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Akitoshi Kawazu on the origins of SaGa's insanity

Jeremy, Parish, and Kawazu, Akitoshi. 2017. “Akitoshi Kawazu on the origins of SaGa's insanity.” Retronauts, article 670 (interview originally published by 1UP.com, October 2012). Retronauts.

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Retronauts, Kawazu interview 2017
Original
https://retronauts.com/article/670/akitoshi-kawazu-on-the-reasoning-behind-sagas-insanity
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https://web.archive.org/web/20171115000758id_/https://retronauts.com/article/670/akitoshi-kawazu-on-the-reasoning-behind-sagas-insanity
Accessed
2026-10-23
Licence
© Retronauts
Credit
Interview by Jeremy Parish, originally published on 1UP.com in October 2012 and republished by Retronauts on 13 November 2017. The questions are Parish's and the answers are Kawazu's, in English translation.
Notes
Kawazu discusses Final Fantasy II's removal of classes and levels, the story-driven reason for fixed characters, the "nurture" growth system, the party-attack exploit, and how he carried the system into SaGa. The English is a translation, not the Japanese original; quote it as the published English.

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Claims (5)

Kawazu has called Final Fantasy II "basically my system".answer on Final Fantasy III's class systemInterview
Kawazu said classes were dropped for two reasons: the team wanted a more story-driven game, which needed specific characters in set roles, and growth was to be nurture rather than nature, so a character who used a lot of magic would become a mage over the whole game.answer on Final Fantasy II's skill systemanswer on Final Fantasy II's skill systemanswer on Final Fantasy II's skill systemInterview
Asked whether he had foreseen players attacking their own party members to get stronger, Kawazu said he had no idea people would use it to grind; he had let characters hit a sleeping ally to wake it faster, and never realized it would become a way to raise hit points.answer on attacking party membersanswer on attacking party membersanswer on attacking party membersInterview
Kawazu said that he took the lessons of Final Fantasy II into his next game, SaGa (Final Fantasy Legend), keeping its nurture system but adding races so that the characters wouldn't all end up as clones of each other.answer on SaGa as a successoranswer on SaGa's racesanswer naming his next projectInterview
Retronauts says the WonderSwan Color remake of Final Fantasy II was released only in Japan and was the basis for the Game Boy Advance and PSP versions.image caption beside the question on Final Fantasy II's skill systemInterview