This is not your ordinary RPG!

This graphics are eye-popping, breathtaking, stunning and unbelievable, not to mention incredible. This is no hack-and-slash, rip-your-guts-out fighter! This is the future of RPGs, right here in your hands! With music this good, you won't turn the sound off--you'll turn it up!

No more small elves leading your team! This game contains real, believable figures. You won't be embarrassed to use your own name; you'll be proud. It's just you against six other characters in search of the 7 Sacred Runes. Whoever finds them...Rules the World. It's that simple, that easy. The only problem is you have some enemies, and I don't mean a few. I mean an army of things you've never seem before ready to raise the hair on the back of your neck and take you out with one swing. This is one powerful RPG. Can you handle it?!

Seriously, 7th Saga box: are you okay? Are you having a stroke? Shall I call 911?

I will let people who have played the game evaluate the claims made here, but suffice it to say, most of them seem...fantastical. Like someone was given no information other than "it's an RPG where you have to find seven runes that let you rule the world," and told to make that seem as exciting as possible. Like someone at Enix was thinking, oh god, how the FUCK do we possibly market RPGs in this brave new world?!? You'd think they'd've been in a better position than just about anybody else, given their long history of publishing RPGs in the West--but alas. I am sorry to say that the febrile tone set by the box is not reflected in the manual, which is as wooden as these things normally are.

I don't know; 7th Saga is okay. Actually, that's probably not true. It's mediocre at best, and even as these things go, the amount of grinding you have to do is truly fantastical. The choose-a-character thing seems interesting but doesn't exactly lead to exciting new vistas of gameplay or story. The unreleased-outside-of-Japan spiritual sequel, Mystic Ark is a much better game, with some genuinely interesting ideas.

Still, sometimes you just want something vaguely nostalgic and mindlessly playable, and if you abuse save state and the fast forward button, Saga will just about do you.