Romancing SaGa – Minstrel Song – Remastered International Review
While this blog very clearly expresses my love for and long history with turn-based JRPGs, and more specifically Square Enix turn-based JRPGs, I have never previously played a game in the Romancing SaGa series. I’ve always been aware of the franchise and how it takes its roots from The Final Fantasy Legend (1989) before splitting off into its own franchise in with the original Romancing SaGa (1992). But I’ve never personally been interested in jumping in. In fact, the only reason I even agreed to review Romancing SaGa – Minstrel Song – Remastered International (RSMRI) was because it’s a remaster of a remake of the original Romancing SaGa. If it had of been any other installment in the franchise, I probably wouldn’t have accepted the review request. Thank you to Red Art Games and Square Enix for providing the key for this review.
The thing that doesn’t get talked about enough when it comes to turn-based JRPGs is that Square Enix, on top of being probably the greatest pioneer in the establishment of the genre, is also the most innovative within the genre. The truth is that the vast majority of turn-based JRPGs are the same. Different companies may change the setting, the characters, and parts of the plot, but most of them play very similarly. The reason for this is of course risk mitigation. An indie studio can’t afford to spend years making a turn-based JRPG only for it to fail because they tried to innovate the gameplay and people hated it. This was especially true before the advent of a lot of modern development tools and internet resources that allow companies to accomplish a lot more with a lot less. Because of this, only the really successful companies with lots of resources have had the ability to experiment with the genre in numerous ways. There are actually a ton of different turn-based JRPG franchises from Square Enix. Some are super successful, and others are incredibly niche; what’s important about a great many of them is that they’re actively trying to do different things, and sometimes those things don’t work. Yet that hasn’t stopped Square Enix from allowing studios to try new things with the genre. In fact, that’s literally how Romancing SaGa came about. It was an attempt to change the Final Fantasy gameplay model.
Having not played the original Romancing SaGa, I can’t accurately review RSMRI in comparison to either the game it’s a remaster of, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (2005), or the game that game was a remake of i.e. the original Romancing SaGa. So, I have decided that I’m simply going to review RSMRI as a new game I’m playing for the first time. Other than when talking about the graphics, as this is a remaster of a PS2 game, I’m going to discuss this game with no preconceived notions about the franchise or changes it may or may not have made from its progenitor installments.
RSMRI is a turn-based JRPG that takes a very different approach to the genre in a lot of ways. I was surprised by just how far off the beaten path it really is. For instance, the game starts by having you choose one of eight different characters with different origins, classes, and skills as your main character. You’re probably thinking that sounds a lot like Octopath Traveler (2018), because it does, but apparently this concept was originally introduced by Square Enix in1992. I had no idea. Another interesting change from the genre’s core norms is leveling. There are no character levels in RSMRI. There are class levels and skill levels, and there are individual attributes, all of which can be increased through the accumulation of battle experience or purchased from vendors, but you can’t just level up your characters’ overall stats by simply grinding a specific amount of XP. In fact, the game doesn’t have XP. Not overtly anyway. Most of what you’re gaining from battling is jewels and gold, both of which can be used in different ways to improve character performance, but neither of which can simply raise all stats by increasing a general number.
Another major difference from normal genre expectations is the addition of Life Points (LP). Each character has whatever amount of HP they have, but you don’t have to manage that between battles. Every battle starts with all characters at full HP. As long as a character’s HP doesn’t reach 0 during the battle, they’ll make it through the battle unscathed and be at full HP for the next battle. Status conditions don’t carry over either. However, if a character’s HP does hit 0, that character loses 1 LP. And each subsequent hit while the character is down costs another LP. If a character’s LP hits 0, they’re permanently released from the party. This mechanic shocked me. Let me be clear, I hate this type of thing in games. I do not like being able to lose characters permanently, but I can appreciate the innovation in doing something so completely different from either Final Fantasy (1987) or Dragon Quest (1986). This is real innovation and risk taking for its time. You can’t even refill LP without visiting an inn and paying a decent amount of gold. Not a bank breaking amount, but more than you could hope to make in a single battle, even in the first area of the game. So before I even get into the nitty gritty of the review, know that if you’re looking for something different, RSMRI could be a great choice for you. On the other hand, if you’re not looking for something atypical of the rest of the genre, this is a terrible game for you to pick up.
