SaGa
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SaGa is a popular series of RPG video games from SquareSoft, now Square Enix. It was started by Akitoshi Kawazu in 1989, two years after its cousin Final Fantasy.
It is graphically in contrast with Seiken Densetsu. As for regional release record, the second three games (the Romancing SaGa trilogy) in the series were marketed exclusively in Japan. Originally in monochrome, the first game in the series, Makaitoushi SaGa (a.k.a. Final Fantasy Legend in the U.S.), was remade for Bandai WonderSwan Color being made over from monochrome 8-bit graphics to color 16-bit graphics. The original version is included with the enhanced version on the WonderSwan Color cartridge. Usually, the original versions are not included with the enhanced remakes. SaGa Frontier is the first SaGa game to be released in the U.S. since SaGa 3 (Final Fantasy Legend III). SaGa's creator Akitoshi Kawazu is the founder of Game Designers Studio.
SaGa is believed by some gamers to have gameplay superior to that of Final Fantasy. While Final Fantasy focuses on storyline, music, and graphics, the Game Boy SaGa games primarily focus on gameplay, concepts, and races. Characters and villagers can be humans, elves, monsters, aliens, cyborgs, or even robots. In the Romancing SaGa games for later systems, gameplay is focused on different main characters, finding allies to join, learning new techniques or magic, and a free-style of gameplay whose order and story is not set. SaGa is less popular than Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Seiken Densetsu, and Chrono. Unlike Final Fantasy and like Seiken Densetsu, SaGa sports cartoonish graphics. The graphics of SaGa are similar to the graphics of Seiken Densetsu games released around the same time as the respective SaGa games.
Release chronology
- Makaitoushi SaGa (Final Fantasy Legend) - 1989 in North America, Game Boy
- SaGa 2 (Final Fantasy Legend II) - 1991 in North America, Game Boy
- SaGa 3 (Final Fantasy Legend III) - 1991 in Japan, 1993 in North America, Game Boy
- Romancing SaGa - January 28, 1992, SNES; 2002, WonderSwan Color (Japanese Wikipedia article on the Romancing SaGa trilogy)
- Remade as Romancing SaGa: Minstrel's Song for the PS2.
- Romancing SaGa 2 - 1993 in Japan only, SNES
- Romancing SaGa 3 - 1995 in Japan only, SNES
- SaGa Frontier - July 17, 1997 in Japan, 1998 in North America; PlayStation
- SaGa Frontier 2 - 2000 in North America, PlayStation
- Unlimited Saga - 2002 in Japan, June 17, 2003 in North America, also released in Europe, PlayStation 2