The History Of Saga
You’d expect that a series with Square’s first ever million-selling game and a three decade legacy would be one known to every gamer – Yet the chances are many of You won’t have played a saga game at all. nick thorpe speaks to akitoshi kawazu about this pioneering rpg series…
f we were the sorts of people who wrote retro gaming quizzes, there are a number of questions we’d throw in to catch people out – and one of them would be, “What was Square’s first game to sell a million copies?” We’d be genuinely surprised to hear anyone deliver the correct answer or The Final Fantasy Legend, or Makai Toushi Saga in Japan. It’s par for the course – what should be one of Square Enix’s most celebrated series is far better known in Japan because of the games that were exported, half of them were renamed. Of course, that’s if you’re lucky enough to live in North America – in Europe, the series has barely made an impact at all.
The first game in the series, Makai Toushi Saga, was a Game Boy project. “There was a new console coming from Nintendo and we wanted to put a game out for that. Tetris was a very popular game at the time, so in the back of our heads we were thinking, ‘Are we going to make a game similar to that?’” recalls Akitoshi Kawazu, a long-term Square employee who served as director of the game. At the time, he was part of the Final Fantasy team. ”Nintendo requested that we go for the combination of a handheld console with an RPG, and that’s how the project started.”
Handheld development was a new challenge not just for Square, but for the entire industry. The new hardware meant that adaptations had to be made. “There were two main differences when working on the home consoles and handhelds. Firstly, the handheld is run by batteries,” explains Kawazu. “With an RPG you’re used to long hours of gameplay, but that’s something we had to have in mind – the batteries run out, so we had to adjust the amount of gameplay hours.” The other difference was a product of Nintendo’s design choices. “Home consoles at the time showed colour, but the Game Boy was monochrome, so we had to make sure there was nothing in the game that had to be expressed using colour.”
In many respects, the original Saga game was a standard RPG – your goal is to climb a tower that serves as a link between worlds, defeating enemies and developing your characters on the way to a final showdown. But one unique aspect of the game was how characters would develop – if you chose to be a human, you’d just get items that permanently boosted statistics, while mutants would develop randomly.
But monsters had a unique system in which they could eat meat dropped in battles, which would have different effects depending on a combination of the source of the meat and your character’s status. “At the time, Final Fantasy III had just come out and we wanted to make something different,” recalls Kawazu.
Makai Toushi Saga was a smash hit for Square on its December 1989 debut, becoming its first ever million-selling game and scoring 35/40 from Famitsu. For North American audiences, the game was renamed The Final Fantasy Legend to tie in with the popularity of the NES RPG. The game received a 3.7/5 score from Nintendo Power, and sold over 200,000 copies. “At the time we didn’t expect it to do so well,” confesses Kawazu, “but we were being told from people higher up, ‘Tetris is selling
3 million, so if you want to just aim from 3 million, that would be great!’”
While the game never hit the same sales as Tetris, it was clearly a
At the time, Final Fantasy iii had just come out And we wanted to make something different Akitoshi kawazu
success and a sequel went into production. “We didn’t originally have any intention to make a second one,” Kawazu explains. “In my view, the first one was done, it was complete and it was fine as it was. But we were told it had done so well that we were going to make a sequel.” With that in mind, the goal was to refine what was already there rather than reinvent the wheel. “The elements we changed were character development possibilities, as well as expanding the story – we just added a general sense of completion to the game,” says Kawazu.
The plot of Saga 2: Hihou Densetsu saw the players recovering the 77 Magi, fragments of the shattered statue of the goddess Isis. After the surprising end of the original game, in which the player’s party fights God, Saga 2 goes crazy and lets you fight a whole bunch of deities. Odin, who revives you if you fail in battle, is one of the gods that must eventually be fought, and once defeated he will no longer revive you. “We wanted a system that would let you retry the battles, but we didn’t want to just have a pop-up screen. We wanted something with a bit more flavour to it,” says Kawazu. “We thought, ‘What’s the best kind of deity for that?’ We decided on Odin coming from Valhalla – and then we built that into the story, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we got to fight him?’ For that bit where he can’t bring you back, it was a realistic way to add a bit more difficulty.”
