A little over halfway through the game now. I just reached Edo and as usual, I've got to give Kawazu props for just the sheer variety in the worlds. While a few are just place holders for story stuff, a few have some interesting designs. I liked the Giant's World, where you have to figure out how to navigate a massive abandoned Giants village, of how Venus' world is some futuristic acropolis with Jetson style moving streets and then the outside if a massive jungle. Edo is a pretty adorable remake of the same historical era of Japan, and this story sequence plays out like a detective story with a Zenigata Heiji stand-in as a potential party member.

Overall, I'm really enjoying this game more than the first SaGa due to a lot of the technical changes. This is probably the most story-centric entry in the series just shy of the PS1 entries with a continuing plot and some really wacky characters as potential party members. The gameplay mechanics are also much more refined. Despite the "random" factor of the game, there is much more control on how your team can be built which has made this playthrough much more smooth than my first one. In fact, I'm still trying to figure out how I almost reached the end of the game with a half decent monster the first time, cause holy trout is the algorithm for them so much more complex and specifically built to prevent players from exploiting it. Robots are also just a fun class and I'm a little sad they rarely show up after the Game Boy entries. I still enjoyed the original, but you can tell this is where Kawazu really got his start on how he wanted SaGa to be like. Especially when you consider the next SaGa game he actually worked on was Romancing SaGa 1. He didn't work on the third entry, which is why it plays very differently from the rest of the series, well until he helmed its remake.

Of anything, I'm a little sad we never got the DS remake of any of these games. Would have been nice to get one with a better translation and no censorship.