SaGa Emerald Beyond Review as a SaGa newcomer
I wrote this as a review for Steam but there seems to be a character limit for Steam reviews that I blew way past. This was my first real try at a SaGa game (not counting FFII). I enjoyed it and plan on re-playing FFII with a mind on SaGa and then maybe play Scarlet Grace Ambitions.
[Bottom Line Up Front]
This turned based RPG is worth your time if you can accept what it is trying to do. First and foremost this game is all about its incredible combat system and subsystems that support it. I might go as far to say it is the best turn based JRPG combat you will find due to its depth, customization, and speed of action that provides a fun experience throughout many hours of play (see my play time for example). Perhaps as important as the gameplay, going in you must understand that REPLAYS ARE EXPECTED AND PART OF THE EXPERIENCE. I'll hit this in more detail below but you should expect to play through the game with the different protagonists, some multiple times, to see the whole story. The good thing is the gameplay keeps it interesting throughout that span. If you are going for secret hidden bosses and endings, the additional time spent might get to be a bit much. The caveat here is with the focus on combat being so high, some other aspects of your traditional JRPG experience get compressed and streamlined, which may not be appreciated by all.
Critically, I think you will have the most fun leveraging the only existing guide on GameFAQs for this one , mostly to help understand how learning techniques work and understanding why multiple laps through a protagonist's story or a given 'world' changes so much.
[Details]
[Gameplay/Combat]
Emerald Beyond's combat system is the main draw and is more or less 'the game' here. While other JRPGs have managed a turn order strategy paradigm, EB goes the distance. Each round of combat your party members and enemies will have an initiative-roll derived placement on the turn timeline and different techniques will modify that placement. You will find that some abilities make your character go earlier or later in the round's timeline and there can be good reasons for either! Different abilities also take up different 'positions' on the timeline and one of the features of the system is to get 'combos'. This will come from your party members going in sequence (via connected positions). Get high enough of a combo and that some or all of that set of characters will get to go again! This can critical elements of battles but keep in mind enemies can do this as well. You also get special executions when an character or enemy is by themselves on the timeline with no one within two spaces left or right. As you progress through the game and encounter different enemies you will often be managing timeline positioning. The fewer the enemies, the easier it is to combo, so you almost get this 'whittle down the enemy and flank them' effect most other JRPGs do not provide.
Also a factor in combat is the concept of BP. These points usually start off low but increase every turn (pending your party formation which I will not detail in this review). So the fights escalate over time. You will find yourself trying to figure out whether it is better to have multiple characters using 1 BP weak attacks to trigger a combo OR try an expensive 4 BP attack with a character for the attack's special effect.
Since we are talking about attack/techniques, this game is like other SaGa games in that you will learn abilities over time but this varies by character type. Without being exhaustive, it works out like this: human-like characters learn techniques by using particular weapon types and 'glimmering' new techniques by repeatedly using existing one; mech/robot characters HAVE techniques and stats based on what items you equip on them; and monsters learn enemy techniques by being the character that kills them assuming they have an open tech slot. There are also spells, which can be powerful but are often outshined by conventional weapon techs. Learning spells varies a bit, some characters start with spells within a 'family' of spells by type (wood/water/fire/earth/metal). Others must equip items that give you a spell, but you must use it enough to then learn spells in the same family off of that initial spell.
Key thing here is that there are no in-battle item uses or heal spells. That's right. You fight to the bitter end. Turtling will not work, you have to be getting after the enemy every turn, efficiently. You might miss healing at first, but it removes tedium of heal-off battles and bosses of other games. Should your characters fall in combat, they lose LP. This resource gets reset when you change worlds or hit story milestones but so long as you are careful you won't need to worry much. There is, in fact, a character role that allows you to restore LP after combat. Oh yeah, roles? Just an equipable feature of characters for minor bonus effects.
Suffice to say, there are a lot of options here across multiple protagonists, multiple recruitable characters, many weapons, many abilities. It's an expansive combat system that fortunately feels very fun to interact with because its fast, snappy, and if you wanted to treat it more idly, you can set up your party's turn and watch TV as it runs through, but you would miss a lot of the little joys in the presentation (see graphics/presentation section).
[Gameplay/Everything Else]
Since the game's focus is combat, everything else in the game serves to get you back into the action. The game is structured that your protagonists will venture to different 'worlds', and these amount to different overworlds where you will job your character to different events to advance a sidequest or the main story. 'Green'/Emerald events will tend to advance the main story, while Blue events are sidequests, and red events are opportunities to do more battles to get the techs/abilities you want to improves. There is no real exploration in the game, ultimately these events play out in a visual novel format. You will need to pay attention to these and make choice along the way, but this model compresses backtracking endlessly across large city maps in more immersive games, for better or worse. So there is a lot of 'fat' being trimmed here. You are going from story beat to story beat, or sidequest, but eventually getting back to the delightful combat.
