There's no new screens, but 1UP has received some translated details from a Famitsu article. I'll copy/past and highlight some of the better details. Here on, none of the following text are my words:
So what all is new, exactly, about SaGa 2: Legend of the Secret Treasure, the Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy Legend II we first discussed last week? A fair bit, according to executive producers Akitoshi Kawazu and Hiromichi Tanaka -- and they should know, given that they've both been working on the assorted SaGa games since the very first one hit the Game Boy in 1989.
Here are some of the highlights of their interview with Weekly Famitsu magazine, which offered some of the first concrete details behind the title in their latest issue:
- Why remake FFL2 in the first place? "The producer, Hiroyuki Miura, was the first one who brought up the idea," Kawazu says. "There was talk of doing a remake ever since we remade the original SaGa on the Wonder Swan Color in 2002. While that never materialized, the project plan has been sitting there the whole time, and once the Nintendo DS came out and the platform seemed to match the concept, we thought the time was right."
- The new SaGa II will remain relatively close to the original, both in terms of story and in gameplay length -- Kawazu doesn't imagine the game lasting longer than ten-odd hours on the first casual playthrough. "This is on a portable system, and for that I think it's better not to have a game you must sit down and play for hours on end, but rather something you can enjoy in small pieces at a time," he noted.
- New features? Besides the obvious 3D graphical facelift, Kawazu says that the character building system -- one which he admits "had a strong presence of randomness" in the original -- will be made a bit less opaque and easier to work with. "I think it'll be a great deal more fun to build up characters from each of the individual races now," Kawazu says.
Don't expect details behind any major gameplay changes yet, though, because Kawazu ain't giving them up. "One of [the new features] is a 'chain' system that works well with the gameplay in the SaGa 2 remake," he told Famitsu. "I think gamers will really enjoy this. This also links up with certain other features which I can't talk more about right now, but I think it'll all add up to a very SaGa-like gameplay feel. It's the sort of thing that will make you want to play through the game two or three times, which I think has always been a hallmark of the series from the very beginning."
- So when's it due out? There's no set release date yet, but the game is approximately 70 percent complete -- and given that 2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the SaGa series, the staff should have more than enough inspiration to get this remake out the door soon.
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3172398
So what all is new, exactly, about SaGa 2: Legend of the Secret Treasure, the Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy Legend II we first discussed last week? A fair bit, according to executive producers Akitoshi Kawazu and Hiromichi Tanaka -- and they should know, given that they've both been working on the assorted SaGa games since the very first one hit the Game Boy in 1989.
Here are some of the highlights of their interview with Weekly Famitsu magazine, which offered some of the first concrete details behind the title in their latest issue:
- Why remake FFL2 in the first place? "The producer, Hiroyuki Miura, was the first one who brought up the idea," Kawazu says. "There was talk of doing a remake ever since we remade the original SaGa on the Wonder Swan Color in 2002. While that never materialized, the project plan has been sitting there the whole time, and once the Nintendo DS came out and the platform seemed to match the concept, we thought the time was right."
- The new SaGa II will remain relatively close to the original, both in terms of story and in gameplay length -- Kawazu doesn't imagine the game lasting longer than ten-odd hours on the first casual playthrough. "This is on a portable system, and for that I think it's better not to have a game you must sit down and play for hours on end, but rather something you can enjoy in small pieces at a time," he noted.
- New features? Besides the obvious 3D graphical facelift, Kawazu says that the character building system -- one which he admits "had a strong presence of randomness" in the original -- will be made a bit less opaque and easier to work with. "I think it'll be a great deal more fun to build up characters from each of the individual races now," Kawazu says.
Don't expect details behind any major gameplay changes yet, though, because Kawazu ain't giving them up. "One of [the new features] is a 'chain' system that works well with the gameplay in the SaGa 2 remake," he told Famitsu. "I think gamers will really enjoy this. This also links up with certain other features which I can't talk more about right now, but I think it'll all add up to a very SaGa-like gameplay feel. It's the sort of thing that will make you want to play through the game two or three times, which I think has always been a hallmark of the series from the very beginning."
- So when's it due out? There's no set release date yet, but the game is approximately 70 percent complete -- and given that 2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the SaGa series, the staff should have more than enough inspiration to get this remake out the door soon.
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3172398
