Final Fantasy Meets Dragon Quest in Square Enix’s Latest ’90s Remake
Big number go brrr
Square Enix has found a lot of success in recent years revisiting the 1990s in a variety of ways, whether it’s the HD-2D remake 1994’s Live A Live back in 2022 or this year’s diorama-inspired 3D remake, Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined. The company’s first offering in this vein for 2027 is a remake of a SNES game known for its non-linear storytelling, multiple protagonists, and unusual minigames — Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United. During a 30-minute preview event at New York Comic Con, I was instantly pulled in by the game’s charming visuals and its unique riff on turn-based combat.
Despite being a ‘90s RPG superfan, I actually haven’t played Romancing SaGa 3 until now. (In typical Square Enix fashion, the series has seen intermittent releases and re-releases outside Japan over the years, including a 2019 pixel-art remaster of this game.) For my demo, I was able to choose between an early, story-focused section or a mid-game slice with more challenging combat. I chose the latter, and soon found myself weaving down a verdant subterranean cave. Cute yet imposing enemies trundled ahead on the path, leaving me the option to scurry past or slash at them in order to kick off a turn-based battle.
The immediate appeal of Romancing SaGa 3’s combat system is embarrassingly simple: big number go brrrrr! Granted, this was a mid-game demo, but I was pleasantly surprised to find standard attacks and spells doled out thousands of points in damage. After a couple fights, combos and charged team-up attacks tipped those numbers well into the five-figure region. What can I say? Doing 34,000 damage at once just feels better than 340. This is a fact of life. Flashy interstitials and swelling numerals on-screen don’t hurt either. There’s a whiff of Final Fantasy Resonance’s gacha-esque thrills to the battle presentation, even though this emphatically isn’t a gacha game.
The SaGa games don’t have a traditional experience point system, so a character’s health and/or stat attributes will increase at the end of a battle instead. In that respect, a character’s build is shaped by the actions you choose repeatedly in battle — think the RPG version of “you are what you eat.” You can learn new abilities that build upon your current loadout through the Glimmer system, which will show a light-bulb icon next to certain skills in the combat menu. You only have so many skill slots, though, so you’ll have to replace older, weaker ones with the more powerful stuff.
All that’s easy enough to grasp, but where Romancing SaGa 3 gets truly unconventional is in its HP and revival mechanics. Your health automatically regenerates after a battle, but not your Battle Points (BP), which are used for skills and magic. If your HP falls to zero, you can be “revived” with an ordinary healing item, but you’ll lose a Life Point (LP). Each character has a set number of LP, and if you lose them all before getting back to an inn or recovery point, they’ll permanently disappear from your roster.
You can have up to five party members at a time: one of eight main characters and four optional recruits. For this preview, my party consisted of Khalid, a graceful swordsman with a long, swooping ponytail, the Zorro-esque Robin, and a snowman called Flurry. (Apologies to the other two I cannot remember; I’m pretty sure one of them was a girl?) Anyway, Flurry is literally two plain-white spheres stacked atop one another with big frowny eyebrows, and I love him. I appreciate that Square Enix (and co-developer Xeen Inc.) kept this pointedly basic design even amid an otherwise splashy revamp. Apparently Romancing SaGa 3 has a ton of oddball optional recruits just like this, including a lobster-person and an overweight Robin impersonator called — wait for it! — Fat Robin. Consider me sold.
I didn’t have huge expectations around Romancing SaGa 3, but I came away delighted by the delightfully chaotic combat and bizarre cast of characters. What’s more, the visuals have an appealing, candy-colored sheen that’s similar to Dragon Quest 11. This definitely feels like a massive step up from the 2019 remaster, and I’m excited to spend more time with this one in a few months.
Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United will be released for Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on Feb. 16, 2027.