There are other systems that play into the combat piece. The main one being 'trading'. Like exploration being trimmed, this game takes the grind-for-loot-so-I-can-buy-stuff loop and compresses that too. As you win battles and progress the story you will get equipment and other items. The other items are the crafting materials needed to upgrade your equipment and this is a critical element of playthroughs long term. Every battle or story beat, your 'trade' options will change. This usually takes the form of items in a list that are open for trading if you have the right items to exchange. This will be how you will accrue various items to get the high tier equipment. You can also take items and offer them up, and on the next beat you will have offers to accept or wait for something else. You will want to do this trading even when you don't really NEED something, because as you trade it increases your trade rank which will be required to get to the good stuff.
Speaking briefly to NewGame+, again replays are an expected thing here. Each protagonists' playthrough is a bit different in story framing and for two characters you are really expected to play through their story multiple times as the initial playthroughs are very short but subsequent plays show more story and go deeper/longer. When you go to start a new game, the menu will show how many completions you have had per protagonist. When you do start a new game you will have the option to carry over skills learned, items, etc. This is something you will want to do pretty much every time so that you can start subsequent playthroughs with your higher trade rank, good equipment to have from start, etc. Also know that to reach some hidden endings and bosses for a certain protagonist, you will need to complete some sidequests as OTHER characters across multiple playthroughs. See the GameFAQs guide for more on that if you want to spoil yourself.
[Characters/Story/Worlds]
The game features 5 different protagonist groups: Tsunanori Mido and his puppet team: More traditional JRPG hero, on a journey of adventure and some self-discovery. Ameya Aisling and her entourage: A Witch on a quirky adventure to find cats and magic. Siugnas: A posh vampire lord that I didn't find particularly entertaining. Diva No. 5: A robot on a quest to find her heart. She is the BEST. Bonnie and Formina: Two cops who don't dress like cops on an top mission of exploration.
These characters all hit similar structures of starting in one of the many worlds of the game and eventually traversing the different worlds, solving the problems/events there, and reaching their endgames (depending on playthrough for Tsunanori and Ameya). The overall narrative is a bit basic and not terribly engaging. This is made up for by all the worlds visited.
There are somewhere around 16-17 worlds to visit and you will often have some choices on which to go during a playthrough, though only via vague hints. Once you gain some familiarity with these over multiple playthroughs you will hints much better. This is another joy of the game, especially early on, as you will not know what is coming next. I don't want to spoil these worlds but for a taste of the variation, you might visit a giant tree, a sandswept wasteland, a wartorn world of elemental ideologies, and more. These worlds are not terribly deep but each offers its own gimmick or theme and importantly, those worlds will function a bit differently across 'laps' of playthroughs. Some elements, characters, and events will vary, so even if you go back to a world, it won't be the exact same experience as your first. Some worlds are more fun or easier to deal with on repeated playthroughs. If you visit all worlds across multiple playthroughs with a protagonist group, you will be able to select from all worlds when given a choice. a bit of a reward.
[Graphics/Music/Presentation]
The graphics of the game are fair for its time though this is a bit of a lower budget game. There are not scenic vistas and great big cutscenes with dazzling graphics. Most of the story is conveyed in the visual novel-esque scenes.
The music is good. Some tracks like for Ameya's combat theme are very fun frenetic violin pieces. Some of the endgame boss music are also standouts. Otherwise the music tends to match the vibe of the game.
I do want to give some special attention to presentation though. Clearly this game was a passion project of the team behind it because there are a lot of neat little details across the game, yes, in the combat. The techniques of the game are a joy to watch play out. There are some choice little details worth catching. Best example I can give is that you can recruit an optional character named Scarecrow. He has a bag with drawn emotes as his face. There is a one-handed gun tech called 'Mightier than the Sword'. Ordinarily, a character does this move with a cool flourish and as smirk before firing. So cool by itself. For Scarecrow, however, when he flourishes there is a brief instant where his bag-head emotes a menacing face. Blink and you'll miss it. It's fantastic.
Holistically, the game's presentation is solid and bolters the face the main feature is the excellent combat system. You will spend much of your time in the combat mode and the music, graphics, and presentation make that just as enjoyable as the deep mechanical aspects.
[Conclusion]
Besides the Bottom-Line-Up-Front section, I'll just close this review with the comment that I have 150+ hours on this game and enjoyed it throughout. It started to drag as I worked toward the hidden bosses, as I had to dig into some combat mechanics I had not invested as much time in. Still, making it through this many hours of a JRPG is a highlight for me. The combat is so good and it will be hard playing a more traditional game afterwards. This game's mechanics are an extension of SaGa: Scarlet Grace's, as far as I understand, though I have not played that one. I suspect it is the only other game that will satisfy the same way for such fast, frenetic, and deep turn-based combat.