Unlimited SaGa and the Perils of Akitoshi Kawazu

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FURTHER READING – TABLETOP DESIGN

Gunparade March and the JRPG at the Turn of the New Millennium

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Since 2016, the SaGa franchise has been experiencing a renaissance, having been buoyed for the better of part of a decade by Square Enix’s own SaGa-like The Last Remnant (2008),¹ several remakes,² and the mobile game Emperors SaGa (2012) alongside its web-browser-based sibling Imperial SaGa (2015). It was in 2016 that Square Enix would publish ArtePiazza’s remaster of Romancing SaGa 2 which would also be the first time the title saw an official worldwide release thus helping rectify the history of the JRPG genre abroad. That same year, Square would also release SaGa: Scarlet Grace, and three years later, re-release an expanded and international port of the game subtitled Ambitions. Meanwhile, ArtePiazza would follow up with a remaster of Romancing SaGa 3, and in 2020 the original SaGa trilogy would be ported to the Nintendo Switch and later to Steam, furthering efforts to reintroduce the series to contemporary audiences. This revival continued with a remastered release of SaGa Frontier in 2021 and Square would subsequently announce that the SaGa re-releases up until this point had exceeded their financial expectations.³ However, it did not end there. Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- would be remastered in 2022, and 2024 would see another new SaGa title in the form of SaGa: Emerald Beyond. Half a year later, Square would release developer xeen Inc’s remake of Romancing SaGa 2, Revenge of the Seven, which drew critical acclaim for making SaGa accessible for newcomers while also retaining the challenging gameplay associated with the series. Finally, in 2025, there would also be a remaster of SaGa Frontier 2.⁴ Nearly the entire SaGa franchise would be readily available on modern consoles and hardware.

Yet, belying this narrative of success is the shadow of SaGa’s former reception, particularly in North America where the franchise had long been viewed as Final Fantasy’s black-sheep sibling. The original trilogy did just well enough with praise directed towards the games’ scope despite being released on the handheld Gameboy. In a retrospective review of Maki Toushi SaGa (released in North America as The Final Fantasy Legend), IGN would remark, “Since it was the very first RPG on what was then an untested new platform, much attention was focused on the game and Square did not disappoint. Final Fantasy Legend not only transferred the RPG franchise to the small screen, it did it with style. The gameplay is ambitious…”⁵ Of SaGa 3: Jikuu no Hasha (Final Fantasy Legend III), the reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly would award the game an average score of 8 out of 10, writing, “Surprisingly, the graphics are really nice, considering that it’s on the black and white Gameboy screen,” “I really enjoy a good RPG and this is definitely a good buy. It seems that Square can do no wrong with their RPGs, even the portable ones,” and finally, “It’s no secret that I dislike the GameBoy (sic) in general, but I happen to like RPGs. The question remains is this game good enough to make me forget the eye strain and green screen? In this case the answer is yes.”⁶

Yet, despite the success of these three games, the subsequent Romancing trilogy, which would further innovate the franchise by introducing open-world exploration and a non-linear form of narrative progression, would fail to see a concurrent North American localization. Decades later, series director Akitoshi Kawazu would reveal the reason, telling Nintendo Life in a 2019 interview:

At the time, the concern raised about localisation was that perhaps Romancing SaGa was just a bit too complicated. Even from within Japan, it was clear that the stories of the 8 protagonists were so interwoven, that there was such a variety of choices and so many stories – in short, the sheer amount of text was so massive – that it would be incredibly costly to localise and difficult to understand.⁷

While here, Kawazu specifically discusses SaGa’s complexity in relation to the potential difficulty of localizing the game,⁸ the SaGa franchise is also mechanically complex, departing from the familiar design of other JRPGs of the era. While we can only speculate on how the absence of the Romancing trilogy in North America affected the reception of later SaGa titles, it is at least clear that the various complexities of SaGa would mark the games as unfamiliar, ultimately leading towards backhanded if not outright hostile comments of subsequent releases.

Kawazu and his team would follow up Romancing SaGa 3 (1995) with SaGa’s PlayStation debut, SaGaFrontier (1997), another non-linear and experimental entry that saw the franchise returning to its sci-fi-fantasy roots—amongst the playable characters are a robot, wizard, and Super Sentai-inspired hero, who all journey across various regions, ranging from Hong Kong’s neon-drenched Kowloon (called Koorong) to a gladiatorial palace nestled in a jungle, on cosmic-hopping ships. For better and for worse, the release of SaGa Frontier would follow the mega blockbuster that was Final Fantasy VII (Squaresoft, 1997) which Square parlayed to their advantage, advertising not only SaGa Frontier but also Bushido Blade (Lightweight, 1997) and Final Fantasy Tactics (Square, 1997) in the back pages of Final Fantasy VII’s manual. But while the success of Final Fantasy VII bolstered the profile of Square’s other titles, it also caused ire in reviewers who seemed to only want another Final Fantasy VII. When SaGa Frontier was finally localized in North America, critics could not stop themselves from unfavorably comparing the game to Final Fantasy VII.

Game Informer would criticize the game’s open-ended and opaque nature: “FF VII and Chrono Trigger have clarity. SaGa has confusion.”⁹ For the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Joe Rybicki’s review would be subtitled, “If only Final Fantasy VII didn’t exist.”¹⁰ Rybicki then opens:

I would imagine that just about anyone who enjoyed Final Fantasy VII was looking forward to SaGa Frontier. On the surface, the games appear similar; they’re both role-playing games from Square with expansive story lines, lots of battles and top-notch static backgrounds on which the stories unfold. I don’t think anyone was expecting the game to equal FFVII, but you can’t help but feel that they should be at least in the same class. Sadly, this is not the case.¹¹

PlayStation: The Official Magazine (not to be confused with Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine) would continue the trend:

After the monumental success of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics, loads of long-time fans and RPG converts have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of SaGa Frontier, the only U.S. released title in the Romancing SaGa series. On the surface, the game seems to contain plenty of cool features…All of these factors add up to a title with a lot of potential, but unfortunately SaGa Frontier is unable to use its strengths enough to mask several primary flaws.¹²

Writing for Game Pro, Lawrence Neves would be an outlier amongst critics, concluding, “All that aside, SaGa Frontier takes you back to the old days of RPGs: lots of battle time, cool spells and weapons, and a fairly mysterious but engaging story line. SaGa will cure your “I’ve finished FFVII and have nothing to do” blues.”¹³

