HP Review
by Emily Schneider
No love lost
- Graphics: 5/10
- Sound: 5/10
- Gameplay: 2/10
- Replay Value: 1/10
- Overall: 3/10
The Short Bark:
Romancing Saga is a disappointingly poor excuse for a role-playing game. From the lackluster story to the mediocre graphics and awful voice acting, there are no saving graces for this game. It's just not fun.
The Full Bite:
Being one of my favorite genres of gaming, I've played a lot of role-playing games and Romancing Saga is one of the worst. When I think RPG, I think story. Most people who like RPG's are usually not playing them for the random battles. Hell, unless I actually feel like leveling up, I'll avoid encounters if given the option. I find the main draw of a role playing game to be the story and Romancing Saga is almost completely lacking in that department.
The narrative goes something like this - three evil gods decided to wage a war against the good gods, including the lord of all the gods, Elore. By the end of the fighting, two of the evil gods were stripped of their powers. However, the third evil god, Saruin, almost succeeded in defeating Elore, but was thwarted when the lord of gods used the Fatestones to seal away and imprison Saruin.
Now fast forward a thousand years to where the game begins: Saruin is about to break out of his magical prison to spread evil and misery around the world of Mardias and its people. That's pretty much all you get for a story in Romancing Saga and the sad part about it is that you could read most of that in story blurb from the instruction booklet.
Originally, when I first picked up the game to review, I thought it was neat that you had the ability to choose from eight different main characters, which come from different backgrounds and regions of Mardia. However, when actually playing the game, you'll find that they are all equally boring with no depth to their character. At times, the main character you have chosen will run into other main characters that can even join your party, but the events of the "story" will still focus on your chosen character.
Romancing Saga attempts to steer clear of a linear story-telling path and goes for a completely open-ended method. This is what really made the game torture to play. In theory, giving players the ability to choose their own paths and create their own story sounds like a good idea, but the execution just isn't there. I spent most of my time in Mardia pointlessly walking around, fighting random battles in a basic battle system and moving from town to town with no direction of what to do next.
The game is progressed mainly through doing side quests. I've never been all that into side quests unless it helped round out the story. Therefore, a game that is made up of all side quests, mostly involving fetching items or clearing out some monsters, which hardly ever help explain more of the story, is excruciatingly painful to play. Another frustrating aspect of the game is that sometimes certain skills are required to complete a quest, which may not be made known to the player until halfway through a quest. Additionally, there is a time limit on some of the quests, meaning they can not be played for the rest of the game if the window of opportunity closes.
Romancing Saga is a disappointingly poor excuse for a role-playing game. From the lackluster story to the mediocre graphics and awful voice acting, there are no saving graces for this game. It's just not fun.
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