Customer Reviews

Unlimited Saga

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(29)

 

 

I have to admitt, I was very nervous about trying out this game because of how much people seemed to hate it with a passion. This game is NOT garbage, but still is a piece of art that perhaps needed more work done to it.

First of all, I thought the music was gorgeous and the watercolor type graphics were amazing. I couldn't help but drop my jaw when I saw some of the movie sequences when the bright colors filled the screen. Character expressions were grand and the voices were done quite well. However, most of the game was not done like this. You saw only a picture, (still beautiful) of the towns and characters. You got little to no choices of where to move. When you entered the a town, you never explored it, talked to random NPCs, instead you looked at a picture of the place and selected areas of the town to enter.

The battles were quite fun, but I wish I could've been able to cure myself. The monsters and battle animations were done well also. However, you can't escape from battle which makes me almost irrate at times when I get into too many battles.
You get to choose which character you are, and the story is different for each. This is a great quality.

When you move around a dungeon, your character looks like a silver chest piece and you lift the piece to move onward on a single colored maze. In the corner of the screen is a drawn picture of what the place "would look like"

I say that it seemed to be cut short, because every intention of the game was wonderful. The ability to choose your hero, the graphics, music, and even some aspects of the battle system were good. However, I felt trapped in the game world, (not in a good way) because I was unable to explore the world more, and save myself from battles by escaping or curing. I don't want this to sound too harsh, but it was like being in a large prison. You couldn't explore beyond the maze of prison bars, despite how nice it seemed inside. I wanted so much more from this game, but it just didn't have it.

I do respect the attempt, and what it really does have to offer. Rent before buying. But still, give it a look.

This game gets awful reviews. I won't even deny that they make wonderful arguements. This game is not flawed; this is a misconception. U-Saga is exactly what the creator wanted it to be. And if you surrender your expectations and the vapid conventions of modern gaming, you're in for an experience.

Most games these days promise an adventure. U-Saga is the one of the only games I have played to fulfill this promise. This game is truly epic in scope, in style; its mercilessness and steep, harshly realistic learning curve only add to the fact that you are truly an explorer going into the unknown parts of the world, that are very reluctant to be explored. I cant tell you how satisfying it is, even the smallest achievement in this game makes you pleased with yourself.

I'm not going to write an entire review about this game, but the one thing I'll tell you is that this game is really a visionary's Dungeons & Dragons, set in a more macabre and unique fantasy world. The reel functions like dice; it affects each of your attacks and also determines your success at disarming traps, repairing weapons, opening doors, crossing obstacles, and so on and so forth. This sounds weird, yes. It is. But you must play it to believe exactly how AMAZING it is go through the beautifully-illustrated island of Avalon (one of the longer missions in the game)and not only fight enemies, but be forced to conquer a true maze with traps, hidden chests, water obstructions, and more.

In short, do try this game, if you are or were ever interested. It is a work of art. Many games have called themselves 'experiences,' but mainly in their immersive storyline. UNLIMITED: SaGa is perhaps the only game that has ever been an immersive experience of pure, bare-faced gameplay.

I love it.

I bought this game a while ago, when it was at list price, played it after playing several other RPG's, and was stunned,,, but not in a good way. I gave up after about 4 hours of play and decided I wasn't getting it. I tried again a month later and lasted 10 hours, still thought that there might be something that I didn't understand. My last try was about 15 hours, and I can state unequivocally that there is nothing to get. This is not a good game, not even a mediocre one, for that matter.

Perhaps the single most glaring flaw is the non-existent animation. Outside of some cut scenes and so-so battle action this is in what Square Enix calls "sketch motion" which means - no motion at all. So help me, one character's sketch appears with a balloon of text, then another, then... Throw in a barebones mapping facility that does the travel and you have the entire art effort. This isn't a game, it's a prototype for one.

The battle system is almost as bad. You have to set up all your characters' moves ahead of time, one painstaking button press at a time. Then, when the action actually starts you have to hit a button while a battle wheel spins. Most of your opponents actually die of boredom.

The story line is doled out in bite-sized bits but what I've seen is pretty run of the mill. Playing Unlimited Saga is actually painful, as you follow a set of meaningless actions using a game structure that was out of style in 1995. the best I can say about is that Square Enix must have cancelled the game before the animation, and has published it to try to recoup their investment.