The lukewarm reception of SaGa Frontier was not necessarily a case of reviewers failing to understand the game’s mechanics given that many of them positively commented on the experimental approach—or at least showed appreciation for it—and instead criticized the difficulty, story, and graphics. Final Fantasy VII seemed to herald the future of the genre whereas SaGa Frontier seemed mired in the past, recalling an older era of JRPGs that in reality was not yet even ten years old—the original Romancing SaGa had only been released in 1992. The perception of SaGa Frontier as already a retro-style game demonstrates the large jump in technology between the PlayStation to its predecessor consoles and the expectation that JRPGs would follow the “cinematic” or “realistic” mold of Final Fantasy VII. On this point, Japanese games scholar Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon suggests that Final Fantasy VII became the turning point where western critics began demarcating the boundary between JRPGs and WRPGs,¹⁴ writing:

Broadly speaking, the integration of JRPGs within mainstream game culture can be interpreted as a form of gradual cultural appropriation of a foreign object, and its integration within a new regime of value as a separate and independent object. According to the macroanalysis of this corpus based on anglophone online publications, the release of Final Fantasy VII in 1997 marks, perhaps expectantly, the moment at which gaming journalism seems to regard Japanese RPGs as different from their western counterparts.¹⁵

Interestingly, Pelletier-Gagnon also points out 2007—the year in which HD consoles were released—as another turning point in the reception of JRPGs in that Japanese developers tended to shy away from realistic graphics:

Traditionally, Japanese games did not rely on technology and visual realism to provide thrilling experiences. Japanese game creators usually found inspiration within the transmedia ecology that defines the Japanese visual culture, such as animation or manga…In addition, the ‘realism’ that the majority of Japanese players seek in games is often said to be fundamentally different than what western gamers may expect (NHK 2011: 59).¹⁶

While I’m in agreement with Pelletier-Gagnon, the “cinematic” direction that Square pushed with Final Fantasy VII ten years prior is also emblematic of a direction towards realism, even if the game still retained cartoon elements such as “super-deformed” sprites. SaGa Frontier was thus an early victim of Final Fantasy VII’s success and demonstrates the larger negative reception of JRPGs abroad to come. As for the game’s reception in relation to the larger SaGa franchise, it established the foundation from which SaGa Frontier 2 (Squaresoft, 1999) and Unlimited SaGa (Square Enix, 2002) would be criticized. In short, the franchise was given the baggage of being “weird” wherein “weird” stained the games as existing outside the structural norm established by Final Fantasy.

In comparison to SaGa Frontier, SaGa Frontier 2 would fare slightly better although for no one single reason. Whereas SaGa Frontier was released in the wake of Final Fantasy VII, in North America SaGa Frontier 2 (1999) came just two months after Final Fantasy VIII (1999) which, like Final Fantasy VII, drew critical acclaim. Yet, this time, critics were less wont to negatively compare SaGa Frontier 2 to Final Fantasy.Game Pro would note,“In a season full of strong RPGs, Square EA is coming to the battlefield with SaGa Frontier 2. And if you’ve already conquered Final Fantasy VIII and are looking to hook up with the next great adventure, SF2 is your game. Its exceptionally deep story line and superb gameplay will appeal to sword-wielders everywhere,”¹⁷ and later concluded, “SaGa Frontier 2 comes to the battlefield ready to take on the RPG heavyweights with an excellent story-driven adventure that will appeal to the true diehard fan. If you’ve already finished FFVIII and need another challenge, SF2 won’t steer you wrong.”¹⁸ In comparison to Final Fantasy VIII, the reviewers at Game Fan would actually highlight SaGa Frontier 2 as the better RPG. Reviewer Cerberus would write, “Remember to pick up a copy of this beaut (sic) when buying Chocobo’s Dungeon 2 for Little Timmy. This is what FFVIII should’ve been: good,”¹⁹ and fellow critic ECM would express a similar sentiment: “I’m a big fan of qualifying my Square Viewpoints with the statement “Well, it’s better than FFVIII” and this one’s no exception to that tired rule.”²⁰

The reviewers of Game Fan express an opinion that is perhaps now more commonly held. That is, while Final Fantasy VIII did earn acclaim upon release, in retrospect, it’s now viewed by the Final Fantasy fandom as something of an oddity in the larger franchise although the game is certainly not without its fans, including the developers of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, 2025) and Ben Starr. Furthermore, while the original iteration of SaGa Frontier 2 is still very much a difficult game—particularly its final boss—it also presents a few changes to the SaGa formula that results in a more palatable experience. For one, SaGa Frontier 2 is perhaps the most narrative heavy of the SaGa titles, giving players specific characters and grounded storylines to follow. In contrast to SaGa Frontier, and certainly the Romancing trilogy, exploration has all been cut, meaning that players will always know where to go and what to do to progress the game. Secondly, the game also saw a change in art direction, swapping to a hand-drawn painterly style that drew praise for its beauty with one reviewer at Electronic Gaming Monthly calling it, “…the best-looking 2D game I’ve seen yet,”²¹ and Eric Bratcher writing for Next Generation commenting, “The first thing you will notice is the art design, which is unlike that of any other game on the market…The resulting images are utterly unique and breathtakingly beautiful. This alone sets SaGa Frontier 2 apart and makes it worthy of attention.”²²

Still, even amongst more positive reviews, SaGa Frontier 2 could not shake off the association of being too strange and while this was certainly a draw for players looking for an atypical RPG, there were other titles released around the time that sought to fill the Final Fantasy-shaped hole with Game Arts’ Grandia (1997) having just been localized two months before the release of Final Fantasy VIII. Furthermore, in North America a slew of cult JRPGs would be published in the months following SaGa Frontier 2, including Wild Arms 2 (Media Vision, 1999) and Chrono Cross (Square, 1999), and the year would close out with the release of Final Fantasy IX (Square, 2000). So even with the better reception of SaGa Frontier 2, it was always going to be difficult for the series to reach the critical mainstream that it managed to achieve in Japan where it had graced the cover of Dengeki PlayStation and reportedly had sold 700,000 copies in half a year.²³

