nuance or context that this non-Japanese cis het dude may have missed, so don’t take this as a whole-hearted defense.
Yeah the Maygypsies. Mother 3 also more heavily relied on Japan-specific humor they were worried wouldn’t translate I believe? There’s obviously never been like, an announcement from Nintendo saying why they didn’t translate it, they just refuse to acknowledge its existence at all. Such a dumb company lol, always leaving money on the table then complain when people emulate their shit. JUST LET ME PLAY YOUR GAMES
Not sure what to play lately. I’m waiting for the games explosion coming in the next few weeks so I don’t want to start anything super long, but also I don’t have anything really new to play. Might just play sports games this weekend. PGA 2k21 has been pretty fun lately.
Still playing Hades for the Switch, but I’m now starting to think about exactly how far I want to go before I drop it in favour of other games in my backlog. I’ve done 32 Heat runs with the sword (hidden aspect) and the rail gun (Hestia aspect), so I still have four weapons with which to do 32 Heat runs. This is not negotiable. After this, I’d like to get at least one run where I finish in under 10 minutes, my current record being around 13:40. Also not negotiable.Then there’s gathering enough resources to buy out all the renovations. I think this will be my ultimate goal, because working my way through the titles seem to require an intimidatingly high amount of resources to finish. Thankfully, the game is still massively fun, even after over 200 runs.
The upside is, since this is on PC, there could a community patch to fix many of the things SE should’ve fixed, but didn’t because it might anger the remaster purists out there.
I’ve been mostly playing Final Fantasy XIV yet again this week. I think I’m getting closer to the end of the base game A Realm Reborn storyline, though I understand there’s a bunch more content in the free trial that I’m still working my way through.So there’s potentially some storyline spoilers here. Since many of the original Seven Scions have been assassinated and laid to rest by my character, so I’m now working with Alphanaud and Cid to try and recover the airship Enterprise to stop the Primal, Garuda. The biggest problem is that the remains of the airship crashed into a dungeon instance that was guarded by this guy:As well as two other big fucking dragons that my Dragoon had to keep stabbing in the ass with a giant fork.Also, with the patch adding PlayStation 5 support knocking the game offline for maintenance, I had a couple of other games to play. First up, I remained in the world of Squenix though with a significant assist from the Walt Disney Company in the form of Kingdom Hearts I.5 HD Final MIX. I was in Wonderland:And after doing some platforming stuff that I’m truly terrible at, I had collected four pieces of evidence to exonerate Alice and proved that a Heartless was responsible. I also successfully took on the cards and the initial Tower boss. Now teh suspect has disappeared, and I think I have to do more platforming in the Lotus Forest to find the final boss of Wonderland and then get actual plot for Sora and his giant feet. Sadly, I’m not quite sure where to look…
Since I was clearly in the mood to get frustrated by puzzles, I fired up this whole thing:Yep, Baba is You. It’s a fantastic puzzler and I haven’t finished it yet. I did successfully solve 3 puzzles in the Forest of Fall in my session, which was extremely satisfying.
When I played the first Kingdom Hearts game, I was shocked by how obtuse it was. If you don’t use a guide, there are times when you’ll spend hours scouring interconnected maps for the next story trigger. It’s something they addressed in Kingdom Hearts II, but they also took out a lot of the platforming challenge.
Baba Is You is the kind of game where every solve makes me feel like an utter genius, even if millions of other people have solved this exact puzzle. It’s perfect for slowly picking through a couple puzzles at a time. I keep forgetting it exists, but it’s very rewarding every time I come back to it.
Without spoilers, the Coerthas arc in ARR is going to be very relevant down the road. The bad news is that the 40-50 slog was, IMO, worse than the post-50 patches. The good news is that the changes to the ARR quests should make it go much faster. Tempting though it may be, I encourage you not to skip the story. FFXIV’s story is serial, and everything builds on what came before. This is especially true with Shadowbringers: the reason so many people love the story is is because it addresses some plot points that go back to ARR’s release–and in some cases, to 1.0. It’s been so satisfying to get answers to long-standing questions.
Recently completed: Genesis Noir. One of the most aesthetically striking games I’ve ever played. Full of wonder and delight. Downsides: a bit tedious at times; prone to softlocking; kind of confusing and incoherent.
On the docket for this weekend: Persona 5 Strikers. It’s an impressive translation of the turn-based Persona formula to a musou setting, but it’s starting to get a bit repetitive 35 hours in. I’m also planning to start Gnosia, because I’ve had my eye on it for a while. I might also dip back into Genshin Impact to switch things up.
If you’re 35 hours in, you’re like, maybe a couple hours from the ending, so don’t let it wear you down. My full playthrough was 36 and I definitely wasn’t sprinting through it.
I’m going real slow. I just finished Jail #4. (That’s also my in-game time according to Steam; I forget what the time on my save file is, but it’s considerably less.)
I got a Nintendo Switch last weekend. Have you guys heard about this game called Zelda: the Breath of the Wild? I just started that up, it might take me all weekend to finish. (I previously put many hours into it on the Wii U, but it was a borrowed disc and I never finished it.)
(Also loving Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with my kids, we even watch the race highlights — we did one race where we were all Shy Guys.)
I am completely addicted to games that collapse under their own ambition. I loved Spore and Black and White, and I’m currently in love with all the SaGa games Square has finally given to us.You’d be forgiven for not wanting to penetrate the SaGa games. They all seem to want the player to stop thinking about the numbers behind the game and just start doing stuff. But They’re still games, so this means you can still fail because you didn’t understand those numbers behind the scenes. It’s audacious and lifelike and frustrating and I kind of admire them.
Re: Unlimited Saga — “With the exception of 2002’s Unlimited SaGa, which is literally played by running a slot machine for every single thing you do, and is correspondingly infuriating.”I think the Unlimited SaGa roulette wheels replace tabletop dice (similar to other parts of the game design standing in for tabletop RPGs), except the roulette wheels are more like loaded dice, giving players some agency.
It’s not the major problem with Unlimited SaGa but from what I’ve seen of playthroughs they can be a bit wonky.