Live-A-Live absolutely blew my mind when I played it. From the moment I finished (or at least got decently far into) Secret of Evermore, I had this burning desire for a game that goes through more than just those four historical eras; little did I know that such a thing existed in Japan. On top of that, you don't have MP, so you can blast enemies with powerful techniques without worrying about resource management, like you're at an office job; it's balanced out by range, blast radius, and charge time, so it's not completely broken. Each chapter has a little something unique, and while some are definitely more interesting than others, the way it all comes together at the end is... something else. Put that together with some wonderful late-game visuals and a soundtrack by the legendary Yoko Shimomura, and you've got yourself something special. I haven't played the remake, but I've played both versions of the translation patch, though I'm not sure I've played it since 2.0 came out.

I didn't explain that well; what I'd meant is that coming back to SaGa Frontier after all this time has been a great experience. Specifically, Asellus's scenario is the one that hits really close to home, though Emelia's always gets me emotional at the end, too. Asellus is my spirit animal, though; her life is eerily similar to my own in a lot of ways, and the only other time that's happened was Terra from Final Fantasy 6, though I will also say that Nina from Breath of Fire 2 and Cecil Harvey from Final Fantasy 4 have a few familiar elements just the same.

Honestly, I didn't even like it that much in Octopath Traveler - there are scenes where the camera shifts and you can see the cracks where the 3D bits don't quite fit together - but I respected it because the dungeons were designed around it, and it gave you a unique way to tell where those secret passages were. I totally agree: early 3D was KRONCHY, so the best-looking games of the era were usually the 2D ones, or at least the pseudo-2D ones, like Paper Mario, but part of the reason I don't like this new style is that the 2D stuff looks goofy when they try to make it look 3D; just keep 2D 2D. Remake/remaster/reimagining/reeverythingelse is a whole other conversation, I agree; it's not clear at all what each one means individually, but everyone has a VERY strong opinion about them, even though none agree. It's like when Harry Potter fans try to place me into one of the houses: they all know EXACTLY where I belong, and they all have completely different answers. It's why I don't use the terms, and why I don't put myself into boxes.

I'd say that's probably wise, based on what I've heard. I'd still like to try messing around with Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 someday, but that's way in the future. I was hoping the SNES versions would be translated, but now that they have official Western releases, I don't think that's likely; I wasn't a fan of how SaGa Frontier Remastered handled a lot of its content, so I'd gravitate toward the originals. Same, and I think that boils down to three things: whether the world is interesting, whether there's enough to do to justify having an open world, and (perhaps most importantly) whether the game is designed around it. SaGa Frontier has really interesting stories and characters, but each story bit is broken into bite-sized chunks that conclude on their own; grinding isn't as much of a chore, because you're not so desperate to continue the story. It also has plenty of sidequests that you can do any time you're not in the middle of a part of the main quest, so you have things to do while you're grinding. What enemies you face scale up the more fights you win, so it's all balanced pretty well; tough as hell, but balanced. I keep hearing about Ara Fell; I'm going to have to try that out someday. I've never been part of an MMO; the only online RPG I played had clans, but was largely single-player, since it was basically text-based, but with images, much like Radical Dreamers, except an RPG, and MUCH smaller in scale.

Money saving, doing well on catching up on games I have now, but still kind of on the fence about it.

I'm going to have to replay Live-A-Live sometime soon to confirm it, but going back to it after all this time (even after probably dozens of playthroughs over the years) was like coming home again. Kind of ironic that this would be the game that reflects the, "You don't belong anywhere; create your own home" life that I've lived, but such as it goes. It's making me want to try Final Fantasy Legend again, but I usually only get a few minutes into the game (if I even get past the research stage) before the idea of having characters that ONLY grow from drinking potions makes me walk briskly in the other direction. I tried my hand at the first Romancing SaGa, too, but it's a bit much, and doesn't have the sparking system I love; that doesn't show up until Romancing SaGa 2. I did also try Romancing SaGa 3, but it wasn't fully translated yet, and I've heard from fellow Frontier fans that it's a nice appetizer, but nothing compares to Frontier. Not even sure how I'd recommend tackling Frontier; my first playthrough started with Lute's scenario and not a CLUE how anything worked, so I'd occasionally stumble into new attacks I hadn't seen before, and never really figured out guns or magic at all. That was kind of a neat experience, and over the years, I learned more and more, each time getting more and more efficient at making an excellent team. This time I actually broke the damn game they were so good - I triggered an overflow glitch that skipped one of the forms of the final boss - and I did it in record time. It takes quite a few playthroughs (and a lot of research) to really appreciate the full experience, so it's not something I can recommend to just everyone, but for those who can tolerate what it throws at them, there's an incredible game to discover.

Well, Octopath Traveler isn't quite that, but it also isn't not that; the same could be said of the SaGa series at large. It's really more of a JRPG that isn't absolutely on rails like most fans are used to, and honestly, it's a great way to introduce yourself to an open-world RPG, because the combat, balancing, story, and just about everything else are that of a JRPG, and instead of just throwing you into a world and telling you to have at it, you have level recommendations on each of the main quests. You finish the first story quest for your main character at Level 5 or so, and then see something like Level 23 recommended for the next chapter, and if you have any kind of pattern recognition, you'll say, "Hmm... Looks like the game is encouraging me to explore this world, instead of just making a beeline to the end." It's built with the usual fans in mind. It's basically SaGa Frontier with Live-A-Live overworld skills and a Final Fantasy 5 job system, but none of these elements are as in-depth as they are in their original games.

Oh, I've been sick of the trend since they started using it in any other game; I wasn't wild about it in Octopath Traveler, either, but they used it in an interesting way that shows you that there might be a hidden passage to that treasure you see over there, instead of trying to walk through EVERY wall, like we did back in the olden days. Point is that the game was built around it; remaking old games in this style just doesn't make any sense to me. It looks kind of like a weird pop-up book, and it isn't doing anything that Doom wasn't already doing back in the '90s. That and the name bothers me; HD-2D is Mega Man 11: it's a 2D game that has a resolution of 720 or higher. I guess 3D-2D would be a better name for it? Of course, I know better than to argue linguistics with the Internet; I'm still dying on the, "Don't call it Metroidvania" hill, and that's gotten me exactly nowhere.