When it comes to graphics, I think this remaster did a solid job. It’s immediately apparent that this was originally a PS2 game, but I’m not at all unhappy with how this version looks on my PS5. I’m sure some people will say it looks worse, because they smoothed out a lot of the edges, or at least that’s how it looks to me, as someone who hasn’t actually played the original PS2 version. Some of the colors look a little washed out, but I’m not sure if that’s how it always looked or is the result of the remastering process. There’s a lot of detail in this game. Like you can see labels on the bottles in taverns. You can’t read them, but you can make out the appearance of letters. Grains in the wood on the floor, walls, and tables of buildings are trying really hard to look realistic. Clothing is another aspect of the graphics RSMRI does really well. My character, Sif, has lots of little tears at the edges of her gown, because of her life as a warrior in the snowy wastes of Valhalland. It’s all rather impressive when you take the time to stop and notice it.
The menus all appear to have been redone for this version, because they don’t look aged at all. The text all looks like modern content that has been created to emulate an older version of the game. It’s very readable, but everything is a bit too jumbled together on the screen. I don’t think that’s because of the remastering process. I think the game just always had a bit too much going on in terms of information it needed to convey. The HUD is very informative, but it doesn’t feel like it was built into the game visually. Like with many RPGs, it feels like another developer designed the HUD independently and just dropped it over the game. You can toggle the out-of-battle HUD off without having to access the menu, which is really convenient. Similarly, the dialog boxes also seem like they were remade for this version of the game and given the appearance of looking older. They’re highly readable, which is a good thing, so I’m definitely not complaining.
My only real gripe about the visual experience of RSMRI is the camera. As this was originally a PS2 game, it’s limited by innate problems of the era. The camera is fixed both in and out of battle. Walking through smaller areas, like sections of towns, can get super irritating, because the camera moves, but doesn’t turn. In battle, the camera rotates around the battlefield when you’re inactive. When making choices, the camera locks to the character you’re currently choosing actions for, which I guess works, but it means you can’t look directly at the enemies while you’re making decisions, until you’ve reached the targeting portion of the process. Overall, I’m not unhappy with the graphics in this game. Given the fact that this is a remaster of a remake from literally 20 years ago, I think Square Enix did a great job here.
When it comes to audio, I consider RSMRI to be quite the impressive feat. Specifically in terms of voice acting, or really the amount of voice acting. Every single line of dialog for every single NPC is fully voiced. There are even tutorial messages that are voice acted. They spared almost no expense in trying to avoid forcing the player to read. It’s great, because it’s really immersive. Outside of cutscenes, there’s not really movement of the character’s mouths, but you do get their voices. You can also set the volume level of the voices as a separate setting from music and sound effects, both of which are also good. The original version of this game is from the heyday of Square Enix JRPGs. The sound effects are exactly what you want from the genre, and the music is more than you ever would have expected from video games if not for companies like Square Enix. This game is called Minstrel Song, because it starts with the logo character, a literal minstrel, playing an entire song as the main menu’s opening sequence. While I am not going to say that this is the best Square Enix soundtrack from that era, because FFX and Kingdom Hearts both exist, but RSMRI was definitely produced by the same publisher in the same era. There’s literally nothing negative I can say about the sound in this game.