Amidst all this, Akitoshi Kawazu would be approaching the height of his executive powers at Square. Kawazu had not only been directing the various SaGa games, having worked his way up from initially designing the battle systems for the first two Final Fantasy titles, but he had also become a producer, working on Legend of Mana (1999), Racing Lagoon (1999) and Hataraku Chocobo (2000), the latter being released for Bandai’s portable console, the WonderSwan. It would be on the WonderSwan where Kawazu would continue cutting his teeth, working alongside Koichi Ishii to supervise the remakes of Final Fantasy I (2000), Final Fantasy II (2001), Romancing SaGa (2001), and Makai Toushi SaGa (2002); producing the strategy RPG Blue Wing Blitz (2001); and designing the original card-based dungeon-crawler, Wild Card (2001). Considering that SaGa originated on the Game Boy, Kawazu’s foray into the WonderSwan should not be surprising given that the nature of portability compliments the quest design of his titles.²⁴ Which is also to say that the games Kawazu tended to work on could be played in short bursts while still allowing players to feel as if they’re making progress. Notable titles in this regard include Legend of Mana, Romancing SaGa 2, and Wild Card, all games which emphasized shorter quests and thus play sessions.²⁵

Furthermore, while Kawazu had long drawn inspiration from the structure of table-top role-playing games, Wild Card‘s own use of cards to represent everything from characters to attacks to exploration would make such design choices more explicit, and in this, Kawazu was not alone, but rather, participating within the larger card game boom that had been ignited by Ginichiro Suzuki’s Monster Maker (1988). Of course, also accelerating the card game fervor would be Magic the Gathering which Japanese players had begun to import shortly before its official localization in 1995. In Japan, both Monster Maker and Magic the Gathering would go on to inspire a spate of card-based and board-based video game RPGs, including Monster Maker‘s own spin-off Monster Maker Kids (Sofel 1994), Texthoth Ludo: Arcanum Senki (Pai, 1997), Arcana Strikes (Takara, 1997), Culdcept (OmiyaSoft, 1997), and Magic: the Gathering (Sega, 2001), the latter game surprisingly never being localized outside of Japan. Indeed, looking at these dates, the same year that Final Fantasy VII was taking the world by storm, a hybrid genre of video game RPGs had emerged, so given his predilection for board games, it is no surprise that Kawazu found himself in such company. And so it’s following the release of Wild Card and Blue Wing Blitz that we finally find ourselves at Unlimited SaGa, the title that would refine the tabletop elements of what came before it. Yet, Unlimited would also remain the last original SaGa game for fifteen years. Why was this the case? What happened?

In contrast to SaGa Frontier 2, Unlimited SaGa returns to the minimal storytelling of earlier SaGa titles. There are seven characters to choose from, each with their own background and narrative. While characters may appear in one another’s story, these narratives ultimately remain divorced from one another. Rather, they are united by their shared world and setting with each character eventually discovering one of the “seven wonders” of the world, primordial structures whose origins and true nature remain a mystery.

From there, Unlimited SaGa radically breaks away from its SaGa brethren, upending nearly every mechanic the series had established. Rest assured, the “spark” system which had become commonplace to the franchise still remains. Characters can learn new attacks during battle with the chance to “spark” stronger skills the tougher the enemy. The game also still retains SaGa’s familiar “life point” (LP) system. Both allies and enemies have LP and also the RPG standard hit-points (HP). However, in Unlimited SaGa, depleting an enemy’s LP is the only way to actually defeat them. Attacks have the potential to deal a combination of LP and HP damage—the higher one’s current HP is, the less likely they are to take LP damage. But this is where the commonalities end.

After choosing a character and going through the beginning of their narrative, players will begin in one of the game’s towns where several actions can be taken, including blacksmithing, shopping for weapons, armor, and magic items, and visiting the local inn to pick up on rumors to unlock new quests. Unlimited SaGa lacks the 3D-style exploration that was becoming commonplace amongst the PlayStation 2’s RPGs. Instead, towns are simply 2D images and the same is true for the character portraits that appear during dialogue.

In appearance, Unlimited SaGa resembles the same 2D watercolor style established by Frontier 2 albeit with a few twists, notably, the game’s use of Adobe. It was after finishing his duties on Final Fantasy X that Yusuke Naora would be poached by Kawazu to also work as Unlimited‘s art director. Both Final Fantasy X and Unlimited SaGa share a similar color palette with preferences towards saturation, but whereas Naora focused on creating a lived-in world modeled after Southeast Asia in the former, with the latter, the goal instead was to use the technique of “sketch motion” to give the game an animated quality,²⁶ one that highlights movement and incidentally recalls the animations of Classical era Hollywood and postwar Japan. Here, bodies become elasticized, a blow from a hammer flattening characters to a dime but not before they bounce and stretch back to normal or the swing of an axe threatening to cleave models in two.

Complimenting Naora’s design are the musical compositions of Masashi Hamauzu who had previously worked on Frontier 2, and like Naora, Final Fantasy X. While the art direction and music results in Unlimited hewing closer towards Frontier 2, both games are also outliers amongst the mid-era SaGa titles given the absence of Kenji Ito whose music had come to represent the series (much like Nobuo Uematsu and Final Fantasy). Compared to Ito, Hamauzu is less epic but more romantic, a style which compliments the visual direction of Unlimited. Furthermore, while both Ito and Hamauzu are certainly versatile, Hamauzu’s shifts between genres also compliments Unlimited‘s own experimentation. In the game’s overture, which serves as the main theme, one finds the refined atmosphere as would befit Hamauzu’s classical background, an energy that surprisingly carries over to the game’s first battle theme in which string instrumentation, backed by percussion and a bass guitar, propels the track forward. However, tracks such as “Journey Through Time and Space,” “DG Sine,” and “BT Ver.8” demonstrate an influence of drum and bass, electronic, and ambient music. The game’s penultimate boss theme, “BT. Ver. 8,” appropriately being one of the most aggressive tracks, second only to the actual final boss theme, opens with machine-gun-like drums which alternate with remixed voice samples to take on a more pensive tone, reflecting the rhythm of the game’s more difficult encounters.

On the point of using 2D, the game also abstracts space such as in dungeons. While these areas are still 2D, characters are instead represented by a 3D figurine thus placing Unlimited SaGa within the lineage of board games which used miniatures. Dungeons are thereby demarcated by tiles that the player explores with even movement mimicking the gestures of tabletop play—figurines are lifted and set down from tile to tile. Alongside the player, dungeons are occupied by monsters, treasures, and traps. If a player moves towards a tile occupied by a monster, they may be attacked. Likewise, if it’s a trap tile, they will have to avoid whatever peril springs, such as buried spikes.  

