SaGa Emerald Beyond Review - The Most Nuanced JRPG Ever

"This is the chaos of this particular SaGa game; it's all a blend of chance and choices you'll never know the effect of your options because you'll never be given the proper amount of context needed to make these choices." Wait, what is particular about that in THIS SaGa? That's... that's the whole franchise! XD

Everything you mentions sound like regular SaGa shenanigans to me.

square enix sending game out to die with 0 marketing and budget rip.

Interesting seeing how wildly the scores for this game varies many sites have it in the 90s range, while it didn't connect for others.

Not gonna lie. This sounds like you rushed through one of the five arcs and rushed out a review. The fact that there are unanswered questions in individual arcs isn't new to SaGa games, and there wasn't a mention of some of the New Game+ stuff I've been hearing hinted at.

It seems more like a game where you're not supposed to care about the story. You're supposed to be like "Let me see how strong I can make this team of cats" and not really think about why you have a team of cats.

Wow, I hate those still frame renders for the dialogue sequences. Either have some art drawn or properly animate your in-game models, don't just render them and run a bad Photoshop filter over the image

I don’t know, I think the negatives for you here are all selling points to me. It seems like a streamlined SaGa that also offers different experiences every time. I’m hoping I’ll enjoy it. I’ve seen negative reviews but the criticisms just aren’t dealbreakers to me. I should add that I LOVE Scarlet Grace Ambitions. It’s the one SaGa game I just COULDN’T put down for long. The combat and goofy story beats are just too fun. This looks like more of that but with Frontier-esque world diversity but no real confusion on where to go and do things. Which is super appealing to me. I know it’s also meant to be played several times with different characters, so I wonder how much multiple playthroughs would impact understanding of things like the overall story. I know the “president” here appeared in each demo in a different role, which seems significant, for example. I have it preordered so I guess I’ll find out for myself. It’s interesting to see and hear others’ thoughts though. I know a lot of reviewers didn’t really care for Scarlet Grace either and it became one of my favorite games.

A lot of it sounds like Scarlet Grace's problems, which is really fine with me cause that game is super fun.

I'm having so much fun with this game, dropped Eiyuden for this for the time being. There is no better JRPG battle system than this game, it is ridiculously in depth, SaGa's biggest problem has always been clunky/messy UI that doesn't hold your hand in the slightest with explanation and lack of traditional story (which I actually like in this case since some of the stories are just ridiculous/hilarious sometimes like the screaming punk rocker chick waking up the slumber demon literally had me LOL). If you enjoyed scarlet grace which was has been out for many years now, this will be right up your alley as it's pretty much the same game but with vast improvements, w/ replayability being the main focus. 5.5 though wow, has there ever been a game worse than this score lol

The gameplay loop looks very similar to SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions. Curious how this game compares to that one?

"JRPG norms, and play it by the books narrative design..." That isn't the SaGa series at all. Have you even played any SaGa games before?

I feel like this is the exact game SE's new CEO was looking at when he announced they would be focusing on triple A in the future and putting out less mid-range titles.

You have no idea how grateful I am for game demos! Every game should have one. I tried it on PC, and it lost me from the very beginning. I didn't find any redeeming qualities here, unfortunately. I never played any game in this series, and this one made me lose interest. Thanks to demos, you lose no money and spend little time in making your decision. 🤠

Just saying you can „quell“ interrupts the same way you could in Scarlett Grace. Same with Magic users. Use Defence and deflect abilities or formations to shield them. Sounds like you didn’t play the previous saga game „Scarlet Grace“. Pretty much the same combat system and it’s awesome once it clicks. Granted this game is very bad at explaining the mechanics.

Looks like a quirky Dreamcaat game. I'm in.

The thing about the frozen area is that some characters like the final emperor and some don't. You can anticipate which character like the final emperor based on their description or the area they're in, and that determinea the end goal of the area. Trying to anticipate how the branching functioned was really interesting to me. I won't argue that this is a bizarre game, and it's difficult to imagine who the target audience is. Weirdos? I'm weirdos.

I understand your opinion but I disagree strongly with this review. The battle system in this game is stellar: imo it is one of the best in jrpgs and builds upon what made scarlet saga great, while eschewing the aspects or scarlet saga that sucked. The story is disjointed but not as bad as this review makes it sound. Some of the world's stories and lore are very interesting imo and a big part of the pleasure for me in playing through these is that you have different options and the game is nonlinear. I like this element of choice and I think replay value or just trying different things is huge here. I loved the area where you choose who lives or dies with unfreezing them. Contrary to this review, the game does tell you some details on the people you are unfreezing, so it becomes a trolley problem moral dilemma. The world with the alien flower people by far was my favorite and while the story did not have deep significance for bonnie and formina, I feel like the story in of itself was good and I enjoyed the experience. In terms of who this appeals to, in my opinion anybody who is tired of generic jrpgs and wants a different experience. Anybody who wants a good battle system that requires some thought and strategy and a nonlinear choose your own adventure kind of game. This game imo is way better than a 5.5/10. Although the graphics could have been better, the game itself is really fun. Battles are enjoyable and challenging and while the worlds arent very interconnected, individually several of them have interesting stories to tell.

The voiceover and visual style are just weird. Not in a good way. I could only take 10 minutes of the demo.

claims to be a SaGa fan then spends over half the video talking about story. SaGa games live and die by the combat system of which this is the best one yet.