SaGa SCARLET GRACE: AMBITIONS™

This one is for the dedicated folks only. If you don't know, SaGa is a very special type of jRPG among jRPGs. This is not your typical cute Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest type game. SaGa is actually an old school wRPG in jRPG clothes. That is: - very RNG dependent (just like the early D&D games!) - non-linear (just like the early D&D games!) - story-light, but full of choices and consequences (just like the... you know the drill now) So why SaGa then? In one word: FREEDOM. You have so many options, the actual party composition is nearly endless. Also the game is very open ended and choice-driven, so it is eminently replayable. You'll need to adjust though, and it won't be easy. There are no typical levels and skill trees here. Your players learn new skills seemingly random, but there's a logic here: the more risks you take, the more progress you get. If you take no risks, your progress will be slow as hell. THAT'S WHY ALL ARE WRONG WHEN THEY SAY SAGA IS A GRINDFEST. EXPERIMENT and your progress will soar. There is no hand holding in the story. SaGa simply throws you into the game world. Let it grow on you. Make choices now and then. Do not fret on "wrong choices" -- there are no wrong endings, just different outcomes. SaGa is hard. Not Dark Souls hard, but this game absolutely requires to play by its own rules. If you don't understand the game, you cannot brute force yourself over: SaGa will punish you. Scarlet Grace then. This is the best SaGa. Relatively user friendly (SaGa games usually very opaque on the actual game rules), nicely presented in minimalism (the world map is a beautiful cardboard look, while the town menus are nicely drawn stills), has a very nice music, and the battle system is THE BEST FRICKIN TURN BASED BATTLE SYSTEM EVER. It is deceptively simple, but oh boy, full of tactics. Go get it if you want something different. You won't regret it. Finally some early tips on choosing your starting characters: Urpina is the introductory character. She has more story and relatively linear early game. Leonard is the ultimate freeroam guy. Minimal story, but the gameworld opens up very early. Great for open world type players. Taria, the mage is the advanced character. Mages in SaGa are very different than your usual AD&D mages, and playing Taria requires serious effort in understanding the magic system.

The main selling point of the game, above all else, is that it has one of the best combat systems in any JRPG. The way it operates results in a style of decision making that you won't see in almost anything else. While the presentation of the game is very basic, and there's little in the way of exploration, the game leverages this to have a large amount of content with quests and main character stories that each can play out in a variety of ways.

Sorry but am sorta done trying to trouble shoot games on gog. Simply won't start. Syncs game, play button greys out syncs game a 2nd time, then play button lights up again. I cannot be arsed to try to figure this out at this point. Was really hoping to give it a shot, but after seeing how the OTHER SaGa games ended up (the versions here on GoG I mean) i will not bother with any other SaGa release on gog till they patch them. Minimal thing should be to make sure it works.