SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered is going to take a little longer.
As reported by Siliconera, SaGa’s lead creator, Akitoshi Kawazu, talked about the title in a livestream for the current mobile SaGa game, Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe. Kawazu was addressing this issue on the stream because the game happened to release on April 1, 1999. That makes yesterday the 25 year anniversary of the game.
Kawazu simply said that the fans need to wait a little bit longer. He did not provide any timeframe for a release date or release window, but he did promise that the extra wait will not to quote Siliconera, betray their expectations.
SaGa Frontier 2, released on the PlayStation, isn’t the most critically acclaimed title in the franchise, but it is one that has a loyal fandom. Fans will most remember the title’s incredible aesthetic; Square abandoned the CG graphics that was in vogue at a time, for a handpainted watercolor aesthetic.
Now, to put things in context, Square was certainly not the only company experimenting with different 2D aesthetics in the period when 3D graphics were in vogue, and in its infancy. The PlayStation also hosted Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the Sega Saturn had Vanillaware’s Princess Crown, and the Nintendo 64 had Yoshi 64 and Paper Mario.
With all that taken into account, perhaps SaGa Frontier 2 wasn’t remembered as well, but it still had an impact on Square Enix’s loyal fans. It received three reissues on the PlayStation, selling a total 675,000 units in Japan by December 2004.
The game also has its place in the evolution of Kawazu’s SaGa franchise. It was closer to a traditional RPG compared to other games in the series, but still had unique ideas, such as Life Points. Life Points, or LP, can be used to bring your health in battles to 100 %, but if you run out of Life Points the game is over. You can also use Life Points for some attacks, and some attacks against you can target your Life Points.
Of course, the reason we are even talking about this at all is that Square Enix released a SaGa Frontier remaster in 2021. That came to mobile, the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Windows, but not Xbox. So it’s possible, given Square Enix’s new relationship with Xbox, that both SaGa Frontier remasters will come to their platform as well.
Square Enix certainly wants gamers to keep appreciating their classics, even as they move their key franchises to new directions. Interestingly enough, there’s enough interest out there for these games that run as much as 40 years old to sell briskly, so much that they’re still doing it. Perhaps in the near future Square could look at their non-RPG titles to rerelease as well.
