I tried SaGa after hearing all the praise, but couldn't get into it. Everything seemed confused and without direction. Seriously don't understand why people like it so much.
I'm sure everyone's got their own reasons, but I could summarize most of my feelings as:
1. The combat demands as much if not more strategy in any average fight in the game as a typical Final Fantasy boss fight does. There's none of the "just hit attack for 15 minutes until you get to the end of the dungeon for a fight that finally matters" stuff.
2. That combat itself is pretty fun & ingenious once you figure out how much there is to it. It starts to feel almost like a puzzle game, manipulating the timeline in ways that would be counter-intuitive in another game, setting up chain reactions of things crashing together.
3. It's streamlined. Some might find that lacking, but you don't have to drag yourself around a dungeon backtracking from dead ends before anything of note happens. You don't get constantly interrupted by random battles. You don't have to wander around a town talking to mindless npcs until you find the signpost character that lets you go to the next part.
4. What you see as confused and without direction, is just as easily seen as freedom. You can explore everything or just skip it. There are things in the world which change, strange mysteries that pop up if you do certain locations, but it doesn't do that much to force you down particular alleys.
5. That mystery is another take it or leave it type of thing - it fosters a community figuring everything out, working though the ins & outs of the battle system & weapons & abilities, but I get that some don't want that sort of thing in their single player rpgs.
6. You've got tons of control over your party, builds, etc. You can make anybody any class. You get piles of characters to choose from. You don't even have to use the main character if you don't want to. The game even rewards variation & mixing & matching classes as it unlocks unique abilities through the role system. The levelling up is interesting in that there aren't even (character) levels, just skills and abilities which are improved though use.
7. The stories are kind of refreshing. You can play as a ceramicist who just wants to make her bowls stop coming out weird. You don't have to be the chosen one who is the only person who can slay the dark demondragon but for some reason nobody will lend him any money. There's a decent amount of lore that comes through in the constant vignettes peppered throughout the game. I've found even most of the minor characters likeable, and I've gotten attached to a few of them.
It's not going to be for everyone. It revolves around a whole lot of battling. It's low budget. It's often really hard & punishing.
It's mainly aimed at hardcore jrpg players who like messing around with systems on systems and are looking for something a little off the beaten track. It's clearly the work of an experienced designer, who's taken some of the best elements from games like Final Fantasy V, Chrono Cross, Grandia, and of course past SaGa games and crafted them into something new that works quite well. In that way it's a lot more fluid & enjoyable than other games which aim for the same crowd like Stranger of Sword City.
