SaGa Emerald Beyond on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
FORGE YOUR OWN TALE The latest standalone entry in the SaGa franchise, SaGa Emerald Beyond, brings together the very best elements of the beloved series to offer each player their own unique gameplay experience.
SaGa Emerald Beyond is a turn-based, party-based rpg and jrpg game
developed and published by Square Enix.
Released on April 25th 2024 is available only on Windows
in 2 languages: English and Japanese.
It has received 305 reviews of which 231 were positive and 74 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.1 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 29.99€ on Steam and has a 40% discount.
The Steam community has classified SaGa Emerald Beyond into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at SaGa Emerald Beyond through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows® 10 / Windows® 11 64-bit
- Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 3 1200 / Intel® Core™ i3-3210
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX 460 / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 10 GB available space
- Additional Notes: 30FPS @ 1280x720
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is the latest game in the long-running SaGa series, starting on the original GameBoy. For SaGa fans, it continues the tradition of difficult turn-based combat with a variety of party members across multiple worlds/universes running the gamut of robots, monsters, humans, and vampires and draws combat elements from previous games like a Great Hits compilation to create an RPG with immense customization and depth. Compared to other modern RPGs, it noticeably has a small budget; some critical story moments are voiced, along with combat call outs and quips, but the majority of the dialogue is text-only. For SaGa fans, the design philosophy feels closest to Saga Frontier 1: you select between starting characters with individual story lines who travel across multiple worlds and who share some but not all of the same recruitable characters. The story pacing follows the old design of stringing short dialogue scenes between combat, with cutscenes an affair of still slideshow images. If the hours of cutscenes of modern RPGs a turn-off for you, this is up your alley. In contrast to the visuals, the audio is quite outstanding; headphones are recommended. Diva's final battle music is my highlight, blending the rapid-fire techno soul of Saga Frontier's T260G Carnage Heart track with a more traditional vocal folk-song to make a fitting thematic and climactic end for her storyline. Party preparation and turn-based combat are the core meat of the game. Story While each character has their own main story, the worlds you choose to visit each have their own storyline which will play out differently depending on your character and story decisions and will impact item rewards and which, if any, characters choose to leave their world to join your quest. The main story length can vary quite widely based on your choices to pursue side areas. Most playthroughs were in the 15 hour range when pursuing all side options. I found the witch-in-training, Ameya, to be the shortest; My first playthrough was about two hours, in which I discovered that the game actually lets you choose the dialogue option to leave a kid alone in his frozen world because he doesn't have the cat you're looking for and skip an entire world of content and I quickly earned a bad ending as a power-crazed catmonger. If you are used to Dragon Quest ignoring your choice if you pick the No option, you are warned! For the longest playthrough, Siugnas the vampire clocked in over 30 hours. As the sole vampire in the game, he can make any human party member into a Thrall or Blood Knight to gain power. Amusingly he can do this with minor NPCs before exiting many of the worlds, leading to brief scenes of loyalty oaths only to never to be seen again. You'll forever keep the Life Point gains though, mwahaha. Combat For those of you familiar with Shin Megami Tensei the high difficulty level will be familiar, but one critical difference is that the player sees the timeline of actions and the name of the abilities the enemies will be performing. This information is vital, and will test your decision making each turn like each differently shaped block in Tetris. Maybe two enemies are side-by-side, creating an attack combo. Maybe you have a plant-girl with stun to stop the enemy combo before it begins, but is she fast enough in the timeline to act before the enemy? If not, you may want a katana carrying edgelord to use an Interrupt to break the chain. Pro-active defense is critical because there are NO healing options in the game. You will learn quickly after you unwittingly leave an enemy alone on the timeline to activate Showstopper and witness your first TPK. And if you can't prevent the combo, you may be better off using active Protect skills like Deflect, or debuff