Sigma Star Saga Review

The RPG is a genre which can easily grow stale. I mean, the formula remains nearly unchanged over the course of hundreds of franchises. Not to mention there are those franchises which never stop reeling out seemingly “new” entries: Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Dragon Quest, etc. etc. So a quirky RPG spin-off which combines classic RPG elements and side-scrolling shooting should be really refreshing, right? …. Right?!

From the get go, anyway, Sigma Star Saga looks like a winner. Not only are the graphics very clean, they venture into territory seldom heard of on the GBA. That is, large, elaborately-animated sprites. The amount of work put into these characters shows that somebody actually cared about this game. The side-scrolling segments also are able to hold up a lot of action without becoming sluggish. Only in extreme cases does the game ever slow down.

Unless, of course, you want to talk about “slow down” from a gameplay point-of-view. But let’s back up and first explain how the RPG/shooter hybrid even pans out. As in most RPGs, you primarily run around an overworld, talk to NPCs, and collect upgradeable equipment. Take too many steps, however, and–you guessed it–you’ve walked right into a random battle. However, in Sigma Star Saga, the random battles are actually side-scrolling space shooters. In these segments, you must blast your way through slews of aliens and asteroids until you’ve reached a certain quota. Collecting fallen experience points along the way will level up your ship, increase your health, and make you stronger.

The shooting tie-in sounds a little crazy, but it works within the game’s context. While exploring a planet’s surface, you are periodically called upon by a ship overhead to help it clear out an immediate threat in the outer atmosphere. Once the threat is taken care of, you are transported back to the surface. Random battles are random battles, but at least this time there’s a reasonable explanation for it. Though Sigma Star could get away with no reasoning a la its off-beat sense of humor. The dialogue can get pretty funny and makes playing through the game a little more interesting than typical RPGs.

But playing through this game is actually a chore, sad to say. I have never liked random battles, but Sigma Star Saga takes it up a notch to what I call “random random battles.” The shooting levels are not always the same, which is good. But your ship is not always the same, either… which is bad. Most ships are quite versatile, but there are a couple big ones that move way too slow. Imagine getting stuck in a narrow level with one of the bigger ships. It’s almost guaranteed you will die by scraping along the cave ceiling too much. When you die, you are transported back to the last save point with none of your experience intact. Considering how infrequent save points (and while we’re at it, health) appear, that’s a lot of work you just lost. So why don’t you just run from such unfair matches? Simply put, you can’t. Sigma Star Saga offers no way out of a battle. Your options are to win… or lose. Not very fun, is it?

Of course, you want to have fun with this game. After about three or four hours, however, you realize these random random battles aren’t worth the exceedingly high amount of patience they require. If you can stick it through (and how you do, I’m not sure), this game will last you a long time. But most of that is repeated exploration of the same areas thanks to dying in battle and having to restart oh so long ago. Yeah… I’d rather not, too.

Final Comments

Sigma Star Saga is one big disappointment. Making a hybrid of several different genres of games sounds like a great idea, but the random battle system completely spoils it. I can tolerate random battles to an extent, but to have battles you absolutely cannot escape from, battles that accidentally put you at a huge disadvantage, is just ridiculous. For those with strong stomachs, Sigma Star Saga has a lot going for it and makes for an amusing and interesting ride. If you get annoyed easily, you’re in the wrong place. Unless you, uh… like that sort of thing. But don’t.