Square Enix held an official livestream dedicated to Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United on September 12. The broadcast featured producer Shinichi Tatsuke and voice actors Junya Enoki, who voices Julian Nohl, and Asami Seto, who voices Katarina Lauran in the Japanese version of the game. Alongside an early gameplay reveal, the developers talked about what players should expect from this remake while addressing questions longtime SaGa fans are likely to have.
One of the topics Tatsuke discussed was the removal of the original game’s “Commander Mode” and how the playable character Sarah will be handled as a result of this change. Note that this article contains some light spoilers for both the original Romancing SaGa 3 and the new Destinies United remake.
Like the original 1995 game, Romancing SaGa 3’s remake features eight protagonists players can choose from to begin their adventure. The course of the story changes based on the player’s choices, such as whose story they begin with and the order in which they challenge The Four Sinistrals. Three difficulty levels are available: Casual, Normal, and Classic, with the Classic difficulty intended to recreate the authentic (high) difficulty of the original game.
During the livestream, Tatsuke confirmed that Destinies United does not come with the original’s Commander Mode. The Commander Mode is a unique mode where the protagonist does not participate in battle directly and instead gives commands to the other party members from the backrow. Compared to regular battles, Commander Moder offers powerful options such as changing formations during battle, recovering HP each turn, and using sparkable Formation Skills, making it quite formidable when mastered.
According to Tatsuke, the dev team ultimately decided against implementing a Commander Mode in the new remake due to the development costs required to create and balance a separate battle system in addition to regular combat, as well as constraints related to the development schedule. Instead, the team is focusing on raising the overall quality of the game, including the standard battle system.
Another question that naturally crops up from there is what happens to Sarah. To explain in the same terms used by the devs during the livestream, if players choose Sarah as their protagonist in the original Romancing SaGa 3, they eventually reach a point where she can no longer participate in a “certain important battle.” The battle then switches to Commander Mode, with the other party members fighting without Sarah. This often left players who were unaware of the mechanic in a predicament.
In the remake, the removal of Commander Mode means that if Sarah is the protagonist, she will still be able to participate in this battle normally. Tatsuke said that things will somehow work out through “the power of a miracle.” It seems the decision was made only after considerable discussion within the development team, as it also relates to the game’s worldbuilding. The team also made sure to consult Akitoshi Kawazu, who directed the original game, before settling on it.
Following the announcement of Destinies United, veteran players had been making somewhat mischievous posts recommending that newcomers choose Sarah as their first protagonist. While these were clearly playful trolling from fans who love the original game, Tatsuke addressed this by mentioning that players can now “safely choose Sarah as their protagonist.”
Also noteworthy is that, while the original game had some characters who could not be recruited depending on which protagonist the player chose, the remake will apparently allow you to recruit all characters regardless of which protagonist you selected.
The livestream also covered some other smaller details, but according to a post by Kawazu on X, the team appears to be deliberately limiting how much information it reveals about the game at this stage. This means there could be some interesting reveals still waiting in the near future.
Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United is scheduled to launch for PC (Steam/Microsoft Store), Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S in February 2027
