The Secret of Varonis

A love letter to the first two SaGa games and highly recommended to anyone who grew up with them. It gets high praise for having many different difficulty options such as choosing if you want weapons to degrade like they did in SaGa 1&2 or make them "recover" when you sleep at an inn, if you want enemies to be seen on the map or be random encounters, even has an option to have a fixed number of encounters so grinding isn't an option, which would make Akitoshi Kawazu himself proud. Only option I would have liked to see added is removing the control over how Espers advance. In this game you are given a choice between learning new skills and stat upgrades and if you don't want to lose a certain magic you can just opt out of it. Add a mode where the Espers develop truly randomly like in the first SaGa game (maybe giving them greater random access to really powerful spells early on as a tradeoff) and I'd have no complaints. If you enjoy SaGa, buy this already.

Fun throwback to FFL2 / SaGa 2 on the Gameboy. If you're already familiar with that game you know about 90% of what to expect here.

Surprisingly long, interesting mechanics, good story. Still not done. Thumbs up. The difficulty options are really nice -- "fixed" battles is the hardest option, where there are only a fixed number of encounters in the game, so you have to be very, very thoughtful about where you're spending your resources. In a Final Fantasy Legend type system where there's no XP, it makes it a totally (I think??) unique experience.

Never played SaGa games, so I didn't have any previous experience with this style of JRPGs. Progression and balance are excellent, it was very interesting to juggle different characters and figuring out the whole team composition. I do generally enjoy grinding in JRPGs to be overprepared and it was a blast here. note: the games gets a little on the easier side towards the end. Story is pretty minimalistic, but writing is surprisingly entertaining. I liked the characters, some worlds had interesting gimmicks, the main plot is engaging. I mostly play JRPGs for the plot and I don't have anything bad to say in this case. Neat. The only frustrating part for me was that one overly complicated dungeon in the middle of the game, where I spent a little too much time flipping switches and going back and forth not knowing what to do. Not sure if it was me only problem, but it's the only annoying part I found. Very good game, highly recommend.

This is a well done game. It plays like the old final fantasy legend games but has several quality of life features that can be toggled on or off. Can be played on older computers and the steam deck.

[b]Full Disclosure[/b]: I am already a SaGa addict and full adherent to the Kawazuismo game design ideology. This game is great and a terrific SaGa-like that folks like me will really enjoy. That said, do beware that a lot of the in-game stuff hews [b]uncomfortably close[/b] to its source material, to the point of literally copy/pasting item/class/skill names from the original SaGa 1+2 (AKA Final Fantasy Legend 1+2). Now, those items/classes/skills work differently than the OG, but noting here anyway. It emulates those original games incredibly well, for better and worse! I already love SaGa, but my normal disclaimer here for those that have not been initiated into SaGa applies! Varonis is reasonably accessible, even explaining the damage calculations of each weapon and how stats play into skill use. Success requires you to think deliberately about your builds and how they work together across your party - this kind of gameplay isn't for everyone, but for a game this cheap, it's still worth recommending if you're interested! That said, I would recommend Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven as a more accessible entry point into SaGa. But Secret of Varonis does a lot to de…