SaGa: Emerald Beyond

SaGa: Emerald Beyond is a 2024 role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix. An entry in the SaGa series, it was released for Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows. The story follows six protagonists as they traverse multiple worlds connected to a realm called the Beyond. The player explores these worlds completing quests and unlocking new events, with the turn-based combat focusing on timeline manipulation and skill growth dependant on in-game actions.

Beginning development in 2017 after completion of SaGa: Scarlet Grace, the development team included series creator Akitoshi Kawazu as director and lead writer, lead artist Satoshi Kuramochi, and Kenji Ito returning as composer. Kawazu's aim was to build on the mechanics of Scarlet Grace, expanding the narrative and gameplay elements.

Gameplay
SaGa: Emerald Beyond is a role-playing video game in which players take control of six protagonists, navigating a selection of seventeen worlds during their campaigns. Characters explore the worlds, with which ones visited triggering different events and influencing the path forward. Navigating worlds, players can follow different glowing lines dubbed Emerald Waves, which lead to different quests. Worlds are navigated from a top-down perspective, with events and battles represented by cutout symbols; cutscenes play out as static conversation scenes. The choice of worlds with one protagonist will impact the storyline in that world when revisited in another playthrough either as a new character or replaying as the same character. There is no money in-game, with new equipment being gained through exploration, quest completion, or trading materials. A character dubbed Mr. S also grants rewards for completing in-game challenges.

Combat is turn-based, with the party having access to a shared pool of points called BP for performing moves, with BP increasing with each turn or certain actions; moves are divided into attacks called Techs and spells which take time to cast. Any character not taking a move guards automatically. The party's Formation, an arrangement with different benefits and detriments, will impact BP gain. All characters are placed on a timeline, with their position influencing their fighting abilities. Adjacent characters can combine their attacks, with a high damage multiplier grant free actions; successful combos also reduce BP costs on the next turn. If a character is isolated on the timeline, they can perform a Showstopper, a chain of free attacks. Some abilities, such as move-specific counters, only activate when the right conditions are met.

Similar to earlier SaGa titles, there is no traditional experience point system, with new abilities being learned through a random Glimmer system; upon being learned, the character uses that ability with no cost. There are five different races that have different growth mechanics. Humans have access to most weapon techniques and the ability to learn unique skills. Monsters cannot have armour equipped, but can randomly learn enemy skills upon victory. Mechs have stats and abilities based on their model and attached parts. Vampires have similar growth to humans, but can also learn techniques from party members by sucking their blood. Kugutsu gain new abilities by copying attacks used on them. Ephemerals upgrade as a character class, but after reaching their highest class will die and be reborn, passing on their abilities to their new form.

Synopsis
Emerald Beyond takes place across multiple worlds connected by an interdimensional space called the Beyond, through which each of the six protagonists travel on their quests guided by an energy dubbed the Emerald Waves. The six protagonists are Tsunanori Mido, a magically gifted man tasked with restoring balance between worlds when his own is threatened; Ameya Aisling, a witch-in-training who has her magic taken away and goes to gain it back while aware of an approaching Calamity; Siugnas, a vampire king seeking to reclaim his realm from a usurper; Diva No.5, a songstress robot who loses her voice and original body after singing a forbidden song; and Bonnie Blair and Formina Franklyn, a pair of rookie police officers investigating an assassination attempt on their world's president.

To complete their missions, each protagonist must journey through the Beyond, following the Emerald Waves to different worlds beset by troubles and with varying levels of awareness of worlds beyond their own. Across each campaign to varying degrees, the protagonists encounter agents of Quissitatum, a group of identical men who seek to merge the worlds back into a single unified whole by force. Quissitatum is revealed to be in some degree responsible for the inciting events in protagonist's story, as they have been given the power to influence events via the Emerald Waves. Each route, including Mido and Aisling's true endings, ends with a fight against the Living Anguish, a being Quissitatum summon as part of their plan to merge the worlds.

