as a long time fan of the SaGa Series, this is mostly what i wanted. SaGa is a series of, to varying degrees, mechanically experimental and dense games and has really leaned into this fact (arguably too hard at first) starting with 2003's Unlimited SaGa with presentation being left, to varying degrees, as a noticeably secondary priority. That said with all the soilid remasters the series has been getting since 2017 this rather cheap looking 'for the fans and arguably no one else' new entry in the series doesn't feel like a good sign for the series future. then again after Unlimited SaGa, it may have taken 16 years, but we eventually got a new game.

>has it always been this bad? You played SaGa Frontier. You know it hasn't. It's always been jank, but it's only starting with Unlimited SaGa that they decided they wanted to make games that feel more like board games than RPGs. Scarlet Grace is about the same as this visually.

Oh bud. SaGa is all over. Pick up Unlimited SaGa if you get the chance. It makes Emerald Beyond look normal. Then pick up Romancing SaGa on the PS2 (or the recent remake.) SaGa is the series that Sqaure experiments with. And I mean that in the sense that people mean when they go to college.

Wow, the graphics looks single developer porn game level.

Legend of Legaia was pretty goated for its days. Both the overworld and the battle system.

As a person who has played SaGa games before, I have played both SaGa Frontier II and Unlimited Saga. Knowing the series history doesn't surprise me with how Emerald Beyond looks. Limited budget and developers likely. SaGa may be Final Fantasy's younger sister series, but it does NOT receive the same treatment whatsoever when it comes to budget and marketing. It is kind of depressing for me to realize I did not see any ads for this game until I stumbled on your video. Square Enix has a pretty bad trend of failing to advertise their other IPs outside of FF since COVID.

I dig that werewolf model. As an observer, I feel like if they gave the visual novel aspects the same polish as combat, it'd be much more appealing. 😅

im addicted to the battlesystem. its always a race to the next confict. I dont know whu but game feels like your playing Darksouls with a card system.

I think what you are missing is that this is a niche game made with a budget to be profitable. Thus incredible depth in everything it does well (which is a lot), shallow and basic in everything else.

I really like SaGa series so this was a nicely review from a more non-biased opinion. I think I agree pretty much on what you said on the graphics and models/maps, my only advice is that people enjoy SaGa for the battles. Everything else is a side-dish that serves to just accompany the gameplay in battles. SaGa is not for everyone but because you did love the battles in this demo, you might as well take a look at the other games in the franchise. If anything you will maybe (If not that is fine too) get to appreciate why this series has endured so many years with minimal support from Square-Enix and from the west (In Japan it is considered a classic).

Dang this was the opposite of the first demo review i looked at.

If SaGa just got some investment for presentation and writing they could make some amazing games. I play SaGa for the combat. The narratives in each world this go around are actually vastly improved over Scarlet Grace's regions (the SaGa before this one) funny enough. I love that a challenging JRPG series with tons of build variety and unique progression still exists in this world and I'm hopelessly clinging to it. One day maybe they'll have an actual world and cutscenes to go along with the amazing combat. Or if they keep making them look like this, I will be one of the dozens in the West playing them :)

You pretty much nailed it on the head with the combat being amazing. That really is the focus of this and scarlet grace. But really... The combat is 10000% worth it. I played the PS5 demo with had a different character and story. But I'm guessing there's an optional Brutal difficulty fight in this one as well. Give that a shot.

