Chances are good that the game, while a solid RPG, won't bowl you over either. It gets a little too caught up in the mediocre storytelling, with cardboard characters and contrived events, and in the end its only saving grace is the enjoyable battle system. It's also damned hard at times, which is a pleasant change from the piece-of-cake RPG’s of today, but some normal encounters will consume more of your time than most other game's boss battles, which can be a pain.
The story is told in two major threads -- that of Gustave XIII and those around him, a young boy exiled from the kingdom he was to rule because he could not use magic, and the story of Wil, a young Digger out to find out what happened to his father. The storylines cross, of course, and in an interesting change, you often have a choice of following different pieces of the storyline. A timeline keeps track of everything that's happened. Unfortunately, the storyline isn't particularly enthralling, and the characters don't have the appeal of, say, Vivi in Final Fantasy IX. Many people seem put in the game as placeholders, fodder for the story to feed on.
As the storyline twists and turns, you'll find yourself subjected to a whole lot of exposition. You can't seem to speed up the text-scrolling speed, which is a pain, especially since some of the rambles almost challenge Xenogears for longest time without any real interaction. The translation, while adequate, has none of the pizzazz of the more recent Square translations, and fails to convey any deeper emotion or meaning.
Fortunately, the battle system is intriguing enough to make SaGa Fronter 2 worth playing, at least for a little while. Most weapons have a limited number of uses, like the SaGa games on the Gameboy (they were called Final Fantasy Legends here). And you gain new attacks and skills in the weapons that you use the most. As you learn new abilities, you can equip them so your character can use them, but each ability costs a certain number of WP to use. By timing it right and picking the right attacks, you can do combos, where more than one person attacks at the same time, usually for major damage. Along with the party battle system, you can do one-on-one duels. These duels allow you even more control over the combat, allowing you to pick different types of blows (feint, backslash, etc.) and combine them to deal some damage. Combining the attacks in the right order and having enough skill in the weapon you're using often gains you new combos to use in the standard combat system. It's fun, if a little overwhelming at first.