Unless you collect total failures, pass this one by.

As much as Squaresoft's Final Fantasy X was quite possibly the best RPG title ever released in recent memory, Unlimited Saga left me scratching my head and wondering what happened to the production and planning committee that put this game together. Lets look at the graphics. There are limited cut sceens and FMVs and little if any, character animation. If I didn't know it was for a PS2 machine, I would have sworn that the game was produced for the PS1. The graphics aren't bad, but considering the power of the PS2, these graphics are way under par with present day standards. All the art is two-dimensional in nature. Basic game play centers on moving your character from place to place on a world map. You and your party do not walk anywhere, you merely jump from map location to map location. When arriving at a destination, you are presented with another map where you also , move from place to place.

Typical of all RPGs, your chracters gain skills and abilities as you continue through the game. The battle system is pretty straight forward with an element of chance. Upon the start of a battle, spining circles appear and you have the chance to bring mulitple attacks on the enemy, depending on where you stop the wheels. Your characters do not accumulate experience points as with standard RPGs but instead, you try to protect your characters from losing their LP, or Life Points. You finish each adventure by completing an assignment without losing all your LP.
There are seven characters in the game and each one has his or her specific adventure. So in reality, you have seven games in one. Each character has their own story line and specific powers. The weapons for each character have a specific usable lifespan. The more points the weapons have, the longer it will last. The weapons stop working when their durability is all used up. While the weapons are powerful, they do not last forever. You have to make sure that the weapons are only used for the really difficult monsters. During the other times, you can usually defeat the other baddies by using kicks, punches and throws.

How fun is this game? Speaking personally, I do not think the game is that entertaining. There is a lot of repetition in the battles and the story lines are very weak. Basically the game can be broken down in these steps: Move, fight or stop, find new place, move, fight or stop, upgrade weapons/abilities. There is not very much to do outside of these steps. In summary, a pretty disappointing game. With all the great games that SquareSoft has produced over the years, I guess they are allowed a mistake every so often. I believe that Unlimited Saga is one of them.

I was originally appealed by this game by the vibrant graphics and illustrations, but was a bit afraid to buy it because of the horrible reviews.

Needless to say, I sided with the reviews.

Unlimited Saga is a challenging game, the gameplay is a bit hard to understand, and most of it stands by luck. Once you have chosen an attack, a roulette will appear. Depending on what you land on, it will determine what attack/move you will be performing. These attacks differ from each other by power...So the bottom line is: you need a lot of luck while facing bosses.

Another failing aspect of Unlimited is the ability of heal. Even having the game for a several months, I don't think there is a way to heal yourself during battle. What you can do though, is take a rest on the battlefield. Unfortunately, you can still encounter random battles while you rest...And as another quirk, you cannot escape from these battles. Overall, the gameplay is very weak.

What I originally found charming is the fact you could choose up to seven different characters, and each had open ended stories. These stories ended up quite dull, despite the convincing voice acting, the beautiful graphics, and the music...which was amazingly not annoying at all (I enjoyed it, actually). The problem is, I completely missed the point of continuing a main plot in one area, and continued going on to another - so I ended up doing only the subplots and ignoring the storyline. I had to restart and erase that file. It was absolutely frustrating.

If you're an easy going gamer who likes to get barely acquainted with RPG's, then this game is definitely NOT FOR YOU. Even though the graphics are great, and the characters seem compelling, the gameplay is frustrating and will make you throw your controller. This game was worth getting when in had the FFX-2 trailer. Since the game's released now, the trailer pretty much is eye candy for those boys who drool over Yuna and co.

I think Unlimited Saga would attract an audience of hardcore RPG Players because of its challenging and tedious gameplay. I still haven't beaten it yet, and I am relieved that I only spent about 10 dollars on this game.

First and foremost, I understand that this game has recieved a lot of negative attention -- and with good reason. It does not follow true to the traditional RPG style of Square-Enix, and so the fans have been setup for a disappointment. However, this isn't to say that the game isn't good, by other standards. In my personal opinion, I think this game is quite perfect, as is introduces a style of gameplay not normally found on a console RPG, which is very similarly laid-out like the 'pen-and-paper' edition of 'Dungeons & Dragons.'

