YMMV / Unlimited Saga

• Americans Hate Tingle: The game was much better received in Japan than it was in North America and Europe (where its highest score was a 6.6 courtesy of IGN). It sold almost half a million copies in Japan and got a score of 31/40 by weekly video game magazine Famitsu.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • One sidequest has you challenging Dagul Bos, the conqueror that destroyed Escata. Except he's away on business, so you get to fight three of his Minoton bodyguards instead.
  • If Kurt doesn't defeat every creature in the Gauntlet before going to Starship Anchor, his penultimate boss is a bipedal robot with no backstory that isn't very strong.
• Awesome Music: Ask anyone who's given the game an unfavorable review. Most of the time, they will cite the soundtrack as one of the major (if not only) redeeming factors.
  • The OVERTURE, a very energetic song. Perfect for to play for starting on an EPIC JOURNEY.
  • This is the basic battle theme, a theme the composer liked so much he reused it in Final Fantasy XIII. Some games don't have music this amazing for their final bosses.
• Difficulty Spike: The third and fourth forms of the final boss will see a radical shift in arsenal, with stronger attacks and magic all headed your way. The fourth form forgoes any subtlety and will hit you will nothing but heavy attacks non-stop.
• Fridge Horror: Why aren't any of the characters you recruited during your journey with the main character in any of the endings? Maybe the main character was the only survivor?
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Josef at the end of Judy's adventure. He's dead weight compared to all of your other characters in every way, and you're forced to drag him along in the final boss fight at the expense of a most-likely-better character.
  • Any character with a Phobia Panel in certain situations. If they're fighting the monster type they have the Phobia towards, any attacks toward that type are rendered all but useless. This makes Tiffon dead weight if she's taken to fight the Knights of the Round Table without her Undead Phobia ovewritten.
  • Wood elemental spells can end up as this. Thunderbringer is a VERY rare spell, (Unless you have Norff recruited) and it's the only attack spell worth a damn in the Wood line-up. ^note Unless you have Magic Blender, in which case it becomes the required basis for stronger spells. If you never find it, 75% of Wood magic immediately becomes useless. There's a reason nearly every FAQ for the game online warns you not to increase your Wood stat without it.
• Obvious Beta: The game wasn't playtested, which is obvious from all the ridiculously clunky and awkward systems. The manual was seemingly not proofread at all, and the game gives off a general lack of polish in all areas.
• Scrappy Mechanic: If only they hadn't built their entire game on the Reel System.
  • The game prevents you from combining weapons with any non-Dagger Mullock weapon. If you're forging Damascus and you have a Mullock 2 Sword primed for the procedure, you're going to have to turn it into a Dagger first. Otherwise, the game won't recognize it as a legitimate secondary material.
  • Semi-related to the above, Armor pieces also cannot be used as secondary smithing materials. You can only combine weapons with other weapons or Accessories.
  • Turns spent in battle also count as turns spent on the Field for the sake of Turn Limits. This means that Monsters are moving about the Field even when you're fighting. If a hyper-aggressive species lands on your space right after you end combat, they'll force you into yet another battle before you regain any control.
• That One Boss: The Knights of the Round Tables' leader, Phantom without exception. All of his attacks will deduct 3 LP from anything hit, his attacks WILL paralyze you, and just to top it all off he can multi-spam them. Ironically, he's pretty nerfed in Ventus's version of the fight, though. While he can still multi-spam, his attacks won't cause any ailments, plus his Strength is lowered.
• That One Level: The "Bandits Are Attacking!" quest in Judy's story is typically where a new player will encounter their first rut; and highlights one of U-Saga's main issues: communication with the player. The set-up is presented in such a fashion that the player would assume "kill enough bandits to save the village." In reality, you have to defeat two or three groups of bandits within a pre-set time-frame. Every turn spent in battle is also a turn spent in the Adventure Map. Bandits re-spawn onto the map once per turn. So, approaching the quest as your typical "complete the objective" fare doesn't apply here. It's very easy for a new player to simply roam the map not knowing any better, whittling themselves down to a loss by proxy of fighting the battles methodically; not being aware of the added-in time-limit that can potentially cause Bandits to spawn forever.^note The quickest way to complete this quest is to equip someone with the Opal Armlet Judy takes with her when the game starts, using the "Shock" spell to whittle down massive waves of enemies while Kurt and Armand pick off the stragglers. Following the Red and Orange markers instead of using the HP Recovery function can wrap this up in about ten-or-so turns.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The game tries its best to recreate the experience of playing a Tabletop RPG, using several game mechanics and a board game representation which try to emulate what you might see and do when Dungeon Crawling with a Real Life Game Master. They used a design philosophy of deliberately making things as abstract as possible and leaving the player's imagination to fill in the details of the setting. Unfortunately, they took this too far, and didn't give the player's imagination enough information to even get started, completely ruining the effect they were trying for.

---