Parties are composed of seven characters who each bring with them a combination of exploration and combat related skills. A character with the ability to swim will help the party cross bodies of water whereas another character who possesses the “eavesdrop” skill will discern the location of specific creatures in the dungeon allowing the party to avoid combat. While certain skills are simply activated, the “reel” system determines the outcome of nearly every action in Unlimited SaGa, serving as the game’s replacement for the typical dice rolls found in RPGs. Reels are a slot system wherein individual outcomes occupy their own space, each represented by various symbols. As far as exploration goes, landing on a green orb means success whereas a red cross marks failure. To properly dungeoneer in Unlimited SaGa thereby means to prepare a party with the appropriate set of skills of which there are several. Besides the reel system, these design choices may not seem particularly alien. After all, these type of skill checks were commonplace in tabletop games and CRPGs. But the depth of Unlimited SaGa lies in how these systems begin to intertwine with one another. With both reels and exploration skills explained, allow me to now discuss the game’s combat system.

Combat is turn-based, the order of which is determined not only by statistics but a weight system which is affected by equipment, as well as specific skills with spells often taking more time to cast than their martial counterparts. Like the Frontier duology, Unlimited SaGa encourages players to create combos from different skills. However, due to the nature of the turn order, which remains virtually unknown to the player (but can be solved), it is in fact possible for players to create a combo with enemies, meaning that both sides will deal increased damage to the other. Similarly, enemies who are outright faster than the party may create their own combination attacks, an especially devastating consequence from late-game bosses who easily threaten a party wipe.

There is no simple “attack” command. Rather, all attacks are skills derived from a character’s equipment. Like exploration skills, battle skills are also controlled by the reel system wherein an equipment’s skill makes up the possible reels. Let’s use the following as an example. A “Black Axe” has these three skills:

1. Woodchopper
2. Tomahawk
3. Timelapse

Each of these skills thus represent their own reel. Where I to attack using “Timelapse,” the reel would be composed of slots that indicate the “Timelapse” attack. The aforementioned “spark” mechanic begins to expand this system. “Timelapse” bears a chance to spark two more axe-related skills: the level 2 “Backslash” and the level 4 “Reverse” Delta.” As the levels imply, these skills are progressively stronger. Once those two additional skills are unlocked, the reel for “Timelapse” will be composed of:

1. Timelapse
2. Backslash
3. Reverse Delta  

Indicated by their level of their strength, each skill is given a color-coded slot—green (level 1), blue (level 2), and orange (level 4) with weaker skills occupying vastly more slots than its stronger counterparts. Whereas a typical RPG will simply allow the player to select their strongest skills from a command-based menu, Unlimited SaGa instead demands finesse and precision with the maximum amount of damage resulting from successfully stringing together powerful attacks that will pierce an enemy’s LP, a system not too unlike Super Mario RPG (Square, 1996), The Legend of Dragoon (Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, 1999), and Shadow Hearts (Sacnoth, 2001).

Despite being turn-based, other design choices defamiliarize the combat format. While seven party members can be brought into an adventure, only five can participate in combat, but like in Final Fantasy X, party members can be freely swapped at any time. At the beginning of each turn, players decide what characters will attack and in what order, although this latter aspect can actually also be changed during the attacking phase. Characters who are chosen first are more likely to be attacked and thereby form the party’s frontline. Players have the freedom to mix-and-match different combinations of characters to attack. It possible to have a single character attack five times, one character attack thrice backed by two more party members, and so on. A small handful of battles force the player to operate with limited options such as one encounter on a narrow bridge in which only three characters at once are able to engage in combat.

These design choices begin to avalanche, leading to a more dynamic combat system. The difficulty of early dungeon-crawlers such as Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Sir-Tech, 1981) partially emerged from the push-and-pull between resource management and attrition. I may continue exploring but does my party have enough strength to survive? What items do I have in stock that may help? Does my healer still have enough magic points (MP) to assist the party? Unlimited SaGa reorients these concerns. HP can be healed during exploration by having the party rest for one turn. For especially newer players, the game’s difficulty arises from a myriad of factors but especially the problem of how to properly survive. Who should attack first? How much LP do they have left?  There is no stockpiling of items that may help one in a moment of need. Neither are there fixed-character classes let alone an MP system. In particularly long dungeons, exploration which had seemed so quaint now begins to take on new dimensions as traversal skills allows one to circumvent combat, a necessity with an especially damaged party.

Unlimited SaGa lacks traditional levels and while each character still has a stat table, the game instead uses its own unique “panel” system to distribute stat growth, a 7 hexagonal field grid where a combination of  quadrants and corners determine a specific stat. Upon successfully completing an adventure, players strengthen their characters by placing one of four rewarded panels and a panel must always be chosen. The received panels are dependent on which skills were used during the adventure both in-and-out of combat, meaning the game uses the proficiency-based system that Kawazu had been deploying since the original Final Fantasy II (Square, 1988). However, rewarded panels are party-wide rather than character specific, so even if a “mage”-like character were to continuously use magic, it could be the “warrior” that receives the upgraded magic panel. Panel themselves offer stronger exploration skills and improved efficiency with weapons and by aligning the same type of panel, a character will grow even stronger from a “panel bonus.”

Initially, there appears to be similarities here between Unlimited SaGa’s panel system and Final Fantasy X’s sphere-grid which sees characters exploring a substantially larger grid-map to grow progressively stronger. Both games offer player’s agency in deciding how characters will grow, but in reality, it is Unlimited SaGa that is the more radical of the two. While certainly confusing at first, once a player understands how panels work, building characters becomes second-nature, opening the way for different sets of unique builds, ones that balance a party that excels in both exploration and combat, such as having a character whose specialty lies in disarming traps and casting magic, or a tank who favors exploring and martial arts. Character builds are further impacted by the bonus abilities granted by armor and weapons which focus on reducing and avoiding damage. Every character can wield a weapon in each hand and so a tank may favor any weapon in one hand, and a shield in the other. However, daggers can have the ability to parry certain types of attacks thereby opening up the possibility to still give a damage-oriented character defensive options. Given that weapons have durability which decreases with the use of skills, preparing a party with a balanced loadout becomes necessary, less players end up facing the boss of a dungeon with broken gear.

