it's good
a couple entries are kind of rough for a beginner
not much story, more gameplay oriented and doing your own thing until you have to slap the final boss
A series that doesn't hold your hand. Some entries are easier to know how to progress, other entries you will feel hopelessly lost. Has different growth mechanics compared to other JRPGs with natural growth and learning weapon skills during battles. The entries in which races are unique will have various differing growth mechanics for the different races that stray far away from the traditional filling up experience points and gaining levels.
The games are very love them or hate them. If you expect JRPGs to progress in a certain manner, tug you along to story points, and the mechanics to behave similarly across different games then there will be a lot to irritate you here. For me it's easily my favorite JRPG franchise.
Though, after writing that I think of the earlier SaGa games on the Gameboy and you always know what to do. The mechanics are sometimes obscure, which maybe is the better hallmark of the games, but the game is straightforward. Seems like Romancing SaGa onward is where it gets more obscure.
Though, SaGa Frontier 2 is as linear as possible. I don't know. I'm rambling and can't easily summarize the games I've played in this series.
I honestly hate the hand-holding trope JRPG's and RPG's in general have embraced as of late. It's even infuriating on WRPG's when I get treated like a fricking child without an option to skip.
Really miss the PC98-PS2 era of experimentation.
Go maximum autism like me and complete every character's story with a theme. Riki has 5 monsters, T260-G has 5 robots, Asellus 5 mystics, Blue 5 mages...
SaGa is definitely confusing, but it's not poorly-designed. They aren't really something you can just pick up and just play. You need to invest the effort to actually understand the mechanics.
I've only played a few of them. SF1 was my first. It's a fantastic game with a lot of comfy, but it's not easy to play, difficult depending on who you play and in what order. It is confusing, but it's got charm.
I'm playing Final Fantasy Legends and what's the deal with Mutants just randomly rerolling skills after each battle? Is there a way to influence it or do I just need to just accept that I can't rely on any specific native skills long term? I refuse to savescum on principle so if it's really just random I'll just accept it and adapt as I go.
In Final Fantasy Legend you just have to deal with it. I haven't played the Wonder Swan remake but maybe they have changed how it works there. In the sequel, Final Fantasy Legend II, you can reorder your spell list and the last spell will be the one always rotated out. Not only that but mutants tend to learn and retain much better spells in the sequel as well.
Espers/Mutants in classic SaGa just roll for new esper skills randomly, there's not much to it at all.
If you know what Gamma World is, they're very similar to 1e Gamma World's mutation mechanics, as in you roll for random mutations and deal with what you roll, it's kinda rough but it was the late 80's and that's how things were back then.
Later on in Frontier Espers were reworked into Mystics/Youma, where you don't roll for your three skills anymore, instead you absorb any non human/mystic/mech enemy in one of your three mystic slots and get additional stats and an ability depending on what you absorb and in which slot.
Thanks anons, was playing the gameboy version. Good to know. Sounds like the second one will be a lot easier to deal with. This is my introduction to the series but I'm enjoying it enough that I want to play the rest eventually too
SaGa 2 polishes a lot of stuff from SaGa 1, it also adds Mechs as a playable race so you have even more choices for party building.
It's also the game where Kenji Ito starts composing for the series.
Espers/Mutants in classic SaGa just roll for new esper skills randomly, there's not much to it at all.
If you know what Gamma World is, they're very similar to 1e Gamma World's mutation mechanics, as in you roll for random mutations and deal with what you roll, it's kinda rough but it was the late 80's and that's how things were back then.
Later on in Frontier Espers were reworked into Mystics/Youma, where you don't roll for your three skills anymore, instead you absorb any non human/mystic/mech enemy in one of your three mystic slots and get additional stats and an ability depending on what you absorb and in which slot.
There's only the Wonderswan remake for that, the DS games are SaGa 2 and 3. I can't comment much on any of those remakes since I only played the original Gameboy games.
Yeah I'll be looking up definitive versions to play or emulate for future entries now. I wasn't looking to actually get into the series and didn't know much about it before; just started playing a gameboy game lying around due to needing to travel a lot recently and it seems I've stumbled into a nice long series to enjoy
From what I remember, SaGa was basically created by a guy who loved Ultima 4 but didn't understand English well if at all.
That's probably the best description of SaGa there is. Great series, once you get the hang of it the games are a ton of fun. Frontier is an easy starting point
They're pretty different kinds of games, mechanically speaking they don't really have much in common at all, narrative wise they're kind of similar in the sense that both series tend to be open ended and focused on building worlds, though again Ultima focuses on a single world, Britannia, while every SaGa game creates new ones, so this is where similarities end.
SaGa games also progressively shift to defined main characters, unlike Ultima where the Avatar is still a sorta fully customizable insert for the player, so again, there's not really much in common between the two even though once you play the games you can see what he was trying to do with RS1's multiple main characters when it comes to the U4 roots.
U4/5 are still good classic games despite their age, as long as you can deal with some jank and a couple of balance issues, playing U4/5 will give you greater insight in the Romancing games in particular, the first one especially since again, a lot of it is a direct homage or elaboration to things from those two particular games, it will also let you understand some specific design decisions he chose for FF2, such as the password system.