I really loved SaGa Scarlet Grace, and maybe it's because of that, but the dialogue and still images as well as character models... are fine to me. I actually like them because they look more stylized than in Scarlet Grace. But I can see this all being jarring to someone who didn't play/enjoy the last game. I thought they felt cheap at first but I grew to like them and to like the characters themselves as I used them on combat. The combat rules and is the main draw to me, and I love the diversity in experiences between playthroughs, even with the same characters. I don't think it would be as digestable with a bigger budget visual setup. There's a TON of dialogue and choices made both intentionally and not. The map looks like a popup book to me, which I think was cool in Scarlet Grace, and I'm actually glad is back here. I can't imagine the tedium of going from town to town on a massive open world map like the recent Final Fantasies. That would suck. It seems like you liked the actual gameplay, but maybe it's just me, but I like the random aesthetics and popup book look of the map. Things are streamlined to get to the good stuff.It isn't even remotely a standard RPG experience and it isn't trying to be. It's focused on what SaGa is good at without filler. To answer your question, as weird as it sounds... it IS what I want as a SaGa fan.

if you play SaGa Scarlet Grace it will make sense. That was my first SaGa game so I knew what to expect with this

i have not tried the demo yet, but if its anything like saga scarlet grace, then I'll probably love it. but yeah, it feels like square isn't willing to give the team a proper budget, but I'll take what i can get 🤣

I personally don't mind the bad presentation, if anything I prefer it because I will be able to play in my shitty laptop, I personally understand the criticize, but I either don't mind of even prefer that way, for me gameplay is king,and if it's good that's all that matters. SaGa scarlet grace was like that, so yes that's what I wanted lol. Also most android and IOS device are more powerful than the switch, lol. The switch hardware is pretty much a 2017, I think it was primary made for the switch in mind and they ported for IOS and android because they could.

It is very much like SaGa Scarlet which was a well received enough to green light this game.

Yeah I sort of having similar thoughts with this. I played the Switch version, which let me play as a girl who turns into like a Witch, who's caught in having to win her magical exams and act like a Super-hero, and her stuff involved collecting cats. And yeah, while I did sort of have fun with the combat, the rest of the gameplay loop of going through the overworld to talk to NPCs, collect things and occasionally have a chance to fight, as well as the odd-character designs, visual novel cutscenes, voice acting that felt kinda off. It kinda made this both a weird and sort of flat experience. Ngl, at times I felt bored at times, waiting for the battles. I didn't find the beginning portions of her story that intriguing, especially when you get to that "Flash by the early 2000s" area. I get that this is definitely one of those mid-budget tier Square Enix games and the whole aspect of it releasing on Mobile alongside consoles doesn't help either, something we had a sheer abudance of, 2 years ago with only a few showing some quality in general, and I know two people on Twitter that really hyped this up. Can it get better with the full game, maybe? But this gameplay from the demo doesn't leave me with full confidence But yeah, this isn't it, for a $50 dollar game, best get it on sale. I honestly and personally am looking forward to the new Visions of Mana game instead as that looks to be far more amazing and has lot more quality, effort and care put into that, than this game.

You must be one of those players who thinks Europa Universalis 3 isn’t worth 50€ because it has almost no graphics or presentation. Hope you can eventually expand your gaming horizon.

2:41 HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

I'm a long time SaGa fan I have been playing them since Final Fantasy Legend 2 on GB and have played all but Unlimited SaGa (I have the disc but haven't got around to it). SaGa games have historically been very dense mechanically and much harder then mainstream RPGs. They tend to not explain these mechanics very well so it has left the series behind in the west. In Japan the Series tends to do pretty well. This brings us to Unlimited SaGa and what I would call the down fall of the series. This game sold low in japan and abysmally in the west. This basically lead the series to be dormant for 10 year until they made SaGa Scarlett Grace. This is a Vita game and what seems to be the engine for Emerald Beyond. Scarlett Grace also sold worse then Unlimited SaGa. I'm shocked we ever got a translation. Two years later( 3, 1/2 years for the west) we got what I would consider the best SaGa game Romancing SaGa Re;UniverSe. It's a gacha, but hear me out. It's the most generous F2P mobile game I've ever played in part because the game was made to promote the SaGa series and getting you to buy the older titles and not specifically to get you to buy currency. It's story is fun, and the combat and hard challenges are amazing. The game does amazingly well in Japan and Taiwan. With the west still doing decent numbers. Its been around for 5 years and avoided all the other SE gacha shutdowns and I expect it to be around at least another 2 years. I'd say its the big reason we got Emerald Beyond. Emerald Beyond seems to not have a budget because of how well the last couple new titles have done. I would speculate that the series Director pitched the game as relatively cheap to make by using an already made engine and refining the combat. While implementing ideas from the whole series and the great art styles of the gacha. This is a game for the fans. I hope it does well because I love the SaGa series and its so refreshing to play games that take risks and is so different then everything else you expect. Edit: added a word.

