Akitoshi Kawazu or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love SaGa

3 Sep, 2021

SaGa is the brain child of the game director and designer Akitoshi Kawazu. He designed the battle systems of both Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II and while Final Fantasy is a fairly straight forward system of winning battles to gain experience points for level-ups, Final Fantasy II took it a step further with an almost random element of stat gains based on the users actions in a battle.

These design sensibilities carry over to the SaGa series – if someone used an axe a lot their abilities with axes would improve. If they practised a specific spell, this spell would improve. If they take a lot of hits, their defence and hitpoints grow gradually.

While in Final Fantasy II this evolved to a famous exploit where players would then cue up attacks on their own parties to grind up levels with relative ease. This is also somewhat obtuse for those who prefer a traditional experience point system where reaching clearer goal incentives gives players a sense of progression and growth.

The systems described are fairly broad and each title gives their own spin and variation to the formula, the detail and nuance to these systems often alienate audiences – hence why they seemingly have been shifted to the SaGa title of games, spearheaded by Kawazu himself.

The series has spanned multiple generations, starting with the modest Game Boy in 1989 with Scarlet Grace being the newest title in the franchise – initially released on PlayStation Vita in 2016. While the series seemed like a Japanese curio in recent years a majority of the classic titles have since been ported to basically everything today and unlike other Square Enix mobile ports they are mostly compromise free.

SaGa / The Final Fantasy Legend (Game Boy 1989)

SaGa or The Final Fantasy Legend as it is named in the U.S. named to piggy-back on Nintendo Power coverage of Final Fantasy on NES.

For the first time they are available in Europe and Australia regions with the release of The Collection of SaGa on Switch also coming to Steam and mobile. With the fast forward available, I’m happy to speed through a bulk of turn-based combat ensuing quick play.

The game starts with a running text crawl, it can be paraphrased to “A tower in the centre of the world being connected to paradise, while many have challenged it before nobody knows what became of them. Now there is another who will brave the adventure.” before landing on a character creation screen with Human Male/Female, Mutant Male/Female and four different monsters. Choose one, walk to the thing to enlist another three members to make a full party.

Here the challenge begins and the absurdity of the series rears its head around:

There are three classes;

Humans gain stats through buying performance enhancers for HP, Strength and Agility with the addition of bonuses based on weapon and armour equipped – humans are reliable and handy but can be expensive if relied on too heavily.

Mutants gain stats through user-actions and have modest HP; they are your typical glass cannons who typically make great stat growth through physical skills and spell casting, necessitating a more offensive inventory which may lack in the ways of armour and defence.

And lastly Monsters, with the most unorthodox levelling up system based on eating meat of felled monster enemies in combat to transform into stronger (or weaker) monsters, Monsters often resemble enemies you cross in battle with skills and their own strengths and weaknesses without any means of equipment.

Many players recommend using guides or calculators to guide your monsters progression and SaGa has a very accessible save function so reloading isn’t awfully painful.

The D&D influence is in full spring here, as you alight the tower you periodically find worlds with typical campaigns set in completely different settings. The first world is a very typical fantasy storyline, collect the Sword, Shield and Armour from three kingdoms. The design is undoubtedly linear, but being given the option of exploring a small world and tackling all three objectives in your own order prefaces developments in the series.

Other worlds include an Underwater story close to the lost city of Atlantis, the Sky Lands and a nuclear future similar to Akira. Finally you climb the tower to the top to defeat The Creator – or God.

In addition to this; each weapon has a limited use. Early game this is not much of a hindrance as stores have the same equipment available at stores but limited use items like the Glass Sword or Muramasa are best kept to bosses or end game dungeon use. ALSO your party members have Life Points, if they die too much you will need to build new party members. Thankfully saves are quick and easy to use and later in the game potions are available to replenish LP.

I had fun playing, my suggestion is to build a varied party. Humans do best with Agility at first before pivoting to Strength. These stats are easily maxed out within the playtime, the 99 is not the highest value (255 is), but it is the highest displayed value - over levelling will reduce the stat back down to 0 so be careful. Sabre is Agility reliant and does well in early game before better weapons with reliance on Strength become available. Mutants are good spell casters, I mostly just spammed those and I recommend guides for Monsters.

I reached the end of SaGa in an unwinnable state, and nearly did the same in SaGa II before I lost interest... The Final Fantasy Legend duology (forget III) are immensely dense RPGs for the fledgling Game Boy. I believe they make for a worthwhile revisit even in this revised work's publishing in 2025.