Unlimited Saga is a 2002 role-playing video game developed and published by Square (rebranded as Square Enix in 2003) for the PlayStation 2 as the ninth game in the SaGa series. It was released in 2002 in Japan and 2003 in North America and Europe; its European version was published by Atari Europe. The story follows seven characters as they explore mysteries connected to the Seven Wonders, artifacts left by an ancient civilization said to be capable of triggering a golden age. Battles carry over the skill-based levelling systems and nonlinear structure of earlier SaGa titles, with an exploration structure similar to a board game.
Production at Square's Product Development Division 2 lasted two years, involving a staff of fifty people. Several staff members returned from earlier entries including series creator Akitoshi Kawazu as producer and director, designer Kyouji Koizumi, and composer Masashi Hamauzu. The characters were designed by newcomer Yusuke Naora, with veteran artist Tomomi Kobayashi contributing promotional art. Kawazu wanted to get back to the basics of game design and evoke the style of the earliest SaGa games, placing focus on the battle system and having several elements mimic tabletop role-playing games. The graphics were designed in partnership with Adobe Systems to create a combination of 3D models and 2D artwork.
Unlimited Saga was first announced in 2002, and was supplemented with several guidebooks that detailed its systems and explored the game world's lore. It sold over half a million units in Japan and a further 130,000 in the West. It saw a polarized response between Japan, where it was met with praise, and the West. In English reviews, the music was met with general praise, while its graphics and unorthodox gameplay saw mixed to negative reactions. Feedback from the title influenced the production of both Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song and SaGa: Scarlet Grace.
Gameplay
Unlimited Saga is a role-playing video game where players take on the role of seven different protagonists, playing through the narratives in a nonlinear style. Gameplay is split between two modes; town exploration that includes story sections and interacting with facilities, and exploring environments while encountering enemies and environmental hazards. Town facilities are represented with icons on an illustrated background, with selecting an icon opening the facility and potentially triggering a story section delivered in a comic book style. During the game, players will explore towns which can be used to gather information and purchase goods to aid them on their journey before exploring outside environments and dungeons. Specific services in towns include the Blacksmith, which sells and forges weapons and accessories. A scenario-specific Carrier's Guild has a ranking system, raised by performing delivery missions. The party can either save at a town, or perform a quick save while exploring. Upon exiting town, the party is either transported to the area of a quest, or can select previously explored areas on a world map.
Dungeon and environmental exploration plays out in a style similar to a board game; the player character is represented as a static sprite on a map that is revealed as the player explores, with unexplored areas being named with a series of question marks. Each move or action being equivalent to a turn. While exploring, an illustration in the top right hand corner of the screen shows the environment the party is in. The goal of missions in these areas is to reach a goal, either a story event, another town, or some other location within the map. The amount of turns taken by the player is recorded. Some missions have turn limits, with the player being returned to a town if they reach that limit. Moving into a new part of the map can trigger an event such as a battle or trap, or hold an item the party can search for and retrieve. While unlocking chests or avoiding traps, the player triggers the Reel, an options wheel that spins until the player halts it, triggering an action. Enemies shift position with each turn, and some spaces have hiding areas allowing the party to avoid battle if they choose.
When a battle is triggered, the party is unable to flee, either having to defeat the enemy or be defeated in battle. During battles, a player party of up to five on-screen characters fight enemies in a themed arena. The player is given five turns per round, with actions selected for up to that many characters per turn. Characters have two types of health: Health Points (HP), which is used for skills and special abilities, and Life Points (LP), which is their underlying health and is lowered if their HP bar drops to zero. If the scenario protagonist runs out of LP, the game ends and must be restarted from the last save. Both HP and LP are fully recovered when the party reaches a town, and can be recovered to varying degrees outside battle by resting for a turn. While HP level can rise, each character's LP level is set from the game's beginning. As in exploration, the Reel system plays a part, with the player's chosen icon on the Reel impacting the type and power of a character's move. The player can choose to have five individual actions, or "Hold" the action so they are chained together to create combination attacks. Combination attacks can be triggered by a single character using multiple skills or attacks in one turn, or multiple characters chaining their attacks together. An attack chain can be broken by enemies if their attack phase comes in the middle of the party's turn.
