So I played SaGa Frontier...

... it was quick and pointless.

My long begotten friend-neighbor introduced me to the SaGa franchise. He bought both games, so I dabbled with them once upon a time. I didn't get far for a number of reasons. Some stories need esoteric knowledge of where to go, and others have tough boss battles that block advancement. And I was a dumb eleven-year-old! But I vaguely remember I tried SF1 again during my dark ages. Again, though, I didn't get very far for the same reasons. But will that change in 2025?

No.

I tried to play at least one scenario this week, and I quickly got bored. Aesellus's story starts slowly, with a lot of backtracking and unexplained ways to get out of Transylvania, starts to ramp up about a mermaid for some reason, and then becomes Dragon Quest VI's aimless walkabout. I looked up a walkthrough and saw a bunch of places to go, none of which had obvious reasons as to why. So I could live in an open world game for no reason, but I hate the battle system.

Between the random stat gains, random skill learns, random equipment slots, excessive characters, and lack of enemy variety let alone difficulty, I'm bored.

SaGa Frontier doesn't come off as a good game to me. I read into some of the characters, and they seem very interesting. Aesellis, for example, has three endings! I'd love to see them, but I'm not going through it. Maybe if they all came together in the end for something, but nope!

As a quick pass through...:

Plot: maybe interesting. The characters have deep and meaningful arcs and backstories, but I don't like how it's played out. 7/10

Gameplay: absolutely garbage. It's all convoluted and confusing. It's not fun for me in any way. But it's a first for my review... 0/10

Sound: the draw. While I didn't hear much while playing, Square Enix has been slowly uploading the OST to YouTube. It's pretty good! 10/10

Art: mixed. There are a lot of doors and paths that I got lost searching for. But there are plenty of cool backgrounds and colorful locations. Enemy variety needs work, though... 6/10

Charm: ...whatever. Maybe it's a cool world? Maybe exploration is rad? 4/10

Add in the two awful mechanics, and the loadings screens have loading screens for a -6, and SaGa Frontier gets a low 21/50.

Unlimited SaGa was the first game I ever returned because I thought it sucked. Frontier is another game I'm quitting on hella early. I think the SaGa franchise isn't for me, so I'm gonna move on. What a bland week.