Saga 2: Hihou Densetsu was a successful sequel when it arrived in December 1990, selling around 850,000 copes in Japan and garnering a 33/40 score from Famitsu. In 2006, Famitsu readers voted the game 94th in the magazine’s top 100 games poll. Renamed Final Fantasy Legend II for North American continuity, the game also received 3.9/5 from Nintendo Power.
aga 3: Jikuu No Hasha was handled by the new Osaka development team at Square, as Kawazu and his staff had their priorities elsewhere. The game represented a shift for the series, as it moved from a stricter fantasy theme to one incorporating some sci-fi elements, including time travel, airships and robotics. The plot follows the destruction caused by the Pureland Water Entity, a creature which floods the world across time, bringing monsters onto land.
As well as the existing meat-eating mechanics, Saga 3 adds robotic parts to the mix, allowing you to transform your character. Eating meat will turn you into a primal monster and robotic parts will make you a cyborg, but you can reset classes by eating meat or installing parts, depending on which is the opposite of what you have done.
Saga 3 arrived in 1991 in Japan as
we wanted a system that would let You retry the battles, but we didn’t want to just have a pop-up screen Akitoshi Kawazu
Final Fantasy Legend III, it received middling to good reviews from the USA press in 1993 – 32/40 from EGM and 3.35/5 from Nintendo Power. It would be the series’ last export for five years.
The reason that the Osaka team was developing Saga 3 is that Kawazu’s team was busy working on Romancing Saga – a SNES game, and therefore the first game in the series not to be designed for a portable console. “It was down to a request from Nintendo,” says Kawazu. “It was the previous situation in reverse – ‘You’ve made lots of games for a handheld, please can you make one for a console?’ We were a lot more happy with that request! Finally we could use a home console to make a better game than what we were used to.”
Romancing Saga took a different approach to storytelling compared to its predecessors. Instead of having one very flexible party to follow through one story, now you’d follow eight characters through their own parts of a larger plot. “At the core, we wanted to make sure that this was a different kind of adventure to Final Fantasy,” Kawazu explains. “There was a real question as to how we were going to achieve this. Within our team, people were asking, ‘You’re not going to have a linear storyline, is that possible?’ It took a lot of consideration to build a game that doesn’t follow a linear storyline, but to still have an ending.”
Romancing Saga was a major hit. Arriving in 1992, it sold 1.3 million copies in Japan, and earned a Famitsu score of 31/40. But Romancing Saga was the first game in the series not to be translated, and this trend would continue throughout the SNES years. Fortunately, the 2005 PS2 version is the only one
of the Saga remakes to have received an English release prior to the 2017 version of Romancing Saga 2.
Romancing Saga 2 took another different path, this time focusing on the ruling dynasty of Avalon over many generations. The initial emperors are fixed, but you can choose your successors. “In the first Romancing Saga, we had the eight protagonists.
For the second one, we thought about how we could make it different, but keep the variety that we wanted to continue,” Kawazu explains.
Despite being the most popular
Saga game to date, selling 1.5 million copies, Romancing Saga 2 was the least well-liked by Famitsu, scoring 26/40.
The game was remastered in 2017, with Metacritic scores of 71 for PS4, 70 for Switch and 62 for Xbox One.
The final game of the SNES era was Romancing Saga 3 in 1995. It returned to the first game’s system of choosing from eight characters as a protagonist, and this time followed the ‘Death
Eclipse’ – an event occurring once every 300 years which kills all newborn life on the planet. In the past two instances, a single baby has survived and obtained enormous power – one choosing to follow a path of tyranny, the other heroism. The game was another hit, shifting 1.3 million copies, and a 34/40 score from Famitsu.