The game features very, very detailed art, which is gorgeously rendered. The style is a mixture of cel-shading and matte paintings. Most of it consists of 2-D static images, whereas the only time you see an animated sequence is during battle, or cinematics.

The music is also a good department. It fits the game very well, and easily manages to reflect the feeling and emotion of each sequence. The voice-acting, however, is borderline terrible. (Though not as bad as the voice-acting in Final Fantasy X.)

As far as gameplay is concerned, I must be honest in saying that it is definitely not suitable for everybody. Not only can it become frustrating and difficult, but most everything is menu-based, and will not appeal to those seeking constant action, or real-time control. However, I generally perfer menu-based gameplay, so this is a plus, to me. The gameplay flows like that of a board game. However, it is like a very vivid boardgame, with detailed characters and roles. The map screen actually functions like a tiled board, whereas your character is a playing peice, and you move him / her across each tile while trying to avoid traps and enemy encounters. All of this adds a more strategic element to the game, and can, at times, greatly affect the difficulty. It is very easy to become discouraged when trying to simply traverse across the map, as you may find yourself in a fatal situation, only escapable by pure luck.

The game's system revolves around the use of a 'reel.' This is basically the equivelant of dice in a pen-and-paper RPG. Whenever you encounter a trap, prepare to execute an attack or skill, or attempt to open a treasure chest, the reel will begin to rotate. There are a number of panels on the reel, which are either good, bad, really good, really bad, etc. The objective is to stop the reel and hopefully land on a desired panel. It can become frustrating, at times, though it is not as unfair as some people make it out to be.

Character development, as you can expect, is similar to that of previous installments in the 'SaGa' series -- the level-up system traditionally used in console RPG's is abolished, and replaced with a more accurate growth system. It should be noted, however, that growth / experience is not achieved after battle, rather it is achieved after accomplishing a mission / clearing an area. This, also, can seem unfair, at times... though it is to be thought that character growth is a reward given after completing a mission, rather than something that progressively occurs along the adventure.

I decided to rate the gameplay at 3 stars. Though, on a personal basis, I enjoy it much more than this, I want to take into consideration that not everybody will find this as suitable as I do. And, perhaps, I may be one of the few people who can appreciate the unique approach that this game has taken...

I love Final Fantasy. I really do. The World is Square, baby! (FFI reference).

I wasted a perfectly good giftcard on this puddle of cow vomit because of the fact I saw Square on the cover. I envision, at Square-Enix headquarters, there is a little room in the basement where the company meets its "hire the handicapped" quota. They spake unto them and said, "Hark! I speaketh to thee and bade thee...maketh an RPG!" and the retards made an RPG and Square saw that it was crap...and that it was bad. Then Square spoke and said, "Oh ye of little mental aptitude...I thanketh thee for thine efforts...however, now I must smother thou with a pillow." and Square smothered the handicapped with a pillow...but not until a few escaped into the battle mechanics room of the Final Fantasy series.

The graphics are vile, the characters two-dimensional, and the combat is something right out of one of those little AA games in the plastic armor hanging on a pegboard shelf in K-Mart. A rusty Tin Man who's had his joints welded together and eyes riveted shut could move with more fluidity than the sprites in this piece of crap. Also, the game leaves you with a realization of what a storyline is, since you're so busy LOOKING and WAITING for one to develop within this game.

I viewed this game as a metophorical giant loog wad of yak-spit right in my suck-hole. Seriously...Square...FOR SHAME! This game is the equivalent of my PS2 powering on and then nipple-twisting me until I bleed and finishing up with a swift kick to the crotch.

I hate this game more than I hate getting an eyelash stuck in my eyeball...more than when you sit down on a dark leather or vinyl seat in the summer and the nuclear heat sears the skin on the small of your back and back of your knees...I hate this game more than when you go on a water ride at a theme park and your underwear chafe your taint (the area between the crotch and butt).