As for the writing, I’m not a fan. More specifically, I’m unhappy with the pacing. This is a traditional JRPG set in a fantasy world where there’s kings and gods and such. I won’t say this game’s plot is particularly better or worse than the next PS2 era JRPG from Square Enix, but I will say that this game is incredibly slow. It took me nearly two hours to get the second major character, and it took me more than three hours to leave the opening area/region of the game. After I finally left that area, it took me more than an hour to get to another battle. The major problem RSMRI has in terms of story is a nearly complete lack of specific guidance. The game gives you overt clues, like “find this person” or “visit this town,” but it basically never tells you how or where to do those tasks. Additionally, there’s a lot of stuff you can miss. While there are only eight main characters, there are a total of 44 different characters that can be recruited to your party. I played for more than an hour and completed the first quest with a party of one before I realized how and where you can find new recruits. Even after I figured that out, I had played for more than five hours before recruiting the minstrel, titular character of this version of the game, even though I had spoken to the character in multiple locations multiple times. This is because the game offers you no real guidance about what you’re supposed to be doing. It has tons of tutorials to tell you how the various gameplay mechanics work, but it doesn’t help you progress the story in any meaningful way. You just have to walk around and talk to NPCs until you manage to find one worth talking to. But you also have to say the right things. There’s not a ton of dialog options, but you do have to be thorough and try them all with pretty much every NPC.
In the PS2 era, when I was in middle school/high school with no job and lots of time on my hands, I wouldn’t have minded a game with such slow pacing and lack of direction. I also would have almost inevitably bought the Prima player’s guide. So it would have been a very different scenario from what I experienced trying to play it today. But I am trying to play it today, so I’m going to judge it by today’s standards. As such, I’m not a fan of how this game goes about presenting and managing the conveyance of its story. And remember that I’ve only experienced one of eight of those stories, and not in its entirety, as I haven’t actually reached the end of the game as I write this review. I simply didn’t have enough time to complete an entire classic turn-based JRPG before the review embargo. At the very least, this game needs a blinking waypoint on the mini-map to tell the player where they should be going. That’s probably more of a gameplay problem, but it absolutely affects the experience of the story in RSMRI.
As with all multi-layered turn-based JRPGs, the gameplay isn’t as simple as the combat system. However, even the combat isn’t your standard turn-based JRPG. It’s close, but Square Enix was clearly trying to do something heavily different with the genre at the time of the original game’s release. While you do have a party, it’s up to five members, which is the most I’ve seen in a classic JRPG. Previously, the most I’d seen was four party members in the original Dragon Quest trilogy. Five party members might sound OP, but RSMRI has some serious balance issues, so that number actually isn’t too high. You can also place your party members in close, middle, or far attack formation. As has been done in several turn-based JRPGs, the distance to the target comes with both strengths and weaknesses, depending on the specific affinities each character has. The game follows the classic formula where you choose the moves for your entire team and then all your party members and all the enemies execute their moves for that turn in order, based on character speed stats. Where things differ is how you determine and manage which skills to use.
In this game, it’s not as simple as MP or AP coupled with HP. Instead, you have to manage BP (Battle Points), DP (Durability Points), and LP (Life Points), all while managing HP (Health Points) at the same time. BP determines what skills you can use in a given turn. Every weapon has a basic move that costs 0 – 1 BP, depending on your skill level with that weapon type, so you always have enough BP to make a character contribute something in a given turn. But all the other skills cost differing amounts of BP. Those costs are determined by a combination of skill level, with that particular weapon or type of magic, and a character’s general stats. In this game, there are no general character levels. Collecting XP upgrades individual stats at a seemingly random frequency, and you upgrade skill levels by spending jewels, which are a form of currency you get by battling. However, it’s not the only currency you can get from battling in this game.