The series got a full makeover for its Playstation debut, Saga Frontier. The
game adopted 3D technology for the first time, with prerendered sprites, adventure areas, and real-time battle areas. However, this game is notable for its abundance of deleted content. Kawazu remembers that ambitious scope well. “There were some things that we created, but we never quite found the right places to use them, like music tracks. So we just left those there! Then there were other things where we couldn’t make the implementation in time for the master submission.”
Saga Frontier was the first game in the series to retain the Saga name outside of Japan, and released in 1997. The game was another success, selling a million copies and scoring 31/40 in Famitsu. The American press was also fond of the game, with EGM awarding it 8/10 and Gamepro 5/5, but websites weren’t quite as enthusiastic, IGN giving 7/10 and Gamespot offering 6.9/10.
or Saga Frontier 2, the number of plots to follow was significantly reduced. Players could choose Gustave XIII, an exiled heir in waiting, or Wil Knights, a digger who seeks the truth about the death of his parents. These would intertwine and follow the descendants of the main protagonists, as had now become traditional in the series. Another graphical style change was made for this game. Some real-time 3D areas remained, but the bulk of the game was illustrated in a beautiful watercolour style.
“It actually was hand-painted!” Kawazu explains, before breaking into a rare English answer. “First hand drawing and scanning, and then digital effects.” Returning to speaking through the translator, he says, “We did it because the technology could allow for that handdrawn style. So we said, ‘It’s going to be really tough, it’s going to be a lot of work, but it will come out beautiful.’”
Saga Frontier 2 released in 1999 and sold over 675,000 copies, a strong number that doesn’t quite live up to that of its predecessors. Famitsu gave it 35/40. EGM gave it 31.5/40 and Gamepro handed down a 4/5, while
IGN gave 7/10. Saga Frontier 2 was also notable as it marked the series’ European debut, a decade after the first game.
2002’s Unlimited Saga took the series to Playstation 2. Another set of seven characters were introduced, searching for the ‘Seven Wonders’ that legends claim will bring a new era of peace upon discovery. The game took the unusual approach of making things more abstract – environmental traversal was almost board game style, with the player simply choosing directions at each new piece of terrain. Likewise, randomisation was added to battles through the use of slot machine-style reels, which determined whether your attacks and actions would have good outcomes or bad.
Unlimited Saga was a polarising game. In Japan, it was well received. Scores included 31/40 from Famitsu, 21/30 from The Playstation 2, 30/40 from Dorimaga and an A grade from Dengeki Playstation. In the English-speaking world, the game was panned. Edge’s 6/10 score looks high next to a 4/10 from the Official US Playstation Magazine and 28% from Gamespy. Gamesradar even went as far as to name it one of the 25 worst games of all time.
Since Unlimited Saga, the series has been mostly confined to Japan. Emperor’s Saga was a mobile game featuring storyline elements from Romancing Saga 2 and Romancing
Saga 3, launched in September 2012. Imperial Saga is a more traditional Saga experience which launched for web browsers in 2015. As an Emperor or Empress, your goal is to win turn-based RPG battles to gain territory, with more territory awarding new story events. This game is also free to play, and is still in operation today.
Saga: Scarlet Grace is the most recent entry in the series, and as a Vita exclusive it’s the first new Saga game to be developed primarily for a handheld platform since the Game Boy years. The game was well-received by Famitsu, scoring 32/40, but it hasn’t quite lived up to its predecessors in terms of sales, getting through 94,000 copies in the six weeks following its December 2016 release. An international release hasn’t materialised, though Kawazu has stated his interest in bringing the game to a broader audience.
That’s where the story of new games ends. But with Square Enix having made Romancing Saga 2 available in English for the first time, there’s new material for any fan to get into. With luck, the next time we talk about the Saga series, it will be better known on these shores.
we said, ‘it’s going to be really tough, it’s going to be A lot of work, but it will come out beautiful’ Akitoshi kawazu