Review jademonkey 4/5 · Mar 5, 2023
This is a very fun and well done remake. The original SaGa 3 was developed by the Final Fantasy Mystic Quest team rather than Akitoshi Kawazu's team like the rest of the series. The result was a much more streamlined game, missing both the warts and the charm of the rest of the series. I still enjoyed the game growing …
This is a very fun and well done remake. The original SaGa 3 was developed by the Final Fantasy Mystic Quest team rather than Akitoshi Kawazu's team like the rest of the series. The result was a much more streamlined game, missing both the warts and the charm of the rest of the series. I still enjoyed the game growing up, but it definitely felt a bit odd. The remake reworks the game to be more in line with the other SaGa games, along with adding a substantial amount of sidequests and expanding the story dialogue. Of course, the graphics and music were also updated to a very pleasant DS style, and the random encounters were replaced with enemies visible on the field.
I'd say the only downside of the remake is that the dungeons get a bit too long. In Saga 2's remake, it was easy to avoid almost every non-important encounter. Here, they've made enemies alert to your presence far sooner and react much more quickly once alerted. The dungeons are also narrower. The end result is a lot more unavoidable combat. On top of that, combat is noticeably slower than the original gameboy version, even with animations disabled. For most of the game, it's not too bad, but the last few dungeons got to be a bit of a slog.
Regardless, this was a great way to re-experience a game I grew up with in a more modern context. Definitely recommended if you're looking for a short (~20 hours) game with the hallmark SaGa weirdness.