Player choice is core to the framework of the SaGa franchise. It was also a bit of an ugly duck, with ill-explained gameplay systems galore, awkwardness around every corner, and the kind of mandatory tinkering that seemed quaint even 21 years ago.Įnter SaGa Frontier Remastered, Square Enix’s noble effort to not just prettify but genuinely improve one of the strangest yet most charming RPGs of its era. And it wasn’t a game about saving the world but learning to live in it. It wasn’t about leveling to 99, but organically mastering one’s inner talents. It wasn’t about destined heroes, but rather, a loosely affiliated ensemble cast each with a story of their own. It was a strange game, as all prior SaGas were those of us who played and enjoyed it had a somewhat difficult time explaining it even to fans of notable odd ducks such as Vagrant Story and Xenogears. Released alongside a river of noteworthy RPGs and a veritable ocean’s worth of exceptional video games, the 1998 cult classic was destined to find only modest success on Western shores. Glued as I was to that very first Sony PlayStation, I quickly gobbled up every JRPG I could find. The game that changed my world was Final Fantasy VII. Whether it was Final Fantasy VII Remake and Kingdom Hearts III, or Rad Racer and the original Final Fantasy, or perhaps - as I suspect is the case for a great many of us - somewhere in-between, there was a period of Square history that drew us in and never let us out. We all have our Square Enix origin stories.