The one thing that keeps me from opening up this game again is the trading stuff. In levels like the underground tunnels, shopping takes longer than battling! But I looove the bizarre vibes and combat. Somehow every SaGa game contrives at least one major stink-point to make it painful. EDIT: Whoa, I only just learned how the block mechanic works through this video... And I ran through the tutorials multiple times... Oof!
I kid you not, half my recording footage is just trading menus. It doesn't just feel like that much of a slog, it really is. If they could slim that down, they could at least make a playthrough half the time it takes now, making it feel somewhat less bad. It's one of the benefits of recording everything, you can verify how good/bad the pacing actually is compared to how it feels. Though improving that aspect still wouldn't make this game good, just less bad.
Hell yeah!! Although, there are some mistakes with how Kugutsu work. They can't just copy Mido's techs, they copy any weapon move they have access to, even from one another. This can lead to some... Hilariousness.
I started Emerald Beyond immediately after beating my first SaGa game, Minstrel Song-which I absolutely adored-and it didn't take me very long to realize it's essentially the exact opposite of every single thing I liked about MS, and subsequently drop it. The nonlinearity and freedom? Gone. The sense of discovery and adventure? Gone. The beautiful art direction? Gone. It feels very affirming to hear that someone else feels the same way about EB as I do lol. Here's hoping that someday we get a proper new Romancing SaGa game.
hey, thanks for the review. was worried seeing how bad the review bombed in the first week it first released. but seems that it got a mixed review now. im not a massive saga fan but i super enjoyed minstrel song and got the remastered on pc. i have the scarlet blaze but its a bit harder to get into after 3-4 years i played it (on and off). i might considered getting this since it is a new story with the new battle system (i believe that the upcoming saga 2 remake use the old battle system). maybe in future when it goes on sale again. thanks again for your review
I love the combat system. I just wish monsters could remember moves without having to track down specific monsters again. The way party BP and showstoppers balance the fight as you lose members against tough bosses is unique among turn based games.
This game would had really benefited if it had the same structure than unlimited SaGa had, where the characters have an actual storyline with like 10+ missions and various events & cutscenes but also access to all the side quest/content with the goofy writing or worldbuilding. It would also benefited if it had dungeons even if it was a boardgame like dungeon like in U SaGa.
It's kinda wild how extremely divisive Emerald Beyond is, and not just among the general playerbase, but among the Saga fandom as well. Some think it's the best of everything Saga has to offer, while some think it's the worst thing since Unlimited.
It’s almost certainly the most esoteric saga game since unlimited. Some of the story stuff is super strange and takes multiple playthroughs of multiple characters to even see the endings. The world traversal is interesting but a far cry from moving around a traditional world ala romancing saga or even SG. The puppets are a strange character type. There’s just a lot of different going on in an already different series. I love it. But not in the same way I love the Romancing Saga games and I can see why people would have a way different opinion on it.
... did SaGa peak with Minstrel Song? That's a sad thought. It's one thing for SaGa as a series to be very experimental, but it feels like they've been making a lot of unforced errors. There's a difference between doing things differently and unlearning basic quality of life principles. Considering the low budget vibes the recent SaGa games give off, I think Square Enix should look more to the original trilogy for inspiration for future SaGa games. 2D pixel art is a favorite of indie devs for good reasons. And there's definitely something to be said for brisk pacing if a game is going to ask you to replay it over and over.
The low budget part is the real wild thing, considering it looks like that Romancing SaGa 2 remake is getting a fairly sizeable budget. At least, comparatively. But that game isn't headed by Kawazu or his team. It's done by the people who worked on Mana titles instead for some reason. It's very strange.
Comparatively, but Square Enix is only asking $50USD for it, so presumably it's still on the lower end of the budget scale. The Romancing SaGa 2 remake is the long awaited follow up to Minstrel Song, but I can't quite help but feel a bit pessimistic. I guess we'll know how it turns out in a couple months. SaGa being tackled by a team that's willing to do more iterating than innovating could be a good thing? Innovation makes the SaGa series interesting, but lack of polish makes the games sometimes not so great to play. But not once have I looked at the Mana remakes and thought, "Yes, do that to SaGa!". So I feel very much like waiting and seeing rather than getting excited.
