Saga is a new RTS/MMO/TCG game mishmash from the people over at Wahoo Studios and Silverlode Interactive, and let me tell you it's not an easy game to review. For every piece of the game that may appeal to one type of gamer there is another that appeals to a completely different genre of gaming fans. In fact, the game is so good and it appeals to so many people from so many different types of gaming walks of life that as soon as you start talking about
Saga you immediately ADD into some other game aspect. This pattern goes on and on until anything you try to say about it starts sounding like one gigantic run on sentence spewed from the mouth of a ranting fan boy, and unfortunately fan boy rants aren't material you want to publish on an accomplished gaming site such as ourselves (shameless self-promotion). So to be able to effectively review
Saga I actually have to scale myself back a bit, remove myself from my career as games journalist, and think of it much like a common fan would (sacrificing some journalistic integrity in the process). When I finally got into that mindset, this was what I came up with.
Saga is good. In fact I could end the review right there but then I wouldn't get paid. So continuing on,
Saga is good because as I said before it has a little something for everyone. The MMO fans get to have a persistent world that they can level up their armies in, the RTS fans get to march their armies strategically into battle, and the TCG fans get to spend all of their money and time trying to collect all of the dragons (I have 3!) Through all of this, the skeptics may ask what is bad about
Saga and when it comes down to it, it's basically the same thing.
Saga tries really hard to please everyone and that can at times make certain game elements a little awkward. However, is this enough to tarnish your gaming experience? Not even close. In fact,
Saga is still probably one of the most innovative games of the year, or heck of all time. In my opinion, I think it is a step in the right direction for game designers, and should set a good example for people hoping to create new types of games in years to come.
So how is
Saga played? Well you start off as a new village or “kingdom” with very few peasants and very few troops. You have to choose what faction you belong to (of which there are five) and your layout for your village as you start the game, but your troops are shareable between different kingdoms so if you don't like what you started with you can always just reset the whole thing. Troops in
Saga are either generic, or faction specific, and they form groups called units. Each unit of troops moves around in formation as one game piece so to speak, so those 25 archers can all be controlled by issuing an order to just one guy.
The unit system in
Saga is enjoyable in almost all aspects. You can change your unit formation to have greater defense against melee or ranged attack, or to lower your defense and raise your attack. You can also make “units” of magical spells. Obviously, these spells cannot act as troops, but when you include their unit in a battle, you can cast them on your enemies from your all-encompassing godlike RTS viewpoint. Each unit takes a certain amount of points to build, and you have a limited amount of points to build with. Some troops, like Dragons cost so much you can basically only fit one in a unit, others like archers and light melee can fit upwards of 30 or more in one unit. You can also outfit your units with equipment, weapons and armor and whatnot that increase their stats. The weapons and armor can also sometimes add special effects to your units but this is rarer. Anyway, you basically make a bunch of units out of all the spells, generic troops, and faction specific troops (you can only include troops that belong to the faction you chose as you started the game) you can muster together and then you are ready to go conquesting.
The only part of
Saga's unit system I am impartial to is that more than one troop type cannot be put in the same unit, and this is a little limiting. It costs points to build a unit in the first place, so placing only one troop in a unit is inefficient. The problem with all of this is that you get new troops in
Saga by opening booster packs like in any other collectible game. This means you may open pack after pack looking for that one troop you want, and you'll eventually get it, but since it doesn't have any buddies to fight along with it you still can't effectively use it in battle.
Saga makes up for this by making the rarer units naturally high costing, such as dragons, but when you include a dragon in a unit you still have about 10 or 15 points left before the unit reaches max capacity so it would have been nice to be able to include a couple archers in there for backup.
Anyway, like any RTS
Saga requires you to work at resource management, and it's the easiest job in the world. To get more points, and more room for people to settle in your kingdom you need to build houses, and remember the more people you have the more of a workforce you have to get stuff done. The resources in
Saga are pretty standard, Gold, Food, Wood, and so on (along with praise for your magicing needs). To acquire these resources you can either have your peasants work on mining, or hunting, or whatnot, OR you can go out with your army and fulfill quests. In the beginning of the game questing is just about all you can do because you don't have enough resources to build a gold mine, or lumberyard, in the first place.
When you choose to build something, it goes into a build queue, and then as time passes the building completes itself. A frequent complaint about
Saga is that building takes a VERY long time, sometimes a whole day. Obviously, you are supposed to go out questing as your peasants build your buildings, or at the very least turn the game off and get a sandwich (the world continues operating even if you aren't logged on) but for some reason it bothers some people that building doesn't happen on a normal RTS time schedule. Well first of all, let me say that if the building was any quicker the game would become massively unbalanced very shortly. Second of all, everyone seems to be way too nice on their villagers. As soon as I started the game I put all my villagers on building, forced them to work through most of the day, and raised taxes to crazy go nuts. I was a slave driver and you know what, it worked! I got my important buildings done in 4 hours or so, even less once my population started growing. There was plenty of time to make the people happy later.
So that's the basic story when it comes down to town management. You shuffle your peasants around, build some towers and walls, and keep upgrading your buildings so that they become stronger against assaults (just in case you go into PVP). In addition, eventually you can get buildings that make your units stronger, and everyone wants that. However, this isn't Sim City, this is
Saga, and that means that you're going to have to get your feet wet and your hands dirty on the battle field eventually.