Both the sphere and panel grid thereby emerge with different approaches towards space, a rather uncommon element within a leveling system. Final Fantasy X emphasizes a forward progression where stronger abilities are placed deeper within the grid. In contrast, Unlimited SaGa’s panel grid lacks movement but instead emphasizes placement with stronger abilities instead rewarded from completing difficult quests. As I came to understand the panel grid’s 2-3-2 structure, I realized it resulted in a more playful approach towards character building. Certainly, there is an “efficient” way to build characters, but I would argue that this line of thinking goes against Kawazu’s intended design for the game, a point I will discuss later on. Freed from the burden of “min-maxing,” players may begin paying attention to the different combinations of possible panel bonuses, and towards the start of the game, as panel grids are not yet wholly defined, players also have the decision to allow the random structure the choice of building their characters. After being unable to make one particular character a “pure” mage, I instead allowed them to become a swordsman bolstered by an assortment of weaker magic abilities.

While I have taken the time to explain these various systems, Unlimited SaGa does not, and players will instead have to turn towards the game’s manual to understand at least the introductory mechanics—blacksmithing results, for example, are hidden and instead requires metaknowledge. But, considering that the game falls within the lineage of TTRPGs, is it really so odd to engage with a paratext such as a manual? It is no secret that one consequence of the difficult and secretive nature of games was the emergence of the guide industry in which developers could collaborate with publishers to sell players literature that could help them “master” a game. Yet, even going as far back as The Tower of Druaga (Namco, 1984), where players left progression hints for one another in local arcade journals, there has always been the guide industry’s alternative—the player-run community. By the time of Unlimited SaGa’s release, while still nascent, online communities were already forming, and eager to capitalize on the momentum of the internet, then Squaresoft launched their notorious, but beloved, online platform PlayOnline which briefly played host to a Final Fantasy IX (Square, 2000) strategy guide.

The dense and secretive nature of Unlimited SaGa makes it bedfellows with another Square RPG released earlier that year: the MMO, Final Fantasy XI, a title in a sub-genre that thrived on the collaborative nature of player communities. Despite being single-player, Unlimited SaGa also works best when players gather together to share their knowledge of the game’s mechanics. My own attempts to play through the game would not have been possible without the labor carried out by enthusiasts, most notably “im biggy” on GameFAQs, or as they go by on YouTube,  “Biggy’s Let’s Plays,” where in 2010, they uploaded several extremely detailed videos explaining the game’s mechanics as a means to assist newcomers.

One may retort that this logic regarding community remains true for all games, but I would argue that Unlimited SaGa seems to have been developed with community—or at least connectivity—in  mind. As part of the game’s promotional efforts in North America, Square Enix would launch the “Hall of Valor,” a mail-in contest where players would answer questions related to the game to earn prizes. The Hall of Valor would be advertised both in the back of the game’s manual, and the various news sites that reported on the event. Upon arriving to the landing page, users are greeted with the following text, “you call y’self..chicken or hardcore? Open-ended adventures will bring you to your knees.” The North American marketing team were at least aware of how Unlimited SaGa would be received and seemed to preempt possible criticism towards the game by aligning it as a “hardcore” experience. If you didn’t “get” Unlimited SaGa, it was simply because you were a “chicken.” Besides the mail-in contest, the Hall of Valor also contained additional tips and strategies that served as an extension of the guide already present in the manual.

What are we to make of all this? The abstraction of game design, the piling of mechanics upon mechanics, the emphasis on randomness, and the lack of clarity? In a 2003 interview with RPGFan, in response to a comment comparing Unlimited SaGa to tabletop games, Akitoshi Kawazu laid bare the team’s design ethos, responding:

If you increase the level of reality and complicate the game, it becomes a kind of reality simulation. However, originally games were putting a knife into the flank of reality. Usually somewhere there is a deformed thing or a symbolized thing has been implemented – Isn’t that what you call a game? Where to cut from the reality, where to symbolize, is the game design part. However, as far as UNLIMITED SaGa is concerned, we said let’s tackle the basics of game design once again. We didn’t try to emphasize the realistic details, but rather symbolize, and cut out the parts we didn’t need. We thought, let’s dare to do a “not express” thing and we calmly sticked to that route.²⁷

Kawazu’s comment on modern games becoming increasingly realistic places Unlimited SaGa directly in opposition to its contemporary RPGs, most obviously, Final Fantasy X, which like VII before it, was backed by the weight of a multi-million dollar budget and all its associated benefits, including cutting-edge graphics, an area Square infamously spent hundreds of millions of dollars on developing in the box-office failure, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Hironobu Sakaguchi, 2001). RPGFan themselves touch upon this comparison to Final Fantasy, pointing out that, “If Final Fantasy is the “rule of right”, SaGa carries the image of a pioneer,”²⁸to which Kawazu answers, “Indeed. It was Final Fantasy, that by selling a lot of copies, prepared our company-intern infrastructure (laughs). In case of SaGa, there is no such thing, I guess. We have to unfold new worlds.”²⁹ In no uncertain terms then, SaGa is the twin-shadow of Final Fantasy, so I don’t quite agree with Rybicki’s earlier implication that the absence of Final Fantasy would mean the critical and commercial success of SaGa. Rather, SaGa is defined by its différance to Final Fantasy: non-linearity, open-worlds, proficiency-based leveling systems, and so forth.

Furthermore, it would also be a mistake to simply understand realism here as just graphical fidelity. Rather, Unlimited SaGa takes up the old concerns held by Japanese game designers and critics regarding the meaning of wargaming and role-playing. It was in the pages of Simulator magazine that the “godfather” of Japanese board games, Ginichiro, “the Mustached Colonel,” Suzuki, penned several articles explaining his own design methodology, such as how designers, when creating historical games, should toe the line between historical realism and a player’s enjoyment. In one article published in the eighth issue of Simulator, Suzuki draws upon the example of designing a game around the Battle of Okehazama, a clash between the forces of Imagawa Yoshimoto and Oda Nobunaga. As Suzuki explains, in reality, Nobunaga achieved victory due to Yoshimoto’s lenience—believing that he would win, Yoshimoto allowed his troops to rest. Suzuki then details, “In other words, the results of the battle stem from whether or not Yoshimoto rests at Dengaku-hazama. If that choice is left up to the player, who would follow in Yoshimoto’s footsteps? After all, if dice are the deciding factor then that’s simply the decision of dice. That is the nature of games.”³⁰ In short, as Suzuki advises, when designing a game, if players remained faithful to reality, then, in this scenario, anyone playing as Yoshimoto is doomed to always lose, thus the need to move away from complete historical accuracy. As a result, Suzuki took his own knife to reality decades ago.