Development
Planning for Emerald Beyond began in 2016, following the completion of SaGa: Scarlet Grace. Production started the following year Multiple SaGa veterans returned to work on the game, including series creator Akitoshi Kawazu as director and lead writer, and Masanori Ichikawa as producer. After taking a minimalist design approach with Scarlet Grace, Kawazu wanted to build upon that foundation with more explicit story elements and refinements to the gameplay. These adjustments included greater exploration, and the removal of in-combat healing. After finalizing the game's design, full production began in 2018 after work finished on Scarlet Grace expanded version Ambitions. Production was slowed due to both other parallel SaGa projects, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team's aim was to take the basic structure of Scarlet Grace, which was well received, and expand and refine it for Emerald Beyond. The combat designer was Tomokazu Shibata, who had worked on Unlimited Saga (2002) and acted as battle director for Kingdom Hearts III (2019). He described the combat system as having been completely redesigned despite carrying over its basic structure from Scarlet Grace while wanting to evolve the combat system rather than replicate it. They also wanted to incorporate elements from earlier SaGa titles, such as the combination attacks first featured in SaGa Frontier (1997). While Kawazu often gave specific instructions on mechanics to include or remove, the battle design was otherwise left to Shibata's team. For the combat adjustment and final debugging during the last stages of development, the team used artificial intelligence to assist them as it would have taken equivalent human workers many times longer to check over the game's many scripted battles. The team found the AI useful, though Shibata noted there were difficulties prioritising game mechanics.

While Kawazu wrote the main scenario, other writers were assigned to the substories of different worlds. This was to avoid the chaotic story design problems caused during the production of SaGa Frontier, which featured a similar multiple world and protagonist approach. In contrast to the more hands-off approach with combat design, Kawazu was deeply involved in the storyline and checking over the writing team's work for consistancy. Kawazu wanted to create a storyline that would never be the same twice for players. The character Tsunanori was inspired by Kawazu's long-standing wish to write a character with a Kansai accent. The key visuals and most main characters were designed by Kuramochi, who had previously worked on SaGa projects including Scarlet Grace and mobile spin-offs. The characters were designed based on Kawazu's instructions. A notable lead character not designed by Kuramochi was Siugnas, who was instead designed by Sara Takahashi.

Music
Kenji Ito, an established composer for the SaGa series, returned to score the game. The score was arranged by Yohei Kobayashi, and produced by Square Enix's Hidenori Iwasaki. Additional arrangements were done by Ito, Noriyuki Kamikura, Tsutomu Narita, Minako Seki, Hidenori Iwasaki, Chiemi Takano, Ayame, and Koji Yamaoka. Ito created the basic score on piano first, then chose a main instrument for each character. Ito had comments on how to composed for several characters. Ameya's music drew inspiration from the themes of earlier witch characters from the series, while Siugnas's themes were designed with his status as a dark king in mind. Diva No. 5's themes were written based on her job rather than being a robot. Tsunanori's themes used jazz elements, Diva No. 5 featured techno, and the theme for Bonnie and Formina was described as having "a detective drama car chase vibe".

For vocal pieces, the original lyrics were written by Kawazu. The soundtrack included arrangements of two pre-existing pieces; an arrangement of "Un bel dì, vedremo" by Giacomo Puccini, and a new version of "Auld Lang Syne" for the game's English release. One song, "Crazy for Who", was written by Ito with lyrics and vocals by Sarah Àlainn. It was not included in-game, instead releasing as an online music video featuring Diva No.5. A soundtrack album was released on May 1, 2024.

Release
A new mainline SaGa title was confirmed in late 2021 during a livestream on the series, with Kawazu stating a hope that it would be revealed the following year. The Emerald Beyond title was trademarked by Square Enix in October 2022. The game was officially announced in September 2023, initially through a Nintendo Direct broadcast and later for wider release. A demo was released on April 4 across Windows and consoles. Different versions of the demo covered the opening of different characters; the PlayStation versions focused on Tsunanori, the Switch version covered Ameya, while the Windows version followed Diva No. 5. Progress from the demo can transfer into the main game.

Emerald Beyond was released on April 25, 2024 for Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows. The game was the first simultaneous worldwide release for the SaGa series. Commenting on the localization, its director Neil Broadley said that he wanted the team to "let loose" with modern or silly dialogue as the original script was far less serious and used more colloquial language than was expected from RPGs. The localization was handled by 8-4, who had previously worked on Scarlet Grace.

Reception
The game received mixed reviews according to aggregator Metacritic, with the PlayStation 5 version scoring more positively than the Nintendo Switch release.