Battles and Quests in
Saga play out like they do in any other RTS. You have a certain amount of points you can use to deploy units, and once you do you send them off to battle. Quests give you certain objectives, while PVP and other battles basically allow you to just run rampant on the battlefield. As you play and kill opposing troops treasure chests drop that sometimes include resources, or items to help build your army. Your units gain experience as they fight, leveling up and gaining more powerful (also sometimes learning new abilities). The XP a unit gains is retained even if they die, so there's no real reason to worry about having one unlucky battle. In addition, instead of destroying your opponent's buildings you can take them over by surrounding them. A building you take over gives you more points allowing you to deploy more units. In addition towers and other defensive structures you take over start attacking your enemies. Sweet! The map continues until you wipe out your opponent or reach a certain goal at which point a gate opens up to take you back to your home kingdom.
The controls in
Saga are basic and are essentially the same as any other RTS controls. Click a button, click the map, click a button, click an enemy unit, so on so forth. You can right click to move and attack, and use the status bar to micromanage, although your units do usually move a bit slower than you would like (causing some of them to die prematurely). Like any RTS though, the gamers who study and memorize hotkeys will ALWAYS have an advantage over gamers who don't. But you shouldn't worry because even if you lose, as long as your temple is still standing, you can spend faith and other resources to resurrect your dead units, sending them right back into the fray. The only annoying thing about
Saga's interface is that sometimes it can get cluttered. There are so many windows (especially if you have the chat window open) that it occasionally becomes a hassle to move them around and micromanage your troops at the same time.
Saga does a very good job in creating a MMO RTS. You can meet other troops along the way, ally with them, and charge alongside with them into battle. You can join PVP and allow your home kingdom to be raided, while granting you the ability to do the same with your enemies. Heck, you can even trade, auction, and sell the units you don't need (along with resources and other items) in the market, allowing you to build the exact army you wish. There is no real end to
Saga, you basically attack, quest, trade, micromanage, build your kingdom, and experience the story of
Saga as much as you like. Eventually you can even join guilds and compete in tournaments for prizes in an attempt to become the most powerful kingdom in the world.
When you consider Saga a collectible game you see that Saga appeals to the TCG crowd more than some TCGs do. Let me explain. In other collectible games what is the cap on units or cards? 4 per deck, or army? That's not the case in Saga. Once you get one good troop you'll want to trade and buy boosters until you have a full unit of them! Then once you have built your full unit, if you come across another in a new booster pack, now you have one MORE than you need so you want to make a full unit out of it too! Full units are obviously the most powerful, and are really the only thing worth fighting with, so when it comes down to it collecting and trading in Saga can border on downright obsession.
So you can trade, sell, auction, and basically do whatever you like (commerce wise) with your troops, equipment, and resources, and that's all well and good, but frankly the way Saga structures its trading community is what makes it appealing. Basically, in game, there is a massive trading bulletin board. When you want to make a trade or sale, you post up what you have for trade and what you want for it. Then people can respond to that trade with whatever offer they like (it doesn't have to match what you asked for). When you find an offer, you like you simply accept it and the trade happens automatically.
Another interesting aspect about Saga's trading community is that you ALWAYS have stuff to trade. As I said before you can only include generic units and units of your faction in your army. So what do you do with the multitude of other units from other factions you have? Trade them! Unless you start all over or make a new kingdom you won't EVER be using them, you can't use them! Even if you are a hardcore collector, you really don't feel that bad about parting ways with them. It's not like other card games where it hurts a little to give up a good card in a trade because you may have found a use for it at some point. One troop in Saga is NOT enough to build an army around, so no matter how good it is, if it's not in your faction trade it and get something better. This creates a social phenomenon I call “painless trading” i.e. trading without having to second guess yourself, and Saga is one of the only games that has effectively produced this effect.
I know I've pretty much only talked about game play and have avoided story and that's for good reason, there isn't much of a story in
Saga. Like any MMO you basically make your own story, and enjoy what quests you can. The story as expressed in the quests is quite enthralling, but in the end you'll probably be spending most of your time playing PVP so that is easily looked over. Still though, as far as being a sandbox game goes
Saga is top notch. You can customize everything right down to the banner your country flies, and when you consider that, you realize that
Saga really works to grant your kingdom a sense of identity. As the game goes on, you can continue to flesh out your kingdom's back story and role-play it out with other kingdoms, allying and warring against whoever you choose. It's pretty generic fantasy as far as flavor goes, but in the end it's YOUR generic fantasy.
Wrapping it all up, as I said before
Saga is good. It is fun, and enthralling, and overall just a wonderful experience. Add to this tournament support and collectability and you'll see that
Saga is exactly what I have been saying it is all this time, a landmark in game innovation.
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Presentation Rating = 8.2
The units are detailed, especially for how tiny they are and other than a few graphics glitches and some interface cludge Saga is a treat to look at.
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Gameplay Rating = 8.9
I've been a fan of RTS's so I may be a bit biased, but I think the game play of Saga is to notch. It seems to be geared a bit more toward the RTS and collectible crowd before the MMO crowd, but honestly any gamer of any type can appreciate the Saga play experience.
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Support Rating = 9.0
The Saga team is always coming up with new patches, new balance fixes, and new ways to get the community involved.
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Innovation Rating = 10.0
I've always thought Saga was an innovative game, and I continue to do so. What other game out there have you found that combines so many genres?
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