The Secret of Varonis

Secret of Varonis is an overlooked gem of a game. I can't believe how few are talking about it and so glad I gave it a shot. If you enjoyed SaGa 1-3 on the Game Boy or classic RPGs in general - you owe it to yourself to play this game. I bought and dove into the SaGa GB collection that released a few years back, but bounced after a few hours. Varonis kept my attention the whole way through. SoV has just enough QoL to keep the nostalgic feel, but make it not so painful as something from the early 90s. The Hint menu was used frequently and kept the pacing in-step. The difficulty is just right, but can be tweaked to your liking. There is no "turn off random encounters" option, but you're able to see and dodge the enemies on the world map (if you choose) and Run has a high rate of success. All the boss battles are carry weight and meaning to the story - not just some random big monster at the end of a cave. The meat system (lol) in SaGa just felt like random nonsense. The SoV devs make the effects of mutation and growth of your esper flawless and easy to understand. Morph a monster, improve an esper, or sell for GP. There is no lose. ~25 hour length is perfect My very few downsides: -You run out of inventory space very frequently in the end game. It would be nice to have a stash of some sort. -There is a mid-game dungeon that starts really fun, but gets confusing and painful (use the Hint menu even mid-dungeon!) -I've been hitting A at the end of the battle way too fast and accidentally overwrote a critical Heal spell on my esper more than once. Thankfully the autosave is near perfect, but there was a time where I had to go back to an earlier save. An "are you sure" would be nice. I feel that if this game was translated to JP it would go viral in a Japanese market that would truly understand and appreciate it.

A love letter to the first two SaGa games and highly recommended to anyone who grew up with them. It gets high praise for having many different difficulty options such as choosing if you want weapons to degrade like they did in SaGa 1&2 or make them "recover" when you sleep at an inn, if you want enemies to be seen on the map or be random encounters, even has an option to have a fixed number of encounters so grinding isn't an option, which would make Akitoshi Kawazu himself proud. Only option I would have liked to see added is removing the control over how Espers advance. In this game you are given a choice between learning new skills and stat upgrades and if you don't want to lose a certain magic you can just opt out of it. Add a mode where the Espers develop truly randomly like in the first SaGa game (maybe giving them greater random access to really powerful spells early on as a tradeoff) and I'd have no complaints. If you enjoy SaGa, buy this already.

I grew up playing Final Fantasy Legend 2 (FFL2) on the Game Boy and that game is still up there in my top 10 favorite games. The Secret of Varonis (SoV) is basically that game with a lot of quality of life improvements added plus with some extra settings to adjust to your liking early on. Being able to switch from random encounters to enemies being visible on the map is an incredible feature that makes playing these sorts of games a lot more palatable in 2024. Compared to FFL2, there is a lot more balance and polish in SoV. There are many similarities to the races between each game, but SoV makes the 4 very distinct. A lot of information is given to you instead of being obtuse and requiring some wiki or old forums to understand what is happening. I especially love how all items have "Info" options to explain how they work. I also appreciate how Esper "leveling" works when you get a choice of what to upgrade. The monster evolution system is leagues better than FFL2 too, and makes monsters less stressful to use and more useful overall. You can commonly pick old forms through a few ways or try some RNG to evolve to the next tier. Good stuff. In other aspects, the story is alright. Nothing too profound, but I also wasn't expecting too much here. It works. The soundtrack has a decent variety and is pretty solid overall, but nothing quite as memorable as Nobuo (but that isn't a fair comparison haha). The visuals are wonderful in their design and feel, but there were times where I would have liked a few more sprites for monsters (both on the map and in battle). Overall, a great game that I will always have installed on my Steam Deck for when I get the itch to play an old school RPG. I am pretty sure I'll stick to SoV going forward instead of going back to FFL2.

If you enjoyed Final Fantasy Legend 2, you'll enjoy this one.

The level of polish and balancing is far above what I would expect from an indie developer. The game is very faithful to the SaGa series while retaining its own identity without pandering too hard with references. On the negative side, I found the Babel areas mildly uncomfortable. I got the sense that it was supposed to feel non-euclidean but it did make me wonder if I was missing out on content or chests. On my second playthrough I did fixed encounters with all mutants and got all the way to edenic world without acquiring a very rare ability. I do not know if that was bad luck or if the rate is too low.

I really am enjoying this game, I think I am before the final boss right now and it has all been done very well. Characters power gets OP at times then settles back to challenging if you don't pay attention. Brought me back to my old school rpg games that I love.

Final Fantasy Legends 4, essentially. It's great.

If you ever read about Final Fantasy Legends in the past, and thought "Man that game looks fun..." Then here you go. The game we always imagined FFL was going to be. Amazing Quality of Life additions, great combat, tons of monsters to fight, eat, and become, and a buncha fun loot to find. 100% worth your time, and a total blast the entire run.

If you enjoyed the original SaGa (ie, Final Fantasy Legend) games and want more, this is effectively the only game on the market. I'm only partway into it, but having a blast.

I think most people reviewing this have already made it clear that this is basically a spiritual successor to the Saga/FFL games on the Game Boy. The game manages to take away some of the tediousness of the old games such as no more random encounters although you can still choose this, but still captures the spirit of them. I feel it's a nice mix between the first two games with some slight balance tweeks. Agility is no longer superior over Strength as it was in the FFL series, although there is a nice balance between the two. Robots no longer can turn into instant death machines, but they're given a lot more utility this time around. The randomness of monster meats is greatly reduced and there's even an item to go back to a previous form. There's lots of references to the old games as well and the music is very close to being on par. There is one part that was a little bit frustrating (okay, it was borderline annoying), but I think it's just a result of overthinking. Other than that, it was really hard to put this game down. Any fan of the Saga/FFL series should play this along with anyone that just wants to play an old school JRPG that has a slight twist to it.