{"id":529,"date":"2024-05-21T20:00:31","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T20:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ballpeenhammer.com\/?p=529"},"modified":"2025-07-02T16:42:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T16:42:16","slug":"saga-emerald-beyond-mobile-review-a-lot-of-role-playing-game-for-a-lot-of-green-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ballpeenhammer.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/21\/saga-emerald-beyond-mobile-review-a-lot-of-role-playing-game-for-a-lot-of-green-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018SaGa Emerald Beyond\u2019 Mobile Review \u2013 A Lot Of Role-Playing Game For A Lot Of Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Before venturing too far into this review, I have to apologize for being a little late with it. Without early access to the mobile version, I got to start at the same time as the rest of you, and I didn\u2019t want to review a game like this without doing some thorough examination. I had been greatly anticipating SaGa Emerald Beyond<\/em> ($24.99)<\/a>, you see. I like the SaGa<\/em> series more than the average person, and I still think SaGa Scarlet Grace<\/em> is one of the most enjoyable RPGs in recent history<\/a>. But the satisfaction in these games tends not to be easily extracted; effort is required, and so here we are. Let\u2019s get on with it, shall we?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about the elephant in the room first. This is a very expensive game by App Store standards. Indeed, at $49.99 USD this is the exact same price that SaGa Emerald Beyond<\/em> is selling for on other platforms. From one point of view, this makes perfect sense. It\u2019s a new game, it came out on the same day on mobile that it did elsewhere, and it\u2019s the same game content-wise. Why should it be cheaper? In a way, wanting games to be cheaper on mobile is simply feeding into the image of these platforms being inherently lesser somehow. Thinking of it that way, price parity almost seems like proper acknowledgement that mobile isn\u2019t just a dump.<\/p>\n

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On the other hand, this is<\/em> mobile gaming. We\u2019ve seen games cease being updated before, and we\u2019ve seen games pulled before. Heck, The Last Remnant<\/em>, a SaGa<\/em> game in all but name, vanished from the App Store ages ago with some vague promises from Square Enix that it would return when it was fixed. Perhaps as you read this sometime in the future, it has returned. But the possibility of games breaking and getting delisted is a more real concern on mobile than it is elsewhere, and one we have to consider. It stings a little when you lose a game you paid five or ten bucks for; losing one you paid fifty for, even temporarily, would be a real test of one\u2019s patience.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, you\u2019re going to have to dig deep and answer that question yourself. I want to tell you not to worry, but I can\u2019t. I\u2019ve been covering this beat for over a decade now and I am not naive to its problems. Square Enix is better about this than some publishers, and that\u2019s the only real reassurance I can give you. I won\u2019t blame anyone for the price affecting their decision of whether to buy the game on mobile or not, and I\u2019m sure Square Enix was prepared for such hesitation when it priced the game the way it did. That\u2019s all I\u2019ve got to say about that. The absolute state of things that I have to spend three paragraphs talking about prices<\/em> in a game review.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m of the belief that the SaGa<\/em> team might have been caught off-guard by the response to SaGa Scarlet Grace<\/em>. This series is not typically well-received in the West, after all. Indeed, more often than not it is reviled by most of the media and the general audience. Over in Japan it tends to fare better, though it certainly has had its highs and lows with fans and critics there as well. But SaGa Scarlet Grace<\/em> was different, wasn\u2019t it? I daresay that people kind of\u2026 liked it? Look, I\u2019m a SaGa<\/em> Sicko. I always like these games (not Unlimited). But I\u2019m usually only joined by my fellow SaGa<\/em> Sickos, and that isn\u2019t what happened with SaGa Scarlet Grace<\/em>. A lot of people really enjoyed it, a fact made all the more impressive by how clearly modest its budget was.<\/p>\n

I think that might be what brought us to SaGa Emerald Beyond<\/em>, at least broadly speaking. This game feels like it was made on a similarly shoestring budget, but that\u2019s not really too surprising. I think one of the reasons SaGa<\/em> survives, beyond the series creator Akitoshi Kawazu\u2019s senior position with Square Enix, is that even when it fails it doesn\u2019t leave the publisher holding a big bill. And if a streamlined approach worked last time, why not this time? What\u2019s more unexpected, given the history of the series, is how\u2026 safe<\/em>?\u2026 this game is in its basic structure. Relatively speaking, of course.<\/p>\n

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If SaGa<\/em> is known for anything, it\u2019s that it\u2019s very uncommon for any two games to be terribly similar to each other. Sure, there are persistent elements. Sparking new skills, the unusual character growth system that sprung out of Final Fantasy II,<\/em> multiple playable characters, and so on. But those systems are usually fit into new frameworks, a double-edged sword if ever there was one. That\u2019s not what happened here. SaGa Emerald Beyond<\/em> isn\u2019t exactly<\/em> like Scarlet Grace<\/em>, to be sure, and I\u2019ll get into that shortly. But it presents itself an awful lot like it, and I\u2019m not sure why but I feel a bit<\/em> disappointed by that. It\u2019s like asking your wild friend to surprise you at Baskin-Robbins and getting a scoop of French vanilla. Hey, it\u2019s a good flavor. I love French vanilla. It\u2019s just that I was just expecting Boogers & Caramel Melody or something.<\/p>\n

Okay, so. Emerald Beyond<\/em>. You\u2019ve got your choice of characters, a sum of six in the end. You are going to get a very different experience based on who you pick. You are going to get a different experience based on whether you\u2019ve finished the game with certain characters already. Playing the game again with the same character will often lead to different results. There\u2019s one character whose true ending won\u2019t even open up for you until you\u2019ve fulfilled some very particular conditions (don\u2019t choose Ameya for your first playthrough, trust me). If there is one way this game separates itself from prior games in the series, it\u2019s in this wide variety of potential routes through the game. If you only do one playthrough of this game, you\u2019ve missed most of it. If you only do three<\/em> playthroughs of this game, you\u2019ve missed most of it.<\/p>\n

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A single playthrough can be very short but rarely longer than fifteen hours, but you are assuredly meant to keep on playing it again and again with new characters and new paths. This is something some players will love and others will hate, but it certainly helps the developers get a lot of soup out of a rather small amount of ingredients. It runs rather thin storywise, but I doubt you\u2019re coming to a SaGa<\/em> game for the story no matter how much text this particular entry likes to throw about. You\u2019ve easily got over a hundred hours of game ahead of you if you want to see the game all the way through to its intended conclusion, and that\u2019s both the value for money you want to see but also a crushing commitment.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fascinating from a design standpoint because on the surface this is a very linear game, penning you into small locations until you fully see them through rather than letting you run about. But it turns out to be very non-linear in a deeper sense, and the way it achieves this is completely bonkers. I respect that, because I\u2019m a SaGa<\/em> Sicko. Others might be less thrilled, particularly since these repeated playthroughs lead to a lot of recycling that can wear on one\u2019s soul. The story that\u2019s here is well-written and the localizers have again done a bang-up job, but there\u2019s not enough substance in it as a whole to keep one sated on their fifth or sixth run. You really have to be in love with the mechanics to keep sticking it out, or really like connecting thin strands from the stories of different characters.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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