Honestly, I didn't even feel compelled to wrap up the demo on PS5. Something about it just didn't... feel right. Sounds like I made the right choice sinking that time into Minstrel Song instead, but now I lament that its style isn't being used in other games.
The closest you'll get to Minstrel Song outside of just replaying it and trying new things in that game is Romancing SaGa 3. Though obviously the battle system isn't anywhere near as polished as that, nor does it have anywhere near the amount, or quality, of content. So if you can set your expectations right, you could have a good time with that still. I do wish we could have more games like it, but at least the one we got is replayable and has enough depth to stay entertaining for absurd amounts of time.
@@Aboveup Honestly I wasn't even talking that much about its mechanical leanings, moreso its visual presentation. There's just something about EB's presentation that feels slapdash.
This is the first new SaGa release I decided to wait on a discount for after the demo kind of disappointed me. I played the PC demo, no idea why they decided to make each platform's demo locked to one character. The PC demo had the singer and I just didn't like her long intro. I need to go back and finish Scarlet Grace anyway.
Very glad you made a video on this and it's problems, I feel less bad about abandoning this game now. I played Romancing Minstrel Remaster thanks to your video, and it's quickly become one of my favorite JRPGs ever, but when I picked this up I refunded it within 2-3 hours. While the combat could be neat, the entire game felt gross, the graphics, some of the systems, and especially the UI. It all felt like a mobile game, add on how linear everything was and my red alarms were going off loud enough that I knew to tap out. Very disappointed.
Oof, I am so sorry. I don't blame you for getting a refund either. After I hit render on the video, I immediately uninstalled the game alongside it. It felt like an exorcism. Like an evil had been cleansed. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed Minstrel Song, though. That game really is something special. The other two Romancing SaGa titles that had remasters are pretty solid too, if you ever want something a bit closer to that again. 3 is probably the closest, but nowhere near as polished obviously.
I’ve been hooked on this game since the day of release. I enjoy the “choose you own adventure novel” style story telling and the pacing between worlds. The character stories really fascinate me and I can’t get enough of the combat. I’m currently on my 9th playthrough. I get that it won’t click with everyone, but man it has captivated me. The stories can vary a lot between playthroughs, and each world feels like its own puzzle to solve. I feel you don’t give the game credit for the varying quests between visits to worlds. Some don’t change much but others can play out wildly differently between playthroughs. And the scaling has felt fair to me so far. I have yet to encounter a situation I can’t get through with a good change in tactics.
I didn't want to say it in the video itself, but it really does feel like they followed the gacha game's lead with infinitely scaling content and repeating story progression. The SaGa gacha has multiple difficulty levels for the stages so you can loop the content once you've run out of it. That's fine for a gacha. There's always new updates bringing in new content and events tuned to the increased power scale. But in the closed system of a packaged release... It's terrible.
Welcome back! Been waiting for a new video and waking up to this was a very nice surprise. Hope everything is going well. I can get over the funky graphics with a slapped on filter that look like a bad xbox live indie game. I can get over the linear path and so-so story. I can get over annoying details like tutorial/hint pop-ups not going away. I can get over a decent amount of jank, as long as the game is overall good. I can't get over how the game feels like an absolute slog in almost every area. Unskippable dialogue and cutscenes, boring quests, downright awful menus and tedious trading/crafting/item management. I see people saying, "oh, but combat is good." That doesn't matter when combat is such a small part of your overall experience, and over HALF the game time alone is navigating terrible item menus. Great 25% of my playtime will be good...what about the other 75% being awful? I, also, see people excusing it by saying Saga games are always "experimental," but there is a difference between doing something different with your gameplay/presentation and just bad game design that ignores all of the QoL improvements and things you should have learned from previous mistakes. At this point, a Saga game shouldn't feel like someone's first indie project. That's exactly what this feels like. So many parts of this game design feel like amateur decisions from someone who doesn't have the experience to know better...but, they absolutely should. It's so frustrating and disappointing to see. Thank you for reviewing this and being more open about the games shortcomings. I still feel like you held back a bit more than you could have, lol.
