Limited Appeal: UNLIMITED Saga (Square Enix, PS2, 2003)

Like with other forms of media, people throw around the title “the worst game ever” or even an "awful game" too easily. I don’t like Kingdom Hearts. While I’m clearly in the minority among gamers, I just think it’s a bad retelling of Disney stories combined with awful anime children. Buuuut, calling it the worst thing ever is unfair. It clearly has some merit as a game. A lot of care went into producing it and a lot of people like, even love the series. While I can run my mouth about how much I don’t like it, calling it “a terrible game” ignores the time and craft that went into producing the games, even if I don't like them. It also ignores the waves upon waves of lazy cash-in games that are just garbage. They’re made without care, without skill, they’re made only to get some idiot to pay a buck. The people that made these games and that market these games know they're not good. People may like them, but they'll never invest any emotion into them. They're just a thing to pass the time. These are bad games.

Unlimited Saga is an especially maligned entry in a series full of games that are often too obtuse for most people. Nearly every western review labels Unlimited as terrible and it’s a frequently mentioned title on “worst of” lists. While it’s not an easy game to get into, Kawazu had a vision for this obfuscated mess of a game, and while Kawazu leans strongly towards a design philosophy of “don’t explain anything and hide important elements” which happens to be very unpopular in modern games (modern in this case meaning “after 1985”), he’s been around long enough that I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt of knowing exactly what he wants. Unlimited Saga, more than any game, is “what Kawazu wants”, and in some corners of the internet, you’ll find a small but loving group of people that really like Unlimited Saga. I’d even say Unlimited Saga is a really good game that appeals to a really limited (ha ha) audience.

While I don’t think it’s completely fair for it to be given the title of the “worst RPG ever”, I can understand some of the frustration. I can’t think of how it could’ve been marketed better, it’s a game that’ll appeal to an extremely niche audience, but it really doesn't help that Square Enix did a terrible job of documenting the game, especially for the North American audience.

I’m not going to go too much into it, but here’s the gist of it: Unlimited Saga strips away the sprawling towns, fields, and dungeons common to big-budget RPGs and leaves the player with a game piece on a small board. Opening chests, avoiding traps, and fighting enemies all rely on a spinner. In battles, it determines if you make a regular hit or a special attack, on the board, something as simple as a treasure chest could mean a lot of trouble for one of your party members depending on how many traps it has attached to it. Besides that, there are a lot of rules having to do with weapons, armor, and stats, and most of them are unexplained, some are even completely hidden from the player. Even the character you pick has a lot to do with how difficult your quest is, and even something so crucial as that is left unexplained. A few characters ease you into the game, but woe unto thee who picks the cute chipmunk-thing Armic without fully understanding exactly how the game works.

When I first played this game in 2003, I picked Laura, the 30-year old pirate lady, who was still nearly 10 years from my age. Oh Laura, how nice it was to just turn 30. I enjoyed her quest for 40 or so hours, and even without knowing the little details behind the veil, I reached the very last boss of her quest who proceeded to murdered every single character in my party. This happened many times before I finally gave up. This is a common experience in a SaGa game, though usually it happens much earlier. Laura’s quest isn’t difficult, but defeating the last boss requires that the player knows the ins and outs of the system and knows how to craft some critically important items. At some point the player is locked behind a wall of no return. If you get that far and don’t have a save before that point, you’re screwed. I didn’t have a save before that point…

But here we are a little over 10 years later. Most importantly, people have figured this game out. Biggy Lets Play videos on YouTube (starting here) are an invaluable source for anyone willing to take up the challenge, and especially for anyone wanting to actually complete a route, double especially for anyone wanting to have fun with Unlimited Saga. This time, I sat down, watched the videos, and decided that Ventus would be a little better of a first character for the game. For the most part, he is. His quest is easy to follow, and allows the player to wade carefully into the game, venturing deeper and deeper into uncharted territory before advancing to the real meat. Occasionally you’ll trigger a required quest. While they can be a little difficult, you can reload your save and take them on when you're more confident about the outcome.

Unlimited Saga isn’t always super difficult, but it can be a nerve-wracking experience. It tends to drop the player into a dungeon with a small party, limited items, and no means of escape besides a reset or game over. This can be awful if you’ve bumped around for an hour or two in some of the longer dungeons. You’ll whittle down your weapon stock point by precious point (weapons have a limited number of uses before they break), you’ll use up precious life point by precious life point (which is the game’s REAL indication of HP, and it’s always low), but usually, if you know what you’re doing, you’ll make it to the end before things get too uncomfortable. In the later areas you’ll feel the limits rushing in much faster. Unlimited Saga isn’t kind, and it isn't fair, but it's only cruel when it thinks you're up to it (or when you started with the wrong character).

On a somewhat negative note, as if you needed any more, Unlimited is a repetitive game. The meat of the game consists of hop-hop-fight-hop-fight with rare breaks for struggling with chests. It has towns, but they consist of few buildings and menu-based exploration. In a perfect world, there would be a portable version, or even a mobile version. Repetition just works better on a mobile system. Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, even Persona 3 benefit from a pick-up-and-play format where you’re not tethered to a television. It’d be so much nicer to close a lid or put the system in sleep mode and come back when you feel like it. We don’t live with that reality, though, and Unlimited Saga is so stingy with its saves.

With games like Etrian Odyssey, Monster Hunter, and Dark Souls gaining popularity despite a steep learning curve and factors that would seem to go against a broader appeal, you’d think there would be more people really getting into Unlimited Saga. There’s also the matter of the recent Guild 01 game Crimson Shroud. People enjoyed Crimson Shroud, and while Unlimited doesn’t have Matsuno, it’s more like a fully realized version of what Crimson Shroud was trying to do than anything else. I think people who truly enjoyed Crimson Shroud for its minimal almost pen-and-paper interpretation of an rpg would enjoy Unlimited. However, Unlimited is a much longer, much more involved game, and Crimson Shroud works well partly because it's not too long. Maybe it was too early to be the “Dark Souls of SaGa”, or maybe it’s just a lot less interesting to most people than the other games. And then there’s the possibility that it *ahem* isactuallyabadgame, and that I enjoy bad games that are interesting more than good games that aren’t. Part of the interest is not knowing everything that’s going on, and like most SaGa games, Unlimited Saga will NEVER. EVER. Let you know everything that’s going on. It’s a little like a Yoko Taro game in that way, though Yoko Taro’s trickery is with emotion, while Kawazu’s is with story and gameplay. I think my perfect game would be a Yoko Taro story in a Akitoshi Kawazu game. You’ll never know what’s going on or what it’s going on, but you sure will be affected by it! Together they could make the most despised game that will be loved by a small but adoring audience that includes myself. Too bad economy doesn’t work on what I want.

In a way, Unlimited Saga feels like a game that’s not so much unfinished, as a game where some ideas were thrown around and barely pasted into place before they had to rush to release. The cut scenes and music are SO nice, but the character portraits and even the small bits of art meant to portray the environments have a feel of concept art. Was the budget cut way short, or was this just Kawazu being as Kawazu as possible? The game actually works more often than it doesn’t, so someone had some idea of what was going on.

I think I’m about halfway through Ventus’s quest, and I’m enjoying it enough to keep going. I’ll probably tackle Judie’s next, since it’s supposed to be kind of easy and short, and then if I feel like it, I’ll brush up on some exploits and try Laura’s quest again. And this time… I’LL BEAT IT! There’s a lot of saga in Unlimited Saga. If i alternated between Unlimited, Frontier, Romancing, the GB/DS SaGas.... 

i might finish a single quest in my entire lifetime