Gameplay
Unlimited Saga is a role-playing video game where players take on the role of seven different protagonists, playing through the narratives in a nonlinear style. Gameplay is split between two modes; town exploration that includes story sections and interacting with facilities, and exploring environments while encountering enemies and environmental hazards. Town facilities are represented with icons on an illustrated background, with selecting an icon opening the facility and potentially triggering a story section delivered in a comic book style. During the game, players will explore towns which can be used to gather information and purchase goods to aid them on their journey before exploring outside environments and dungeons. Specific services in towns include the Blacksmith, which sells and forges weapons and accessories. A scenario-specific Carrier's Guild has a ranking system, raised by performing delivery missions. The party can either save at a town, or perform a quick save while exploring. Upon exiting town, the party is either transported to the area of a quest, or can select previously explored areas on a world map.
Dungeon and environmental exploration plays out in a style similar to a board game; the player character is represented as a static sprite on a map that is revealed as the player explores, with unexplored areas being named with a series of question marks. Each move or action being equivalent to a turn. While exploring, an illustration in the top right hand corner of the screen shows the environment the party is in. The goal of missions in these areas is to reach a goal, either a story event, another town, or some other location within the map. The amount of turns taken by the player is recorded. Some missions have turn limits, with the player being returned to a town if they reach that limit. Moving into a new part of the map can trigger an event such as a battle or trap, or hold an item the party can search for and retrieve. While unlocking chests or avoiding traps, the player triggers the Reel, an options wheel that spins until the player halts it, triggering an action. Enemies shift position with each turn, and some spaces have hiding areas allowing the party to avoid battle if they choose.
When a battle is triggered, the party is unable to flee, either having to defeat the enemy or be defeated in battle. During battles, a player party of up to five on-screen characters fight enemies in a themed arena. The player is given five turns per round, with actions selected for up to that many characters per turn. Characters have two types of health: Health Points (HP), which is used for skills and special abilities, and Life Points (LP), which is their underlying health and is lowered if their HP bar drops to zero. If the scenario protagonist runs out of LP, the game ends and must be restarted from the last save. Both HP and LP are fully recovered when the party reaches a town, and can be recovered to varying degrees outside battle by resting for a turn. While HP level can rise, each character's LP level is set from the game's beginning. As in exploration, the Reel system plays a part, with the player's chosen icon on the Reel impacting the type and power of a character's move. The player can choose to have five individual actions, or "Hold" the action so they are chained together to create combination attacks. Combination attacks can be triggered by a single character using multiple skills or attacks in one turn, or multiple characters chaining their attacks together. An attack chain can be broken by enemies if their attack phase comes in the middle of the party's turn.
While characters do not earn experience points in battle, completing missions can increase a character's maximum HP, weapons have unique abilities, and skills are unlocked by equipping different types of items to a character's growth tree at the end of a mission. New weapon techniques can also be learned during battle at random. Weapons have a limited durability, and after a set number of uses will break and become unusable. Durability can be raised by using certain items, or reworking the weapon at the Blacksmith. Magical abilities called Arts are learned by characters with tablet items. If an Art is used in battle, players will be invited to invest points into raising the power of that Art, unlocking an Art's use with a weapon. Withdrawing points from the Art will cause the character to lose their higher abilities. Some character types can use spirits called Familiars, which are element-themed spirits equipped to characters who can perform specific skills.
