SaGa Emerald Beyond

[Peklo]

It would be unconscionable not to warrant a new thread for a new SaGa. Its existence had been intimated before, and now the newest game in the series has materialized... and despite it looking just about what was expected--very Scarlet Grace-inflected in everything shown--there is not a hint of disappointment in it being so, because staying true to one of the best games ever made doesn't seem a terrible proposition. Beyond excited and full confidence in the finished work based on just the glimpses shown.

 

[Kazin]

I still have so much of Scarlet Grace to play, and yet I'll still be getting Emerald Beyond pretty much as soon as it releases. Great series.

 

[MetManMas]

I am thrilled to see we're going back to some sci-fi stuff and especially that Mechs are back. I'mma main Diva No. 5

 

[ozacrot]

The drastic differences in fashion across characters and mention of travel across 17 worlds has me thrilled - the multiverse setting of SaGa Frontier is one of my favorites from any video game. With the returns of guns and (as characters, at least) Mechs, I'm curious to see what other mechanics may make their way into the new one.

I'm also looking forward to having an enormous black house cat as a party member:

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Me when a new SaGa game

 

[YangusKhan]

Hell yeah! My impression is the world design/structure and character types hews closer to Frontier/Gameboy SaGa, while the everything else is very much Scarlet Grace.

 

[Peklo]

SaGa is usually excellent with gender parity in its playable casts, but when the pendulum shifts away from a binary split, men tend to receive the slight preference in perspectives and stories present. Emerald Beyond is the first time there's a female majority, with or without counting both Bonnie and Formina as a unit in their buddy cop dual scenario.

 

[spines]

i saw a screenshot of the battle screen before the trailer so i wasn't sure if they were changing the battle system a lot more but it seems more like the visual representation is more "scaled" to give a better idea of whether or not certain actions will change the turn order without having to check every single move you have manually, haha. although watching the trailer it also looks like unite attacks are being replaced (?) by a combo system like the ones the series has commonly had since frontier

incredibly excited about this game

 

[YangusKhan]

Hmmm. I wonder if this will get a physical release outside of Asia or if it will still be digital only like every other SaGa release now?

 

[demi]

I don't know, but GameForce Boulder has stocked the Asia region physical releases for SaGa and many others pretty darn consistently, if not immediately. We'll definitely be checking with them as the release draws near.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Some bits from a Famitsu interview that I forgot to post here:

The main characters are credited with voice actors, which I don't think we knew? Yuki Ono (Josuke from JJBA4) as Vampire Guy and Ayaka Suwa (A2 from Nier Automata) as Diva #5 are the only particularly big names. I don't really care about voice actors but some of y'all might.

"We decided on character designs during a drinking party"

Slightly fewer party members than in Scarlet Grace (I think that's what it says), but there are a lot more variety because of races.

They came up with more than 17 worlds, but they knew that wasn't feasible for development - some folks even suggested cutting a couple more, but Kawazu was like "naur it has to be 17"

Interviewer: ScarGrace's protagonists all had unusual jobs, it kind of feels like the same is happening with EmaBeyo
Kawazu, speaking about a game with a Robot Songstress Who Lost Her Voice And Body and Literally The Prince of Darkness: Eh, I think they're pretty normal?

Bonnie and Formina exist because Kawazu wanted a girl best friends like how Balmante and Arthur are boy best friends in ScaGra.

Siugnas's party is all men. They decided from the start his team would be all goodlooking men. I wonder if this means just his starting party or if characters have a set list of people they can actually recruit?

The character artist keeps referencing someone named on the art team named Takahashi, who did some of the design work - she apparently designed Siugnas and the Puppet masks. Kuramochi's Siugnas design was apparently a lot sluttier lmao.

Siugnas is the only vampire in the game? So it seems like less of a SaGa Frontier Mystic and more of a Vampire Guy From RS3? He can suck blood in combat, but they don't clarify anything about it.

The world is supposed to feel different depending on which characters you're playing - they specifically mention how in ScaGra, Balmante and Talia may have different storylines, but ultimately the various events that happen in the world are largely the same between games, but EmeBeyond it's supposed to actually feel different. Progress is also different if you play the same character story.

Kawazu: Don't worry, if you follow the Green Line, you'll reach the end.

Emerald Vision exists because Kawazu was like "ok we use these lines during development, so it's fine for the player to see them too"

Kawazu: Games today are really long, and they make me say "I'll take me 3 months to beat this game" and so I wanted to bring back the feeling of being a young person who would be like "I'm going to beat this game in 3 days this weekend"

Tsunanori is essentially a tutorial character like Urpina. Ameya has a lot of endings for her scenario.

Originally they were planning on having the game out in 2021, but the pandemic happened so development slowed down. Preproduction began when they were working on ScarGrac Ambitions.

The rewind feature lets you make different choices in a cutscene, but you can't rewind out of a battle.

 

[YangusKhan]

Rewinding SaGa cutscenes? That's a pretty surprising feature ngl.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Rewinding SaGa cutscenes? That's a pretty surprising feature ngl.

It seems like he says he wanted a way for players to be able to reread text/rewatch events, but since actual rewind features aren't that common in games he wanted to give it a shot (versus, i guess, an event viewer/message log).