BP is annoying, because you have a maximum BP, which increases as a character gets stronger over time, but you don’t start battles with full BP. You always start with somewhere between 30 and 50% of each character’s total BP. This means that even if you have unlocked great skills that would considerably change the tide of battle, you can’t actually use them until you’ve amassed enough BP, often multiple turns later. BP refills a little each turn, and the game does inform you how much each character will get at the start of the next turn. But most characters aren’t getting more than 3 BP added per turn in the early chapters of the game, while starting battles with only 6 BP. Meanwhile, there are skills you can unlock fairly early that cost 15 BP to use. That means you have to wait 3 turns, without using any above basic skills, just to get enough BP to use a move once. And most of the time we’re not talking about OP moves that are going to one-shot everything. That’s not the only type of points you have to manage when using skills either.
When you use skills other than the most basic ones, there is usually a secondary cost, in addition to BP, that characters also have to pay. DP is tied to each specific weapon, while LP is tied to each specific character. Most skills cost DP, but some cost LP instead. Again, if a character’s LP drops to 0, they are permanently removed from the party. If a weapon’s DP runs out, upper-level skills can’t be used until the weapon’s durability is restored. This can only be done by visiting an inn or a black smith. Similarly, LP can only be restored by visiting an inn. It’s not a confusing system, but it’s an annoyingly complicated one. You often find yourself unable to do the things you want to do during battle. Magic, for example, is prohibitively expensive. I almost never use it, because of the costs. The fact that the game doesn’t at least give you an increased amount of BP when you guard during a turn is pretty ridiculous, if you ask me.
Gaining new skills is an interesting system, but it’s tied to RNG and has no visible indicators of your progress towards earning new skills. Each character can hold up to four weapons at a time. You just keep using a particular weapon type with the same character until they randomly learn a new skill. I have not been able to discern any rhyme or reason behind what sets these moments off. There doesn’t seem to be any particular order to which skills unlock either. New skills just randomly become available to individual characters based on moments of inspiration, and that is what the game is going for. I’ve even unlocked new skills, which always happens in battle, reloaded the save, and then the skill didn’t unlock when fighting the exact same battle in the exact same way. I’ve also reloaded a save and ended up unlocking a different skill than previously while fighting the same battle. This system could have worked really well if RSMRI wasn’t so terribly unbalanced. You end up reloading saves so often that a lot of unlocked skills are lost in the madness of it all. You hope to regain them soon after, but that often doesn’t happen.
The lack of balance and the dynamic difficulty of enemies are my two biggest gripes with this game. One of the core tenants of a turn-based JRPG is grinding your way to domination. While this game does require grinding for multiple reasons, you never feel like you’ve reached a point of domination. Because the enemies continue to get stronger as you do, usually outpacing your party’s development. When I started the game, I had a party of one. With this one character, I went on to clear out the first wild area and completed a quest that involved three mini-boss fights. After completing that quest and adding two characters to my party, the enemies in that same area got exponentially harder. Not only did the area add new enemies, but the older enemies also got much stronger. Monsters that my solo character had been one-shotting by the end of the first quest were now taking multiple hits worth of damage and surviving. The game doesn’t show you how much HP enemies have, so it’s always a bit of a guessing when trying to determine what the best course of action is. It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s very disheartening. No matter how much you feel like you’re progressing, you never feel like the game is getting any more forgiving as a result of your hard work. Honestly, it’s not fun. This system also makes unlocking skills with non-main weapons very difficult, because you can’t afford to waste turns on ineffective attacks. I’d love to unlock more bow skills with all my characters, but the bow doesn’t do enough damage at basic level to justify wasting turns using it.
One of the things I like about character development in this game is that any character can learn/master any type of weapon or magic. They have natural affinities for certain things, but you can use crystals to upgrade any skill for any character. You can also equip any type of weapon with any character at any time. They just won’t be good with it until you’ve developed that affinity for them. Magic is similar, but slightly different in the fact that there is a clear limitation set on the use of magic. There are 10 schools of magic in RSMRI, and any character can learn any of them. However, characters cannot learn the opposing school of magic to a spell they’ve already learned. Meaning that a character who learns fire magic, or Pyrology, cannot also learn water magic spells, Hydrology. It’s not really a problem, because magic is so troublesome to learn and use in this game anyway, because of the costs both in and out of battle, but it does force the player to think carefully about the development of their party.