the enemy's attack power. (Psst, debuffs last the entire battle. Use them early and often!) Despite your best efforts, you will see members KO'd in combat. Thankfully, fighting with 2/5 of a team isn't hopeless. Lone members can activate Showstopper mode more easily when the field is empty, hitting above their weight class to stand toe-to-toe with bosses. In addition, your actions per turn are based on spending BP, a shared resource that refills at the start of each turn. With less people to spend BP, your surviving members can use more powerful attacks. These systems work together as a counter-balance over the course of the fight, so even when things are dire you can turn it around. You will win boss fights by the skin of your teeth when your last mole monster stands up on his shaky little legs at 10% health and pulls 5 killer moves out of his ass in Showstopper mode, so don't give up! Once you master the system, you will turn the chaos of battle into an orderly march to victory. The first time you land a 5x combo double-overdrive by internalizing knowledge earned over dozens of battles to turn defeated enemies mid-combo into stepping stones to extend your attack chain further (with the right circumstances and a little luck), you'll bask in the glow as your team turns into a perfectly oiled warmachine. Combat Preparation Firstly, formations. There are a variety of formations to tweak your playstyle. Read the descriptions, because many also weight the timeline in different directions; Last Stand will put most of your party at the end of the turn, so unless you have high initiative techs or Interrupts to break enemy combos, you'll be a sitting duck when the enemy team strikes first. Secondly, party and equipment. Robots Tech moves are tied to specific equipment, humans learn Custom Techs, monsters learn Techs from defeating monsters. Ephemerals grow more powerful the longer they live, and learn special Techs when they die and spawn a new Generation. If you transform a human into a vampire knight they will lose the ability to learn and even use previously learned Custom Techs, so keep that in mind. Compared to previous games in the series, balance for all racial types are quite good, particularly for monsters who have suffered in previous games. Everyone but robots gain stats from battle, robot stats are tied to upgrading equipment. Monsters have the largest move pool by gaining physical and magical Techs from defeated enemies, but you will have to recapture previous skills via combat later if you decide to change abilities. Humanoids equip armor to min-max defenses for particular situations. Robots are immune to almost all status effects. Choices feel impactful yet balanced. Conclusion I have enjoyed auto-battle in RPGs like Dragon Quest 11, but this game really revealed to me that games use auto-battle as a crutch because the majority of battles were solved by using the same move on your fighter, mage, and cleric. At that point many turn-based games become little more than repetition and drudgery for which auto-battle is a band-aid. Kudos to the design team here for tearing the band-aid off and wrestling with the difficulties of creating an engaging turn battle head-on. In its own way, the combat became story for me. I'll never forget the time the incarnation of Hate annihilated Tsuninori with the Absetzen technique, only for the puppet Musashi to instantly Mimic the move and end the Boss on the same turn. Thank you lizardman Nitram for giving your life to Deflect a freaking firestorm to buy Guinevere one more turn to complete her spell and win the battle. I enjoyed my time in the game immensely and look forward to experimenting with more teams in future playthroughs, and maybe you will too!
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I know not every SaGa game appeals to even fans of the series, but I enjoyed this newest entry very much. The combat system is pretty much the same as in Scarlet Grace, which is fine with me. It's a very dynamic system and one that requires planning. One difference is the lack of healing magic of any kind, so every HP is precious. The other new addition is Show Stoppers, a one-person combo where the character will choose from any of their equipped skills (if they can be used on the enemy). These combos become longer as the battle goes on (relates to the number of team BP available) and can be a clutch moment. Of course, your foes can trigger these as well, so it's something to watch out for. The branching stories are back. As with Scarlet Grace and SaGa Frontier, the various regions (called Worlds in this edition with the whole universe called the Conjoined Worlds) are visited by all the protagonists, but with their own twists and the home world of the protagonist has it's own story line unique to that character. In addition, as you complete scenarios, the game tracks the number of times you've played a story to it's conclusion as well as the overall number of