 

[YangusKhan]

https://rpgamer.com/2023/09/saga-emerald-beyond-gets-more-details/

Nothing really in-depth here besides summarizing basic stuff in English. There is a nice collection of screenshots, however. Really want to know more about those cat/fox people. Most of the protagonists sound neat to me; I'm not too keen on the "beginner friendly" guy Tsunanori yet.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

The full press kit mentions that Showstopper is more likely to happen as towards the end of battle as fewer units are on the field, which makes me worried that the end of boss fights might just be rocket tag to see who can self combo the hardest

Really want to know more about those ...fox people ... I'm not too keen on the "beginner friendly" guy Tsunanori yet.

those are his puppets!

 

[YangusKhan]

The full press kit mentions that Showstopper is more likely to happen as towards the end of battle as fewer units are on the field, which makes me worried that the end of boss fights might just be rocket tag to see who can self combo the hardest

That article from rpgamer did a terrible job of explaining what Showstopper actually is. It's a... chance? for someone to combo with themself? How would that work if you can only pick 1 action per turn?

those are his puppets!

Oh. Well then... I can re-consider...

 

[Pajaro Pete]

this is all we know atm, it could just be a version of Overdrive

 

[Peklo]

​

Already made note of it from that great bunch of screenshots on RPGamer, but I'm unreasonably excited that Guanyin is back.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

this is all we know atm, it could just be a version of Overdrive

apparently not because the tgs trailer has Overdrives listed as a separate thing from Showstoppers

 

[estragon]

Kobayashi Tomomi is not involved with this game, but she was to TGS just as a general audience member and wrote a blog about it including a sketch of the panel event.

Presumably whatever reason she's not involved is probably some factor no one has hard feelings about, because she's delighted to meet the SaGa team again for the first time in a while. She also excited to run into some promotional banners with Cloud and Sephiroth, so apparently the part of her that was inspired to draw her FF7 doujin back in the day is still alive and well.

 

[estragon]

About the game itself: As someone who played through all four character scenarios on the original Vita release of Scarlet Grace and then again with the Ambitions release and still occasionally fiddles with an ongoing save just because the battles are fun, I'm obviously extremely hopeful for this. Scarlet Grace is the result of stripping down things to the bare essentials, and here they're clearly using that framework as a starting point but bringing some of those cut elements back in. It will be a delicate balancing act, but the initial pitch is very promising if executed well. Visually, as much as Kobayashi is missed, I think the initial designs here are quite song and clearly they've developed a team that Gets what SaGa is about.

 

[Peklo]

They are/have been streaming new stuff about the game, so have a Steam page. The release date is April 25th, which lands it two days apart from Eiyuden. Uh oh!

 

[YangusKhan]

I know where my loyalties lie!

 

[Peklo]

Incredible character trailers:

​

Tsunanori became significantly more interesting because of this VA casting and direction.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

They had already mentioned in Japanese he has a Kansai accent, so I'm glad they didn't go too over the top with the English version (real 90s anime fans know what I mean!!!)

Anyway happy to have this and Slayuden Chronicles Hundred Heroes within days of one another

 

[spines]

tsunanori is probably still the protagonist i'm least interested in, but that is not saying much. i hope there's a quiz like SG again, i'd rather do that than have to choose

(i'll probably pick siugnas if it comes to that though)

 

[estragon]

Didn't watch the stream so maybe it came up there too, but I read a Dengeki interview where Kawazu mentioned there's no in-battle healing in this one. Previous SaGa games have featured healing that's optional, suboptimal, or feels vestigial, so I'm glad they're seeing what happens when you just eliminate it. Kawazu says he'd rather you focus on preventing damage through buffs, debuffs, and protection abilities. This was a very effective strategy in Scarlet Grace, so it makes sense that they're fully commiting to it and balancing around not even offering healing as an option.

It's kind of funny though because after Kawazu talks about how healing in most RPGs allows you to win too mindlessly, then Ichikawa jumps in to try to reassure people that it won't be too hard, saying that they think at least the start to mid-game will be more accessible than Scarlet Grace, and it's only later on that the game will want you to have a stronger grasp on its systems. That's not what I want personally as someone who loved Scarlet Grace's balance, but I do understand that they're trying to sell the game here and a lot of people just bounced off of Scarlet Grace because of difficulty.

Also, although that may be their intention, who knows how the balance will end up in practice.

 

[YangusKhan]

I read that (Google translated) interview and it seemed like they were contradicting themselves a bit when talking about difficulty, so I don't think we can take much away from that until we play it. But removing healing entirely is a natural step forward for this branch of SaGa, so that'll be interesting. It also sounds like magic is relatively simplified? It's unclear to me if all spells take a turn like it was in SG, or if only the big ones do.

Square Enix also released some more details about the game. Humans getting to use 2 different weapons is gonna be such a nice thing with this battle system.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

The english stream touched on the difficulty for a bit and the localization director summarized it as "there's a lower barrier to entry than in scarlet grace" which, if i'm being honest, i kind of interpret as "you won't constantly get wrecked by boars until you glimmer matador at the beginning of the game"

 

[Pajaro Pete]

New Bonnie and Formina trailer.

Also new info dump: Shows off some new party members, new worlds, new weapon types, new mechanics, and how the Ephemeral race works.