SaGa announced for PlayStation Vita at the 25th anniversary live stream Square Enix held for the SaGa series. The livestream took place on NicoNico, a popular video content service in Japan. Akitoshi Kawazu made the announcement and specified the title would be on PlayStation Vita in 2015 and is currently titled SaGa 2015. Not only that but Imperial SaGa was announced and will be a browser based game. It is a single-player RPG and is farther in development than SaGa 2015. It has a new story and will be set in past SaGa game’s worlds. Lastly Square Enix also announced Romancing SaGa is returning as a PlayStation 2 classic in Japan. It will be available on March 12, 2015 in Japan only and isn’t likely to be localized. The Romancing SaGa will also come with a special edition that includes a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and download code for the game.
The only images available are concept art created by illustrator Tomomi Kobayashi. Kobayashi has worked on the entire SaGa series which began in 1989 on the Game Boy handheld. It was the first RPG to ever appear on a handheld game console. Kobayashi also did the artwork for the MMORPG Granado Espada which was released in South Korea in 2006. The series was originally titled “The Final Fantasy Legend” and SaGa first appeared as an actual title in Romancing SaGa released for Super Famicom in 1992. The last SaGa game to come to North America was released in 2003 for PlayStation 2 and was titled Unlimited Saga.
Akitoshi Kawazu created the series after his work on Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II. He designed the game to be difficult and is more science fiction themed than fantasy. The series is also open world and less linear than the Final Fantasy series and continues Final Fantasy II’s progression which was based off of individual skills instead of general experience points. Think of how in Skyrim you level up as you increase your one-handed skill. The series has overall been more experimental than Final Fantasy, with level-scaling enemies, dialogue choices with consequences, and a sidequest focused plot instead of a big epic storyline.