FA+
Shop
SaGa: Scarlet Grace Ambitions (2019) Review
a year ago
General
This is a game that I had to start multiple playthroughs just because the game got too frustrating for me. This current playthrough is no different as I played as Urpina and cleared Chapter 1 before calling it quits as i feel like I had seen everything the game has to offer.
SaGa: Scarlet Grace Ambitions (SGA) is a game that has very solid bones but is held back by the tedious and often unrewarding combat with too many contradictory game design choices that stops SGA from being a very solid game.
SGA is a JRPG that is the 10th mainline game in the long-running SaGa series that focuses on a non-linear progression system and open world exploration at your own pace with 4 protagonists and story lines to follow. The game does a good job of being open world as you gain the ability to complete quests in any order you want without railroading you for large portions of the game. Compared to previous SaGa games, the protagonists actually have more to say this time around as each story-line is more in depth allowing the personalities of the protagonists to shine. In addition, you can find different solutions to various quests which allows for replayability to see which solution is the optimal one.
This game is also unique in that there are no dungeons and there are no random encounters in this game as all battles take place within event nodes ranging from Easy to Hard nodes each with their own rewards and bonus win conditions. I found it disappointing because I like exploring dungeons and collecting powerful loot and gear.
The main problem is in the combat itself. It's a unique JRPG battle system with more emphasis on playing defensivley and manipulating the battle timeline. In this case, SGA is a turn-based JRPG but the twist is that you spend Battle Points (BP) to use skills during battle including your basic attack which is shared by all 5 members of your current battle party. This means that you need to think about how to spend BP during the turn including choosing the correct formations to optimize buffs and BP gain as some formations have unique means of earning BP, diffirent max BP, BP restored per turn, etc. In addition, Magic also got changed as all spells have a casting time. Status aliments are just as important here as in past SaGa games as you need to make good use of them such as poisoning bosses so its easier to disable them with paralysis or spamming skills that cause stun on a boss about to drop a nasty attack so they can't use it. The battle timeline is also present and visible to the player so they can focus on targets and set up unite attacks that act as bonus attack if an enemy is defeated in between allies on the timeline.
Long story short, this is a completely new and unique battle system that turns nearly every battle into a boss fight as even the trashiest of mobs can hit hard enough to KO characters in 2 hits. I am conflicted on the battle system as I think it's very well thought out but feels too dependent on RNG to actually feel satisfying. Having so many battles hinge on one status aliment landing or hoping that only one person in your party gets poisoned is a common occurrence which ends up making you feel like you're never in control of the battle for a system that rewards players taking control of the battlefield.
The progression system retains the traditional SaGa weapon and magic level system from past games with HP, Skill levels, and Skills being semi random including Sparking/Glimmering techs. It always feels good to see those stats increase after every battle but as with SaGa games, enemies scale to your level so they're always challenging. I'm fine with level scaling if its done right but more often than not, I feel like I keep getting weaker compared to enemies. There is an option to make enemies weaker but even easy mode still feels like hard mode and is still just as frustrating.
Life Points (LP) also shows up here as a resource to discourage you from getting KO'd too many times. Since you recover full HP between battles, your LP acts as your lives such that you lose 1 LP if you get KO'd and if your LP hits 0, you're "dead" for a set number of battles until you get revived and your LP is returned to full. I feel that LP has no point being in this game as the game expects you to have crutch characters and makes grinding to resurrect your crutch characters a living hell. It feels like punishment for no point especially in past SaGa games where 0 LP meant permadeath but not here.
Another issue is that the game wants you to experiment and try out new parties so the game lets you have as many characters as you want in your reserves but nearly every new character you get requires grinding. In other JRPGS, this is no issue as Past JRPGs already worked out solutions such as Suikoden making new characters slingshot to your level in 1-2 battles or Chrono Cross tying levels to battle stars earned and scaling their stats based on how many stars you have. But in SGA, new characters do come with weapon and magic levels similar to your party's current level BUT they only join with either 1 or 2 skills known for their favourite weapon type meaning you have to grind to get the useful techs you need such as Mizuchi or Sweep for spears; skills that your current spearmen ALREADY know. This just creates bullshit situations in which your spearmen you've used since the start of the game is better than any spearmen you get in the future and vice versa so what's the fucking point of new party members if they join underdeveloped compared to you?
