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Square Enix has found a lot of success in recent years revisiting the 1990s in a variety of ways, whether it\u2019s 2022’s HD-2D remake of Live A Live<\/em> or this year\u2019s Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined<\/em>. The company\u2019s 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 \u2014 Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United<\/em>. During a 30-minute preview event at New York Comic Con, I was instantly pulled in by the game\u2019s charming visuals and its unique riff on turn-based combat.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Despite being a \u201890s RPG superfan, I actually haven\u2019t played Romancing SaGa 3<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n The immediate appeal of Romancing SaGa 3<\/em>\u2019s combat system is embarrassingly simple: big number go brrrrr! <\/em>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\u2019t hurt either. There\u2019s a whiff of Final Fantasy Resonance<\/em>\u2019s gacha-esque thrills to the battle presentation, even though this emphatically isn\u2019t a gacha game.<\/p>\n The SaGa games don\u2019t have a traditional experience point system, so a character\u2019s health and\/or stat attributes will increase at the end of a battle instead. In that respect, a character\u2019s build is shaped by the actions you choose repeatedly in battle \u2014 think the RPG version of \u201cyou are what you eat.\u201d 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\u2019ll have to replace older, weaker ones with the more powerful stuff.<\/p>\n All that\u2019s easy enough to grasp, but where Romancing SaGa 3<\/em> 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 \u201crevived\u201d with an ordinary healing item, but you\u2019ll 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\u2019ll permanently disappear from your roster.<\/p>\n 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\u2019m 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 <\/em>has a ton of oddball optional recruits just like this, including a lobster-person and an overweight Robin impersonator called \u2014 wait for it! \u2014 Fat Robin. Consider me sold.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t have huge expectations around Romancing SaGa 3<\/em>, but I came away delighted by the delightfully chaotic combat and bizarre cast of characters. What\u2019s more, the visuals have an appealing, candy-colored sheen that\u2019s similar to Dragon Quest 11<\/em>. This definitely feels like a massive step up from the 2019 remaster, and I\u2019m excited to spend more time with this one in a few months.<\/p>\n Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United <\/em>will be released for Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on Feb. 16, 2027.<\/p>\n