Review | The Secret Of Varonis - What's Old Is New Again
Makai Toushi SaGa and SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu (released in the United States as Final Fantasy Legend and Final Fantasy Legend 2) were some of the earliest RPGs for the Game Boy. They’re best known today for their unconventional systems design. In the first game, human party members raised their stats by consuming special items. Espers (or mutants in the original English translation) learned new spells at random. Monsters transformed into new forms based on what meat they ate. The second game introduced robots, which gain further power based on how many they have equipped.
These were fascinating ideas that could be infuriating in practice. An esper’s new spell might come at the expense of an old standby. Equipping a robot with any item halved its durability, and reequipping it halved it again. Navigating monster meat tables was a nightmare on par with Shin Megami Tensei demon fusion charts, with far less control over the final result.
The Secret of Varonis, a new independent RPG from Wombat Logic, recreates the look and systems of the early SaGa titles. Once again you stock your party with humans, espers, monsters and robots. The characters navigate a monochrome world and communicate in clipped dialogue. The intended difficulty setting wastes your party’s attacks if their target dies rather than reassigning them to a new target. Although these settings can be changed, the game’s inefficiencies are designed around by the developers. They are an intentional choice rather than a bug.
What makes Secret of Varonis notable is how it reworks the classic SaGa mechanics. Espers are given two spells or stat-ups to choose from at a time rather than one at random. Monsters become whatever they eat rather than transforming unpredictably, and their meat can also be fed to espers or sold for money. Items and skills come with detailed descriptions regarding their effects and how they scale. Everything is much more transparent than before.
SaGa fans might chafe at the idea of Varonis’s relative accessibility. Puzzling out systems has always been a part of the franchise’s appeal, even as recent entries have sought to explain themselves better. SaGa Scarlet Grace features an extensive tips section that answers any question the player might have about a mechanic as it comes up. It also stubbornly refuses to explain the game’s Benison system, which represents the interference of the gods. Its workings remain mysterious because the gods themselves are mysterious. What’s the fun in knowing everything?
Many RPGs lose their magic as their interlocking systems become routine. SaGa games, though, always benefit from foreknowledge. Systems that seem finicky on a first playthrough pay dividends on a second and third. The same applies to the development history of these games. The first SaGa title for Game Boy had lots of great ideas, but was very buggy and hard to play. By the time SaGa 2 came around, the team was able to refine those ideas into a far more palatable game. A Japan-exclusive DS remake further iterated on the formula.
The Secret of Varonis is not a replacement for the DS remakes. But I do get the impression that its developers thought long and hard about what parts of the Game Boy SaGa titles to change and what to keep. The player is free to build their party however they want. They are allowed to explore the world and accomplish objectives on their own without being led by the nose by story or quest logs. At the same time, the world of Varonis hides secrets and mini-dungeons the Game Boy SaGa titles could only ever imply. An in-game hint system teases the next steps. The delivery of the story is terse, but the Wombat Logic has found ways to flesh out the world and its inhabitants without damaging the surreal atmosphere of the original titles. It’s an impressive balancing act.
You might wonder why developers would choose to make a game inspired by the Gameboy SaGa titles of all things. Why not go for a game that everybody loves, like Chrono Trigger? Well, while Chrono Trigger was a high watermark for video games back in 1995, it was also a dead end. Its focus on pure execution and artistic excellence doesn’t leave much room for systemic iteration or experimentation or even improvement. Recent indie RPGs like Sea of Stars have not changed my mind in that regard, even if they capture Trigger’s surface appeal.
The SaGa series by comparison offers a wide range of unusual systems and ideas that never felt fully realised for developers to play with. Generational inheritance, random skill learning and changing world states are just a few of them. Recent remakes of titles like Romancing SaGa 2 and SaGa Frontier package those ideas for a new audience together with accessibility features. Meanwhile, the upcoming SaGa Emerald Beyond aims to stretch the minimalism of its predecessor, Scarlet Grace, into a wilder and woollier territory.
That’s not to say SaGa ideas have been totally left behind by other developers until this point. It should also be said that Japanese developers have happily borrowed from the SaGa toolbox over the past decades. Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Elden Ring both take inspiration from the same old computer RPGs and tabletop games that were so foundational to the SaGa series mastermind, Akitoshi Kawazu. Meanwhile, indie titles like The Genius of Sappheiros and Hat World: New Testament have built upon the SaGa series with their own unique ideas.
As far as I know, The Secret of Varonis is the first “SaGa-like” independent game to be made outside of Japan. I hope that it inspires other developers to not just take inspiration from the SaGa series, but to borrow from other RPG franchises as well. Why not take inspiration from Baroque’s narrative design? The dragon transformation system in Breath of Fire? Point-limited navigation from Riviera: The Promised Land? Developers have avoided these opportunities in favour of chasing the magic of touchable classics. But the history of Japanese role-playing games is far more varied and experimental than folks realize.
Squaresoft released the first SaGa and SaGa 2 at a time when nobody yet knew what “handheld RPGs” should look or play like. Those games broke the rules because there were no rules. The Secret of Varonis can be said to be a far more conservative game, in that it aims to recreate the SaGa model with improvements. Yet by choosing SaGa as its inspiration, Wombat Logic took a risk. I don’t know if Secret of Varonis will attract as many people as those who flocked to Sea of Stars last year. I do know, though, which of these games I want to see more of.
