Let it be known that I have finished Urpina route before Emerald Beyond's release.

Fun combat that takes a LOT of thinking but feels INSANELY great when you pull of that amazing unite combo or status strat.

Great music all around makes redoing fights after a wipe still enjoyable, while learning from each attempt makes further attempts easier, as knowledge is KING in this game.

While resource management is important early on with forging, getting access to Missions and just sending out randoms you aren't using to do them accumulates far more resources that manually farming battles ever would, which then allows you to forge to your hearts content towards the end of the game.

Speaking of randoms, you can recruit SO MANY PEOPLE its absolutely RIDICULOUS. Also no matter how late you recruit someone it's still possible to train them to be used.

Fun game, great music, interesting combat that makes you think. ThumbsUp out of 10

I tried to like this game and I enjoyed things it does and how you can take so many routes to reach the ending, but... some battles are awfully done, expecting too much from the player and even the RNG screwing them in a horrible way.

The last fight with Sigfried, just before the ending is one that is not fun or balanced. You are totally at the hands of what the CPU will do and you are still hoping for some luck as Sigfried can just kill the whole party in a single turn, while he being inmune to all not "All out attack" actions. Having a boss kill you with a 3 turns spell because he said "nah, I'm going to resist 6 stunt attempts" is just bullshit.

Possibly the ideal battle RPG. Amazing battle system, full of tactical possibilities. Balanced extremely well, too - I beat the final boss in a real do-or-die type situation and that kind of thing happened all the time.

The RPG part is no slouch either, though it's unusual. Presented in a picture-book style, it is more like a tabletop game in that you just move between encounters, either in towns, dungeons or with people or monsters in the open. It's refreshingly direct, and it feels like the non-essentials have been stripped away.

There's some weird loading stuff that goes on in battles, which is a hangover from the Vita version; the machine clearly didn't have the RAM to handle the game running on Unity so it would slowly load all the moves and effects before each turn. It does so here too, but in a much faster fashion. The effect is still a drag on the overall tempo, but it does provide for some great drama as you wonder why it's spending a little longer than usual preparing the turn to play out. I don't think it'd work if the characters had more hit points; a couple of bad hits or a mistake can easily take out one or two of your characters and set you on a slide towards defeat, even in a relatively 'easy' fight by the numbers.

The ports added a limited amount of voices but the real star of the show remains the music. My only real complaint would be that there isn't enough as a lot is spread across the four scenarios. That said, from what I can gather the four different characters progress through the story in a very different manner to one another. I'll definitely be playing through as another character at some point, after clearing it as the sarcastic ceramicist Taria. Dialogue is relatively scarce for an RPG but what's there is well-written and full of character. I really enjoyed the pairing of Taria and Kahn going through her story and the game's actually full of funny little moments, little mysteries, medium length stories and stuff that's left hanging or unsolved because you didn't do stuff in the right order.

I think this is coming out in English relatively soon. I can't recommend enough that you give this a shot. It's huge, it's daunting, the party levelling system initially makes it sound like you can chronically mess your game up but it's actually the opposite because it drags you up to where it thinks you should be. It's a series of systems and algorithms which have been agonised over for hundreds of hours to the point where it almost feels like it's scripted or even that someone's in control of it for maximum drama, but it really isn't. The Grace system in particular contributes hugely to that sensation and it's not like any Japanese RPG I've played before.

Scarlet Grace has the best combat of any JRPG I've ever played. I don't want to write an entire treatise on the mechanics, but with all of the timeline manipulation, counters and interrupts, unite attack mechanic (if defeating an actor brings two actors of the same team adjacent on the timeline, a special attack happens), status effects, damage types, delayed spells, cover mechanic, etc. each turn becomes a puzzle leading to easily the most dynamic decision making I've ever experienced in the genre. The combat can be brutally hard -- there's almost always a risk of death, even in regular battles. That said, it's exceptionally fair -- if you use your toolbox appropriately and come up with the right strategy, you'll make it through. Also the final boss, holy crap. They put phases inside the phases and I kept thinking I was gonna die, but somehow scraped by. Top notch send off.

Outside of the combat, though, the game is very stripped down. You essentially run around a world map to trigger events or combat at nodes. Towns are just a menu and the events are largely limited to simple dialogue with character models making poses to show emotion. As with most SaGa games, the overarching story is a bit vague, but still fairly enjoyable. The side quests have stronger writing, though they can still be rather strange and a bit stilted at times. I'm down for that, but it's definitely not for everyone.

Oh, there's 4 different main characters to chose from at the start, each with a different scenario. I chose Balmaint, the executioner. His story is very on-rails for a SaGa game, but I liked Balmaint, Arthur, and company, so it was all good.

