SaGa Series Director explains why the original games were never localized

Switch owners are getting all sorts of SaGa content from Square-Enix, some of it coming decades after the titles originally released. Why on earth did Squaresoft (at the time) not localize the original SaGa games? Nintendo Life talked to SaGa Series Director Akitoshi Kawazu to find out why.

At the time, the concern raised about localisation was that perhaps Romancing SaGa was just a bit too complicated. Even from within Japan, it was clear that the stories of the 8 protagonists were so interwoven, that there was such a variety of choices and so many stories – in short, the sheer amount of text was so massive – that it would be incredibly costly to localise and difficult to understand. This is why we decided to pass on releasing it for the NA/EU market at that time. I could see the problems that had been pointed out and felt that it would be an unusually difficult game to localise, which is why I didn’t recommend it back then. Looking back, I think it was the wrong choice, so although it’s only in English right now, I’m really glad for the chance to expose the world to this game.