Did Romancing SaGa 3 have a chance?

by H. Clower

Flashback: The year is 1995. Chrono Trigger makes a big splash, and fans all over the internet clamor for more Japanese RPGs to be translated. On top of their lists are three titles: Seiken Densetsu 3, Final Fantasy V, and Romancing SaGa 3.

Flashforward: The year is 1998, and it's late springtime. Having finished Final Fantasy Tactics, Square fans turn to another recently-released RPG, by the name of SaGa Frontier- causing an immediate negative reaction among the general gaming community.

The bottom line about SaGa Frontier was that the game simply wasn't that popular. While it has won some fans in the US, including myself, the majority of people who played it didn't like it. Recently, I had a rare oppurtunity to play Romancing SaGa 3, the very same game which was not translated so long ago. Comparing the two very similar games, I can't help but wonder: had it been translated, would Romancing SaGa 3 have had a chance at sucess?

One of the major factors which I feel really turned people off to SaGa Frontier was the extreme nonlinearity of it. While nonlinearity in and of itself is not a bad thing, the addition of the seven different quests of SaGa fronter which followed mostly different routes with little or no direction as to what to do next is very overwhelming at first. Although Romancing SaGa 3 featured eight different characters, their quests only deviate at the beginning as far as I know. Because most of the steps involved in completing any given quest were used in all eight quests, there were no problems- as there are in SaGa Frontier- of fighting through a two-hour long dungeon only to find an empty room with a pivotal role in another quest. Furthermore, Romancing SaGa 3 featured an "Objective" feature in the game which would tell you what your next major goal in the quest was. Together, these two factors at least partially resolve this issue- while still nonlinear, RS3 is at least kept at a non-overwhelming level.

Another common complaint about SaGa Frontier is the game's poor battle graphics. Even as a fan of the game, I must admit that the battle graphics are definitely the low point- they're pixellated, the ones that are hand-drawn have very few frames and thus are poorly-animated while the ones that are computer-generated look incredibly out-of-place next to the hand-drawn characters and backgrounds. I am proud to say, however, that Romancing SaGa 3 is probably one of the most graphically impressive 16-bit games I've played. The characters and enemies are all well-drawn and animated, the techniques and spells, while not Chrono Trigger-level, are passable, and the backdrops are all well-drawn as well.

A third major complaint about SaGa Frontier is the lack of any real plot in the game- unfortunatley, due to the fact that I do not know Japanese, I cannot respond to this in regards to RS3. I feel that it is fair to assume, however, that RS3, like SaGa Frontier, features little or no development of the supporting cast.

Romancing SaGa 3 lacks, as I have stated, several of the main factors which I feel contributed to SaGa Frontier's unpopularity. The unfortunate conclusion which I have come to is that were it translated, Romancing SaGa 3 would have been a fairly popular game- but alas, we in the US can only hope that Square will eventually make and translate a Romancing SaGa Collection.