Ostensibly, the original concept behind Sigma Star Saga was to fix what so many people hate about traditional RPGs, namely the frequent turn-based battles for experience points. In this game, random encounters are played out as horizontal shooter sequences in the mold of Gradius or R-Type. The rest of the game is structured like a simple but fairly standard RPG/adventure, with puzzle-solving, fetch quests, and a lot of text dialogue. It sounds like a cool merging of two completely different styles, and it actually is, but there are considerable problems in the execution of this innovative formula.

But first, the good stuff. Sigma Star Saga bears the distinctive look of a WayForward game, with big character sprites and a cute art style. The shooter bits are less detailed, but they still look good thanks to some scrolling effects and the wide array of shots your ship can fire. The frame rate holds up well except during the use of a screen-clearing bomb, which you probably won't use too often.

The story is also worthy of praise, as it manages to be original and engaging. The main character is Recker, a human pilot whose squad is destroyed by the Krill aliens. Recker's commander sends him in to infiltrate the Krill ranks as a double agent and report back with intelligence on a supremely powerful weapon. As Recker flies back and forth among six different planets and their corresponding starbases, he makes friends and enemies in the Krill empire, and it's not always clear which is which. Mixed in with the interplanetary espionage is an unlikely love story and a side of humor, all delivered through a very well written script. By the end of the game, the plot is more than a little confusing, which further ties in the anime inspiration so clearly on display.

The main part of the game looks like Zelda, with maze-like planet surfaces to explore, a map to help you navigate, and overworld enemies to get in your way. Exploration is painful for a number of reasons. First, the view is zoomed in so far that you can't always tell where you are from the surroundings, even if you're familiar with that area. So you have to keep moving to keep your bearings, and that means more horrible random battles, which I'll get to later. It's easy to get lost because the environment graphics repeat so much. And the map isn't much help, because it's completely devoid of detail and won't even show where you have and haven't already been. The overworld enemies are moronic and can easily be ignored, which you'll want to do as much as possible since they don't cough up experience points. As an example of how underdeveloped the adventuring portion of the game is, consider that Recker has a huge inventory but never more than one key item at a time to store there. To its credit, the game tries to make exploration worthwhile by hiding Gun Data upgrades all over the place, but it becomes clear soon enough that these rewards are not worth the effort.

Gun Data is a system for customizing your ship for combat. There are several dozen of these upgraded hidden throughout the game, and they're divided into three classes from which one upgrade each can be equipped at any time. So there's a lot of customization for the shooter gameplay, and that's pretty cool…right? Well, sort of. The truth is that most of the Gun Data are useless, because they provide highly specialized abilities. The game throws you into completely random scenarios, and you can't reconfigure the ship during a battle, so the only practical strategy is to equip the most versatile, all-purpose upgrades…of which there are just a few.

Even less-cool-than-advertised customization is better than most shooters offer, but Sigma Star Saga flunks out several other criteria that make for a good space shooter. The scrolling is too slow, enemies are barely aggressive, the ship's hitbox is far too large, and most of the boss enemies are very easy to beat. The level designs can be infuriating in their ineptitude, as the game will drop you off inside a solid wall or give you a huge ship incapable of squeezing through narrow tunnels, and it's impossible to guess whether some environmental objects are in the background or foreground. Let's not forget that all but one of the randomly assigned ships move like snails unless you hold down the B button constantly while hammering on A to fire. Most of these shooter episodes go on indefinitely until you destroy a certain number of enemies, and that number is randomly generated. It can be as low as ten or as high as 100; the latter translating into a five-minute snorefest since there's no way to run from a battle or speed up the countdown unless you're lucky enough to find a multiplier Gun Data. Clearly, Sigma Star Saga will have little appeal for seasoned fans of the shooter genre, and the bland, frustrating design of these sequences probably isn't going to convert any new fans, either.

I experienced two major bugs worth mentioning, though hopefully they are not common. The first one was early in the game, during a story scene which I somehow skipped through prematurely so that the following shooter sequence loaded up while the characters were still talking. When the conversation ended, my ship entered at the start point, but the level had been scrolling the whole time, so my ship was stuck off screen with no way to defeat enemies and end the stage. The second bug happened much later in the game and simply caused a random battle to keep going even after I had killed the required number of enemies. The level just ran on forever until I finally reset the system.

As with many other RPGs, Sigma Star Saga's great story can be motivation enough to put up with the annoying combat engine, and there are flashes of brilliance peppered throughout the adventure. This game ambitiously combines several gameplay ideas but never figures out how to balance them against each other for a refined experience. If you're the kind of gamer who can be taken in by artful storytelling even in the absence of polished gameplay, give it a shot.