To add insult to injury, there's few areas that are easy to grind in as with SGA's enemy scaling, you're always having to work your ass off bit by bit just to get your underdeveloped characters to your level. Furthermore, you always have to make sure your crutch (In my case, Urpina) picks up the slack so they don't lose any LP and extend your grinding time. And wouldn't you like to know that your new party members start out with base weapons meaning you have to grind out resources to upgrade their gear to their current level?
Upgrading also ends up feeling like a hassle as there's no GP in the game. Instead you get elemental stones and other crafting materials to upgrade your current weapons and armour. The upgrading system feels like padding as the requirement for crafting materials just serves to make the game longer than it should since some of the ways you get unique crafting materials besides the elemental stones is to complete battle challenges which often requires you to beat the battle using sub-optimal parties. And with a game where every battle feels like a boss battle, this gets annoying and grinding VERY fast especially with how easy it is to get KO'd and lose LP which means MORE grinding to restore your LP you lost while grinding.
Another feature in the game is Roles you can give to your characters which act as passive skills offering stat boosts. To learn new roles, you have to make sure you have weapon techs learned and weapon levels at the required levels. In other words, you have to grind and use suboptimal parties in battles where EVERY battle feels like a boss fight just to learn new roles. Yeah.
Had the game just toned down the number of battles where it feels like a boss fight and less luck based (or even adding in a proper easy difficulty), I could see myself enjoying this game more and even finishing it. This game best exemplifies a comment i saw a couple years ago: "If you know and get annoyed that you're grinding, its grinding done poorly. If you don't know that you're grinding but you want to do more of it, then its grinding done right. " So many of the game's systems and features designed to encourage experimentation and customization require stupid amounts of grinding that feels like you're always at a stone wall even if you're gaining stats and levels.
Sure, this game may have a very in-depth combat system and be accessible to new players but none of that matters if the majority of the game feels like a chore. It gets very tiring thinking like a chess game in a JPRG that it ultimately sours the experience. As such, I cannot recommend this game. I appreciate that the devs swung for the fences on this experimental take on a JRPG but like most SaGa games where its either an excellent hit or a massive miss among players, i found this one to be a miss.
I do love how the game made sure to give everyone lubriciously over the top animations to every single tech including making the "Teleports Behind You" meme literally.
SaGa: Scarlet Grace Ambitions (SGA) is a game that has very solid bones but is held back by the tedious and often unrewarding combat with too many contradictory game design choices that stops SGA from being a very solid game.
SGA is a JRPG that is the 10th mainline game in the long-running SaGa series that focuses on a non-linear progression system and open world exploration at your own pace with 4 protagonists and story lines to follow. The game does a good job of being open world as you gain the ability to complete quests in any order you want without railroading you for large portions of the game. Compared to previous SaGa games, the protagonists actually have more to say this time around as each story-line is more in depth allowing the personalities of the protagonists to shine. In addition, you can find different solutions to various quests which allows for replayability to see which solution is the optimal one.
This game is also unique in that there are no dungeons and there are no random encounters in this game as all battles take place within event nodes ranging from Easy to Hard nodes each with their own rewards and bonus win conditions. I found it disappointing because I like exploring dungeons and collecting powerful loot and gear.
The main problem is in the combat itself. It's a unique JRPG battle system with more emphasis on playing defensivley and manipulating the battle timeline. In this case, SGA is a turn-based JRPG but the twist is that you spend Battle Points (BP) to use skills during battle including your basic attack which is shared by all 5 members of your current battle party. This means that you need to think about how to spend BP during the turn including choosing the correct formations to optimize buffs and BP gain as some formations have unique means of earning BP, diffirent max BP, BP restored per turn, etc. In addition, Magic also got changed as all spells have a casting time. Status aliments are just as important here as in past SaGa games as you need to make good use of them such as poisoning bosses so its easier to disable them with paralysis or spamming skills that cause stun on a boss about to drop a nasty attack so they can't use it. The battle timeline is also present and visible to the player so they can focus on targets and set up unite attacks that act as bonus attack if an enemy is defeated in between allies on the timeline.
