In a sea of major releases, SaGa Emerald Beyond shirks the concept of accessibility and polish--perhaps as a conceit to appearing on mobile devices--but provides an RPG fascinatingly different that, above all else, has an intricately complex and engaging battle system.
It would be difficult to conceptualize SaGa Emerald Frontier to those, like me, who have no experience with the SaGa franchise.
After the long, winding trail that was Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Emerald Beyond wasn’t necessarily a polar shift. Certainly, like Rebirth, Emerald Beyond is packed with quaint characters that are distinctly 90s-era JRPG vessels. There’s a capacity for multiple worlds in which the protagonists can potentially dive into alternate fates. And cats. There’s also cats too.
But Emerald Beyond is not traditional in any sense of the word. In the opening hours of the game I found myself absolutely baffled at what was actually happening, how to squeeze the most out of its gameplay, and what the SaGa franchise was all about. In a deluge of long-running RPG franchises, SaGa is one I’ve noticed but never interacted with. Likely it provides a dash of familiarity in terms of mechanics but is its own iceberg, one originating as Final Fantasy Legends in the West and leading to a legacy of about a dozen games.
Emerald Beyond will likely prove to be a difficult game to get into for players expecting an RPG with the amount of polish the upper echelon of Square Enix’s games feature. Additionally, there should simply be an expectation of the barrier the learning curve and the presentation has. Those first hours of Emerald Beyond were relatively rough, not transitioning to an experience slightly smoother until I accepted it for what it was.
Abandoning a traditional party system where the player collects characters over time, Emerald Beyond features six protagonists who exist in their own world. Each of these characters has the ability to travel into the inter-dimensional space between worlds referred to as the Beyond. No, this is not a multiverse game per se. Instead, players who go through the stories of multiple characters will note familiar faces may pop in and out and perhaps be a driving factor in part of other narratives.
I decided to start my journey with Bonnie Blair and Formina Franklyn, two cops that were attempting to track down a mysterious figure. Immediately I was taken aback by the game’s complete lack of any kind of real narrative prelude. It felt as if I was in media res, stumbling upon these two characters who were in turn stumbling into each other chasing down the same person.
Narratively, Emerald Beyond has a massive hurdle to overcome because its developments and dialog take place over static screens featuring walls of text. Perhaps Bonnie and Formina’s quest was not a great introductory one but I rapidly felt my eyes begin to glaze over as I attempted to scour over lines and lines of text that, gracefully, had voice acted lines. Unfortunately, the voice acting present here does feel a bit all over the place. Some characters were good, others laughably awkward. It has a kind of B-movie charm but I can also see many players reading through text rapidly and moving on before an actor finishes a chunk of dialog.
This does partially make Emerald Beyond a bit impenetrable from an engagement standpoint. There’s a palpable sense of budget and minimal production values from the start. Admittedly, this is not always a flaw and can cast a kind of charm over the product. But if one wishes to reach that point, they will need to work for it. I was minutes into Emerald Beyond and felt absolutely lost in what was going on. Out of nowhere these two women were following a silent man into a different world. And then suddenly, a bunch of cats decided to join me along for combat.
Quirky games can occasionally come across as a bit ham-fisted and the absurdity of parts of Emerald Beyond not only made me laugh but endeared me to absorbing its world. But this really, truly is not for everyone. Those static cutscenes and flat action are indicative of a title that is also working to be massively accessible towards nearly every player out there. Emerald Beyond is available on every console, PC, and mobile devices.
This may justify a number of Emerald Beyond‘s shortcomings to open-minded players, especially those who may be entrenched in the SaGa franchise already. For me, it loomed over the game like a specter, albeit one I could ignore. The unimpressive graphics, walls of text, and clunky menus struck me as a concession made to allow Emerald Beyond to be playable on virtually every screen imaginable.
Rather than play on PlayStation 5, I almost wonder if my time would have been better suited to digesting the game in bouts on my phone during work lunches or right before bed. That could also be an argument towards playing it on Switch, or Steam Deck, or PlayStation Portal, but I degress.
Whether players are trying to aid robot Diva No. 5 in finding her lost singing voice, helping puppet master Tsunanori restore his home, or reclaiming the throne as a vampire king, Emerald Beyond is not wont for intriguing concepts. But the game also means to hook players in my tantalizing them with 17 different worlds that can be explored. By using a feature called the Emerald Wave, players will be presented with a glowing path towards varying quests.
In essence, Emerald Beyond has a kind of random purpose to it where players have access to different choices and quests based on what worlds they visit. Based on the choices made, subsequent playthroughs will reflect the story when a new protagonist traverses that world or characters visit it again with the same heroes as before. This kind of incentive is persistent through roguelikes as a genre, not so much in RPGs, so I have to give Emerald Beyond credit for implementing this technique in a game that presents such a wild narrative conceit.
However, this strange mechanic can present a unique kind of problem. To maintain a sense of cohesion, I got the impression that Emerald Beyond‘s major story beats were not entirely random or different based on delving into its five narrative paths. In between the smaller touches during the story, players may encounter different dialog and options but nothing felt vastly different after a few runs. And honestly, that’s merely a risk taken with this type of process in games, whether it’s Binding of Isaac or, Hades, or Emerald Beyond. And maybe that’s where experiencing the game in a more mobile, incrementally digestible format would have felt more palatable.
While Emerald Beyond may sound relentlessly mediocre, strange, and unapproachable, its combat is only like that for a brief moment. Exploring the isometric-like, flat worlds will result in a number of turn-based battles that offer up an unexpected delight in a game that felt like it may be challenging for all the wrong reasons.
Echoes of Final Fantasy X were present in my time with Emerald Beyond. Players are placed in an arena where battles take place and a timeline at the bottom indicates which characters and which enemies will act, shown by their portraits. Initially, players start a battle with a handful of stars that will be used up by actions. More complex moves may consume 2 or more stars, with a new round of action restoring more stars.
The primary goal of Emerald Beyond‘s combat is to set up and chain together combos to deal massive damage and get the jump on enemies. On the battlefield, players can move characters near each other or closer to enemies to set up various attacks and combos. A combo attack can often deal big damage or throw an enemy off the timeline, delaying their attack. However, groups of enemies are also capable of doing the same thing. It’s here that players may wish to move a character closer to enemies, potentially blocking that combination attack.
Though I can’t be certain if this a methodology present in prior SaGa games, it is entirely unlike anything I’ve used in prior JRPGs. Where a traditional turn-based experience like an older Final Fantasy or current Persona games act as a back and forth volley with some forethought, Emerald Beyond does require a significant amount of savvy as its crazed cast of villains and characters attempt to dominate battle.
Magic takes time and turns to cast, meaning it isn’t instantaneous. There are no shops and currency, where instead crafting exists using earned materials to make stronger equipment. New moves and skills are unlocked with leveling, along with new formations that let players set up different attack approaches. Hell, each group of protagonists often have their own party composition. Bonnie and Formina get flooded with cats, Siugnas the vampire can enthrall human combatants, and Tsunanori gets help from his puppets. It is a system that I grew to not only enjoy but relish in. And maybe beyond all the grime, that’s the ultimate diamond in the rough here.
SaGa Emerald Beyond all comes together in a strange swirl of complex mechanics that justify progressing through a weird story that is by no means approachable. It truly is a shame that the game feels so dated and limited by its visuals and presentation. By no means is this a mainstream RPG. Will it make you curious about other SaGa entries? Perhaps. But those looking for a satisfying turn-based system unlike its peers will have enough to chew on.
