saga frontier: the remaster

Before I get into SaGa Frontier, there's something I've wanted to talk about for a while in regards to the current state of the games industry. It's been an issue for some time now, but it's really been ramping up over the last few years.

Rereleases. Remasters. Remakes. As far as mainstream AAA video games go, it feels like every other game being released this year is something we've already played before, but with a fresh coat of paint. There's a remake of The Last of Us coming out, despite that fact there already is a PS4 version available right now. Why is there a remake of Spider-Man PS4? Spider-Man came out in 2018! Not only is that such a stupid idea to remake something a few years old, the remake looks worse, despite being better hardware! In fact, a lot of these games look worse. Spider-Man, Mass Effect, Demon's Souls. Games that really didn't need a remake in the first place, getting a fucked up Mickey Rourke facelift and shoved into the hands of the general public, who have been conditioned that the future of games is its recent past. I remember thinking, years back, that too many sequels were suffocating to the medium. Sequel-itis seems preferable to this, as at least we're getting a new end product. I am chomping at the bit for Resident Evil 8, to the point of pre-purchasing the game (helped that the pre-purchase price was $10 less than if I had bought it normally), and even if the game turns out to be bad, it's still better than the fucking nightmare that would be a potential Resident Evil 4 remake. Resident Evil 4 does not need a remake! Leave it alone!

Of course, not to say that every remake or remaster is bad. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 was fantastic. The Yakuza Collection was worth it for reintroducing content cut from the US version of Yakuza 3. The Switch release of Baroque is a second chance for a little-known game in a niche genre, assuming that Sting will ever release it outside of Japan, and they fucking better. Hell, I recently spent an awful lot of words talking about how great the PC-Engine remake of Tower of Druaga is, and made a few mentions of the Resident Evil remake. If it's done sparingly, or for something that should have been better received than it was, remaking something can be great.

That leads to the focus of today's post: SaGa Frontier Remastered. This is the perfect example of a game being remade/remastered/whatever. A second chance for a game that was demolished in the gaming press (Western press, naturally) at the time, was released unfinished, and didn't reach the fond memories that so many other Squaresoft games on the Playstation did. SaGa Frontier was a game that I hadn't spent much time with over the years, mostly due to its reputation of being a bad game. In the subsequent decades since, I've learned to love the SaGa games (Final Fantasy Legend 2 being a particular favorite), and a remaster of another one of its entries that included characters and quests that had been cut from the original game got my interest. As far as the "remaster" part goes, it's pretty great. The prerendered backgrounds have been AI enhanced, there's a number of quality of life changes that can be turned on or off (I turn them off because I am America's Most Important Gamer), and the best thing, a cryptic hint system that nudges you in the direction you need to go rather than leaving you to wander around for hours.

Yes, SaGa Frontier is an extremely open world game. There are seven scenarios to pick from (including a hidden eighth one), each having a different degree of linearity. Some will lead down a straight line for a majority of time, and others will let you explore the entire world at once, leaving you to figure out how you want to take things.

Anyways. That's it for the "is this a good remaster?" part. If you've already played SaGa Frontier, you want to get this.

SaGa Frontier is a great game. SaGa Frontier is a game about watching numbers go up, in its own weird, anti-RPG way. Listen to an internet radio show (sorry, but I fucking hate the word "podcast," despite being a co-host of two of them) or an ASMR video while you do some stat grinding. It's great, because it is an RPG that does not give a fuck. There's no overarching theme. There's no coming together to fight a Big Evil at the end. There are eight characters, all vastly different from one another, who have their own shit to deal with. And when that shit is done? Their story is over, roll credits. No long, elaborate cutscenes or extra-long dialogue to sit through. No lengthy exposition, which is both good and bad. Good in that there's less cruft, and everything moves much more smoothly. Bad in that maybe characters don't get as much personality as their peers in other RPGs do. I feel like the main characters get just enough time to show enough personality to keep you interested, but maybe they could have stood to get a little more time. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. The main character of SaGa Frontier is the world that everyone inhabits, the playable characters are bit players in showcasing this gorgeous and strange mirror to our own world, much like you and I being bit players on Earth.

I think that's what I like the most out of SaGa Frontier on a narrative level. It's not as if the characters are boring or anything. You have a Tokusatsu hero, a robot with amnesia, a shapeshifting monster, a woman brought back to life as a kinda sorta vampire, a gifted magician, a super-model turned underground thief who at one point goes undercover as a pro wrestler to infiltrate a martial arts tournament, a slacker musician recently kicked out of his mom's house, and a member of an elite detective force. Those are all extremely interesting characters, who do get to show off some of their personality. But at the same time, they are all focused on their own individual goals, while the world keeps on going. Why is there a biological laboratory where all of the scientists have turned into hideous monsters? I don't give a fuck, I have to get revenge on the man who framed me for murder. There's a town where everyone is a fortune teller or a magic salesman. Great, but I'm a robot who cannot learn magic, and I need to figure out what my prime directive is. Why are the furthest reaches of outer space a surrealist landscape where everything is made out of sweets? Doesn't matter, I need to learn more types of magic so that I can kill my brother in a preordained duel.

The narrative structure is a bit true to life that way. There's all sorts of weird, fucked up shit happening in the real world, but we're all focused on our own lives. Going to work, going to school, maintaining a relationship, raising a family, sitting in a dark room and jerking off to internet porn, all sorts of things. It's not that we don't care about the evils of the world, but there's not really a whole lot we can do about it, unfortunately; you can't just cut the president's head off with a Samurai sword, or suplex the concept of white supremacy.

I like that SaGa Frontier is this thing that managed to be both grounded in reality, and completely out there. It's a world of magic and monsters, robots and spaceships. There's a real life super-hero running around while people make ends meet in a very obvious allegory of Kowloon's Walled City. There's a robot, a martial arts master, and a vampire wandering around a city literally called Manhattan, while regular folks relax in a large shopping mall. This really cool blend of the outlandish and the mundane that, frankly, pulls it off better than Final Fantasy XV did. I got this game a week ago, and in that time, I grew so resentful of the publications that told me to avoid it at all costs

SaGa Frontier is this amazing game that appeals best to weirdos and artists. Genre conventions are out the window, and in its place is a surrealist adventure that makes sense on its own terms, not yours. Even with the remaster's user-friendly additions, SaGa Frontier remains this wild animal of a video game, bouncing off the walls and talking a mile a minute. Like other games I've brought up, like Tower of Druaga and Genpei Toumaden, SaGa Frontier is a game that has long since been blown open, with all of its secrets displayed to the world. We all know how to exploit a glitch that gives you infinite money, and we know how to get an unlimited supply of weapons and items from a particular shop. We know which characters can be recruited, what skills they possess, and who they work well with. This remaster puts back all of the missing content. Despite all of this, like Druaga and GT, there still remains this aura of mystery, like there's still more to be discovered. This is what I love about video games. I love games like this, that do interesting stuff that can only be done in this medium. Movies can't do this. Books can't do this. Music can't do this. Only games can do this. To tie this back to my point at the beginning of this post, I would rather have a market flooded with games like SaGa Frontier, than the murky sea of selling me the same tired ass "prestige" bull shit that I didn't play from 2-10 years ago. I don't need, nor do I want, Billion Dollar Crunch Culture HD Remake Exclusively On Playstation 5. Give me cheaper, weirder shit that isn't interested in meaningless awards or the praise of some dickhead who already hates the Japanese anyway. Give me more games with a soul.