completions. Both numbers impact details within the Worlds. Some worlds have multiple scenarios that will occur based on triggers like how many times you've visited this world across all playthroughs. This makes replaying the game valuable not only because you enjoy certain scenarios, but to progress the world stories and see something different. Even if the scenarios repeat because you've revisited that world often, it's still a change of pace, which is welcome. Likewise, you'll see various minor characters as well as the other protagonists on your journeys through the Conjoined Worlds. Each protagonist has a selection of these other characters (including protagonists) available for recruitment. Weapon upgrading returns, and works similar to Scarlet Grace with one caveat...you can't buy gear, at least not directly. Also new is an item trading system. This is just offline but you can offer up items and get a random offers in exchange. Some of these trades are outright ripoffs (but still could be useful if you need that item to upgrade your gear) but some can net you equipment and materials that are rare or otherwise good quality. Through the trading system, you can "buy" a starting batch of gear and upgrade from there. There is an item that's so common that it may as well as act as currency. This will especially help your first few playthroughs and/or if you choose not to carry over your gear to a new playthrough as this readily available item will act as a currency to help you equip your team. Of course, gear as well as materials often drop from battles, making those battle spawn points important. More on those later. A new game+ feature is added this time, extending on the usual "system data" record system that's a staple of many SaGa games. You have the choice to carry some, all, or none of your prior data accumulated across your playthroughs over to the new game you're starting. Trials are a new feature, giving you a way to complete challenges to earn some gear or materials. Many of these trials are repeatable but some can be completed just once per playthrough. Character development is more like Minstrel Song and SaGa Frontier in that a character's main attributes increase as they develop, unlike Scarlet Grace and Romancing 2 and 3 where they are fixed. Like Romancing 2 and 3, the characters can also grow their skill levels. This brings back the "anyone can be good at anything with enough time" aspect to team building. Skill sparking is a returning favorite with custom techs being additions in this title. These are variants of the "regular" skills that might have lower cost or be an interrupt, etc. They are sparked the same way as "regular" skills are and are used the same way once learned. Speaking of races, they make a return. There's humans, ephemerals, a vampire, mechs, and monsters. They each have their advantages and mechanics. Like most SaGa games, this entry is not without its quirks and outright issues. Some patches have been released to address some of the lack of information issues and various softlocks and crashes. On PC, the game seems to run smoothly overall and I haven't had any crashes thus far. I can't speak for the other platforms, however. I don't have a problem with the overall art style and presentation of the game, though some may feel like it's too much like a visual novel or not like the art direction in the story scenes. Exploring the worlds is more like Scarlet Grace than the older SaGa games as is engaging in battles (you go to a battle spawn point and fight to your heart's content instead of exploring traditional dungeons). These spawn points have an out-sized importance because there's no going back, literally, during the world stories and after completing a world's scenario. In addition, the battle spawns aren't always available during a world's scenario. Fortunately, a spawn point is available before entering the final portions of a scenario leading up to the final boss. One of my playthroughs was saved because of this. It was my first time encountering the final boss (the first story I choose didn't end with the final boss) and my team was NOT prepared. In addition, these spawn points are the only semi-reliable source of materials that you can use either to upgrade gear or exchange on the trading system. Overall, I am very much enjoying this entry as you can see by my play time. I will probably try to 100% the game and continue replaying it here and there as I do with most of the SaGa games as I adore this series. I've played every one that has made it to North America starting with SaGa 1 (Final Fantasy Legend). SaGa Emerald Beyond hasn't damaged my love of this series and I would recommend it to SaGa fans as well as RPG gamers looking for a different approach to the genre's conventions. I would give the game an 8/10. A solid entry for the series. A solid game overall. Has it's quirks, some coming with the SaGa package and some not, but an overall enjoyable experience.
