SaGa Frontier
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サ・ガ フロンティア | |||||||||
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Basic Info
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Release Info
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SaGa Frontier is the seventh installment in Akitoshi Kawazu's SaGa series, and the first entry to not be developed for Nintendo-produced hardware. Marking a return to the blending of science fiction and fantasy seen in the original Gameboy trilogy over the pure high fantasy seen in the Romancing sub series for the Super Nintendo, SaGa Frontier details the lives of seven unlikely heroes as they explore the solar system known as The Regions in order to overcome their personal hardships and discover the wicked secrets of a long-dead civilization.
Blurb
Back of box
A RICH AND DEEPLY TEXTURE RPG OF EPIC PROPORTIONS
Enter a vast frontier where seven quests are taken one hero at a time. A wizard's dark destiny, a woman's revenge, even a robot's search for a soul. Seven amazing adventures weave into one - yours.
- 140 hours of gameplay
- 30 regions of time and space to explore
- Deep battle and magic system
- Features the Free Scenario System for highly open-ended gaming
- Only on Playstation
A separate and unique adventure awaits for each hero: how many can you survive?
Story
Contrary to the previous six games in the series, SaGa Frontier does not have an overarching narrative and villain tying the protagonists together. The underlying danger of the ancient civilizations' relics being used for evil is featured as the impetus of the story in several scenarios, but each hero has his or her own distinct tale, with other characters appearing as recruitable allies or helpful NPCs.
Cast
- Asellus: a seventeen year old human girl who was forcibly given a transfusion of blood from the vampire-like Mystic race after a near-fatal accident, becoming the first Half-Mystic. Having recently awoken from the twelve year coma after her accident, the human world she once knew has moved on without her and she is forced to adapt to the cruel Mystic planet Facinaturu.
- Blue: a caustic, hateful magician hailing from the unnamed Magical Kingdom. Sent out into The Regions by the authorities of the magician academy to learn a variety of magical principals in order to kill his twin brother Rouge.
- Emelia: a former supermodel preparing for her wedding, Emelia's life is thrown into chaos when she discovers the body of her fiance in their home and is sentenced to a life-long sentence of imprisonment without due process. Escaping from the prison planet along two agents of Gradius Annie and Liz, Emelia is forced to join the underground espionage agency to discover the truth of her lover's murder.
- Lute: a layabout teenager from a backwater planet, Lute leaves home to discover what the solar system has to offer him on a journey of self-discovery. With only his namesake instrument on his back and not a care in the world, the lad is oblivious to the legacy of danger and intrigue his late father left him.
- Red: the son of a famous scientist targeted for assassination by the terrorist organization BlackX, Red is saved from certain death by the superhero Al-Karl. Wanting revenge for his father's murder, Red is transformed into the superhero Al-Kaiser and swears to destroy the BlackX organization.
- Rikki: a member of the shapeshifting Lummox species, Rikki is a young boy tasked with finding a set of magical rings in the hopes that they will be able to revive his tribe's dying planet. All alone and woefully naive to the world around him, he is joined by the human woman Mei-Ling. Rikki is able to learn the moves of enemy monsters by copying their biorhythm after battle, transforming into new monsters through a complex system hidden from the player.
- T-260G: the damaged central core unit of a space battleship recently excavated and restored as a robot. Her memory is damaged but the sense of urgency for her mission was not lost, and she travels The Regions in the hopes to uncover the mystery of her purpose. T-260G plays like the robot race of SaGa 2, increasing in power as she dons new equipment.
Gameplay
Taking the SaGa series' Free Scenario System to the next level, Frontier is a very open-ended title that gives the player almost complete control of where they can travel to within the game at any moment. Characters are fully customizable as is the series tradition, with statistical growth being dependent on the actions taken in battle. The race system seen in the Gameboy trilogy returns, with monsters and robots behaving as they did in past titles and the new Mystic race needing to absorb the life essence of enemies to improve their stats.
Combat remains turn-based, but exhibits a facsimile of 3D by featuring several techniques and spells with ranges based on straight lines and cone-shaped spreads. The amount of available weapon skills has been reduced from Romancing SaGa 3, being only swords, katanas, guns, and three types of martial arts, but the variety of magic has expanded to include more original concepts such as tarot cards, Nordic runes, as well as the manipulation of time and space.
