Minor spoilers below for the Yomi storyline paths to give an example to readers unfamiliar with SaGa Emerald Beyond.

The biggest Con is that the stupid move Life Sprinkler crashes the game, so I can never use it making everything harder when I get it as a “tech” skill. After that, some of the endings feel kind of… hollow. The game just sort of ends inexplicably without any meaningful closure which makes me think some routes were rushed. I had thought of trying the more “hidden” endings for the Witch character, Ameya, but it would have probably taken me 200 hours and I was satisfied with the 89 hours that I put into the game already. Fortunately, a Youtuber showed the dark ending and a Gamefaqs FAQ had dialogue quotes of the other endings, it seemed like variations of the same “to be continued . . .” (to encourage a playthrough with another character) or “Thanks for playing!” ending. The variations in specific self-contained routes are indeed enormous in terms of depth and branching paths, but most of the cast of characters remain static without much growth and when there is interesting growth, the endings abruptly end. This game is definitely more about the journey and each self-contained world having branching paths than any emphasis on the characters. I like it, but the amount of characters ironically made the overarching narrative feel more limited. The self-contained worlds are like short-stories with multiple variations, whereas the overarching narrative feels more like . . . “Well, here’s the main villain now that you’re done exploring, go beat them!” and then you get either a “to be continued” or “thanks for playing” ending.

The gameplay is a horizontal grid where tech skills and spells are moved from left to right with the leftmost side moving first and the rightmost side moving last. The skills are limited by a point system with rectangles positioned on the grid; you can combine the cast of characters tech skills and spells together for combination attacks or leave it open for a character to absorb more of the rectangle power on a grid for a chance to do singular combo moves. The Tech skills are broken down by either a regular Tech skill, Pursuit (to have a character combine with a regular Tech skill for an instant combo), counterattack (to block an enemy’s singular attack and then counterattack it), and interrupt (to strike a specific singular or group attack from an enemy prior to them being able to make their tech attack). It took a lot getting used to for me, but the first Bonnie and Formina playthrough where I accidentally locked myself into the hardest possible final boss fight for a first playthrough helped me to appreciate how crucial interrupt skills were. I proceeded to play around more with pursuit and counterattacks slowly after that experience on what was my third playthrough. If this explanation isn’t sufficient, here’s a video of some of my 2^nd Bonnie and Formina playthrough:

I like it in parts, but the overall feeling I got from this game was a total lack of direction outside of the self-contained stories. I put 89 hours into it in total and I can’t explain to you why the evil organization is doing what they do, apart from them being a generic evil force. There’s no real breadcrumbs or explanation beyond the fact that they’re just evil for the sake of it. The lore explanations they give are interesting, but it strangely has a contrary result with their motivation. Their lore-filled explanation for how the Conjoined Worlds came to be is interesting, but they don’t truly explain their motivations on why they’re pursuing their goal; it’s more just that they exist and this lore about the 17 Conjoined Worlds exists but there’s not really a why for what they’re doing. At least, there’s no meaningful explanation given within the 89 hours that I played outside of they do it “just because” and fulfill the game’s need for an antagonistic force. If anything was revealed after that, I’m sorry to say that 89 hours is more than sufficient enough of an undertaking. The main villains just aren’t memorable or interesting in the slightest to me. The self-contained stories and varied results within each self-contained world are great and it’s the highlight of the game. However, the overarching plot is barely existent to the point you get a “to be continued” to encourage playing other characters or “Thanks for playing!” and that’s it. It doesn’t really feel like a satisfying main plot, whereas the deep and intricate side-stories are where the actual fun and interesting character dynamics truly shine depending upon player choice.