While characters do not earn experience points in battle, completing missions can increase a character's maximum HP, weapons have unique abilities, and skills are unlocked by equipping different types of items to a character's growth tree at the end of a mission. New weapon techniques can also be learned during battle at random. Weapons have a limited durability, and after a set number of uses will break and become unusable. Durability can be raised by using certain items, or reworking the weapon at the Blacksmith. Magical abilities called Arts are learned by characters with tablet items. If an Art is used in battle, players will be invited to invest points into raising the power of that Art, unlocking an Art's use with a weapon. Withdrawing points from the Art will cause the character to lose their higher abilities. Some character types can use spirits called Familiars, which are element-themed spirits equipped to characters who can perform specific skills.
Synopsis Unlimited Saga takes place in an unnamed fantasy world. Scattered across the world are the Seven Wonders, giant structures from a time called the "Golden Age" linked to an ancient battle against chaotic forces. Key to the world's backstory is Iskander, a warrior king who conquered half the known world and founded a capital bearing his name near one of the Seven Wonders. In the game's backstory, the Seven Wonders were created as research devices by the Arcanians, a race created as the original humanity by the world's Creator. Their experiments in the Seven Wonders were with Chaos, a dangerous energy force. Chaos's influence prompted the Creator to destroy the Arcanian's civilization, banishing Chaos and causing the Creator to vanish. In the present, the Seven Wonders are attributed the power to bestow a new Golden Age.
The storylines follow seven different characters—Laura, Judy, Ventus, Ruby, Mythe, Kurt and Armic—who each face a person using the power of the Seven Wonders. Laura is a former pirate who after the death of her husband finds new meaning protecting a wandering prince. Judy is a young witch-in-training who goes on a quest to save her grandfather after he is trapped in a mirror by an old rival. Ventus is a courier looking for the man who killed his brother years before. Ruby is the powerless sister of a fortune teller who ends up caught in her affairs. Mythe is a lady's man who becomes smitten with the picture of a mysterious woman. Kurt is a former noble knight who defies his family to find adventure and discover the truth behind a curse gauntlet he wears. Armic is a laid-back, slow-witted member of the Chapa people sent to find the items necessary for a rain-making ritual as his people are suffering from a prolonged drought.
In Ruby's scenario, the party includes the now-immortal Iskander, who became an omnipotent being through learning the Creator's secrets from Arcanian survivors. A key event in the game is the Festival, a celebration in memory of Iskander and his immediate successors Lord Dixon and his wife Regina. All the characters come together and can interact during this period. Each scenario reveals the antagonists to have been tempted, directly manipulated by, or be intent on using the manifested Chaos, which the chosen protagonist defeats and banishes once again.
Development Unlimited Saga was developed by Square, which handled development for multiple role-playing series including SaGa and Final Fantasy. Development lasted two years, and involved a staff of around fifty people from Square's Product Development Division 2. Many of the staff were veterans of the SaGa series. Series creator Akitoshi Kawazu produced and directed, Kyouji Koizumi returned as battle designer from the Romancing SaGa games, and recurring staff member Jyunichi Shinomiya acted as lead writer. As with other games in the series, Kawazu chose a non-traditional way of designing the game. He stated, "As far as Unlimited Saga is concerned, we said let's tackle the basics of game design once again. We didn't try to emphasize the realistic details, but rather symbolize, and cut out the parts we didn't need. We thought, let's dare to do a 'not express' thing and we calmly [stuck] to that route." Despite the non-traditional approach, the team built on their previous game development structures when creating Unlimited Saga. During its early production, it was planned for an unnamed handheld console. When production of that console was cancelled, production was moved to the PlayStation 2. Unlimited Saga saw the series' debut on that platform.
The game's art director was Yusuke Naora, who had just finished work on Final Fantasy X. After completing his work there, Naora was considering leaving Square and going overseas to study art to keep up with other artists coming into the industry, but was unable to for unspecified reasons. At this point, Kawazu invited Naora onto the production team. Naora accepted, as he "wanted to try new things" within the SaGa series. The character designs were created by Naora, with additional character and monster artwork by Yuichi Shiota and Toshiaki Matsumoto. Naora was originally only assigned as background designer, but Kawazu wanted a "challenging" design for the characters, so requested Naora to design them. Regular series artist Tomomi Kobayashi created character art for the game based on Naora's design. While working from another artist's work, Kobayashi put her own spin on the designs, creating the illustrations around the primary color of each character. The visual theme for the cast was "flowers", with each character being given a key colour based on a flower.