Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remastered

Romancing SaGa is not for everyone, but if it hooks you, it may hook you *hard*.

Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- is a JRPG that breaks the normal conventions in an enjoyably fun experience that runs near perfectly on the Steam Deck!

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remastered is a well-done and polished remaster that allows the player a lot of freedom. Fans of the series will be delighted at the extra characters and storylines. It still suffers from 2005 visuals and 2005 voice acting but it is nostalgic in a way.

Recently, I’ve been trying to work through some issues I have with the way I approach playing & beating video games. For the longest time, I’ve felt like I need to make sure I see every possible piece of content in a playthrough of a game – and that drive to avoid missing anything often leads to me turning games into a checklist of tasks and a monotonous guide-assisted slog. Sometimes, missing out on an item or a boss in a game can be punishing – but punishment and frustration aren’t bad things to experience when gaming. Like any piece of art, entertainment might not always be the goal. Like r...

Finally, players can experience the first 7 SaGa games, chronologically, on modern consoles! The first current gen SaGa port was Romancing Saga 2 in 2017. It’s taken 5 long years to finally get our hands on Romancing SaGa 1, in the form of Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered. The inception of the SaGa series came in the form of Final Fantasy II, for the Famicom. It was different from the original Final Fantasy in a lot of ways, and those ideas would leave the mainline Final Fantasy series and become the SaGa GameBoy series. There were three games, released as Final Fantasy Legend I-III i...

Three decades after Romancing SaGa made its debut in Japan, players around the world have literally dozens of great choices when they decide which JRPG to tackle next, even if they’ve been exploring the genre for years. Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered doesn’t have the high profile that might allow it to jump to the top of most JRPG lists, but its quietly engaging experience is a bountiful reward for those who give it a proper chance.

Romancing SaGa is the remake of the fourth entry in the SaGa franchise. The game introduced the free-form scenario mode, which sacrificed linearity in favor of freedom galore alongside a brutal combat difficulty.

Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered International adds new language options to an interesting if somewhat flawed JRPG.

As a long-time dabbler in the SaGa series, I'm very happy that Romancing SaGa has been remade yet again so let's check it out.

Fans hoping to return to a game they are already familiar with will likely be very satisfied with Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered. It does an admirable job of remastering the game’s visuals and adds a considerable amount of new content for fans to engage with. However, it doesn’t do quite enough to make the game accessible or interesting enough for most newcomers.