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*EDIT AFTER 58 HOURS AND COMPLETION OF SUIGNAS' STORY* After playing for a whole run I do really like this game as I expected <3. Suignas is a good starting Hero but he is more of an Anti-Hero ;). The final boss for his route is easier than Diva No.5's final boss. After completing one route you inherit all non-story based items and gear, on fresh runs(no need to select NG+). I've just started an Ameya run, so I've only just seen the start of it but this is such a helpful feature <3. The final boss battle music is also very epic JRPG final boss battle music, and the final boss battle is in segments so once you beat one form you move onto the next phase with a time to be able to adjust formations, gear, level up weapons, etc. *ORIGINAL* I don't normally write early reviews but I wanted to write one so new players know what to expect when they try this game out ^^. This game is more like an old school tabletop RPG similar to a Dungeons and Dragons playthrough except only for one player. The zones are just like a map of a board game and the descriptions of areas are the same as if you were exploring in a tabletop RPG too. Because of this the story is catered to people who love reading to fully experience and immerse yourself in the world <3. I love SaGa and I love reading so I love this part of the game! The combat is amazing and a real gem of the game. It's more like a sequence of puzzles to solve to defeat the enemies as well as you can than just hit with biggest number attack :P. The music is amazing, Kenji Ito has done almost all the SaGa game compositions and this one is equally as fantastic as all the others <3. I love this game so much, the demo made me so impatient to get back into it. I hope this review can help new players understand a bit about the type of game this is so that they don't purchase and rage thinking it's a typical JRPG like, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Octopath etc. It would make me so sad to see Negative Reviews because of misunderstandings like that T_T. As a proud member of the SaGa fan community, I hope this game will get many new and eager players into the series. Emerald Beyond is just as amazing as all the other SaGa games with it's ingenuity and innovation! <3
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HOW HAVE YOU PLAYED THIS FOR 100 HOURS ALREADY DUDE shut up SO SHOULD I BUY THIS DAMN THING OR NOT? As a series veteran, I wholeheartedly recommend this, with some caveats of course, if you don't like the modern Unlimited/SSG format you probably won't like this game either, the lack of budget is still there, but believe me when I say that it's well worth your time and money. To newcomers: This might not be the best SaGa to start with as it's a return to the origins of the series in one way and an elaboration of the more modern, abstract entries in another, I'd suggest you to start with the more orthodox entries like the remasters for the Romancing games or the first SaGa Frontier, but If you don't mind learning new things and like the weirder games out there like, say, the Fear and Hunger games or Kowloon High School Chronicle, you'll be right at home with this one. WHAT IS SAGA EMERALD BEYOND This game is the latest entry in the long running SaGa series, and sort of a second entry in the current generation of games that started with Scarlet Grace. If you're not familiar with these games and want the usual quick rundown, this is the sister series to Final Fantasy that is hell bent in doing the opposite of what Final Fantasy does, that is focusing on experimental gameplay and actual role playing rather than blowing millions on cinematics and complain about not meeting sales expectations. If you come from previous games, or you're a series veteran, the best way to describe Emerald Beyond would be saying that it's a return to the classic Gameboy trilogy but in Scarlet Grace's general format, it's honestly much more than that though. WHAT MAKES THIS GAME STAND OUT AND WHY SHOULD I CARE Short version is that this game is an RPG with what might be described a pseudo-Roguelike approach, progression varies wildly through different runs due to a certain set of hidden parameters that shuffle things around, as per the series' tradition it's a game heavily focused on replay value and it's been made with short runs in mind so you can finish a run in 4 to 10 hours, play it over and over again and still find new stuff, I know I'm still doing that after 100 hours. Long version is...well, LONG , so read at your own peril: The main thing about this game is that you're jumping around 17 different worlds, kind of like SaGa 1/2 or Frontier, if you didn't play those games think of it as a funkier version of Spelljammer. As you jump through these worlds you'll experience them through the eyes of six different main characters, in the spirit of the Romancing style of games all of these characters are different too, they have different main quests, backgrounds, and even specific mechanics and choices they can make, if you're new to the series think of this as the recent Larian games, except it's actually well done and the choice isn't almost entirely cosmetic. Playing as Tsunanori is a completely different experience compared to Diva, conversely playing as Siugnas is completely different from Ameya or Bonnie & Formina, all of these characters progress through the game differently, start in different worlds, have access to different characters, mechanics and questlines, all of these characters will let you see ONLY SOME FACETS of a complex setting, this means that if you really wanna understand what's going on you'll need to play through all of these characters at least twice. But this is just the beginning of the rabbit hole, while this game has a lot of mutually exclusive choices to make like all respectable RPGs, the meat of the game lies in the NG+ cycles and how the game is structured. First off, regardless of who you're playing you won't be able to visit all worlds in a run, you can only visit some of them