Seriously, I had a colonoscopy about four years ago and I had to drink this oily lemon-lime stuff that made me squirt clear liquid and wasn't allowed to eat anything for 24 hours so that it felt like my stomach was eating itself and I wanted to die. Well...this game wasn't quite THAT bad but at least with the colonoscopy I knew it was going to be a horrible experience. This is a VIDEO GAME. Dance all happy and free while you put it in the system thinking, "Another AWESOME RPG from Squaresoft!!!" and then suddenly you're doing the video game equivalent of gagging down a gallon of Quaker State with lime and squirting clear liquid from your o-ring.

You think I'm kidding? Do you KNOW where this game disk of mine is right now? A landfill. LANDFILL! Know why? Because I THREW IT AWAY! I was moving and consolidating some boxes and THERE IT WAS on the bottom of a box...staring at me. I looked around...thought about it...and tossed that piece of twice-tossed monkey dung right in the freaking trash. Did I want the $3 credit from the gamestore? NOPE! I refused to subject any other human being, decent or indecent, to the vile putridity of this shiny circular turd. I feel guilty that I didn't snap the disk in half first for fear some homeless kid living outside the dump and stealing electricity from a storage shed's power outlet might find this game and try it.

If you love RPGs (especially Final Fantasy) avoid this festering wart on the arsecheek of the Sony Playstation 2.

Gladly, I bought this game on clearance for about 6 bucks, so I don't feel that bad. The FFX-2 trailer was worth almost that anyway.

This game...oh, where to start. It's not a good or bad game, it's more of a decent game that was rushed off the drawing board. It had some great ideas but fell short of the good game it almost could've been. Because a lot of gamers who picked this up expected a Final-Fantasy style game I've tried to compare it to the closest one I could get it to, for justification of their choices.

First, if you are used to the flashy graphics of now, please save your money. The FMVs are the only real good artwork in the game, and those are few and far in between; the game uses art stills instead of the "normal" moving 3d character for storyline scenes. These scenes look horrid on a high-def TV, i'm sorry. Everything looks pixelated to me. The battle graphics...well, the background looks like an early ps2 game, but the sprite characters look like they predate the PS1. The movements look stiff and fake while attacking, and the 2d sprites look rediculous on the 3d background. Now, don't get me wrong, Final Fantasy Tactics had sprites, 2d stills, speech bubbles, and no real movement outside of battle too, but it had a good story and some graphics credibility to make it a classic.

During the story the screen almost feels constrained thanks to Square-Enix slapping a thick border around their painted backgrounds. The lack of exploring towns didn't bother me as much, as I thought of the menu-based shopping in, again, FFT. The world exploration, however, did. It felt more constraining than the "action" sequences, with a very limited and bland chunk of land being laid out for you to "explore". I'm sorry, FFT did a better job of the linear maps...the exploration part was what finally turned me off this game. It became one long chore.

The battle system is a poor aborted child of what could have been a great idea. Much like the roll of dice, a reel determines which of a few actions take place in battle. However, selecting all your movemetns before you know what the enemy is going to do gets rid of a lot of battle tactics, and early in the game you just end up punching and kicking your way through mundane battles anyway.

If I could change only one thing, I would change the map. They had a traditional map you could view, there was no reason to put in poorly rendered walking paths that you had to hop across. Just put in paths on the actual world map!

All in all, its a liveable game. That and the trailer make this worth the 6 bucks.

I eagerly anticipated this game for more than two years. Needless to say, I had relatively high hopes and standards regarding it's SaGa-ness. I expected it to be hated by most, gorgeously pretty, and mildy frustrating. It succeeds completely in all three of those categories.

Well, I suppose I will group my review into different sections for ease of writing and reading.

Graphics: 4/5 stars.
Simply put, this game is absolutely breathtaking to look at. The main cinemas done in what seems to be a type of cel-shading called "sketch-motion" developed by Photoshop developer Adobe. With this graphical style, it is difficult to differentiate between illustration and 3D Model, and I find the effect to be wonderful. Attention is appropriately drawn to this aspect of the game in the opening cinema, in which a painting of the characters at "the Festival of Regina Leone" seemlessly takes on a 3D form and then flashes to images of the nobodies at the festival, all just simple blue humanoids.
Beside that, the in-game art is also quite nice. Instead of being a 3D character or a sprite who moves about a 3D world, you are instead just a Monopoly piece that moves through the "game world"--a game board. All of the scenes that you view are presented as beautiful paintings, and when you enter a town, all there are are menus and paintings.
However, the graphics falter a bit in the battle scenes. The characters, in these battles, now are sprites. The sprites are generally poorly animated and appear blocky, and it disappoints me that a game that focuses on battle so much has such unattractive models. Still, battle attacks are colorful and creative, so all is not lost.

