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

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.