Man, I really wanted to like Unlimited SaGa. I gave it the better part of 15 hours to grow on me, going through the majority of Ventus’ scenario to my understanding, but I honestly just think it’s not a well made game.
I actually love the board game style exploration in concept. Unfortunately, the interface is just awful and really drags down the entire game. For example, chests take way too many button presses to deal with – search with the sharpeye skill, deal with the traps, then unlock, then handle the magic lock, then maybe use the fortune teller skill a few times, then open. Each of which requires multiple presses to open the action menu, select the chest, select the character, scroll to the ability, activate the ability, do the reel. Also, some basic party management isn’t even available in cities and has to be done on the adventure map, which is weird. Doubly because you can’t save outside of town.
Very nice art and music, generally speaking. Everything in battle looks great and has a lot of character – the sprite work is extremely good! I really do enjoy the character and monster designs. The dungeons themselves have almost no detail on the map, which stinks since you spend so long looking at it. There’s artwork off the side, but the interface is very intrusive and frequently blocks a portion of the art. The whole thing is just ugly and low effort. While I love the combat theme, most of the music is just kind of there.
I have negative feelings about the combat system, even discounting the barrier to entry. I absolutely do not like the implementation of HP/LP here. HP is really just a probabilistic buffer to LP damage – sometimes you’ll take an LP from a scratch and it just feels bad. Since you don’t go down at 0 HP and sometimes you take LP damage at high health, it sometimes feels like your decisions in combat don’t matter. Combat became a frustration that I wanted to avoid since there weren’t any immediate rewards, just a chance for a better tile at the end of the mission – which is crucial, so you really don’t want to avoid too much combat. The challenge is in being slowly worn down over the course of overly long dungeons, which I simply don’t find enjoyable. The majority of the tactics in fights revolves around knowing which units to move first (and thus make more likely to be targeted) and which ones to let sit out to recover HP, which is neat, but I wish the abilities were more interesting to support it. Otherwise, you’re generally just selecting which attack reels to use based on whether you need HP or LP damage more. Magic is really hard to come by, so chances are you won’t have a whole lot of choice there unless you really gun for it and know what you are doing. Many of the low level spells also just boost your ability to cast magic with that school or provide a detection spell for a certain kind of enemy, so you really have to luck out to actually get anything useful. It would also be nice to have more information visible in combat, such as how many LP an enemy has and such.
I really don’t like the growth tile system. Being forced to take a tile and replace one you already have every mission means that you’re actually making your character slightly weaker after a mission sometimes. Further, the tiles offered are randomized, and sometimes the ones you need just don’t drop, despite taking the actions that make them more likely to drop. It’s another place where the basic idea is interesting, but the actual execution ends up being more frustrating than enjoyable.
I’m not a big fan of the reel system, but I think it’s fine design-wise. Just not to my taste.
Like I said – I really wanted to like Unlimited SaGa, and I gave it more than its fair shake to grow on me. There really are a lot of neat ideas here, and there's nothing quite like it. I think a remake that fixes the interface annoyances, makes magic more available, tweaks the growth tile system in the way mentioned, and totally reworks the HP/LP system could actually be a pretty darn awesome game.
I actually love the board game style exploration in concept. Unfortunately, the interface is just awful and really drags down the entire game. For example, chests take way too many button presses to deal with – search with the sharpeye skill, deal with the traps, then unlock, then handle the magic lock, then maybe use the fortune teller skill a few times, then open. Each of which requires multiple presses to open the action menu, select the chest, select the character, scroll to the ability, activate the ability, do the reel. Also, some basic party management isn’t even available in cities and has to be done on the adventure map, which is weird. Doubly because you can’t save outside of town.
Very nice art and music, generally speaking. Everything in battle looks great and has a lot of character – the sprite work is extremely good! I really do enjoy the character and monster designs. The dungeons themselves have almost no detail on the map, which stinks since you spend so long looking at it. There’s artwork off the side, but the interface is very intrusive and frequently blocks a portion of the art. The whole thing is just ugly and low effort. While I love the combat theme, most of the music is just kind of there.
I have negative feelings about the combat system, even discounting the barrier to entry. I absolutely do not like the implementation of HP/LP here. HP is really just a probabilistic buffer to LP damage – sometimes you’ll take an LP from a scratch and it just feels bad. Since you don’t go down at 0 HP and sometimes you take LP damage at high health, it sometimes feels like your decisions in combat don’t matter. Combat became a frustration that I wanted to avoid since there weren’t any immediate rewards, just a chance for a better tile at the end of the mission – which is crucial, so you really don’t want to avoid too much combat. The challenge is in being slowly worn down over the course of overly long dungeons, which I simply don’t find enjoyable. The majority of the tactics in fights revolves around knowing which units to move first (and thus make more likely to be targeted) and which ones to let sit out to recover HP, which is neat, but I wish the abilities were more interesting to support it. Otherwise, you’re generally just selecting which attack reels to use based on whether you need HP or LP damage more. Magic is really hard to come by, so chances are you won’t have a whole lot of choice there unless you really gun for it and know what you are doing. Many of the low level spells also just boost your ability to cast magic with that school or provide a detection spell for a certain kind of enemy, so you really have to luck out to actually get anything useful. It would also be nice to have more information visible in combat, such as how many LP an enemy has and such.
I really don’t like the growth tile system. Being forced to take a tile and replace one you already have every mission means that you’re actually making your character slightly weaker after a mission sometimes. Further, the tiles offered are randomized, and sometimes the ones you need just don’t drop, despite taking the actions that make them more likely to drop. It’s another place where the basic idea is interesting, but the actual execution ends up being more frustrating than enjoyable.
I’m not a big fan of the reel system, but I think it’s fine design-wise. Just not to my taste.
Like I said – I really wanted to like Unlimited SaGa, and I gave it more than its fair shake to grow on me. There really are a lot of neat ideas here, and there's nothing quite like it. I think a remake that fixes the interface annoyances, makes magic more available, tweaks the growth tile system in the way mentioned, and totally reworks the HP/LP system could actually be a pretty darn awesome game.