SaGa Frontier 2 is the latest RPG to grace the PlayStation.  Unlike most of Squaresoft's games, this one doesn't go all out to blow players away with revolutionary CG graphics but is instead a more traditional RPG.  Many may remember SaGa Frontier as a game that was, in many ways, one of the worst games to ever make it stateside.  Square’s attempt at making a non-linear game that retained high replay value was a disaster with such high points as a hollow plot, repetitive gameplay, and a complete lack of direction.  Thankfully, Square has learned from their mistakes and have made a better game.  Unfortunately, SaGa Frontier 2 is still not without many serious faults.

This time around, instead of the seven short stories of the first game, there are two main scenarios that the player can choose to follow from the outset.  The first plot follows the political ambitions of prince Gustave XIII, who is banished from his kingdom because he is born without magic.  The second story follows the adventures of Wil Knights and his quest to discover the secret of his family history and the source of magic.  Of the two, the Wil Knights adventure is the better one because it has more character and actual gameplay.  Since Gustave is a ruler he can’t go out into the world for adventure.  

Once he seizes power, the game is reduced to a series of strategic army battles followed by long interludes of dialogue.  If the story was good, I wouldn’t mind this so much but, at best, the political intrigue is dry and uninteresting.  Compounding on this fault, Gustave dies before he is even developed as a character, and a series of successors emerge as the game skips 20 years every couple of minutes.  The Wil Knights scenario, on the other hand, is more linear, has actual dungeon exploration, and the player gets to keep and develop the characters he starts out with.  Square has maintained the non-linear portion of the series by allowing a choice of the order of events the player can undertake.  Usually, there is one choice as to where to proceed next, but sometimes there are several events that can be taken in any order.  There is even a point where the player can leave one scenario and follow the other from the middle creating a unique historical timeline of the world.

Surprisingly, the strongest aspect of SaGa Frontier 2 is the graphics.  Instead of the usual sprite or polygon-based graphics, Square has opted for a watercolor approach.  This makes the game highly original and incredibly colorful.  Each background is a joy to watch.   The entire game looks and feels like a big painting with cut-out characters moving around the canvas.  From the beginning, this style is a breath of fresh air and really revitalizes what otherwise would be a dull RPG world.  

Music and sound is another aspect that SaGa Frontier 2 excels in.  Many of the tunes are memorable and appropriate to the situation.  Sound effects are used throughout dungeons and in towns to emphasize important events and actions.

Gameplay, however, is where SaGa Frontier 2 really falls apart.  While deep, it is so poorly explained that navigating through the menus becomes frustrating and the style quickly gets old.  Basically there are three combat modes – team battle, individual duel, and army battles.  Generally, the player will spend most of their time in the team battle since characters can help each other out and there is less chance of dying.  There is a large variety of weapons available and all of them can be used by any character.  As the character uses a weapon, they learn special techniques.  Additionally, each character can be equipped with spell arts that act as the magic system.  Combat is menu-driven with the enemy going after your character attacks.  Between attacks, you are given a chance to heal by sacrificing life points or, if the enemy is damaged, you can even negotiate a truce or escape from battle.  While this system seems simple, it is plagued with problems.  

For instance, normal attacks do pitiful damage that force the player to always use the special attacks.  Unfortunately these special attacks use up weapon points that can’t be replenished easily.  The same problem applies to spells.  A spell can be equipped to a character but that character may not have the points to use it.  It’s still not clear to me how spells can be activated or replenished in battle.  It’s convenient that the characters can heal between battles but since it uses life points healing in the long run can kill. Since many of the enemies have ridiculously high hit points, battles can drag on forever.  You can see all your enemies on screen, but unfortunately they are very hard to avoid since they chase you and every time your party moves off-screen, the enemies come back.  Basically if you are lost, you have to fight endlessly to find the way out.   

Another really pointless addition is your weapons will break with use.  Every weapon has a certain amount of points allocated to it that decrease every time it is used.  When it reaches zero, the weapon breaks.  If there are no spare weapons in inventory, then you are out of luck.  Weapons can be bought or fixed in shops for money.  However, monsters almost never give money when defeated so you have to search for it in treasure chests.  You can’t even sell items you don’t need.  Another gripe is since you have to follow a set event path, there is no way to go back to a town to buy stronger weapons when you do have the money.  This entire system is so tedious that most players will get frustrated and give up.  

A possible remedy for some of these problems is the single duel battle.  While a good idea, it again fails to make-up for the headache of the team battles.   Basically the player can choose which party member gets to fight a single monster.  Then you can string together a series of commands to pull off combos and quickly finish off the enemy.  Unfortunately, no matter what new skills or magic the character learns in team battle, the set of available skills in duel battles is always the same and based on weapon type.  Because of this, the novelty of duel battle quickly wears off and is just there as a distraction from the main team battles.  

The only redeeming quality of the gameplay is the army battles.  Here you take control of troop units that can advance in any order on the enemy.  Once you attack, the screen shifts to a regular team battle between your troops and the enemy.  Here there is at least some strategy involved and the fights don’t take as long.  Despite these many interfaces in combat, gameplay is tedious at best and horribly frustrating at worst.  The best aspect to me is just exploring the beautiful painted backgrounds and reading the text story.  Otherwise, this game has little to offer and much to anger.

Squaresoft has made a valiant attempt to correct the mistakes of the first game.  While in many ways SaGa Frontier 2 is a better game overall due to graphics and more coherent story, it still fails as a good RPG.  Most of the characters are distant and don’t stay around long enough to become developed.  Added to this is the worst combat system I have ever had the misfortune to plod through.  Therefore my advice would be to stay away from this disaster of Saga proportions and wait for the killer Square line-up for the rest of 2000.

The unique timeline is not really that unique. One headache with this game is enough.