May '25 Monthly Game Club - SaGa Frontier 2

[brettch]

May 2025’s Monthly Game Club game is SaGa Frontier 2! It’s a hidden gem of an RPG from Square during their heyday, part of the long running SaGa series helmed by Akitoshi Kawazu.

SaGa Frontier 2 was originally released for the Sony PlayStation in April 1999, and was released in the west the next year. It recently received a remaster for modern platforms as well.

The game was nominated by @Herb in June 2024, and here’s what they have to say about the game:

Saga Frontier 2 has aged very gracefully thanks to choosing a watercolor 2D aesthetic and containing one of the best soundtracks on the PS1. This is Squaresoft at their height, when they were an absolute hit factory. Saga Frontier 2 was overshadowed by the other Square titles of the time, but based on its’ own merits it deserves a seat at the table as one of the greatest PS1 RPGs.

Herb said it great!

It turns out I’ve been playing this game since the remaster came out, and I have been really loving it. It’s beautiful and interesting and different.

The story follows the life journeys of two main characters, Gustave and Wil, whose fates intertwine.

Key art by Tomomi Kobayashi of Wil Knights.

Also, the sound track is one of the earliest projects by Masashi Hamauzu, who would later go on to compose for Final Fantasy XIII among other Square (Enix) games. The sound track is fantastic in SaGa Frontier 2!

Should I play the original or the remaster?

I’d say play the Remaster since it’s readily available, has more legible text, has more content that didn’t make it in the original game, and—most importantly—has battle speed up options!

Some people don’t love the way the backgrounds look upscaled in the Remaster, so do a little prep/research first if you’re particular about that sort of stuff.

More SaGa

Interested in more SaGa? Check out the SaGa thread for more recent thoughts from the forum:

Final Fantasy for Sickos (SaGa Series)

A thread to talk about the long-running Square (Enix) RPG series SaGa. [image] The SaGa series is helmed by Akitoshi Kawazu, a battle designer from Final Fantasy 1 & 2. It’s known for its unique approach to storytelling and gameplay systems. Each game is a standalone entry with no direct story sequels at this time. In the last 5 years or so the series has been very active, with Square Enix releasing new games in the series and lots of re-releases of older titles. What’s your experience wit…

[MoH]

Oh hey I picked this up when you were talking about it! Great excuse to play once I’m done with PMA.

[Karasu]

Wowee, the timing might be right for me to finally participate in one of these, since I wrapped Suikoden 1 and I’ve been steadily bouncing off of everything I was thinking of playing afterwards! (I might also flake out on it thoughhhhhh, this is me we’re talking about!)

[kuu]

i’m gonna do it

[Funbil]

Ooh interesting. I was just thinking about starting up a new RPG, so this could be cool. I’d be playing the original ver off my SiSTER. Is this a good point to enter into the series or not really? I’ve never touched a SaGa but have always been interested.

[MoH]

Short answer: yes

Longer answer: Final Fantasy for Sickos (SaGa Series)

[kuu]

I got in about an hour this morning, just long enough to play through the first combat scenario with Gustave in the caves with the bandits. I’ve unlocked a memory of playing a demo for this on PSX?

The remaster includes the Playstation Pocket stuff, which reminds me that there was special gear in Legend of Mana if you had a SaGa Frontier 2 save file. But i don’t think the demo came with LoM.

Anyways, the game is so pretty. Background art is crisp and light, the colors are lovely, the music is sweet and catchy. It already feels like a darker story but a lighter presentation than Romancing Saga 2 Remake, which is the only other one of these I’ve played through.

Duels are rough! I might need a little notepad for remembering the command combinations. Feint/Slash turns into a stun move which I kind of crutched on. As always, having a hard time resisting running around experimenting because I know how these games get about grinding too much.

Really enjoyed my little morsel this morning :D

[MoH]

early thoughts now that i’m about 1-2 hours in:

• the backgrounds are gorgeous. this is primarily the reason i was interested in the game, so i’m glad that is delivering.
• the music so far has been benign but sets the tone quite well.
• i really like the duel system.
• i love how you can see events in the future when viewing the chronology
• i’m not sure how much the game expects me to know at any given time. should i be reading the (very wordy) hints sections? should i just keep rolling with it?
• thank god for 3x speed

i am not looking to do the most optimized route and would prefer to not look anything up, but i do feel the want for just a little bit of guidance–

i’ve just been doing gustav’s route so far. should i switch to the other route at some point? is there a preferred method? any other tips…..?

[MoH]

@MoH

any other tips…..?

[Herb]

Hadn’t been on IC in several days, it’s a pleasant surprise to see SaGa Frontier 2 is the game of the month. I’ll have to join in after I finish playing Clair Obscur, which might be a week or two.

