A new venue for SaGa's opaque weirdness
I like to play a little guessing game with Square Enix properties: while the company mines the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest brands, which of its other classic franchises have been abandoned? The best sign of a derelict brand is watching for what appears on Wii's Virtual Console. Square is miserly corporate entity that lives to squeeze every last cent from any property it deems viable, so when it shovels out a classic for 800 Wii Points instead of repackaging it as a $40 DS remake, you can sure that series is moribund. Secret of Mana showed up on Virtual Console in the wake of the Mana series' pitiful showing in 2007, while Chrono Trigger got a full-on DS remake. ActRaiser? Toast. Star Ocean? Still kicking. King's Knight? Dead and buried.
But there's been one major Square Enix franchise left unaccounted for over the past few years: SaGa. The SaGa games aren't quite the black sheep of the Square roster, but they're definitely the weird uncle that makes everyone slightly uncomfortable at family gatherings. A distant cousin of the Final Fantasy games, SaGa got its start on Game Boy as a sort of derivative work based on the oddballFinal Fantasy II. In the U.S., Square even branded the first three games, Makaitoshi SaGa, as "Final Fantasy Legend." But the bloodlines have grown thin, and SaGa bears zero resemblance to its distant relative these days. I thought I saw its spirit in last year's The Last Remnant, which I took to be a rebranding of the SaGa series. Meaning SaGa was done for after the thudding failure of Unlimited Saga and Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, right?
But no! The latest issue of Shounen Jump magazine (whose scans professional courtesy forbid me from posting myself) features the debut showing of a full-on remake of Makaitoushi SaGa 2, known in the U.S. as Final Fantasy Legend II.
Fear and trepidation among the U.S. gaming set no doubt swiftly ensued.
But is that really fair? The SaGa series' iconoclastic design and deliberately opaque mechanics can be a tough pill to swallow, and the franchise has been slow to catch on in the U.S. Most American RPG fans associate the game with 1998's SaGa Frontier, which they eagerly bought thinking, "Wow! A new RPG from the creators of Final Fantasy VII!" And what a hilarious surprise they were in for!
Yet the same elements that make SaGa games so horrifying to those whose baptism into RPG fandom was Final Fantasy are the same qualities that make the series stand out in an increasingly stagnant genre. SaGa draws equally from three diverse inspirations: other Japanese RPGs, Western role-playing concepts -- computer and otherwise -- and creator Akitoshi Kawazu's sheer cussedness. The SaGa games tend to be fairly open and flexible, and they also have a habit of not holding players by the hand: they're full of unique systems and rules that are best learned through experimentation. They're not for everyone, but I've grown to appreciate them more in recent years as other JRPGs, like the Tales franchise, grow increasingly tedious and stagnant.
In any case, all RPG fans should be excited about the prospect of a SaGa II remake: by many accounts, it's the best game in the franchise, despite its humble Game Boy origins. Certainly the game still commands a healthy price both here and abroad -- I was stunned recently to discover that a complete copy of the game costs $40-50 in Japan, where old Game Boy titles are a dime (or rather, ¥100) a dozen. And this is a far more ambitious remake than Chrono Trigger saw; the Jump scans show a full-on 3D game that looks to be running on the same tech as Final Fantasy IV for DS -- or possibly the Ring of Fates engine, given what appears to be real-time exploration in a fairly sweeping vista.
What won't be changing is the game's cool class system, which allowed players to build a party of humans (melee fighters), mutants (mages), robots (powerful but subject to unique limitations), and monsters (chimerical and unpredictable). The Jump teaser features a gorgeous piece of artwork showing off all of SaGa II's classes -- surprisingly drawn by The World Ends With You's Gen Kobayashi, although you wouldn't know it for the lack of anorexia and superfluous belt buckles on display.
While I'm growing a little weary of remade RPGs, I'm definitely excited about this one. I made a commitment to myself a while back to play through the entire SaGa series, and Final Fantasy Legend II was next on my list. I can definitely wait a little longer, as a U.S. release for a DS game that looks this good is practically assured.
O jogo está lindo a nivel grafico 
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