Yaaa the battle system is the only good part of Emerald Beyond. I do love the SaGa series, but this one is by far my least favorite. The game is set up for multiple playthroughs, but after clearing each character, I did not want to go through all the repetitive quests again. I want to like this game so bad, but it just failed on every front except the battle system. Also, how did you get Japanese voices with English text? I seriously can't stand the English voices, but there's no option to change them.
Shocked how much was poorly thought or poorly implemented. This sounds a lot like botched development, either "too many cooks" or "new inexperienced devs under unclear vision" or something else.
I had a feeling it would turn out this way. Everything budgeted that Square-Enix releases is a 50/50 or worse it will be mediocre, okay or bad. I've no idea why this is the case, but it's been that way since the 90s with them. All resources are poured elsewhere and you can see the drastic difference if not in looks, execution from their AAA releases to their AA. Their pixel games are the exception, but they still have experienced crew on those teams. I don't know if it goes against the SaGa formula, but they need to prioritize narrative because gameplay in a JRPG can go only so far or it should switch genre. Not sure if I entirely agree with it, but it's always been the reason I feel more recent games since PS2 have been lacking and no additional content or side-quests to flesh things out.
Honey, wake up. We got a new AboveUp Saga game review.
The one thing that keeps me from opening up this game again is the trading stuff. In levels like the underground tunnels, shopping takes longer than battling! But I looove the bizarre vibes and combat. Somehow every SaGa game contrives at least one major stink-point to make it painful.
EDIT: Whoa, I only just learned how the block mechanic works through this video... And I ran through the tutorials multiple times... Oof!
I kid you not, half my recording footage is just trading menus. It doesn't just feel like that much of a slog, it really is. If they could slim that down, they could at least make a playthrough half the time it takes now, making it feel somewhat less bad. It's one of the benefits of recording everything, you can verify how good/bad the pacing actually is compared to how it feels.
Though improving that aspect still wouldn't make this game good, just less bad.
welcome back goat
Aboveup + SaGa Game Review = Perfect, i wish for more ❤️
Thank you a lot for all these details. It's been a long time since you did a video, i started to worry. I'm so glad you're back.
I’ve been patiently waiting for this hell yeah
great, I've never played SaGa but I like your reviews so I might try it, that's how I discovered Ys
I knew you would review this game and I was waiting for this!
Hell yeah!! Although, there are some mistakes with how Kugutsu work.
They can't just copy Mido's techs, they copy any weapon move they have access to, even from one another. This can lead to some... Hilariousness.
Oh shit welcome back bro we missed you
I started Emerald Beyond immediately after beating my first SaGa game, Minstrel Song-which I absolutely adored-and it didn't take me very long to realize it's essentially the exact opposite of every single thing I liked about MS, and subsequently drop it. The nonlinearity and freedom? Gone. The sense of discovery and adventure? Gone. The beautiful art direction? Gone.
It feels very affirming to hear that someone else feels the same way about EB as I do lol. Here's hoping that someday we get a proper new Romancing SaGa game.
hey, thanks for the review. was worried seeing how bad the review bombed in the first week it first released. but seems that it got a mixed review now. im not a massive saga fan but i super enjoyed minstrel song and got the remastered on pc. i have the scarlet blaze but its a bit harder to get into after 3-4 years i played it (on and off). i might considered getting this since it is a new story with the new battle system (i believe that the upcoming saga 2 remake use the old battle system). maybe in future when it goes on sale again. thanks again for your review
Welcome back. Wish it was a better homecoming gift but good to see nonetheless
Ayy, new Aboveup!
Let's go!
I love the combat system. I just wish monsters could remember moves without having to track down specific monsters again. The way party BP and showstoppers balance the fight as you lose members against tough bosses is unique among turn based games.
Hey i love your Reviews espacially the Saga Ones, ever Heard of the last remnant? Thats an undercover Saga Game 😊 would love Geting a Review from you❤
We missed you.
~The Return of the King~
Welcome back
Hell yeah dawg
Glad this channel isn't dead 😁
THE GRAND RETURN
Oh, wow, you're still here, fantastic! I hope things are going well. Too bad this was a bit of an ignominious game to come back on.
