The Final Fantasy Legend is Square's first game to sell over a million copies; the Game Boy version alone shipped 1.37 million copies worldwide (1.15 million in Japan) as of March 2003. Square quickly released two sequels for the Game Boy, and marketed subsequent
SaGa games on other video game consoles. The one-eyed monster featured on the Japanese box art later became the series' mascot, appearing in the sequel as a character named "Mr. S".
Game Freak founder
Satoshi Tajiri cited the game's influence behind the Game Boy
Pokémon series, stating it gave him the idea that the system could handle more than action games. Upon release,
Makai Toushi Sa·Ga was acclaimed by Japanese critics. In
Famitsu, two reviewers complimented that the game really suited the Game Boy, while two wished it was expanded upon and released for the
Famicom. Western critics gave mostly positive reviews upon its initial release. Author
Jeff Rovin heavily praised the title in the book
How to Win at Game Boy Games, citing the thorough manual and considering the game a "masterful achievement for the Game Boy unit, and a superlative game of [its] kind", though not as complex as
The Legend of Zelda. In May 1991,
Nintendo Power named the game the third all-around best Game Boy game of the previous year, and in September 1997 they ranked it 70th on their list of the "Top 100" games to appear on a Nintendo system, stating that it had "stayed true to the Square Soft tradition". The
Chicago Tribune in 1991 called the game "a little slow in spots, but, like
Final Fantasy, worth your patience", and a "good quest". The newspaper gave the game ratings of 8 out of 10 and 7 out of 10. German gaming magazine wrote that they had been waiting for a portable role-playing game and found it unbelievable that the programmers managed to get so much in a game style that was normally only found on large home computers. He found that the combat system did not have the depth of an
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, but hardly found that to be a serious problem. The Game Boy version of the game received mixed reviews in retrospective. Spencer Yip of Siliconera named it as a game he was thankful for playing, citing it as opening his mind to story-based games more so than titles like
Dragon Quest, and in part led to the creation of the website. TechnoBuffalo's Ron Duwell said that, while it was regarded less favorably than its sequels, its flaws could be worked around and added that there was no such other title to compete like
The Final Fantasy Legend.
1UP.coms Jeremy Parish called it one of the "essential" games for the Game Boy as well as one of the best of 1989, noting its introduction of new ideas that contrasted the
Final Fantasy series and calling it "a pretty decent portable RPG in its own right".
GameDaily named it a definite game for Game Boy alongside the related
Final Fantasy titles, describing it as providing "hours of role-playing excitement". Andrew Vanden Bossche described the game as "unusual" amongst Japanese roleplaying games, describing its narrative as "loosely connected experiences rather than the sort of epic narrative the RPG genre is commonly thought of". As a result, the off-screen deaths of non-player characters felt more "poignant" and an example of
memento mori. However, he also felt the monster class system as counter-intuitive, as frequently said classes emphasized the point of enemies as "designed to pose challenges, not overcome them".
Electronic Gaming Monthly,
Pocket Games, and
GameSpot shared this sentiment; the latter three named it one of the top fifty games for the Game Boy. Along with
Final Fantasy Adventure and the other two
Final Fantasy Legend games,
Game Informer placed as the sixth in their list of the "Top 25 Game Boy Games of All-Time" in 1997. The difficulty and significance of the game's final
boss, the Creator, has elicited several mentions.
GamePro named him one of the "47 Most Diabolical Video-Game Villains of All Time", placing him 37th on the list and adding "You gotta wonder... how many
hit points did the developers give God?"
1UP.com described the battle as "epic", considering it part of a recurring theme of Japanese role-playing games in which characters band together to kill God. Comedian Jackie Kashian referenced the Creator on
Comedy Central Presents, describing the game's final battle as "the worst premise ever of any video game", and recalling how she still tried for eight months to defeat the boss. Despite the final boss' difficulty, it can be killed easily by the instant-death "chainsaw" weapon. In 2009, Square Enix battle planner Nobuyuki Matsuoka paid homage to the fact in the game
Final Fantasy XIII, by deliberately giving the title's final boss a similar vulnerability. Square brought back the character as a boss in later SaGa games
Imperial SaGa Eclipse and
Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe, the former of which included a line referencing his weakness to the chainsaw. ==Notes==