Developer/Publisher: Square Enix
Release Date: April 25, 2024 (Worldwide)
Platforms: PS4/5. Nintendo Switch, Steam, iOS and Android
Physical Release: Currently only for Japan & Asia, including the collectors edition
Price: $49.99, €49.99, £39.99
Demo: Yes - PS4/5 users can play as Tsunanori Mido, Switch users at Ameya Aisling, and Steam users as Diva No. 5 for 2 worlds, and progress carries over to the full game.
View: https://youtu.be/r_L1X8Pn4CU?si=9xxbxzVU_OXilYBF
A New SaGa
A brand new standalone SaGa adventure is here, bringing together elements from across its 35 year history in a unique package that has you traverse 17 connected worlds in what promises to be the SaGa with the most branching choices in the series yet! An iterative game that looks to have built upon the foundations of SaGa Scarlet Grace, but also featuring sci-fi elements not seen since SaGa Frontier, races and character choice that covers everything from the mechs and mutant mechanics of the Gameboy titles to the pirates, monsters and non-human races of the SNES titles, and so much more. SaGa Emerald Beyond promises to be an evolution of the series while also pulling from its long and varied history for references and mechanics and callbacks. Set out on your journey by choosing one of 5 different scenarios featuring 6 different protagonists and follow the emerald waves that bring you to new doors and adventures, and every playthrough is certain to feature unique experiences from your choices!
For those who haven't played a SaGa game before, Square Enix have a nice introductory guide to getting into the series. Briefly, some of the things it mentions are the nonlinear storytelling, exploration, and character progression. The storytelling is more focused on scenarios that can be weaved throughout the narrative, dropped or adapted to player choice, and similarly exploration might entail you never visiting certain regions and locations depending on the choices you make. Characters progress is typically a mixture of equipment levels and skills developed while using that equipment, as well as stats like HP/MP increasing over time, or strength/dexterity etc. The games tend to feature a "battle rank" mechanic in lieu of any traditional levels, and there's often a stigma or fear mongering around the level scaling and screwing yourself over, but I really haven't found it to be a problem in any of the games at all. As you get stronger you will fight stronger opponents; if you somehow end up fighting tougher opponents your abilities will increase faster to take on that challenge as well. The games often have limited healing or item usage, with tactical gameplay based around damage mitigation and all out battles where you're healed in between encounters. There's often a lot of systems at play and many of them are not always explained to the player that well or at all, but these systems give the series a very strong and unique Identity that has been crafted for decades, and more recently there's been a lot more transparency about the underlying systems to ease onboarding of players and overall engagement. For this title in particular check out the battle section where I try to explain some of the basics.
Protagonists
Diva No. 5
Character Trailer
A mech who specializes in singing and dancing. She is popular in Avalon, a world where industry has developed around the royal city.
She was a flawless and captivating entertainer, but after singing a forbidden song she found in the Royal Museum, both her memory and singing functions were disabled, and she lost her ability to sing. Dejected, she abandons her humanoid body and joins the National Extradimensional Exploratory Task Force, leaving Avalon.
Like all mechs Diva can change her abilities and techs by changing which armaments she has equipped, but she can also change body type which might grant different roles or techs depending on which body type you're using.
Siugnas
Character Trailer
After being removed from his throne by someone or something's betrayal, he awakes to find himself in Brighthome, a world where fallen warriors gather. He is recruited into the king's band of warriors called the Generals and sent to fight in a chaotic battle against invaders. But how did he, an immortal, end up in a world where only the dead can go? Together with fellow members of the generals, he begins a journey to regain his abilities as the Dismal King.
Siugnas is the games only Vampire, which gives him the same abilities as other human races but also access to unique Sanguine Arts that consume LP (life points, the series system for governing whether or not your characters can participate in battles). In addition to this, consuming party members LP will grant additional Sanguine Arts and also put them into a thrall state. Granting these thralls Sanguine Gear will turn them instead into your Knights, who can use Sanguine Roles+Arts, but at the cost of any special racial traits they had before. Removing this gear will permanently reduce this party member to 1LP and make them a Wastrel who can no longer use these powerful abilities, learn new spells or glimmer techs, so make sure you choose wisely.
Bonny Blair & Formina Franklyn
Character Trailer
Former marine Bonnie Blair and renowned sharpshooter Formina Franklyn are two police officers working together to find the truth behind the assassination attempt on the President of Capitol City, a world studded with skyscrapers.
With the claim of a key person of interest in the case that the president is a traitor and a mysterious triangle piece as their only clues, they set off on a journey through other worlds to uncover the hidden truth behind the incident.
Unless I've missed it we don't really know as much about this scenario as most of the others, so we'll have to see what unique element the dual protagonists bring us!
Tsunanori Mido
Character Trailer
Tsunanori comes from the long lineage of the important Mido family of Miyako City, a world filled with traditional, old-fashioned city streets that sprawl out from the central Gokakudo Temple. He can control kugutsu, or animated puppets, which bear their own will.
The last great war destroyed the old societal and spiritual orders alike. Ever since, Miyako City has been plagued with all kinds of supernatural phenomena. Tsunanori is selected for the Cathedral Project to investigate other worlds and restore order to the spiritual realm. With the kugutsu accompanying him, he sets out on a journey to other worlds to find four elemental spirits to accomplish his task.