wasnt invested in the glimpse of dialog. moving around...if you can call it that felt boring. Combat was fun. Artstyle wasnt for me. not a day one...maybe someday as the Visual Novel style per se would be great for my steam deck

I believe Saga Scarlet grace ambitions, and Unlimited Saga has character portraits with dialogue too, and Unlimited Saga world map looks like a gameboard, so I see simularities with that, although I agree that some of the Npc's look very weak.

You like the combat but dislike the game because of the graphics and art style?... Uh ok bro u do u

Not all SaGa games are like this, but either way...I'll buy it because the reasons people play these games aren't for great NPC graphics or wonderful maps.

These NPCS look like the ones from PSO NGS.

It looks like Scarlet Grace and I could not get into that game either. I'll stick to the earlier Saga games, there's enough depth there to last me a while anyway.

you don't want me to share my thoughts on your video...

I've always thought the SaGa series has been weird, it's too experimental for its own good lol. Great review dude, I'll be skipping this game probably 😅

And they charge $69.90 for this (in my region anyways).

I think you didn't like many of art/design in this game. For me, I don't really feels bother with this art and the different graphic on different world is cool imo. Like in Spiderman: into spiderverse movie.

A few things to note. * SaGa has always been a AA franchise, not AAA. * Yes, it's being developed for iOS/Android as well, as Japan has a big mobile market. * Every SaGa game has looked like crap graphically, this isn't anything new for the franchise. * The last SaGa game (that wasn't a remake) that had actual normal exploration of towns and areas was SaGa Frontier 2 on the PS1, if that tells you how long it's been since a new game in the franchise had that. * The PC demo only lets you try out Diva. Switch demo lets you try out Ameya (which eases you in properly with an even mix of story and combat), and PS4/PS5 demo lets you try out Mido (throws you into the action almost immediately).

I had very low expectations from this game when it was first announced, I've played older games from the series like Unlimited Saga and Romancing Saga Minstrel Song and both have the same issues as this one, great battle system, terrible at everything else, especially exploration

Pretty Sure, Legend of Legaia looks, has a better story, and plays way better than this game could ever hope to be. Saga has always been a series of gutting an RPG of everything but the bare minimum. To me, this looks like Square's first romp into an AI made game, as it actually looks worse made than the other saga games that were already awful. But as usual the music is awesome, I swear music is pretty much carrying Square games for the most part nowadays.

It looks and feels kinda janky. And the Switch demo’s story was about a young witch girl who has to collect cats to get her magic back. It was the weirdest thing I don’t want anyone I work with to know I play. 😂 And it came together as the most pieced together mess that I somehow enjoyed. No idea if I’ll hang on long, but I want more cats. I want all the cats! No, the game’s mess is not what I want, but as something I wasn’t asking for, it was weird enough to intrigue me.

sorry but this game just looks weird and doesn't appeal to me

looks IA images

Do yourselves a favour and buy Eiyuden Chronicles instead. 😊

man, this looks awful lol

People in the comments talking like experimentation is the same as being lazy with the art of the game. This is not some abstract art, guys, it is just cheaply made. Not enough care given to make a polished product.

Square publishes way to many mediocre games with a few banger games. Idk why they can’t hold more of the games to a higher standard

Imagine paying for this shovelware. $70 for garbage. Console plebs will lick it up, but they have some balls listing this on Steam. I guess the weebs will squawk about how amazing this is to make themselves feel better.