I'm a big fan of Kenji Ito's music, and Scarlet Grace is no exception. Similarly, I absolutely love Tomomi Kobayashi's illustrations, and was very happy to see a couple actually show up in game. The character designs are great, though graphics themselves clearly come from a lower budget Vita game.

Scarlet Grace: Ambitions is easily my favorite SaGa game to this point.

Not my thing at all, also not what I was expecting, though. SaGa: Scarlet Ambitions is not your average JRPG. What I found inside this more obscure Square IP is basically a visual novel with puzzle-like turn-based combat. It's not exactly obtuse, but I wouldn't call it intuitive. Very non-traditional character progression coupled with battles that can take more than a few tries just creates a scenario where I'm not really into a game at all. Not to mention that the story writing here is the really reason this isn't getting three stars. I was playing more for the battles and just couldn't be fucked to care about the story at all, even if the characters looked at least a little interesting. Maybe Urpina's story is the weakest and a different character's route might suck me in more, but that'll have to be down the line.

I really enjoyed SaGa: Scarlet Grace - Ambitions. Its greatest strength is the combat system, but the SaGa flavor of open world RPG is also in full effect here.

Combat in Scarlet Grace is in the Grandia tradition of having character turn order obviously displayed, with the player (and enemies!) being able to manipulate it. It is still turn-based, rather than real-time though -- you choose all your attacks and can clearly see what effect they will have on the timeline, then all the characters execute them as they might in a game like Suikoden or early Final Fantasy games.
Seeing all the enemy attacks gives you opportunities to stun or interrupt enemies who are executing powerful attacks or delay them in the turn order so you can kill them before they can kill you. Speed up and down effects also have extra value, permanently giving you more options in that battle. The kinds of timeline control you have is determined by the weapons you bring into battle and what abilities their users have learned. There is an additional wrinkle here when a character dies -- if it causes two characters on the same team to come together in the timeline they will perform a combo attack on a random enemy, dealing a large amount of damage and buffing themselves for the next round of combat. This is extremely powerful and fun to manipulate even though the random nature of the attack can sometimes screw you over.
All of this makes the battles very cerebral and engaging because you are granted so much control over your success or failure.
The enemy variety is lacking, unfortunately, with only about 15 different things to fight. It is a downer, but the complexity of the combat system means that different combinations of enemies usually need to be tackled very differently, so this doesn't hurt the game too much.

As in other SaGa games, characters get more powerful not through leveling up, but incrementally as they fight battles. HP increases and they have the chance to "spark" new abilities for whatever weapon or spell type they are using. Abilities can also increase in tier, making them more powerful and cheaper to execute. This is a super satisfying system that feeds directly into the timeline controlling focus of the combat, since getting new abilities almost always opens up new ways for you to maximize your effectiveness.
New Game + is a bit more restrictive than I would like from playthrough to playthrough, with a complicated matrix of what does or does not transfer over. I never really felt like I got much out of it, especially since the large stable of available party members means not too many are shared between protagonists, so you cannot benefit from your past games too much.

Visually, Scarlet Grace is striking but doesn't look that impressive. The character designs are pretty eclectic and random feeling (perhaps to try to capture a lot of different cultures) -- it doesn't work that well despite having a certain amount of charm. The models and textures are pretty low res as well (other than the main characters) and none of the 3d really looks that good, unfortunately.
This game does make some cool stylistic choices with its overworld that are really good. It is sort of like a papercraft world the characters run around, with locations and characters popping up and down as they change. It lends the game a unique and whimsical feel.

Narratively SaGa Scarlet Grace is pretty low key and fun, but doesn't have a ton going on. There are four protagonists you can choose from, each of them has a small scenario specific to them that you play through, with varying levels of freedom to explore the open world and various extra, side quests as well as a final boss that is shared between all four. They each have their quirks and range from a scavenger hunt for gems hidden around the world to a headsman hunting down a criminal who can't seem to truly die.
The world structure is a bit like SaGa Frontier, but unfortunately Scarlet Grace also forces each character to play through two of the other three character's scenarios, which makes playing as each character extremely repetitive and needlessly extends the length of a single playthrough. Extending playtime was probably the goal, but playing through more than a single protagonist's chapter is pretty tedious. The game would just be better if each protagonist's main quest was only available to them.
Repetition aside, the world is fairly complex with a ton of history and setting that makes it feel somewhat real although the translation and explanations are very stilted. There is a lot of assumed knowledge and focus on a pantheon of gods that is never really explained beyond a side quest to visit each of their shrines (though even this is more confusing than enlightening).

I like this game a lot, carried mostly by the strength of the combat system and the general charm of the characters and world. Despite the structural shortcomings and repetitive narrative, I played through the full game as three of the four protagonists (Urpina, Balmaint, and Taria) and was engaged the entire time based almost entirely on the gameplay.
If you like interesting combat systems (especially timeline based ones!) or open world turn-based RPGs, SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions is definitely worth a look.