SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered – for fans only

Kevin Hofer

7.4.2025

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Role-playing game SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered mixes beautiful, hand-drawn backgrounds with picture-book storytelling. Sounds great, but it fails due to a lacklustre story and a tricky combat system.

SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered has one thing in abundance: visual charm. This is mainly thanks to the pre-rendered backgrounds – which could’ve come straight out of a picture book – and the character sprites. They’ve been enhanced for the remastered version and, unlike the PS1 original, aren’t a mess of pixels, but razor sharp.

This version optimised for modern systems also offers some more improvements. For example, there’s additional story content, more battle speed options and transferable skills. Unfortunately, none of these can disguise the weaknesses of the original.

You follow two narrative threads in the game. In the first, I control young prince Gustave. He can’t succeed to the throne since he has no magical powers. As a result, he and his mother are expelled. But Gustave still wants to prove his worth. Wielding a sword he forged himself, he now fights using physical prowess, slowly gaining political power after all.

In the second scenario, you initially follow young miner Will. At the tender age of 15, he sets off in search of powerful sources of magic. Later on, he wants to avenge the death of his parents, putting him on the trail of a devilish egg – no, not the snack, the full chicken kind. Over three generations, his family tries to destroy the dangerous treasure.

Although both storylines approach their subject well, they don’t pull me in. I don’t care about the fates of Gustave and Will – I just can’t put myself in their shoes. Their lines are devoid of those great emotions they’re meant to convey. Gustave really gets on my nerves with his adolescent posturing. Even in old age, he doesn’t seem to have learned anything. On top of that, he and Will are too generic for me to bond with them. There are also plenty of other characters in the game, but none of them radiate life. They feel like dolls, no charm at all.

The game also only vaguely explains many of its mechanisms. Health is the only standard value, really. There are also weapon and skill points that are used up when you unleash certain abilities. These then partially regenerate under certain conditions – which you have to find out for yourself, of course.

But the confusion doesn’t just end at basic mechanics. Skills are the easiest to win in duels – not that the game tells you that. In these duels, you have to combine individual attacks or spells and, if done correctly, you might learn new, more powerful attacks. There’s no way to find out what the prerequisites for this are. That, or you can only guess at them over time. In the group battles, me learning something is purely up to chance. However, this is extremely rare, and it isn’t enough to conquer the game’s ramping difficulty. It seems that a guide’s mandatory, then.

True, you can easily unlock numerous, extremely powerful skills in the first few hours of the game. However, the process just becomes trickier as the story progresses. If I miss my chance at the beginning, the game gets too difficult from the middle onwards. I hardly stand a chance, even in simple confrontations. However, if I develop into an overpowering fighting machine too early, the whole game’s too easy.

What’s more, certain characters only appear briefly then never return. Any skills I learn for them are lost. Well, mostly: in the remastered version, you can pass on skills you’ve learned. That way you don’t have to laboriously level up new characters. However, if you know how this system works, it only ensures that you’ll be levelling up right at the start to avoid having to do it later.

The soundtrack perfectly accompanies this beautiful scenery. Most of the tracks are catchy and pleasant to listen to, drawing me into the world. Even the battle music makes the constant fighting tolerable – that specific piece is even available in several arrangements.

SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered was provided to me by Square Enix. I tested the PC version. The game has been available for Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Steam, iOS and Android since 27 March 2025.

Kevin Hofer

Senior Editor

kevin.hofer@digitecgalaxus.ch

From big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.

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