SaGa Frontier/YMMV
- Cult Classic: The game is, safe to say, quite incomplete and some may be put off with its non-linearity. A lot liked that non-linearity, along with party customization, awesome music by Kenji Ito, quirky characters and more, making it one of the most classic JRPG alongside its sequel.
- Game Breaker: The 'Overdrive-Stasis' trick. The Overdrive spell gives you up to eight actions in a single turn, but drains all your spellcasting resources at the end of it. The Stasis Rune spell locks the caster exactly as he or she is at the moment of casting for the next ten turns or so. If you cast Stasis as the last move during Overdrive, not only do you not lose any JP or WP, but you get to act eight times per turn for the rest of the fight. It gets even
worsebetter when you realize that since it saves all your JP, you can repeat casting Overdrive for free multiple times during the fight, so long as Stasis is always your last move in it. - Good Bad Bugs
- Takonomics, named in honor of the man who discovered it: in Koorong, the price of gold goes down as you sell ingots and back up as you buy, but this calculation is (erroneously) made before any actual physical inventory changes hand. You can therefore manipulate the gold market in the shop menu such that when you actually sell your gold, you get more money back. Then you travel to Nelson, where gold ingots are always sold at a fixed price, and repeat until you have all the money you'll ever need.
- In addition, the well-loved Overdrive-Stasis trick, even though it seems like it may have been on purpose due to the moves descriptions("temporarily gain infinite speed" and "freeze time in battle"), is actually a glitch- see Zaraktheus' last post here for an in-depth explanation (the short version: once you use Stasis or the consumable item SnakeOil, this confuses the game into resetting your JP). It can be taken even further with the use of the Shadow Servant spell, which creates a shadow doppelganger that copies any spell or attack you use, effectively doubling the damage dealt in those eight turns.
- The Junk Shop glitch, which allows you to get endless free stuff from the Junk Shop in Scrap: just attempt to sell a HyperionBazooka that you don't have, and you get seven free items. Perfect for either kitting yourself out with Disc One Nukes or building up enough money to engage in Takonomics.
- Ho Yay/Les Yay:
- From the "Essence of Saga Frontier"- Ildon and Rastaban are lovers. Asellus and Gina could be considered an item too if you get the Mystic ending.
- In spite of one member of the PTB handwaving Asellus and White Rose's relationship as mojo-transfer-by-blood, fandom as a whole ignores this - and no wonder, given Zozma's blatant 'get out of the closet!' speech after the business at the Labyrinth.
- Asellus gets a lot of homosexual text with White Rose and Gina, but she and Mesarthim rack up a lot of subtext due to the latter's insistence on being her slave.
- Magnificent Bastard: Rastaban. He plots to have Asellus replace Orlouge as the ruler of Fascinaturu and sends Ildon with her to make sure she is safe. The Bastard part comes in when he kidnaps Gina and puts her inside of a Griffon. This bothers Ildon and angers Asellus. However, if Asellus doesn't save her, then no one would know who's really responsible for her kidnapping.
- Quicksand Box: Both present and averted. Some of the stories (like Riki) are very straightforward, and you can learn your way around the sidequests by playing some characters' main quests, but starting with Asellus or Lute is a quick way to get completely lost.
- The Scrappy: Slime, who comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Except in Essence, where he does quite a bit.
- That One Boss:
- Virgil in Riki's scenario. He differs from most bosses in that to defeat him, you have to score points by throwing combos at him. Two-point combos are a no-go, and you can't repeat the same combo twice. If you don't know how the combo mechanics work, or haven't been writing down any of the combos you've chanced upon up to this point, then you're pretty much stuck. Worse, you have to take him on with Riki in your party, and monsters have a hard time racking up combos.
- Tanzer's heart, also from Riki's scenario. It's the second boss in his story, but it honestly feels like it should be a mid-game encounter. The organ can one-shot your characters with its Acid Breath, it effectively gets extra moves thanks to all the surrounding tendrils that you can't target, and it has a staggering amount of HP at its disposal. Worse, Tanzer's body is a terrible location to Level Grind in because there are no shops or inns to replenish your stats. So if you didn't prepare for it before getting swallowed by the beast (and without a guide, you won't know it happens), and/or blew all your JP and WP on the minor encounters littering the place, then you're going to be stuck in an Unwinnable By Mistake situation.
- That One Level: Riki's Mosperiburg dungeon. From the Magma Slimes to the Mystic Spikes, to the Puzzle Boss fight, it's... unpleasant to say the least.
- The Woobie: Asellus. Used to be a normal, happy girl, but then she got ran over by a carriage, turned into a Half-Mystic where Mystics scorn her, humans are scared of her, and she was rejected by almost everyone that knew her. She kept getting hunted by the Mystics because one of Orlouge's Mistresses, her best friend White Rose, stays with her and eventually lost her in Orlouge's labyrinth, breaking her heart. And in the end, she either dies liberating herself from her Mystic blood, or went mad with power because of it, or accepts that she'll never be human again or be accepted as a Mystic and wanders the Earth for eternity, seeing her human friends age and die while she stays forever young.
- Woolseyism: A minor one: Alkaiser's Shin[1]-Al-Phoenix becomes Re-Al[2]-Phoenix.
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