Due to RL, I have not had much time to work on either game. Mostly been sticking to mobile gaming and mostly trying to finish up Terra Battle or doing some Pokemon Go. That changed around last night because I had initially signed up for the beta testing on Romancing SaGa re:Universe but missed the beta due to RL once again. The game officially came out in the West two days ago. Curiosity got the better of me and I checked it out last night and I'm already hooked.

The easiest way to describe it is that the game is basically FF Record Keeper just with the SaGa IP and game mechanics. It does feature a real plot and have a central cast, but a big part of the plot is the arrival of mysterious towers that summon heroes and villains from other SaGa titles. The main plot is set 300 years after Romancing SaGa 3 and follows a man named Polka, who is a former acrobat who traveled with a circus with his sister Liz. She was kidnapped by a dark figure and has now roamed the lands looking for her. He has joined the Graves Knights, an order of warriors based in Vanguard who explore the mysterious Graves that have begun to pop up across the globe. As mentioned earlier, the Graves serve as a portal to alternate worlds and exploring them will sometimes have Polka re-enact famous moments from the games.

You can build a party of up to five characters and can use gems or tickets to draw characters from the whole franchise to make up our team. Characters are bit unique, because they are sorted by rank from A to SS and it's possible to get the same character just with different ranks. The ranks deal with a characters "Style" which is a fancy way of saying how they develop and what skills they can spark. Each character can only spark up to three moves and their style alters what stats will likely be raised when you finish a mission. It's pretty straight forward and it's possible to switch styles on a character if you own different ranks of them. Mages are also a bit unique as they only gain magic after a mission is completed but some characters can do both magic and weapon arts.

There is a crafting system, but I'm way too early in the game to make use of it. There are also formations, but again, I'm still too early to make use of it. You can also send characters on expeditions so you level up large swaths of them at once. Expeditions remove them from play for a set amount of real world time, but you can also acquire special tickets that make expeditions end instantly for the bonus. Party members will get stat gains and style points for going on these missions, but they won't unlock weapon or magic arts so you'll still need to use everyone if you want them to be good.

I'm currently rolling a party with Polka, Faerie, Gerad, Laura, and Sif.