Credits
- Producer / Director: Akitoshi Kawazu
- Supervising Programmer: Takaaki Tonooka
- Game System Developer: Kyoji Koizumi
- Character Design: Tomomi Kobayashi, Masaki Ōtani
- Art Directors: Kōji Tsuda, Yasuhiko Kamata, Shinichi Kameoka, Hiroshi Takai
- Monster Design: Tomohiro Hasegawa, Shinichiro Okaniwa
- Associate Director: Koichi Ishii
- Game Data Developer: Akihiko Matsui
- Music: Kenji Ito
- Sound Effects: Teruaki Sugawara
- Director Of Product Localization: Michael Baskett
- Localization Specialist: Brian Bell
- Assistant Translators: Naomi Cooper, Daisuke Kato
- Q.A. Manager: Jon Williams
- Customer Service Manager: Rick Thompson
- Customer Service Supervisor: Fernando Bustamante
- Executive V.P. / Strategic Planning: Yoshihiro Maruyama
- Vice President Of Marketing: Jun Iwasaki
- Assistant Marketing Associates: Kenji Mimura, Kyoko Yamashita, Kiomi Murazeki
- Lead Testers: Vangthonhoua Moua, Yoshinobu Matsuo
- Testers: Clayton S. Chan, Andy Hsu, Sean Camanyag, Takahiro Soh, Kyoko Makino, Stanford Ng, Sissie Chang
Sony Computer Entertainment America
- Associate Producer: Seth Luisi
- Assistant Producer: Jeffrey Ng
- Senior Producer: Perry Rodgers
- Lead Tester: Christian Davis
- Assistant Lead Testers: Conner Morlang, Kevin Seiter
- Testers: Mike Benton, Bruce Cochrane, James W. Harper, Chad Lowe, Peter Mayberry, Eric Molina, Neil Musser, Joseph Aragones, Randy Blake, Alfred Dutton, Lee Frohman, Chris Johnson, Christopher Keith, Ivan Kougaenko, Loren Miller, Jason Torres
- Senior Marketing Manager: David Bamberger
- Vice President Of Marketing: Andrew House
- Senior Director Of Marketing: Peter Dille
- Senior Public Relations Manager: Molly Smith
- Senior Creative Service Manager: Howard Liebeskind
- Packaging / Manual: Beeline Group
- Special Thanks: Kaz Hirai, Etsuko Kobata, Mark Pentek
Trivia
- Saga Frontier experienced a very brief development cycle, leading to several instances of cut content. In particular, several key events meant to broaden Asellus' viewpoints on humans and mystics were removed along with a second method of escaping Facinaturu. Worse yet, the planned eighth character of Inter-region police officer Fuse was cut entirely. These events and scenarios would be restored with the game's 2021 remaster.
- Akitoshi Kawazu states in an interview called The 100 Mysteries of SaGa Frontier that T-260G has a female personality, for no reason beyond it being fashionable for a spaceship's computer to be given a female personality at the time of development. The T in her name was also meant to stand for Tatyana, a reference to the Romancing Saga 3 character, but was not implemented.
Gallery
Asellus
Blue
Emilia
Lute
Red
Red as Al-Kaiser
Riki
T-260G
Blue, Lute, and Riki
Emilia, Annie, and Liza
Red, Lute, Rabbit, and T-260G fighting Cindy Campbell
Al-Karl
Berva
Captain Hamilton
Captain Hawk
Cindy Campbell
Cotton
Doll
Dr. Klein
Dr. Nasukan
Fei On
Fuse, along with Cotton
Gen
Joker
King Sei
Leonard
Liza
Mei Ling
Mesarthim
Metal Black
Mondo
Orlouge
Princess Lion
Princess Sei
Princess White Rose
Rabbit
Ren
Rosemary & Thyme
Roufas
Rouge
Shuzer
Silence
Time Lord
Virgil
Zozma
External links
The Essence of SaGa the defacto resource for the game, featuring translated guides, interviews, rarely seen artwork, and developer commentary among other features.
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