@MoH

i’ve just been doing gustav’s route so far. should i switch to the other route at some point? is there a preferred method? any other tips…..?

• I haven’t played in several years, so any tips I have are going off a very shaky memory. I don’t think that there’s a wrong way as far as picking scenarios, but it always felt to me like the game intended for you to hop back and forth between Wil and Gustave. It’s probably a better paced play through if you do hop back and forth because Wil’s scenarios are dungeon heavy, while Gustave’s are more story heavy.
• Try different combinations in duels, because skills have set move combinations. It’s a great way to spark skills. In regular combat, try using stuff you might not otherwise just to spark skills.
• Hang onto any quells you find, these are generally useful the entire game.
• It’s not necessary to grind in this game, but I have heard of people softlocking themselves in the final dungeon, because the difficulty really jumps at the end and once you go into the final dungeon there’s no option to turn back and restock. Just do the standard JRPG thing of using multiple save files to prevent any potential headache.
• There’s another potential source of frustration toward the end of the game. The final strategy battle in the game can be a headache. The first time I played the game I had no issues with it. The second time, years later, I had to retry several times at what I believe came down to RNG to win. I have no tips for this part, just be lucky!

[MoH]

Thanks @Herb – it sounds like the best advice is to relax and have fun with it

[Herb]

Yeah, it’s a pretty chill game so don’t worry about potential roadblocks. You’ve probably got to really go out of your way at avoiding combat to get yourself into a spot where you need to grind or get soft locked. If I remember correctly, there’s a couple different areas where you have to Super Mario Bros. level 8-4 style pick the correct combination of paths where most players will end up taking way more fights than they want to any way.

[j_k]

@MoH

any other tips…..?

I just last night read thru the in-game hints page in the remaster, and they’re quite good!

[kuu]

still vibing out very hard with this game!

• find myself enjoying playing as gustave more. though there are party members he himself has a little less to keep track of ability wise, at least at this point. unga bunga.
• i found that the trick to break out of the traditional jrpg grindset for me was to treat it a little more like a roguelike. i’m not going to spark everything i can in every scenario. i’m going to use what does spark and keep plugging away.
• its got a rendition of the inheritance system from romancing 2 so that’s always there if i need it

@brettch i really appreciate you putting this one out there, this would have been in my childhood canon for sure if i had been more aware of it.

[WanderWhist]

In for this adventure. I’m a westerner with SaGa franchise blindness and was certainly distracted by Legend of Mana . Glad Squaresoft had the time for two games with beautiful 2D backgrounds, neat character pixel art, and sure-let’s-try-it systems designs.

Just about 4 hours in now.

• It’s neat seeing the PocketStation ported over with the LCD style graphics! The yield on items is out of control though and I’m gonna limit sending them out to self-balance.
• Quite a few rude npcs in this game! Why I never.
• Slightly jarring warping between certain areas. It doesn’t always feel like where I came from connects to where I am going.
• Getting a handle on systems so far, I hope. It’s been fun piecing things together within the menus rather than tutorial prompts.

Infiltrate! Alexei Gang 1238

• While everything in the game seems “instanced”, it was cool seeing Westia as an “instanced narrative town dungeon”. Hitting the beat so often and getting a little bit of development through multiple characters visits. Its not the most engaging thing I’ve done in the game, but I hope there’s a few more like it.

• CORDELIA was KILLED IN A SEWER!! It was all over in one turn. I think she is gone forever. Do you always lose who you send? ;-;

[sapphicvalkyrja]

Damn, I’m only just now seeing this thread or I might have jumped in sooner! I’ll have to look into that remaster…

[kuu]

a third protag!?

lord i can’t decide if i should keep at it here which has to be towards the end or if i should start again with a guide for scenarios, i was surprised by that spoiler so i went and started reading and saw how much i missed D:

[MoH]

i’m not very far into the game (i just passed the “tycoon wil” scenario), and i find myself swinging between absolutely loving it and being very fatigued by the encounter rate and sameness of the battles. unlocking new moves by sparking or glimmering or whatever it’s called is fun, but not that fun

[Herb]

Just started the game and I’ve got to say, forgot how bad the movement controls are. Ever so slightly nudging the analog stick makes the character move at a crawl, any ounce of force more and they go zoom.

A couple things I forgot and didn’t immediately see glossing over the manual that may be useful:

• Silver items are the musical notes affinity
• Characters can be equipped with skills that other characters have glimmered, as long as they’re equipped with items of the corresponding element of the skill.
• There is a line in equipped arts. Anything above the line is kept when glimmering, anything below can be lost.
• The line can be moved by holding X and pressing up or down.