When reality has been cut away, a game is not just simply left with empty space. Rather, it is the players’ imagination which now fills that void. As Shunichi Takanashi wrote in one of the earliest Japanese articles explaining the tenets of role-playing, “Unless combined with rules, the player’s imagination and creativity—the heart of play—will amount to nothing. Therefore, games are all about good rules and good players. I believe this applies to all simulation games with role-playing elements.”³¹ In the case of Unlimited SaGa, it is a player’s imagination which bridges the gap between the game’s rules and the depiction of the game’s world which in turn is what allows for the emergence of a unique narrative. Two different players may explore the same dungeon with wildly different experiences. So Unlimited SaGa abstracts dungeoneering and its constitutive elements (movement, encounters with monsters, traps and treasures) and town exploration (shopping, blacksmithing, quest gathering). Therefore, whereas Kawazu’s contemporaries were creating RPGs that tended towards realism in their design, Kawazu instead went against the grain, resulting in systems that are more symbolic.³²

Alongside this shift away from realism, Unlimited SaGa simultaneously emphasizes players agency, allowing players to build characters as they see fit, while also using randomness to disrupt that agency. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the game’s design around magic. While any character is capable of casting magic through the use of “familiars” which are obtained as growth panels, the game’s more intricate magic is locked behind “magic tablets,” an item that can be obtained during certain quests. Magic tablets are equipped the same way that growth panels are, and a character with a tablet can then learn the magic that is inscribed therein. But, the actual magic remains unknown to the player even after they loot the tablet. It is only by completing a quest that one can learn which magic the tablet corresponds to. Moreover, while certainly unnecessary, the most powerful spells are locked behind the “magic blender” panel which is extremely rare. All this results in any attempts to build magic-based characters as being extremely difficult, but players have devised several strategies that includes manipulating one’s save file, to ease the experience, a technique that, much like the various exploits of Final Fantasy II, I don’t have reason to believe Kawazu intended for players to engage with. This is not to say that utilizing these methods is “wrong,” but rather, a tension emerges between the game’s design and the approach of players—the heart of play! We should perhaps instead view this element of randomness as actually part of the game’s narrative design, one that highlights dramatic twists, such as how sparking adds an element of surprise to the battle system, giving players an edge in particularly difficult scenarios where defeat suddenly turns to a narrow victory.

With all this mind, as a bold experimentation within the genre during the height of its popularity abroad, how was Unlimited SaGa received in North America, especially compared to its predecessors? Of course, dear reader, you already know the answer. Unlimited SaGa never had a chance at success. Game Informer’s review would be titled, “Unlimited SaGa: Fun Turned Tedious,” with the reviewer Chet concluding, “Interaction with the environment and the board game movement and structure are tedious and archaic. In the end, only the most persistent players will appreciate this game; but even those gamers will probably be hard up to find enough rewards to justify the effort.”³³ Writing for the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Gary Steinman’s review would be particularly antagonistic, taking issue with Kawazu’s whole oeuvre with every space on the page being utilized for critique. In the running head, for example, Steinman writes, “The best thing about Unlimited SaGa? The extended FFX-2 video preview. You must see it!”³⁴ Running alongside the actual review would be an entire separate column titled, “Akitoshi’s Atrocities” in which Steinman details the various games Kawazu worked on that are considered critical and commercial flops, including Final Fantasy II, the Frontier duology, Legend of Mana, Racing Lagoon, and even Kawazu’s yet-to-be unreleased Nintendo projects simply labeled “Nintendo Stuff.”³⁵ Steinman’s own review would explicitly take issue with Kawazu’s methodology:

It all adds up to a frustrating mess. Still, while I don’t recommend you buy this game, it’s a worthy rental for hardcore RPG fans, if only to experience some of Kawazu’s quirky vision. It’s as if he stripped away any extra elements from his game, leaving us with the bare essence of an RPG. Unfortunately, he also stripped away any sense of fun.³⁶

Although still negative, the reviews at least did not all commonly cite a preference for wanting to play Final Fantasy, but the implication was not lost on Kawazu. Unlimited SaGa would indeed be critical and commercial flop and Kawazu would follow-up the title with a remake of Romancing SaGa for the PlayStation 2, titled Minstrel Song (Square Enix 2005), which, according to Kawazu, Square sought to be more in line with the conventional RPG experience.³⁷ In an interview with Game Spy regarding Minstrel Song, he would speak at length on the subject of Unlimited:

GameSpy: I noticed there’s a big change from Unlimited SaGa and what prompted how the series is evolving?

Kawazu: Unlimited SaGa was a special game for us in terms of presentation and gameplay. It was an experimental game. This time I wanted to stick closer to RPG conventions so more people could enjoy it. Square-Enix really wants this one to be a little more in line with expectations.³⁸

Shortly thereafter, Kawazu more straightforwardly defines the SaGa franchise in relation to Final Fantasy:

GameSpy: The SaGa series has not been as popular as Final Fantasy in the United States. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on why, and what barriers it might have to U.S. fans?

Kawazu: The SaGa series hasn’t adopted the same visual style of presentation that the FF series has, so that has gotten in the way of its acceptance in the U.S. market.

GameSpy: I would also say that the gameplay is a little different and more complex than FF. What separates the SaGa series from other RPGs?

Kawazu: I put myself in the design team, and we pride ourselves on the very advance level of gameplay. We’re hardcore gamers making games for hardcore gamers. That’s probably the greatest gameplay difference between the SaGa series and the Final Fantasy series.³⁹

Finally, Kawazu brings up the Western market’s preference for Final Fantasy’s more cinematic direction:

GameSpy: What kind of reception is the team expecting for Romancing SaGa in the United States? Unlimited SaGa wasn’t received terribly warmly, and the SaGa Frontier games were pretty popular, but not huge. This game has changed to be much more 3D, however, so I was wondering what you’re expecting.

Kawazu: I believe that the American gamers have been expecting a game that’s similar to Final Fantasy that’s full of flashy graphics and CG cutscenes. I am hoping to create a game that has quality gameplay that hardcore gamers can enjoy. I believe that the SaGa series offers challenge to gamers.⁴⁰

So perhaps after all, Square Enix’s North American marketing team weren’t wrong to advertise Unlimited as a hardcore game given that it was never going to capture the same fanbase as Final Fantasy despite both titles being RPGs from Japan. It’s not without irony then that the most negative review of Unlimited also compares its to the Bard’s Tale series, demonstrating how SaGa has always straddled the line between Japanese and Western RPGs, as if to say that the distinction itself is false. As a result, it is perhaps due to Unlimited refusing to cohere into genre stereotypes that so many critics found it difficult to categorize and consequently enjoy.

