Ode to limits
If there is one thing that the triple-A industry has been able to demonstrate for more than ten years, it is that an avalanche of technical, human and financial resources in no way guarantees the creation of an impactful and memorable work. One more stone on the edifice of the eternal philosophical question on freedom and constraint in the process of artistic creation: and if the latter was necessary for the artist to impose a framework on it, which he can then try to transgress or respect? What if, ultimately, real constraint was paradoxically more beneficial than total freedom when bringing an original artistic project to fruition? If games with an almost infinite budget and a development team made up of hundreds of small hands brought ultimately a more striking, transgressive or interesting gaming experience for players, believe us, we would know. On the contrary, it would seem that technical, human or financial limitations push the most astute creators to take advantage of these constraints by making more daring choices, which result in a daring, even clear-cut, attempt. SaGa Scarlet Grace is a perfect example of this concept.
Despite a limited budget and limited human resources, the master thinker Akitoshi Kawazu manages to enlist the services of two of the essential artistic figures of the series Saga : Tomomi Kobayashi for character design and illustration work, as well as Kenji Ito for music. The three of them are definitely the soul of the games Saga, and the transition to 3D via Unity will not get rid of this original spark, visually still present. And then, from the first fights, there is no doubt that we are hitting a Saga pure juice: no experience or leveling up for the characters, random improvement of certain statistics at the end of each confrontation, learning of new skills in the middle of combat, disjointed narrative structure which guarantees an anti linear specific to the series… All the ingredients are still there and early fans are navigating familiar territory, with one exception. The structure of the fights has been largely reworked, favoring a clever approach that plays on the action turns of each character.
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Since we don't have millions in the bank, we make do with what we have. The good news is that the gray matter is free: by tinkering with your brain a little, the development team manages to concoct one of the most addictive and complete combat systems in recent memory. By certainly taking up what makes the games so special Sagajust to firmly anchor this new opus in its heritage, but by adding various well-felt components which offer the recipe a gentle sensation of novelty, and above all (a first for the series), real accessibility to lay people.
The imposing drug
Spread the word : SaGa Scarlet Grace certainly does not shine with its storyline, certainly effective if you make the effort to follow it but relatively disjointed (Saga obliges) and succinct. The dialogues are as concise as possible, cookie-cutter: we take neither the time to develop the world nor the characters through the mini-scenarios unlocked by the player throughout his wanderings. The developed story actually acts as a pretext, a smokescreen to hide the real salt of the game: its combat. These revolve around a temporal action gauge on which enemies and allies are located depending on their speed. Thus, a character with high speed will be located on the left of the gauge, while the slowest will be on the far right. This bar requires particular attention from the player: depending on the position of his allies, it is possible to generate group attacks on enemies, which also make it possible to reduce the cost of attacks in BP (Battle Points). . These BP are shared by the entire team and each skill consumes more or less points depending on its power. These skills are determined by the type of weapon used by the ally in question: a character with an ax will tend to favor powerful attacks that cause stun, while the sword offers a much faster play style. , even if less impactful.
One might think that the system stops there, but this is not the case: the layers of depth are numerous. To determine the number of BP received by the player each turn, it is possible to choose a formation which will directly guide the chosen strategy (emphasis on speed, attack, application of state alterations). On the other hand, in addition to the usual life points possessed by each of the characters, their accessibility in combat is determined by the famous LPs so specific to the series, which decrease by one point if the HP falls to zero: if he has zero LP, the ally cannot be used in combat (he however recovers points for each encounter spent in the reserve). We must therefore play with all this data to determine before each combat the most suitable strategy with the forces still capable.
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All this information, certainly difficult to summarize in a few lines, quickly makes sense to the player even if it sometimes appears counterintuitive to the JRPG fan who is not necessarily aware of the previous madness of the series. Saga. Everything is extremely complete and the creators of the game complete their deep and detailed system with arduous combat which requires the player to have real mastery of the forces involved and the mechanics offered to them. And here we come to our conclusion, which ties in with our introduction about SaGa Scarlet Grace : faced with the lack of budget for the title, the game development team simply decided to offer a clever combat system in addition to being very addictive, at the expense of a more worked scenario or more “visuals”. flashy “.
In other words: a choice was made under duress. The direction of the game therefore follows this constraint, and decides to embrace it by stuffing ONE aspect of the software with multitudes of layers, in order to offer SaGa Scarlet Grace one of the most interesting combat systems of the last 10 years. Just take a quick look at SaGa Emerald Beyond to see that a similar choice was made, taking up the foundations laid by its predecessor (visually, but also in terms of the confrontations, visibly similar). However, the choice necessarily calls for division; there is no doubt that by continuing in this direction as stupid as it is effective for anyone who appreciates the challenge, the frankness Saga should struggle to reach a wider audience, remaining the object of confidential adoration. The industry's trend is not to specialize in one aspect of gameplay, but rather to offer as much content as possible (at the cost sometimes – most of the time – of regular mediocrity): therefore , the audacity to do less but better would certainly deserve a greater reward.