This game would had really benefited if it had the same structure than unlimited SaGa had, where the characters have an actual storyline with like 10+ missions and various events & cutscenes but also access to all the side quest/content with the goofy writing or worldbuilding. It would also benefited if it had dungeons even if it was a boardgame like dungeon like in U SaGa.
Diva is a Singing robot... Now where have I heard that before?
Some one that starts with an m and ends in a u
Vivy fluorite eye's song.
It's kinda wild how extremely divisive Emerald Beyond is, and not just among the general playerbase, but among the Saga fandom as well. Some think it's the best of everything Saga has to offer, while some think it's the worst thing since Unlimited.
It’s almost certainly the most esoteric saga game since unlimited. Some of the story stuff is super strange and takes multiple playthroughs of multiple characters to even see the endings. The world traversal is interesting but a far cry from moving around a traditional world ala romancing saga or even SG. The puppets are a strange character type. There’s just a lot of different going on in an already different series. I love it. But not in the same way I love the Romancing Saga games and I can see why people would have a way different opinion on it.
You're back!
... did SaGa peak with Minstrel Song? That's a sad thought.
It's one thing for SaGa as a series to be very experimental, but it feels like they've been making a lot of unforced errors. There's a difference between doing things differently and unlearning basic quality of life principles.
Considering the low budget vibes the recent SaGa games give off, I think Square Enix should look more to the original trilogy for inspiration for future SaGa games. 2D pixel art is a favorite of indie devs for good reasons. And there's definitely something to be said for brisk pacing if a game is going to ask you to replay it over and over.
The low budget part is the real wild thing, considering it looks like that Romancing SaGa 2 remake is getting a fairly sizeable budget. At least, comparatively. But that game isn't headed by Kawazu or his team. It's done by the people who worked on Mana titles instead for some reason. It's very strange.
Comparatively, but Square Enix is only asking $50USD for it, so presumably it's still on the lower end of the budget scale.
The Romancing SaGa 2 remake is the long awaited follow up to Minstrel Song, but I can't quite help but feel a bit pessimistic.
I guess we'll know how it turns out in a couple months. SaGa being tackled by a team that's willing to do more iterating than innovating could be a good thing? Innovation makes the SaGa series interesting, but lack of polish makes the games sometimes not so great to play. But not once have I looked at the Mana remakes and thought, "Yes, do that to SaGa!". So I feel very much like waiting and seeing rather than getting excited.
Honestly, I didn't even feel compelled to wrap up the demo on PS5. Something about it just didn't... feel right. Sounds like I made the right choice sinking that time into Minstrel Song instead, but now I lament that its style isn't being used in other games.
The closest you'll get to Minstrel Song outside of just replaying it and trying new things in that game is Romancing SaGa 3. Though obviously the battle system isn't anywhere near as polished as that, nor does it have anywhere near the amount, or quality, of content. So if you can set your expectations right, you could have a good time with that still.
I do wish we could have more games like it, but at least the one we got is replayable and has enough depth to stay entertaining for absurd amounts of time.
@@Aboveup Honestly I wasn't even talking that much about its mechanical leanings, moreso its visual presentation. There's just something about EB's presentation that feels slapdash.
This is the first new SaGa release I decided to wait on a discount for after the demo kind of disappointed me. I played the PC demo, no idea why they decided to make each platform's demo locked to one character. The PC demo had the singer and I just didn't like her long intro. I need to go back and finish Scarlet Grace anyway.
The legend returns!
Holy Shit!! Peak is still alive.
Very glad you made a video on this and it's problems, I feel less bad about abandoning this game now. I played Romancing Minstrel Remaster thanks to your video, and it's quickly become one of my favorite JRPGs ever, but when I picked this up I refunded it within 2-3 hours. While the combat could be neat, the entire game felt gross, the graphics, some of the systems, and especially the UI. It all felt like a mobile game, add on how linear everything was and my red alarms were going off loud enough that I knew to tap out. Very disappointed.
Oof, I am so sorry. I don't blame you for getting a refund either. After I hit render on the video, I immediately uninstalled the game alongside it. It felt like an exorcism. Like an evil had been cleansed.
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed Minstrel Song, though. That game really is something special. The other two Romancing SaGa titles that had remasters are pretty solid too, if you ever want something a bit closer to that again. 3 is probably the closest, but nowhere near as polished obviously.