As far as non-combat related gameplay, this is a pretty standard JRPG from the PS2 era. The fast travel system is actually pretty good, allowing the player to freely travel between places that have already been visited and even to different buildings/locations within individual towns. You must already be within the town with the building you want to travel to though. The prices for things, like weapons and magic spells, are way too high early on. Gold just isn’t dropped in large enough numbers to justify the high cost of equipment in literally the second town of the game. Magic is similarly overpriced and won’t be used nearly as often, because of the BP costs to do so. Armor customization is solid, with seven different types of armor pieces to equip to characters. I do think the game could have a slightly better/clearer equipment comparison system, but it works well enough to get by. The game also has some solid puzzles and non-combat mechanics, but nothing revolutionary. Like pushing statues around to open doors isn’t anything new, but the way it’s done so smoothly in this game is quite impressive.
Overall, I don’t hate what Square Enix tried to do here. The level of innovation from other games in the genre at the time the original Romancing SaGa was released cannot be overstated. It is absolutely an impressive level of differentiation from Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and other turn-based JRPGs of the time. I just don’t think it works. However, I really think the major issue is the lack of balance. If the enemies were balanced to begin with and didn’t have dynamic strength, the other mechanics wouldn’t be so off-putting. I don’t like the LP system, but it wouldn’t be a huge problem if I wasn’t struggling to kill first area enemies with a party of four characters and level 3 skills. It’s appalling how much save scumming this game requires, and yes, it does require it. The tutorials literally tell you to manage your saves for this reason. You have 60 manual save slots, a quick save slot, and an auto-save slot. You can save at any time outside of battle with basically no limitations, because they knew you would be save scumming. You can even reload a save in the middle of battle, and reloading is quick on the PS5. They wanted to make sure it was easy to do, because they knew you would be doing it a lot. I’m not going to allow myself to lose one of my party members permanently, because they’re a generic recruit with only four LP, by getting my ass kicked by standard wolf enemy that’s way to OP when compared to any other turn-based RPG. A difficulty slider, a la The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, would have done wonders for this game. And there are so many gameplay settings of various types that I’m honestly surprised it doesn’t have some way to alter the difficulty. I could never get comfortable playing the game, because my party never felt like every fight wasn’t a struggle. I don’t want every fight to be a boss fight. I don’t want to have to play at the highest level of tactical thinking to kill a generic bird or spider enemy. A turn-based JRPG just isn’t supposed to work like that. So, while I can acknowledge the large amounts of innovation that went into designing the gameplay systems in RSMRI, I can’t actually give the game high points for gameplay.
This game can have all the points for replay value. Not only are there eight starting characters with their own origin stories, but there are also a total of 44 recruitable party members, and many if not most of them can be missed. There are 10 schools of magic, several different types of weapons, and I’m not even sure how many classes, all of which can be applied to whatever characters you choose. If you like playing the game, you will absolutely be able to get your money’s worth and then a lot more. In general, I don’t really replay RPGs, but there are definitely multiple reasons to justify replaying this one multiple times.
Overall, Romancing SaGa – Minstrel Song – Remastered International seems like a great remaster. Even though I didn’t play the original version nor the game that original version was a remake of, I can tell that this version is true to form with some added modern benefits. The ease of reloading saves being one of the best examples. However, I can’t say this is a good game. Or rather, I can’t say that it’s an entertaining one. I don’t enjoy playing this game, because it’s just too prohibitive in its design. The game doesn’t want the player to feel powerful. It doesn’t want the player to be able to take advantage of all the tools it has at the same time. It’s a constant struggle with no clear light at the end of the tunnel to shoot for, and that, in my opinion, is not great game design. While I can endorse fans of the franchise buying this game, I can’t encourage people who aren’t already fans of Romancing SaGa to buy this installment.
