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The story
SaGa Emerald Beyond has dropped to just ¥980 on Amazon, sparking discussion on 5ch’s hardware/industry (Geha) board. While some praised composer Ito Ken’s music and the battle system, persistent criticism of the dungeon-less, visual-novel-style presentation and the lack of a skip function fueled a broader debate over the series’ direction.
What people said
Still too expensive
The battle-prep track is stupidly cool
I remember thinking, 'yep, this series is done'
Guess once something dies, it really doesn't come back
Liar!
It's a visual novel, replaying is mandatory, and there isn't even a skip button
Yeah, honestly it's just 'decently fun'
It feels rough around the edges — good ideas, but needs more polish
Also, since this is a replay-heavy game, let us skip the long-winded explanatory text and dialogue choices too
I picked up Romancing SaGa back when it got dirt cheap
It's just too expensive, seriously
Really shows how unpopular the SaGa Scarlet Grace direction is
Stop making games like this, Kawazu
that usability was basically destroyed
The battles are fun but they demand way too much effort
It's probably a programming-level issue
Kawazu supposedly came from a top science program, yet he has no problem shipping something with a technical flaw like this
Does he have no pride?
Wasn't he a Tokyo Tech dropout though?
That's not really Kawazu's job anyway
but then the load times are so long that it
really wrecked the pacing, which was a shame
SaGa Scarlet Grace was great on that front though
Scarlet Grace of Ambitions was fine, but the original Vita release had all sorts of problems
Well, the SaGa series itself is a game only fanboys buy in the first place, so fanboys hyping it up to each other is pointless…
Apparently SaGa Emerald was ¥670 at Bic Camera
I wanted that…
Wait, really?
Is that the PS5 version, not the PS4 version they did the big clearance sale on?!
At that price I'd actually want it
If Revenge of the Seven (the Romancing SaGa 2 remake) had come out right after Minstrel Song, things would've turned out completely differently
Honestly it's the same dynamic as FFXIV's 'Warriors of Light' fans do for producer Yoshida-P
Players buy it knowing full well it's a twisted, quirky kind of game, right?
Maybe it just bugs them that people are enjoying something they personally dislike
People criticize it because it used to be good and now it's garbage
It's become a totally different game from the Romancing SaGa days
No dungeons, just visual-novel scenes — that's not an RPG anymore, that's an adventure game
At least Unlimited SaGa still had dungeons and still felt like an RPG
Kawazu games are awful about forcing 'if you want to enjoy it, learn how to play it first' on you
are exactly what has propped up the JRPG genre all along
That said, if SaGa had the same systems as every other JRPG, it wouldn't have survived this long in the first place
The outer trappings matter, but only because there's a solid core underneath
Make the trappings rich while neglecting the system, and you end up with an FF-style button-mashing game (a jab at flashy, style-over-substance combat), and the brand dies
Background and Key Points
SaGa is Square Enix’s longest-running experimental RPG line, dating to the 1989 Game Boy original, and it has spent three decades oscillating between mainstream-friendly entries and deliberately obtuse ones under director Akitoshi Kawazu. Unlimited SaGa (2002), referenced directly in the thread, is the series’ byword for “system so unfriendly it alienated even longtime fans,” while Romancing SaGa’s freeform, dungeon-crawling “Free Scenario” structure is what older posters are nostalgic for. Emerald Beyond (2024) followed SaGa Scarlet Grace in trimming exploration further: no dungeons, primarily text-and-portrait “visual novel” scenes between battles, and heavy reliance on replaying the same content to see different outcomes — a structure the thread treats as a regression rather than an innovation. ¥980 (about $6-7) on Amazon Japan is a steep drop from its roughly ¥8,000-9,000 launch price, though rapid bargain-bin pricing for niche, low-print-run Japanese RPGs within a year of release is common and not unique to this title.
The thread doesn’t split on whether the game is bad — nearly everyone agrees the presentation and lack of a skip function are flaws — it splits on whether “the battles and music alone carry it” is legitimate praise or an admission that the core game has failed, and on whether Kawazu’s fanbase enables him by refusing to call weak entries weak (drawing an explicit comparison to Yoshida-P/FFXIV fandom).
What’s left unstated is that composer Kenji Ito (“Ito Ken”) has scored SaGa since 1990, so the music praise reflects franchise continuity, not a standout new hire — and that Steam pricing, unlike Japanese retail, hasn’t seen a comparable discount.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “SaGa Emerald Beyond Hits a Washed-Up ¥980 Bargain Price on Amazon!!!!!!!”.
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