From the look of things, he was tapped to do both Chocobo Racing and Chocobo Dungeon 2's OSTs . He even had a third game he was working on as well so he was likely too busy. I mean he didn't compose Legend of Mana's OST either and that came out the same year as Saga Frontier 2, so he missed composing on two of his hallmark franchises. As for Unlimited SaGa, I'm pretty sure I know what I'm getting into. Sadly it's definitely one of those game mechanics where I feel the concept is intriguing, but it also seems kind of obvious it's going to have too many pitfalls as well. We'll wait and see, I'm heading into the last third of SF2 and I broke the halfway point in FFLegends. I've been wanting too dedicate more time to Romancing SaGa 1, and have been terribly tempted by its sequel now that it's almost five dollars cheaper thanks to the Golden Week sale going on in for PSN. Watching the trailer for the port, I'm slightly amused cause it looks like they updated the backgrounds, but didn't really touch the sprite work. Wonder if the Mobile/Steam ports of FFV/VI had something to do with that choice.
Honestly, I'm sure the game is perfectly fine as long as you go into it knowing what it is and don't mind the luck involved in the system. At the very least the game looks and sounds good, so you can use it as a musical screen saver. Annnnnnnnnnnnd holy crap, I didn't even notice Ito wasn't the composer for Frontier 2! I mean, most of his notable tracks in the series are battle themes as well, so maybe it doesn't matter all that much, but I have to check out the Frontier 2 OST now. Wonder why they swapped him? O_ oa
Fun fact: Cordelia only dies if you pick her for the infiltrate Alexia's gang mission. If you choose anyone else, she lives and becomes Wil's wife. At least that's what happened on my file. Kind of like that to be honest cause you don't often see those kind of choices in games, at least without the title being really heavy handed about it. I can see what you might mean about SF2 feeling different, from what I've seen and read about the series, the closes entry it has anything in common with is Romancing SaGa 2 due to both games being generational stories where you follow a family line as it tries to save the world. My own thoughts on SF2 at the moment is that it's biggest problem is that it had a lot of potential to be something amazing, and it kind of just falls short at every opportunity. Not to the point of being a bad game, but I feel if the cutscenes and story had been handled by someone like say... Yasumi Matsuno, this game would have had a richer narrative that would bring the political tale to life. The characters are all pretty interesting but the game is terrible about introducing them and dropping them from the plot. The battle system has some interesting ideas but duel battles drag on forever, but trying to gain new abilities within normal battles is like pulling teeth so they become a necessary evil. War battles are interesting, but they're too simple and too few to be much of a feature and more of a weird quirk in the game. The music isn't as catchy as Romancing SaGa's tunes, though I am starting to come around to it cause it's rare to find accordion music in gaming with a calypso vibe. Even then, I've come to the conclusion that Hamazu's best scores are his battle themes, and his regular themes leave much to be desired. Still none of it is a deal breaker, just minor annoyances. I could say the same thing about a game like Final Fantasy VIII. It's a fun game, but it has too many problems, the biggest one being that it never measures up to the potential of the ideas used as the basis for it. I am laughing cause I just picked up Unlimited SaGa and part of me is really curious to see if I'm going to dislike it as much as most people do, or if I'm going to gain some sick pleasure from how weird the whole thing is.
It's probably more fair to say there is one I do not like, being Unlimited SaGa, and the other, Frontier 2, I'm more . . . dismissive of, I suppose? Unlimited is a lot like Dragon Quarter for me, where I went into it expecting an experience reminiscent of any of the previous installments and that is simply not what I got. The game takes the series in a completely random direction and many of the choices, and even the results of said choices, sometimes feel completely out of your hands. I didn't spend a whole lot of time with the game, but I remember having map actions fail on me because of a chance wheel, combat actions I'd botch again due to said wheel, and no real sense of location or progress in the game, just kind of advancing along from map to map and . . . well, hating every second of it. I might be able to enjoy it more today, but as a fan of the series at that point in time I was certainly not open to the title. Which, it also happens, was kind of my problem with Frontier 2 as well, though to a much lesser degree as I do recall the game itself being decent and playing through at least until probably unnecessary spoiler tagCordelia's death. Frontier lives up to its name in that it is a very out there feeling title compared to most other RPGs, with an almost non-existent narrative, different races, odd graphics, and wildly different locations to hop around to and explore, and I loved all of those elements, while Frontier 2 feels much more . . . safe in its choices, probably moreso than any title in the series up to that point, and I've just kind of wandered elsewhere in the series over it because of that. Reading your playthrough of it has drawn my interest back to the game though, so I'll probably give it another shot sometime soon, provided work doesn't continue to murder my ability to focus on anything else like it has been.
I'm curious to know which two SaGa games you disliked?