and when you can visit them also changes depending on who you're playing as, the game makes a clear cut division between mandatory worlds that are part of a character's main quest and optional, side quest worlds, these are respectively signalled by Green Doors and Blue Doors. Tsunanori for instance only gets to go through Green doors in his campaign, but all the 17 worlds can be Green Doors in his case, while Diva gets a lot of Blue Doors or Green Doors to choose from but her Green doors will always be the same, and so on, the game progression changes depending on which order you take these doors, some doors you've seen before but didn't go through might have disappeared after one world, on the other hand some new doors you haven't seen before might appear, and all of the main characters can only vaguely sense what's behind a door, in their own unique ways, which adds to the feeling of wonder in your first runs. After you're done with a character's story, which leads to wildly different endings and experiences, what happens after that is that the game "remembers" what you did in a previous run and changes the state of ALL THE WORLDS in your next run, even if it's with a different character, this leads to even wilder differences in progression. And this is not all, even your character's main quest will change depending on how many times you've gone through it, I went through Tsunanori's story twice and the two runs were COMPLETELY different, from the prologue to the ending, Siugnas' story retained some core elements in its main quest, as it's more open ended, but I was still able to have an almost completely different run with a different prologue and a new ending. ALRIGHT, BUT HOW ARE THE WORLDS THEMSELVES AND HOW IS THE CORE GAMEPLAY The game is presented through a pop-up book kind of style, like Scarlet Grace, you run around through overworlds and get into fights or VN style events with dialogues between different characters, there's no dungeons, cities or shops, the worlds themselves all have some neat, unique gimmicks to them which I won't spoiler here, go play the game. The battle system is a greatly expanded version of Scarlet Grace's, it's a timeline system but this time around you have more things to play with, from six different races to different weapon types, more equipment choices etc., it's simply pristine and honestly one of the very best I've seen in almost four decades. SO WHY ARE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME IF IT'S SO GOOD Game is simply too abstract and complex for most, it's kryptonite for the casual player, but there's some very legitimate issues nonetheless. The main menu UI for this game is pretty bad, the general click economy is atrocious with tons of needless steps to get where you want to be, which is puzzling since none of the previous games had this issue. There's a lot of forced pop ups which for some reason can't be turned off, despite again, none of the previous games having this issue. There's no speed up option for text or battle animation for some reason, which is again, puzzling since all of the previous games had this. To conclude, this game might best be described as the Anti-Baldur's Gate 3, a game made with a budget of three peanuts and a beer can that is laser focused on actual roleplaying (and not roll playing), a great combat system, multiple main characters that actually matter, short runs but with a lot of replayability and overall actual design depth. If you're the kind of guy who doesn't think RPGs should be dating sims with outrageously bad sex scenes and DOOM barrel combat with hours and hours of watching characters slowly walk next to each other, this is the game for you, and hey, no Denuvo either so you know the devs actually respect you.
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I'm just over 2 hours in and started with the dismal king (vampire). There do seem to be story driven choices that impact your play through and I'm a huge fan of that. The combat is exactly what you'd expect from a Saga game. It's got lp, random stat gains, and skills randomly learned. That's all good. Story - this seems to be extremely story driven, more so than Saga Frontier or Romancing Saga 3. This isn't actually a good thing in this case - it feels more like a mobile rpg where the story and reading still images makes up 90% of the game. I'd prefer a 16 bit pixel game with some sprite emotions vs still images. Voice acting - playing in english and the voice acting is good so far. Weapons - some pretty neat weapons. Digging the machine gun. There are also your regular standards like swords, spears, and pistols. I'm not far enough in to full judge the game, but I didn't try the demo before buying. I'm excited to see how my story progresses and try out the other characters too. Because of that, I'm going to recommend for now but may edit once I have more hours in. Beat the game edit: I beat the game with Siugnas in ~15 hours. The last boss was tough, but didn't require grinding. I started the game now with Ameya... collecting cats as the main story quest is silly but is kind of fun. Idk if I'm going to beat this with all 5 characters but definitely could see getting 50-60 hrs out of this if you do everything. Not as good as Saga Frontier or Romancing Saga 3, but it's enjoyable. I'm still not a huge fan of how the over-world map questing works but it's fun.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 11 March 2025 12:11 |
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| SteamSpy data | 14 March 2025 10:48 |
| Steam price | 16 March 2025 04:48 |
| Steam reviews | 15 March 2025 19:59 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about SaGa Emerald Beyond , we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about SaGa Emerald Beyond
- SteamCharts - Analysis of SaGa Emerald Beyond concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck SaGa Emerald Beyond compatibility
Online players
20
Developer
Square Enix
Publisher
Square Enix
Release
25 Apr 2024
Platforms
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