Editing SaGa Frontier

''SaGa Frontier'' was developed by the then-Square Production Team 2 (referred to as 2nd Division in the game) with Akitoshi Kawazu as director and producer, Koichi Ishii as planning chief, Kenji Ito as composer, and [[Tomomi Kobayashi]] as illustrator. Square Production Team 2 included Kyoji Koizumi, Miwa Shoda, Kazuko Shibuya, and Minoru Akao among others. Originally, the game entered development as the next entry into the Mana series around the time [[Romancing SaGa 3]] released, but it was ultimately scrapped due to the development team not being able to settle on any particular idea. The game officially began development on January 22nd, 1996, at a development camp at [https://www.le-nessa.com/ Le Nessa Akagawa], located in Izu, Japan. The first three days of the camp were dedicated to building the worlds and the protagonists with only the planning staff, and the final two days were to work on attacks, game data, and game mechanics with the rest of the team. The planning staff consisted of Kawazu (Fuse, Miko-san), Ishii (Emelia), Hiroyuki Kuwata (Red), Akihiko Matsui (T260G), Shoda (Asellus), Yuko Sakamoto (Blue), and Koizumi (Riki, Fuse), with the planner for Lute's scenario being unknown. Each planner created their own original character and region, but they also assisted with the other heroes throughout development.  

Originally, the working title of this game was "Romancing SaGa 4" during early development. It was also referred to as Eternal Romance, Romancing Legend, Legend of SaGa, Legend of World, Eternal Frontier, Emerald Frontier, Dream Frontier, and Frontier SaGa throughout the first six months of development. The game was officially unveiled to the world as SaGa Frontier on August 2nd, 1997, in issue 398 of Weekly Famitsu, with a release date of March, 1997. The game officially entered full production one month before said issue was published. At that point in time, two more heroes' quests were also being developed in addition to the existing seven lead characters. One of them was Fuse, the IRPO agent who may be enlisted as a playable character in the actual release. In his quest, Fuse was supposed to be able to take part in other characters' scenarios, and the ultimate goal of his quest might be determined by what the player did in the course of gameplay. This was dropped around April, 1997, when Kawazu was forced to delay the release of the game to July, 1997. A planned but ultimately scrapped ninth protagonist, referred to as Itako and Miko-san by the development team, was to be the daughter of a channellers family who was going to engage in a controversy with her family members regarding which of them would inherit the property of their former patriarch. This scenario seemed to have been dropped during early development, most likely before November of 1996, due to being too comedic, and was repurposed to be what is now [[Princess Rei]].

Due to time constraints, some plot points of several heroes' stories were removed, the most famous of which belonging to Asellus. During those events, Asellus was supposed to visit Dr. Nusakan's clinic, Bio Research Lab, Lambda Base, and Furdo's Workshop so that she would find her true identity and determine whether she would decide to live as a human being or as a mystic. These quests were also intended to affect her scenario's ending. These quests are still present within the original release of the game, but in a nonfunctional state. Emelia's story was intended to end with a final showdown against [[Joker]] along with three more endings, one of which involved [[Roufas]] turning into Joker. Red's story was intended to have a unique region called Santario, where the Hero Council and other hero characters were located. The majority of Lute's scenario was scrapped towards the end of the game's development, the majority of these events pertaining to [[Nelson]], the [[IRPO]], and [[Trinity]]. Blue's story also had minor plot points pertaining to his history with [[Magic Kingdom]] removed, specifically the region's Nursery.