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There are a few words that come to mind when I think on my Unlimited SaGa experience. Some are more positive than others. However, the fairest way I can sum up the game is that it appeals to very specific tastes, and mine are not among them.
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From a graphical standpoint, Unlimited SaGa is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the character and location portraits are beautiful, and probably would look pretty nice on my wall. On the other, most of it is static, and the artistry loses something since you never get to see it in motion. The characters do move in battle, but the game makes use of what are essentially sprites (although by far the biggest and most detailed sprites in existence), so they naturally have limited movement animations. The contrast between detail and stiffness can play with your eyes sometimes, actually.
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There is no room for mixed feelings about the music, however. Easily the most pleasant soundtrack I’ve heard in quite a while. Now, because of Unlimited SaGa’s unusual gameplay and storytelling style (more on those in a moment), the music is mostly ambiance. That is, it is used mostly to be heard than to set moods or create themes. Which makes it no less nice to listen too, but it is something that should be kept in mind. Beyond that, the game makes limited use of voice acting. However, because the acting is low in volume and of unremarkable quality, there is little to note about it.
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The story of Unlimited SaGa is fairly simple in scope. The world has a group of places called the Seven Wonders. Various people are pushing to use them for unscrupulous purposes, and this is, of course, not something that should be tolerated.
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That is just the overall story, though. What makes this more engaging is that there are seven different protagonists, each with their own initial goals that eventually lead to this grander arc. Because of this, Unlimited SaGa plays more like seven smaller games with interconnected story threads. The protagonists are fairly different in personality and battle prowess, enabling the player to pick one they are most comfortable with while they learn how to play the game.
This is fortunate, because learning to play is a feat. The field is set up like a game board. You move a silver piece resembling your character from space to space, with the spaces littered with traps, treasure chests, and beasties. During all this, your menu will be open. Your characters can use various abilities to help you navigate safely from the Skill menu. This is also where you can examine treasure chests and other objects of interest. Other menu options let you check your equipment and abilities, and create a quicksave should you need to stop. These, of course, are gone when you load them. Between game board locations are towns, which are menus integrated into neat pictures. Here you can forge weapons, save properly, choose your next quest, and perform other tasks.
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Naturally, no RPG is complete without killing things. This is done in an uncommon fashion in Unlimited SaGa. Your party gets five attacks each round. Whether you have one person do all the work or send out a full team, you get five attacks. Each character can punch and kick, but outside that all their combat maneuvers are contained by their equipment. Using them consumes some of the equipments durability (hence the Blacksmith). Once you pick your attacks, the round starts. During your attacks, a reel will show up, where you have to use split second timing to determine the potency of the attack. Now, you can have the attack go, or you can ‘hold’ it, and try to make a combo with the next action. The trick is that it is difficult to guarantee that the next act that round does not belong to an opponent. There are certain tendencies, such as spells delaying your next act, and fast characters being more difficult to interrupt, but it will always be risky.
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It is often necessary, however. In Unlimited SaGa, HP is a mere buffer for your actual health, called LP. There are ways to get around this, but in general to hurt an enemies LP you have to either deplete all its HP (thus increasing the odds of LP damage considerably), or deal a great deal of HP damage at once. Which means combos. Your characters as well have both LP and HP, and although there are ways to reduce the odds of LP damage, you still have to keep your HP up. On the game board, though, this is as easy as pressing in the analog buttons and using a turn to rest. Although some boards have turn limits, and occasionally enemies may try to attack you, resting is often a necessary thing for success.
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Unlimited SaGa is loaded with side quests. Combined with the game's seven protagonists, doing everything can take a long time. Especially coupled with the game's overall difficulty, which should have many players seeing plenty of restarts. In between one of them, though, you can always take a moment to watch the Final Fantasy X-2 trailer, which if nothing else is nice just because it’s something you don’t have to think about.
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As I said several paragraphs ago, Unlimited SaGa wasn’t for me. It took me hours to figure out such basic things as how to open a treasure chest, and about half an hour to figure out how to move on the game board. The game is overall unintuitive, which was a huge turn off. However, the underlying quality is there, so in the end the game is best judged by individuals, and someone else's opinion can only help you so much in deciding if you’ll like it. Definitely a game to rent first, but make sure you spend a few hours making sure whatever that rental makes you think.
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