Following the release of Unlimited, Kawazu and his team would get to work on Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, a 3D remake of the original Romancing SaGa (Square, 1992), this time released for the PlayStation 2, and while Minstrel Song would fare slightly better than Unlimited, it did not capture the wider audience that Square Enix was banking of, especially in the wake of their aggressive “polymorphic” policy—even Unlimited would receive a vaguely related anime produced by Kawazu, titled, Final Fantasy: Unlimited (Gonzo, 2001 – 2002). But to say that Unlimited ruined Kawazu’s career or squandered the goodwill he had cultivated at Square Enix would be incorrect. Rather, it seems that Kawazu would work tirelessly as a producer, especially in spearheading newly formed development teams to work on a few new I.P.s (Code Age Commanders and The Last Remnant), alongside games that were meant to be Square’s mea-culpa for having abandoned Nintendo for Sony, namely, the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles franchise.

Considering Unlimited SaGa‘s reception, one is then left wondering, what does Square plan to do? On Square’s own blog page introducing SaGa, Unlimited remains the only game to be absent.⁴¹ Given that Unlimited originally followed Frontier 2, it is certainly the next game to be remastered. Yet, while changes aimed at improving the quality-of-life of older titles helped them find a new and modern audience, Unlimited SaGa is far opaquer than its predecessors—the same style of changes would only go so far. Change too much, and Unlimited transforms into an altogether different game. Just as there is a tension between Kawazu’s design and players’ approach, there is also a tension between the design ethos behind Unlimited and the market forces which dictates what kinds of games can be produced, even as Square’s own business decisions waver between releases of niche titles (Dungeon Encounters, Harvestella, and Valkyrie Elysium) and announcing support for new hare-brained technologies (crypto and NFTs). Of course, circumstances have also changed since Unlimited’s initial release. Within the cultural zeitgeist of JRPGs, Final Fantasy no longer dominates the space as it once did, and players have shown publishers that there is a market for experimental titles, including board-game inspired JRPGs—2026 has already seen Sting’s Viractal: Will You Trust Your Party with Neos Corporation’s Culdcept: BEGINS being set to release at a later date this year. The landscape of game criticism has also shifted away from print publications and has fractured across the internet allowing titles like Unlimited to find and build their audience.

So the question is, when Square Enix finally re-releases Unlimited SaGa, will you call yourself chicken or hardcore?

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bratcher, Eric. “SaGa Frontier 2.” Next Generation, no. 63 (March 2000): 90.

Chet. “Unlimited SaGa.” Game Informer 122 (June 2003): 102.

Chris. “SaGa Frontier 2.” Electronic Gaming Monthly, no. 128 (March 2000): 145.

Clarke, Stuart. “SaGa Frontier 2.” The Official Australian PlayStation Magazine, vol. 32: 71.

Electronic Gaming Monthly. “Final Fantasy Legend 3.” Electronic Gaming Monthly. Issue 51(October 1993): 44.

Game Informer. Game Informer. Vol. 61(May 1998): 47.

Heaney, Duncan. “An Introduction to SaGa.” Square Enix, May 22, 2025. https://www.square-enix-games.com/en_US/news/introduction-to-saga/.

Lane, Gavin. “Feature: SaGa Series Director on Romancing SaGa 3, The Super Famicom JRPG Heading Westwards After 24 Years.” Nintendo Life. November 9, 2019. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/11/feature_saga_series_director_on_romancing_saga_3_the_super_famicom_jrpg_heading_westwards_after_24_years

Neves, Lawrence. ‘SaGa Frontier.” Game Pro. May 1998. Vol. 106 (May 1998): 110.

Nutt, Christian. “Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song.” GameSpy, May 26, 2005. http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2/romancing-saga-minstrel-song/619282p1.html

Pelletier-Gagnon, Jérémie. “’Very much like any other Japanese RPG you’ve ever played’: Using undirected topic modelling to examine the evolution of JPRGs’ presence in anglophone web publications.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds. Volume 10. No.2. 135 – 148.

PlayStation: The Official Magazine. PlayStation: The Official Magazine. Vol. 10 (June 1998): 35

Rybicki, Joe. “SaGa Frontier.” Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 8 (May 1998): 76

Suzuki, Ginichiro. “Hige no Taisa no Rensai Dai 6-kai: Gēmu Dezain Kōza.” Simulator, Vol. 8 (Feb – March 1984). Tokyo: Shō Kikaku: 41 – 43.

Sy, Dexter. “The Final Fantasy Legend.” IGN. June 12, 2000. https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/13/final-fantasy-legend.

Takahashi, Shunichi. “Bōken no shimyurēshon, shimyurēshon no bōken — Adobenchā rōru pureingu gēmu to wa —” (The Adventure of Simulation, the Simulation of Adventure: What Are Role-Playing Games?). TACTICS, no. 3 (May–June 1981). Tokyo: Hobby Japan: 28.

The Enforcer, “SaGa Frontier 2,” Game Pro, Vol. 127 (February 2000),  p. 120. Vitale, Adam. “SaGa Series Interview 2021 – Talking the current state and future potential of a renewed franchise.” RPG Site. June 25, 2021. https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/11395-saga-series-interview-2021-talking-the-current-state-and-future-potential-of-a-renewed-franchise

Winkler, Chris, and Eve C. “RPGFan Exclusive Interview Series: Creator’s Talk 2003 – Akitoshi Kawazu (UNLIMITED SaGa).” RPGFan, March 2, 2003. https://www.rpgfan.com/feature/rpgfan-exclusive-interview-series-creators-talk-2003-akitoshi-kawazu-unlimited-saga/

