This remaster is a really good version of this game. There are quite a few quality of life changes that make the experience more streamlined and some restored and expanded content that add quite a bit to the experience.
I played the original release of SaGa Frontier when it came out on the Playstation 1, and I liked it a lot. It is a very unique RPG that does a ton of interesting things that aren't like many other (non SaGa) RPGs. SaGa Frontier doesn't come through with complete success, but it still has a lot of great stuff in it.

SF has of 8 characters to choose from, each of which has a fairly short, personal story to play through. The stories can be a bit ridiculous or lighthearted, but some have some poignant moments and fun (if campy) events. The new character added in the remaster (Fuse) adds a lot to this, since his story is actually a series of very short narratives in which he investigates each of the other characters, giving more context and depth to them.
Most of the characters also highlight a specific system (Blue is collecting all the magic in the world, T260G's quest focuses on robots and how their advancement works, Asellus does the same for Mystics), so playing through all of the chapters ends up being a tour of the world as well as a tour of the mechanics throughout the game. The human chapters seem to want to focus on each of the weapon types, but don't do a super good job of making this an actual part of the story or as mechanically necessary as the non-humans do, which is kind of a bummer.

Mechanically the game is straightforward, with most of the interest coming from how you build and set up your characters, rather than the individual battles. Learning the nuance of each of the different character types and what works best in certain situations is very rewarding. However, once you have this figured out the combat drags a bit, since you can just smash through everything with overpowered techniques.
You do have to recruit and outfit each character you want to use in every chapter and reacquire any magic you want to use, which is very tedious (especially in Fuse's case files, where he rifles through them so quickly).

The world and style of SaGa Frontier is very unique. It has a low-tech, sci-fi, magic heavy aesthetic and takes place in an open world that consists of multiple planets, each of which are different and somewhat interesting.
It is colorful and wild, with enemy designs that are often very surreal or just strange. They have a very mashed-up feel that can be somewhat off-putting, but worked well for me in this eclectic group of sci-fi worlds.

I had a lot of fun playing through SaGa Frontier again in this remaster. It delivers very well on the open world RPG experience, which is rare, even if the gameplay itself is fairly simple and straightforward. If you want a quirky, unique experience that isn't much like any other RPG you have played, SaGa frontier is worth checking out.

Reviewed on Oct 05, 2021


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