Long story short, this is a completely new and unique battle system that turns nearly every battle into a boss fight as even the trashiest of mobs can hit hard enough to KO characters in 2 hits. I am conflicted on the battle system as I think it's very well thought out but feels too dependent on RNG to actually feel satisfying. Having so many battles hinge on one status aliment landing or hoping that only one person in your party gets poisoned is a common occurrence which ends up making you feel like you're never in control of the battle for a system that rewards players taking control of the battlefield.
The progression system retains the traditional SaGa weapon and magic level system from past games with HP, Skill levels, and Skills being semi random including Sparking/Glimmering techs. It always feels good to see those stats increase after every battle but as with SaGa games, enemies scale to your level so they're always challenging. I'm fine with level scaling if its done right but more often than not, I feel like I keep getting weaker compared to enemies. There is an option to make enemies weaker but even easy mode still feels like hard mode and is still just as frustrating.
Life Points (LP) also shows up here as a resource to discourage you from getting KO'd too many times. Since you recover full HP between battles, your LP acts as your lives such that you lose 1 LP if you get KO'd and if your LP hits 0, you're "dead" for a set number of battles until you get revived and your LP is returned to full. I feel that LP has no point being in this game as the game expects you to have crutch characters and makes grinding to resurrect your crutch characters a living hell. It feels like punishment for no point especially in past SaGa games where 0 LP meant permadeath but not here.
Another issue is that the game wants you to experiment and try out new parties so the game lets you have as many characters as you want in your reserves but nearly every new character you get requires grinding. In other JRPGS, this is no issue as Past JRPGs already worked out solutions such as Suikoden making new characters slingshot to your level in 1-2 battles or Chrono Cross tying levels to battle stars earned and scaling their stats based on how many stars you have. But in SGA, new characters do come with weapon and magic levels similar to your party's current level BUT they only join with either 1 or 2 skills known for their favourite weapon type meaning you have to grind to get the useful techs you need such as Mizuchi or Sweep for spears; skills that your current spearmen ALREADY know. This just creates bullshit situations in which your spearmen you've used since the start of the game is better than any spearmen you get in the future and vice versa so what's the fucking point of new party members if they join underdeveloped compared to you?
To add insult to injury, there's few areas that are easy to grind in as with SGA's enemy scaling, you're always having to work your ass off bit by bit just to get your underdeveloped characters to your level. Furthermore, you always have to make sure your crutch (In my case, Urpina) picks up the slack so they don't lose any LP and extend your grinding time. And wouldn't you like to know that your new party members start out with base weapons meaning you have to grind out resources to upgrade their gear to their current level?
Upgrading also ends up feeling like a hassle as there's no GP in the game. Instead you get elemental stones and other crafting materials to upgrade your current weapons and armour. The upgrading system feels like padding as the requirement for crafting materials just serves to make the game longer than it should since some of the ways you get unique crafting materials besides the elemental stones is to complete battle challenges which often requires you to beat the battle using sub-optimal parties. And with a game where every battle feels like a boss battle, this gets annoying and grinding VERY fast especially with how easy it is to get KO'd and lose LP which means MORE grinding to restore your LP you lost while grinding.
Another feature in the game is Roles you can give to your characters which act as passive skills offering stat boosts. To learn new roles, you have to make sure you have weapon techs learned and weapon levels at the required levels. In other words, you have to grind and use suboptimal parties in battles where EVERY battle feels like a boss fight just to learn new roles. Yeah.
Had the game just toned down the number of battles where it feels like a boss fight and less luck based (or even adding in a proper easy difficulty), I could see myself enjoying this game more and even finishing it. This game best exemplifies a comment i saw a couple years ago: "If you know and get annoyed that you're grinding, its grinding done poorly. If you don't know that you're grinding but you want to do more of it, then its grinding done right. " So many of the game's systems and features designed to encourage experimentation and customization require stupid amounts of grinding that feels like you're always at a stone wall even if you're gaining stats and levels.
Sure, this game may have a very in-depth combat system and be accessible to new players but none of that matters if the majority of the game feels like a chore. It gets very tiring thinking like a chess game in a JPRG that it ultimately sours the experience. As such, I cannot recommend this game. I appreciate that the devs swung for the fences on this experimental take on a JRPG but like most SaGa games where its either an excellent hit or a massive miss among players, i found this one to be a miss.
I do love how the game made sure to give everyone lubriciously over the top animations to every single tech including making the "Teleports Behind You" meme literally.