ENDNOTES

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1. Developer Cattle Call would also release their own SaGa-inspired games in the form of The Legend of Legacy (2015) and Alliance Alive (2017). I would be remiss to not also mention the doujin RPG, Hat World: New Testament (2019). ↩︎
2. This includes Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (Square Enix, 2005), SaGa 2:Hihō Densetsu: Goddess of Destiny (Racjin, 2009), and SaGa 3: Jikū no Hasha: Shadow or Light (Racjin, 2011). While Minstrel Song would later see official releases in the West through its remastered versions, the remakes of SaGa 2 and 3 would instead receive fan-translations.  ↩︎
3. Adam Vitale, “SaGa Series Interview 2021 – Talking the current state and future potential of a renewed franchise,” RPG Site, June 25, 2021, https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/11395-saga-series-interview-2021-talking-the-current-state-and-future-potential-of-a-renewed-franchise ↩︎
4. Notably, the Frontier duology and -Minstrel Song- all included restored and additional content making these games much more than simple remasters that were only given a high-definition polish and quality-of-life upgrades. ↩︎
5. Dexter Sy, “Final Fantasy Legend,” IGN, June 12, 2000,  https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/13/final-fantasy-legend. ↩︎
6. Electronic Gaming Monthly, “Final Fantasy Legend 3,” Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 51(October 1993), p.44. ↩︎
7. Gavin Lane, “Feature: SaGa Series Director on Romancing SaGa 3, The Super Famicom JRPG Heading Westwards After 24 Years,” Nintendo Life, November 9, 2019,  https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/11/feature_saga_series_director_on_romancing_saga_3_the_super_famicom_jrpg_heading_westwards_after_24_years ↩︎
8. During this time, translating a game was as much a technical feat as it was an artistic one. The relatively smaller storage capacity of games, as well as even the size of textboxes, meant that translators had to work within the confines of the technology, an issue to my understanding fan-translators still face today. ↩︎
9. Game Informer, Game Informer, Vol. 61(May 1998), p.47. ↩︎
10. Joe Rybicki, “SaGa Frontier,” Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 8 (May 1998), p.76. ↩︎
11. Joe Rybicki, “SaGa Frontier,” p.76. ↩︎
12. PlayStation: The Official Magazine, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, Vol. 10 (June 1998), p.35. ↩︎
13. Lawrence Neves, “SaGa Frontier,” Game Pro, Vol. 106 (May 1998),  p.110. ↩︎
14. Although as Pelletier-Gagnon also points out, the “language” for the comparison had already long been there. ↩︎
15. Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon, “’Very much like any other Japanese RPG you’ve ever played’: Using undirected topic modelling to examine the evolution of JPRGs’ presence in anglophone web publications,” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, Volume 10. No.2,  p.146. ↩︎
16. Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon, “’Very much like any other Japanese RPG you’ve ever played’: Using undirected topic modelling to examine the evolution of JPRGs’ presence in anglophone web publications,” p.145. ↩︎
17. The Enforcer, “SaGa Frontier 2,” Game Pro, Vol. 127 (February 2000),  p.120. ↩︎
18. The Enforcer, “SaGa Frontier 2,” p. 120. ↩︎
19. ECM, Fury, and Cerberus, “SaGa Frontier 2,” Game Fan, Vol.8, No. 2 (February 2000), p.12. ↩︎
20. ECM, Fury, and Cerberus, “SaGa Frontier 2,” p.12. ↩︎
21. Chris, “SaGa Frontier 2,” Electronic Gaming Monthly, No. 128 (March 2000), p. 145. ↩︎
22. Eric Bratcher, “SaGa Frontier 2,” Next Generation, No. 63 (March 2000), p.90. ↩︎
23. Stuart Clarke, “SaGa Frontier 2,” The Official Australian PlayStation Magazine, Vol. 32 p.71. ↩︎
24. SaGa: Scarlet Grace would initially release on the Sony PlayStation Vita before later being ported tom home consoles and PCs, and while SaGa: Emerald Beyond received an immediate multiplatform release, included amongst that platforms would be iOS and Android. ↩︎
25. In fact, next SaGa title, Unlimited SaGa, began development for an undisclosed portable console before having to be redesigned for the PlayStation 2 ↩︎
26. Adobe, “Adobe Photoshop to Adobe After Effects to no renkei kara umareta
    shinkankaku no sukecchi mōshon ga hyōgen suru kitai no RPG
    “UNLIMITED SaGa,” December, 2002, https://www.adobe.com/jp/digitalimag/features/square_saga/index.html ↩︎
27. Chris Winkler and Eve C., “RPGFan Exclusive Interview Series: Creator’s Talk 2003 – Akitoshi Kawazu (Unlimited SaGa), RPGFan, March 2, 2003, https://www.rpgfan.com/feature/rpgfan-exclusive-interview-series-creators-talk-2003-akitoshi-kawazu-unlimited-saga/ ↩︎
28. Chris Winkler and Eve C., “RPGFan Exclusive Interview Series: Creator’s Talk 2003 – Akitoshi Kawazu (Unlimited SaGa). ↩︎
29. Chris Winkler and Eve C., “RPGFan Exclusive Interview Series: Creator’s Talk 2003 – Akitoshi Kawazu (Unlimited SaGa). ↩︎
30. Ginichiro Suzuki, “Hige no Taisa no Rensai Dai 6-kai: Gēmu Dezain Kōza,” Simulator, no. 8 (Feb.–Mar. 1984), 42, trans by author. ↩︎
31. Shunichi Takahashi, “Bōken no shimyurēshon, shimyurēshon no bōken — Adobenchā rōru pureingu gēmu to wa —” (The adventure of simulation, the simulation of adventure: what are role-playing games?), TACTICS, no. 3 (May–June 1981), Tokyo: Hobby Japan, 28, trans by author. ↩︎
32. However, we must be careful not to fetishize Unlimited SaGa as some sort of “pure” game freed from the constraints of programming or diegetic narrative, but there’s certainly a line to be drawn from the likes of Rogue (A.I. Design, 1980) to Unlimited SaGa and even further ahead to Dungeon Encounters (Cattle Call, 2021).  ↩︎
33. Chet, 102. ↩︎
34. Gary Steinman, “Unlimited SaGa: Unlimited frustration, unlimited unfun,” The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, 94. ↩︎
35. Gary Steinman, “Unlimited SaGa: Unlimited frustration, unlimited unfun,” 94. ↩︎
36. Gary Steinman, “Unlimited SaGa: Unlimited frustration, unlimited unfun,” 94. ↩︎
37. Christian Nutt, “Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song,” Game Spy, May 26, 2005, http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2/romancing-saga-minstrel-song/619282p1.html. ↩︎
38. Christian Nutt, “Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song,” Game Spy, May 26, 2005. ↩︎
39. Christian Nutt, “Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song,” Game Spy, May 26, 2005. ↩︎
40. Christian Nutt, “Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song,” Game Spy, May 26, 2005. ↩︎
41. Duncan Heaney, “An Introduction to SaGa,” Square Enix, May 22, 2025, https://www.square-enix-games.com/en_US/news/introduction-to-saga ↩︎