MS Saga: A New Dawn
- February 22, 2006 00:00 AM PST
A competent, if forgettable, basic RPG. Robot fanatics and young children only.
Over time, RPGs on the PlayStation 2 have gotten flashier, and in many cases more complicated, with labyrinthine upgrade systems and oodles of interweaving lore threads. MS Saga, for better or worse, bucks this trend by retreating to a simpler time.Rise of the Machines
Thousands of years of human civilization were toppled during the Great Fall. Sixty years later, Mobile Suits have reappeared and destroyed an orphanage, setting Tristan and Fritz, the sole survivors, out to bring the culprits to justice. Along the strictly linear way they meet a variety of nicely imaged characters with cookie-cutter souls, acquire new abilities and equipment, and learn, ironically enough, that building a successful future means not repeating the past.
It's all a bit too familiar. Everything about MS Saga is adequate and mildly enjoyable, from the under-developed puzzle piece arranging of the equipment system to clanking through obligatory caves and military complexes. A boost system lets you save up energy points for bigger attacks, and each character learns new offensive and support techniques, but because the variations in tanks and robots you face are minimal, and every move they make is telegraphed in advance, the whole combat experience quickly grows tiresome.
Baby Steps
If you've got a youngster looking to cut his or her teeth on the role-playing genre, MS Saga will fit the bloodless bill, but the fact that no part ever rises above RPG 101 makes it an also-ran for the rest of us. While at no point will you stumble across a grievous design error, you'll also never encounter any inspired environments or enemies. The places you'll plod through are, with a few exceptions, drab and rough, even during the most climactic moments of the story. The world and its characters just never truly come to life.
MS Saga is like a cake without icing: it qualifies as a simple dessert, but it's just not tasty enough to be memorable.
