Romancing SaGa 3

Genre: Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

The SaGa series is one of Square Enix’s longest-running series of JRPGs, although it doesn’t get the same level of recognition as the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. This is likely in part because the series has only sporadically been localized to Western territories – while the earliest games in the series were released in the West on the original Game Boy as the Final Fantasy Legend series, entire generations would pass with SaGa games staying exclusive to Japan. Romancing SaGa 3, originally released on the Super Famicom in 1995, is one of those games, not getting a release in the West until this remaster, which was released on multiple platforms in 2019, including Nintendo Switch.

Much as with the Nintendo Switch release of Romancing SaGa 2, Romancing SaGa 3 has visuals with a pixel art look reminiscent of the 16-bit roots the game originally hails from, but with much more detail and polish than the Super Nintendo would have ever been capable of, most noticeably in the game’s backgrounds, which look very nice now. I’d say this game fares better than its predecessor in this regard, with visuals that seem very reminiscent of Final Fantasy VI.

While some elements of the visuals have gotten a makeover, the soundtrack here is still decidedly old-school, and I’d say this one is much better than the previous game in the series, though still not quite on par with legends of the era like the Final Fantasy games. And thankfully, this time around the localization is much, much better, which isn’t to say this is Shakespeare, but that it is actually reasonably well-written, which is far beyond what Romancing Saga 2 had to offer.

The gameplay here is also improved over the previous game as well, although it still shares some of that game’s flaws. This game brings back its predecessor’s unique approach to character progression and combat, but also brings back how poorly-explained it all is. As with the previous game, characters heal after every battle, but can only be brought to 0 hit points a limited number of times before getting a permadeath. Thankfully this time around, these limited “life points” can be revived by sleeping at an inn, making a turn of bad luck in combat much less daunting.

The game’s menus still aren’t very well explained, but seem easier to read than the last time, and my other complaint about the slow and tedious combat seems to have been addressed as well, with combat being more fast-paced.

And where the previous game used an ambitious multi-generation story progression, this game opts instead to have players focusing on a more character-focused story, with the beginning of the game having players choosing from one of eight characters to follow, each with their own unique twists and turns in the story. This gives the game a fair amount more replay value, and I appreciate this approach a bit more.

However, the biggest complaint I had about the first game still makes a return here – the price. I like this game much better than Romancing SaGa 2, but I can’t ignore that a price of $29 for a 25 year-old game is absolutely outrageous, especially when more recent, more well-known, and more… well, better games like Square Enix’s own PlayStation-era Final Fantasy games all sell for less.

It’s really frustrating here, because unlike Romancing SaGa 2, I would genuinely recommend Romancing SaGa 3 to players looking for a good old-school JRPG. It improves on multiple problems the previous game had, and delivers a decent-quality experience that’s still fairly unique. Unfortunately, that price tag is just too absurdly high, and while this game does address some of the problems of the previous one, it doesn’t address all of them. Perhaps if you like old-school JRPGs and find a really good sale on this game you may want to give it a look, but otherwise there are better ways to spend your money.

tl;dr – Romancing SaGa 3 is a JRPG originally released only on Super Famicom in Japan, and this game brushes up the visuals while leaving the original game otherwise largely intact. Thankfully, this game improves on the flaws of the previous game in the series somewhat, and there’s some good old-school JRPG fun to be had here… but once again, the price tag is just way too high. It’s worth a look if you can catch a really good sale on it though.

Grade: C+

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