I’ve never played Dwarf Fortress, but I do love watching people’s stories about adventure mode. It doesn’t look that fun to actually play, but the stories of – oh – a hostile human town over a demon worshipping cult, and the main character swinging in and defeating the cult by a well timed thrown fish is the stuff that I suspect RPGs wish they could create. Of course, for every amazing story, there’s the “Demon ambassador is rampaging through my town and I can’t destroy him” or “Well, my fortress is destroyed because a slug made of steam visited” kind of things.

I wonder if I should do a thing on random dungeons. The ways that randomized games have set rooms is an interesting way of encouraging you to feel familiar and comfortable with an area even if it’s all randomized. Plus, there’s sort of a thrill in Dungeons of Dredmore to recognize that you’ll get a nice rare item, or something like that. Early randomized dungeons in RPGs tended to be hampered by disk space, so you tended to get samey mazes or simply almost unwinnable combinations.

I do agree, though, that it’s a pain in the neck to get “deeply” into a roguelike. Nethack’s the worst for me, since you can be amazingly competent (and have a high chance of winning,) if you know all the ins and outs of what you will find. I suppose SaGa games are like that too. If you know what you’re doing, you can be competent and confident, but if you don’t – well – death is cheap.

Thanks for the comment, Ampersand!

Also has some odd battle sprites that feel almost like they’re from a different game. Sort of a dithered early Wizardry look to them.

From what I heard, Gideon Zhi is working on Romancing Saga 2. The games have some ridiculous coding, so it’s not exactly easy to translate the games. For example, I do know that Romancing Saga is invisibly tracking a sort of Event Rank in the SNES version. From a Japanese fansite, it sounds like you get events automatically happening and locking off certain things at very late dates in the game (so, you’d need to play through a couple of characters for it to be any problem.) In the PS2 remake, Event Rank issues happens a lot more quickly, which basically forces you to avoid almost all battles in comparison to the grinding in the SNES version. Romancing Saga 2, from what I heard, is much more complex, more attractive, but can basically make your game unwinnable if you don’t have certain skills or if you accidently trigger the next generation.

I wonder if the Android “Final Fantasy Legends” isn’t the Wonderswan remakes of the Gameboy games. They’re a lot simpler to update compared to the SNES versions.

Btw after reading your Silas Saga II piece, I tried it out and oddly enough got hooked! I like it for the same reasons I like SaGa I guess: it’s original enough for me . (Sorry for errors, typing on bad phone)

You have an awesome site!

Anyway, have there been any successful attempts to get Romancing SaGa 1 and 2 translated? I recall that a couple years ago no one had finished the projects, so I was curious. Of course, I think 1 was translated and redone on the PS2 as Minstral’s Song (I think that’s the title), but 2 so far is untranslated.

As a side note, I found it interesting that Square is working on a new game under the title “Final Fantasy Legends” for Android devices – I doubt it will have relation to the SaGa games, but it’s still cool.

I love the art style of the game. It’s sort of retro, but there’s a nice combination between the simplistic towns and the battle graphics.