Sound: 5/5.

The section in which Unlimited Saga shines the most is its music, which surprises me, because the composer, Masashi Hamauzu, was responsible for the music in SaGa Frontier 2, a musical tragedy of sorts. The game is almost always fully-orchestrated, and the sound of 40+ string instruments all playing in unison as the 7 Wonders flash by is really a great treat.
Besides being beautiful, the arrangements of music for missions are very different and refreshing. For example: Whil trampling through a desert full of dust and canyons, you would expect to hear dry, pseudo-Middle Eastern music, right? Right. However, in this game, the desert with canyons is accompanied by a few simple piano notes and the cello.
Unfortunately, the game has some voice-acting, thanks to ADVision, who was in charge of the dub. The voices range from annoying to really annoying, and I am only thankful that voices are kept to a minimum.

Control: 3/5.

What is there to say? You navigate menu after menu.

Gameplay: 2/5.

Ouch. This game frustrates like nothing else. But I'm afraid it is too difficult to describe without an actual part of the game. So, I will describe the game's flow as it actually happened. I started the game (I picked the sexy and tough-looking Laura) and met some kid. Laura agrees to escort him to a nearby town, and as I travel from town-to-town, I walk through "maps" that are more like "nondescript monopoly boards." I saw a treasure chest and attempted to open it. There is a trap! Spikes! Hit Points (HP) minus XX! Gas trap! HP minus XX and poison! A treasure chest monster appears! ~battle.~ I am given 5 turns, and I can spend them any way I want to. However, I must make sure to spread out attacks, because to attack costs HP, and HP is the buffer for Life Points (LP), your life force. Running out of HP doesn't kill you, but it makes it ridiculously easy to lose LP. Anyhow, I spread my attacks and begin the battle. 5 circles are presented, each with a character's face inside it. I can choose who I want to attack in what order, so I pick Laura. Suddenly, a reel suddenly starts spinning. Basically, you must stop the reel in different parts to change your attack from weak to strong to evilly strong. After I have selected a part of the reel to stop at, I have the option of choosing X or O. X stops the attack and I do whatever type I picked. O pauses the attack and either A) you choose another person to attack and form a combo attack, or the enemy interrupts and does combo battle with you. This is frustrating, because combo attacks are the main way to defeat enemies in this game, and enemies almost always interrupt the best combos. Hmph.
You defeated the treasure chest monster! Boom! The treasure chest exploded! HP minus XX, LP minus 1! Congratulations, stupid! You're playing Unlimited SaGa.

Story: 3/5.

Nothing too remarkable. You are one of 7 characters who searches for the 7 wonders, with 7 artifacts, that, when discovered, will unleash god and a time of peace will begin.

That is about it. The story is nice, and I think it will be enjoyable if you are a fan of the SaGa's before SF2. Otherwise, you should DEFINITELY rent first, becase this is a risk.

Possibly Square's worst creation. It had a lot of potential. And to be fair, the battle system was a great version of the SaGa system.

But it went terribly wrong with the primary interface. Dungeon maps play like a moving a cloth with a hole in it on a board game map. Towns are just dots on a map where you get to talk to a few people. There's no interactive exploration with the world at all. Just a terribly crude, pre-NES style interface (with PS1 era graphics).

The "Hardcore" aspects of the game come from artificial difficulty caused by convoluted and often hidden systems within the game. Little to nothing is explained in game (and the manual covers very little). You'd need a guide for most of this game, but a printed one never existed. Supposedly, Square was putting it up on their website for some reason (I don't know if they got around to it).

I advise skipping this altogether. Especially if you're new to the SaGa series. Play Romancing SaGa, which is a wonderful game or one of the SaGa Frontier games and you will get much more enjoyment out of them. Unless you're a masochist, in which case this is your game.