Tsunanori alone is able to imbue the puppet like Kugutsu with additional roles learned from defeating enemies, and starts with a full retinue outfit of them. However Kugutsu can not glimmer new techniques and will be dependant on mimicking the moves from other enemies or allies in the middle of battle.
Ameya Aisling
Character Trailer
Ameya visits Miyako City from the Witchdom Pulchra, a world ruled by witches, as part of her witchterms.
While in Miyako City, she assumes the identity of an 11-year-old schoolgirl named Yumeha Izumi and lives with her cat familiar, LoLo. But after being attacked by an unknown man, she loses her magic powers completely.
Will Ameya be able to get her magical powers back and pass her witchterms?
Ameya will grow her magical stats by finding cats which seem to be manifestations of her lost magic. Go to many worlds and find the cats, while also trying to pass your witchterms with flashy heroics that produce mana when witnessed by others!
Your Retinue
Your retinue will grow across the worlds you visit and as outcomes to the choices you make during the branching scenarios. Your active party consists of 5 members, with Emerald Beyond now introducing a sixth support member who can grant various buffs to accommodate your teams strategy! Enjoy a huge variety of races and unique characters like mechs, monsters, kugutsu puppets, cats, moles, werewolves, witches, pirates, bug like aliens, living plants, scarecrows, and more. When a character has 0 LP they can no longer participate in battle, so switch around your characters if in need and let the backline heal up. (Ephemerals are a unique monster race that will actually be reborn when they hit 0 LP, passing down techs and spells to the next generation)
Worlds
There are 17 explorable worlds in SaGa Emerald Beyond. A world of darkness that Siugnas once ruled, a world of witches who live an unfettered existence in exchange for a cruel fate, the skyscraper studded Capitol City, a cellular sized microcosm, a sci-fi land of progress with thanks to something called triangle theory, the Valhalla like land of unending fighting, a dead desert world filled with dead machines and scarecrows that serve no purpose, an ocean world filled with pirates, a plant world centered around a blooming flower and the unending cycle of life... and many more are waiting!
The Battle System
Like its predecessor (SaGa Scarlet Grace), Emerald Beyond features a turn based timeline battle system in which you will develop a strategy each turn before confirming your actions. Learning to both offensively and defensively take advantage of each units position in the timeline is absolutely critical to success in what can be a challenging and demanding system. Your retinue will have access to a host of moves but at the cost of ⭐ Battle Points (BP), the resource shared across your characters to decide which moves to use each round. Different formations for your party can change how you accrue BP, effects of magic or techs, attributes such as attack, defence and speed, etc. New to Emerald Beyond is the method of creating "United Attacks", important combos that are triggered by having moves with a green timeline range link your characters together.
In this case you can see the move buckshot has a green 3 beneath the ⭐x3 BP cost, which means it has a range of 3. On the timeline as well you can see the green bars positioned, so that if you were to select Bonnie and give her a move with a range of at least 1, these two characters would be enjoined in a combo. Similarly the cat to your right is in immediate range as well, and you could even potentially have Formina join you by delaying the enemy in front of her, or selecting a quicker acting move that positions her before the enemy. The possibilities for characters moving is great with a number of moves that affect players or enemies, and special conditional techs such as chain attacks which move you behind another character on the timeline, pursuits which position you after an enemy, or defeating an enemy in the middle of a combo introducing a character to the combo that otherwise hadn't been a part of it. The tactical depth to the battles is fantastic, as not only do you have access to all these abilities and strategies but so too do your enemies. Prevent them from being positioned together or else you will be on the receiving end of a deadly United Attack! You might think this would make boss encounters easier to manage but you must still be wary, as Showstoppers are combos performed by a single unit when they are given sufficient space alone on the timeline, depleting their BP to unleash as many moves as possible. And of course, you yourself can make use of these Showstoppers!
The "techs" you learn are dependant on the weapons you use in battle. I believe these are the weapon categories for the game:
2-Handed Swords (greatswords, katanas, and polearms)
1-handed blades (longswords, short swords, daggers and axes)
1-handed guns (equipping two let's you use the dual gun wielding tech Guns Akimbo)
2-handed guns
Martial Arts
Using a category of weapon will increase your proficiency, and the likeliness that when facing a sufficiently strong opponent and with thanks to RNGesus, you will "glimmer" (💡) a new tech in the midst of battle! It can be exhilarating to only win a difficult encounter by getting a new tech to glimmer, maybe even having it move you into position for a combo! Similarly it can be devastating to have a glimmered tech move you out of position and ruin a carefully planned combo lol. Increasing the level of a tech makes it stronger and can even decrease the ⭐BP cost.
Different characters and races might have unique mechanics as alluded to already throughout this post, or otherwise. For example "Monsters" like cats can't equip weapons but those they were born with like their claws, but they can equip accessories, or by equipping relics they can absorb other monsters and their special techs. Humans are the most versatile group probably by virtue of being able to glimmer and also equip two different weapons on top of that, but many other races and characters promise to have fun and unique ways of developing them. All races except mechs can learn spells but I'm not sure how those mechanics work just yet!
And that's all I've got. I hope you enjoy the game! There's more systems and choices than you can shake a stick at, and some pretty sweet music and great art and fun humor and out there scenarios and crazy characters to come across. Here's a fun character moment I saw on Reddit (LOUD):
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/PJWwG1Xmr4Y?si=FqpySeNfVF5OUaYT
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