Big ups😢
Hey be respectful to cats 😹 By the way great video ! I never knew this game got such a deep battle system
I’ve been hooked on this game since the day of release. I enjoy the “choose you own adventure novel” style story telling and the pacing between worlds. The character stories really fascinate me and I can’t get enough of the combat. I’m currently on my 9th playthrough. I get that it won’t click with everyone, but man it has captivated me. The stories can vary a lot between playthroughs, and each world feels like its own puzzle to solve. I feel you don’t give the game credit for the varying quests between visits to worlds. Some don’t change much but others can play out wildly differently between playthroughs. And the scaling has felt fair to me so far. I have yet to encounter a situation I can’t get through with a good change in tactics.
Looks like a step in the wrong direction from Scarlet Grace to me...
maybe they should have called it Saga Emerald Disgrace, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahaha
I didn't want to say it in the video itself, but it really does feel like they followed the gacha game's lead with infinitely scaling content and repeating story progression. The SaGa gacha has multiple difficulty levels for the stages so you can loop the content once you've run out of it.
That's fine for a gacha. There's always new updates bringing in new content and events tuned to the increased power scale. But in the closed system of a packaged release... It's terrible.
ngl im like really surprised. I havent played a huge amount but ive been enjoying it a lot. im not sure whetehr to continue it now.
This review really catches how I felt about the game. Really hate to dislike a SaGa game, but this one was such a tedious dissapointment
Sadly kind of sounds like a downgrade to scarlet grace sadly
Sadly
Welcome back! Been waiting for a new video and waking up to this was a very nice surprise. Hope everything is going well.
I can get over the funky graphics with a slapped on filter that look like a bad xbox live indie game. I can get over the linear path and so-so story. I can get over annoying details like tutorial/hint pop-ups not going away. I can get over a decent amount of jank, as long as the game is overall good.
I can't get over how the game feels like an absolute slog in almost every area. Unskippable dialogue and cutscenes, boring quests, downright awful menus and tedious trading/crafting/item management. I see people saying, "oh, but combat is good." That doesn't matter when combat is such a small part of your overall experience, and over HALF the game time alone is navigating terrible item menus. Great 25% of my playtime will be good...what about the other 75% being awful?
I, also, see people excusing it by saying Saga games are always "experimental," but there is a difference between doing something different with your gameplay/presentation and just bad game design that ignores all of the QoL improvements and things you should have learned from previous mistakes. At this point, a Saga game shouldn't feel like someone's first indie project. That's exactly what this feels like. So many parts of this game design feel like amateur decisions from someone who doesn't have the experience to know better...but, they absolutely should. It's so frustrating and disappointing to see.
Thank you for reviewing this and being more open about the games shortcomings. I still feel like you held back a bit more than you could have, lol.
I try to stay balanced in my videos. I have definitely gone on long tangents brought on by frustration playing this game more than once.
Romancing saga woke version. I think only AI could make a game so bad.
Yaaa the battle system is the only good part of Emerald Beyond. I do love the SaGa series, but this one is by far my least favorite. The game is set up for multiple playthroughs, but after clearing each character, I did not want to go through all the repetitive quests again. I want to like this game so bad, but it just failed on every front except the battle system.
Also, how did you get Japanese voices with English text? I seriously can't stand the English voices, but there's no option to change them.
Shocked how much was poorly thought or poorly implemented.
This sounds a lot like botched development, either "too many cooks" or "new inexperienced devs under unclear vision" or something else.
I had a feeling it would turn out this way. Everything budgeted that Square-Enix releases is a 50/50 or worse it will be mediocre, okay or bad. I've no idea why this is the case, but it's been that way since the 90s with them. All resources are poured elsewhere and you can see the drastic difference if not in looks, execution from their AAA releases to their AA. Their pixel games are the exception, but they still have experienced crew on those teams. I don't know if it goes against the SaGa formula, but they need to prioritize narrative because gameplay in a JRPG can go only so far or it should switch genre. Not sure if I entirely agree with it, but it's always been the reason I feel more recent games since PS2 have been lacking and no additional content or side-quests to flesh things out.