SaGa Frontier 1 has been started and holy hell is this a weird entry. It almost feels like Kawazu and his team decided to ignore the SNES entries and that last GB entry and went back to SaGa 2 (FFLII) as the main basis of the game. I'm not complaining though because it was a fave of mine.

Basically we're back to having characters broken up by Humans, Mystics/Espers, Monsters and Robots. Humans largely work like they did in SaGa 2 but now have the Romancing series spark/waza element to actually learn skills. Monsters absorb defeated enemies to learn new skills and possibly transform into a new form, and I haven't ran into the other two races yet to get an idea of how they work. It's interesting how the game feels both streamlined and more convoluted at the same time compared to RS3.

I opted to go with Red as my first character. His plot is based off a bunch of tropes from Tokusatsu genre, specifically Henshin Hero's like Kamen Rider. So his dad is killed by a mysterious organization called Black X and he himself was nearly killed until he was saved by a superhero who granted him his similar powers to save his life. Now Red is trying to find out more about the mysterious organization while fighting off their henchmen as his alter ego Alkaiser.

As a fan of Super Sentai shows like Power Rangers growing up, this has been a fun blast so far. My only real beef is that while he can spark techs in his Alkaiser form, including some cool exclusive moves he can only use in said form, he can't get stat boosts if he transforms. Granted his Alkaiser form like quadruples his stats but it makes it harder when the game kind of makes it a crutch mechanic in the early game.

I am currently trying to increase his levels and techs in the Bio Research Lab and was thrashed by the areas boss. I'll need to come back with a full team I feel because he one shot my whole party. I did recruit a monster named cotton and after a lot of trial and error, I mange to strike...metal? and got it to transform into a SaGa brand Liquid Metal slime with ridiculously high stats for this point in the game. With my mon on the team, I've finally been able to get Red's stats to go up, but since we're playing Henshin tropes to a tee, I've lost the ability to use the Alkaiser form because Red can't use it in front of other people and must keep his identity a secret, even to his own teammates apparently including a monster that can only say kyu kyu...

Music is good, graphics and setting remind me of FFVII, controls are a bit janky for my taste but I remember SaGa Frontier 2 was pretty similar in that regard. It's interesting how SF1 feels like a send up to the GB entries while SF2 feels like one for the SNES ones.

With the Golden Week sales going on, I may finally pick up SaGa Scarlet Graces and perhaps the SF1 Remaster. I really want that SF2 remaster and new SaGa game Kawazu hinted at.