I really liked most of the main characters. Siugnas and his powers are by far my favorite part of this game. Siugnas is a Vampire Lord who was mysteriously cursed and killed by someone, and so looks through the Conjoined Worlds to learn of what exactly happened and what forced him to reincarnate. He’s able to turn recruited characters into vampire thralls that enhance their strength and increase his Life Points (a point-based system wherein it limits how often you can retry with a character in reattempts when losing fights). His Vampire skills are extremely fun and seeing former main characters like Mido get turned into bloodthirsty Vampire knights that growl insanely had made me laugh because of how uncharacteristic it felt after playing Mido’s route first before the other characters. Mido is a spirit finder who journeys through the Conjoined Worlds on an assignment from his home world; apparently, multiple playthroughs make for huge divergences in his story but the first playthrough just wasn’t interesting enough for me. Bonnie and Formina, who are gunslinger cops, feel like glorified sidekicks and I honestly think it would have been better, if their route was just a Part 2 of Diva’s route. For the first playthrough with them where I played blind, I basically boxed myself into the most difficult first playthrough imaginable on accident. If I had played and completed Diva’s route before theirs, then I’d have received Diva in her most powerful form as a party member and obliterated nearly everything without much of a challenge. Diva’s own route feels poorly made; she’s a Songstress android whose humanoid body gets blown up in a terrorist attack, her memory is partially wiped, and her song manager takes her outside their world into the Junction (the pathways of the Conjoined Worlds) ostensibly to look for her “heart” and her character is basically just a gimped main character who can’t do much of anything except get killed easily, so I had to rely on side characters. Her final frame, of her returning to her humanoid form where she’s basically a singing Samurai fembot, gives her the most broken and insane skills that allow the player to basically obliterate everything if you use her right with a few other characters. I wanted to try out her final form more, so I replayed Bonnie and Formina to have Diva added and her abilities are genuinely insanely good, but this also means her entire character lacks balancing within the gameplay. 4 out of 5 of her Frames are just terrible and the final one is overpowered in terms of gameplay mechanics. It’s nice to feel rewarded since playing through her route in what feels like a handicap is very lengthy, but this definitely made Bonnie and Formina just feel like a pointless slideshow by comparison because I wanted to replay their game to really have fun using Diva’s final form and not for anything to do with their individual characteristics or buddy-cop social dynamics. The Witch Girl, Ameya, is interesting with how much personality, background lore, and depth she’s given compared to everyone else; but her story and Mido’s story arcs go by very fast. They both have a variety of multiple endings to compensate, but it leaves a feeling of disjointed patterns when the two shortest routes have multiple endings and the other characters who have much longer routes have essentially just two endings each.

I think for future games, they should limit the story to just three main characters and have more meaningful and varied depths with the conclusions of their respective main story arcs similar to what already was presented for the self-contained side stories in each individual world, because it would have more of an impact and lasting impression than “to be continued” or “Thanks for playing!” as the conclusion for each character’s arc. The game suffers from contradictory extremes because there’s too many main characters that limit the main plot to be anything other than a vague and ill-defined motivation to have fun in each self-contained world’s side story where the real meaningful differences in stories can be shown with multiple variations and mutually exclusive conclusions. For example, when I started as Mido and went to the Dismal King’s world of Yomi, the Dismal King had turned into a Dragon who needed to be defeated to self-reincarnate – analogous to a phoenix – into a baby. In Bonnie and Formina’s first playthrough, the twist was that the four enforcers of the Dismal King had assassinated him and I had to fight them instead. In Diva’s route, the four enforcers helped to defeat the sealed away draconic form of the cursed Dismal King who died for good after being defeated by me. I really enjoyed this format and I think this SaGa game made it addicting and exciting with the depth of the storytelling, but it clearly came at the expense of the main plot and that was more due to the number of main characters than anything else. For example, why couldn’t the Dismal King and Mido been turned into One singular main character? Mido’s background is so vague that I find it entirely plausible. Diva and the two gunslinger cops could have been a single route combined together with Diva’s final form achieving a longer route with Bonnie and Formina joining. Ameya could have been given far more depth in her story including her endings and more playable worlds. I think they should stick with three major characters which could result in a main plot with more variations alongside the stellar work that they’ve done with the side stories shown in this game.

Overall, I would rate SaGa: Emerald Beyond a 7.7 / 10. I believe it is definitely worth playing and to wait for a discount for purchase.