Diving into SaGa Emerald Beyond: First Impressions and Localization Concerns

Growing up as a SaGa fan wasn’t easy. While Square Enix gave all the love to Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, SaGa was mainly left to budgeted releases from a team determined to deliver true non-linear JRPG adventures. However, I feel like its reputation precedes it, with most gamers simply echoing the statements of others who swear by the series and others who don’t understand. Through the recent re-release of the SaGa series, gamers have access to these timeless adventures, but a SaGa fan can never truly know if we’ll be getting a new entry. Thankfully, SaGa Emerald Beyond is here, and with a free demo available slightly before the official release, we got the chance to understand the nuances of this game, along with a brief introduction to the characters and systems. Sadly, for the first time, I can’t remember how long it has been since the localization and English dub completely turned me off.

Choosing Your Path: Character Selection and the Adventure’s Onset

SaGa Emerald Beyond allows players to choose one of six protagonists to start their journey. In the demo, the player character is determined by which platform you play on. Given that it was the easiest to record footage of, I chose the Steam version and played through the opening of Diva No.5. After selecting the character, there was no pre-amble, no introduction to the world, and no context as to what I was doing or where I was. If that wasn’t confusing enough, the opening scene had two characters with unique accents for their English audio.

SaGa Emerald Beyond promises a rich tapestry of adventures, yet its localization challenges remind us that the devil is in the details.

I’m not sure why the leads seem to all have exotic accents. At the same time, everyone else speaks in basic American. Still, I was also questioning just what the hell was going on with this finely dressed character named Constantine and Diva No.5 on a car ride to a radio station. This is when things get out of hand. Diva No.5 malfunctioned, had her memory wiped, and decided to transfer herself into a scrap bot. Then, Constantine shows up again to take her and a group of randoms to an extraterrestrial space containing doors to other worlds.

A Disjointed Journey Begins: Dialogue and Localization Challenges

I honestly wasn’t prepared for this. I’ve played every entry of the Saga series multiple times, so I was confident that I could approach this adventure easily and not stumble on the systems that typically confuse new fans. However, I was quickly humbled by the lack of context provided to the actual story. If you want answers, you will have to work for them, and this demo experience will likely not showcase all of the game’s offerings.

Still, one other narrative element didn’t sit right with him. The localization is quite cringy. I don’t usually do this, but I decided to play with the Japanese audio and Japanese text using translation software to directly translate a few conversations because I felt like the dialogue between characters in the English version was disjointed. Playing with Japanese text revealed a lot of personality put into these characters in the English version that doesn’t seem to be present in the Japanese release. Accent stereotypes like “y’all” and “naur” are found in the English text, but I couldn’t find them in the Japanese text or showcased in the character’s audio. The audio is a whole other beast, and even though I exclusively play games and watch anime with English audio nowadays (primarily out of laziness because I don’t want to read more than I have to), I switched to the Japanese audio.

Despite the jarring English dub and localization missteps, SaGa Emerald Beyond’s core of intriguing gameplay and narrative potential shines through.

I swear, I’m not a picky gamer, and I rarely even care about localization taking liberties here and there considering the localized region. Still, it just feels like there is no cohesion in this particular game. Nothing flows during dialogue, leaving it almost impossible for the player to relate to or care about the adventure. I’m hoping the other character arcs don’t have this same flimsy opening. Sometimes, it’s like the characters are having two conversations simultaneously, or there’s missing context to understand the situation. For a super surface level and basic example, an NPC says, “Hi, I need help.” English Diva No.5 responds by saying, “Yes, Love?”

Meanwhile, the Japanese text says, “Yes, Yes. What can I help you with?” (). “Yes, Love?” doesn’t make sense to me in this situation because Diva No.5 is just meeting this person for the first time who refers to her as an alien because she just appeared in this world. I don’t know in what context someone would refer to someone else as “Love” when they are just meeting and being referred to as an Alien. Sorry, I’m getting too deep. Maybe it’ll make more sense when the characters have more time to develop.

The Magic of SaGa: Uncovering the Unique Aspects of Emerald Beyond

The demo allowed for some training battles and level navigation, but I think I will wait until the full release to continue to work on it. A lot is riding on SaGa Emerald Beyond. This team knows how to craft quality and timeless adventures within a budget. They don’t have the freedom of the other studios at Square Enix to make adventures with the most modern graphics, but they still make it work.

I’m looking forward to uncovering what makes SaGa Emerald Beyond unique because these games always contain something magical for all who play. I’ll likely be playing with Japanese audio for the remainder, though.

SaGa Emerald Beyond will be available on April 25, 2024, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, and iOS and Android mobile devices.