Kawazu's most influenced by Ultima 4 and Hack/NetHack when it comes to videogame design, but he considers himself a tabletop RPG player first and foremost, so the other things that shaped his tastes are 1e D&D/AD&D, Dragonlance and specifically the Mentzer/BECMI school of design, and Avalon Hill historical wargames and RPGs.
Here's some interesting links if you wanna read/listen more to Kawazu himself talking about his design choices and development history
It's kinda divisive because it uses RS3's Commnader mode as its gameplay basis and streamlines a lot of things, sometimes not a in a good way, and has some odd decisions here and there and a couple of big issues like most of the other games.
Most people dislike the main character and story bits, so I guess that might be your problem as well, it's still a solid game though, if you played the SaGa games you'll have fun looking at all the references and meta jokes like a certain bunch of bosses.
Not being able to explicitly choose what your unions do can be annoying, especially if you need healing. They have to built a particular way, with certain commanders and types of units. Even then, getting the correct commands to pop up can be a bit of a lucky draw.
Still, I managed to play through it and finish it, and my butthole is still puckered 3 years later.
I started with RS3, didn't enjoy it much. I expected storyline variations of every quest for each character, but what I found was quests that ended suddenly without being satisfying, felt lost, didn't had fun with char building and combat.
Then I played Scarlet Grace, it made the combat fun for me, the story was a clearer, but I got tired of only combat after combat.
Tried RS3 again, I'm having a blast, now I understand the mechanics, it's fun to build my characters, to fight and explore dungeons, to learn about the world, understand that the storytelling is simple but still enough to build a little world, looking forward for more SaGa games, especially the Minstrel Song remake.
If you want entries where the personal quests are more important you should play Frontier.
RS3 is more like RS1/Minstrel Song where the personal quests are just optional side stuff you do or not while doing everything else, in Frontier the personal quests are the main quest for each main character and everything else is side stuff, you'd probably enjoy it a lot.
I think R. Saga 3 is the most underwhelming entry in the series. Takes out everything that made R. Saga 2 innovative and fun, and reduces it to a rather bog standard SNES rpg with random ass quest triggers. End-game is just a glorified boss rush/grind area.
saga frontiers are great, scarlet grace is great, rsaga 2 is great, etc etc
You could've said RS2, but you had to be a special snowflake and shorten Romancing to R. You're a fricking israelite.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I'm not even that guy you moron
2 years ago
Anonymous
R. Saga.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Hi. I don't post in these threads, I just scanned through it and responded to that one post. I don't give a fig what you think about how I shorten game names.
Don't really agree as much as it's on the lower end of the list for me.
RS3 isn't bog standard at all, it's mostly just a retread of RS1 which is not a common formula at all, its actual issues are the godawful mechanical balance for a lot of things, from enemy design, to the terrible monster family type BR, the awful implementation of ER being tied to the MC's HP pool, the sin of creating what will later become rare hunts in other games on top of doing it in the worst possible way, there's a lot that went wrong despite the good intentions.
But it's not that bad, it did polish many things RS2 introduced, like making the Master system a lot less clunky, nerfing a lot of things that needed to be nerfed like Afterimage Blade, Hasten Time etc., having a creative although rather broken alternate fighting configuration, and some great dungeons and questlines despite being less reactive than RS2, it has as many strong points as weak points, and as flawed as it is it's still better than SNES RS1, SaGa 3 and Frontier 2 as a whole.
now that's a nice substantive post. I would agree its better than saga3.
Don't really agree as much as it's on the lower end of the list for me.
RS3 isn't bog standard at all, it's mostly just a retread of RS1 which is not a common formula at all, its actual issues are the godawful mechanical balance for a lot of things, from enemy design, to the terrible monster family type BR, the awful implementation of ER being tied to the MC's HP pool, the sin of creating what will later become rare hunts in other games on top of doing it in the worst possible way, there's a lot that went wrong despite the good intentions.
But it's not that bad, it did polish many things RS2 introduced, like making the Master system a lot less clunky, nerfing a lot of things that needed to be nerfed like Afterimage Blade, Hasten Time etc., having a creative although rather broken alternate fighting configuration, and some great dungeons and questlines despite being less reactive than RS2, it has as many strong points as weak points, and as flawed as it is it's still better than SNES RS1, SaGa 3 and Frontier 2 as a whole.
Hardly downhill. RS3 is great, SF is back to form with different racial growth mechanics and seven different routes. The Romancing SaGa remake is phenomenal, and the battle mechanics and what goes into them in SaGa Scarlet Grace is awesome. The first two SaGa games are also excellent games to play on a whim due to how short they are and you can choose your party among 3/4 races that develop differently.
god damn humans are so rad in the gameboy games
I wish the remakes would get some updated versions so I didn't have to emulate the DS and look at all the jaggies
RS2 has the best and most complex campaign in the series until Scarlet Grace came up and somehow beat it, but it doesn't offer things other entries do, like multiple protagonists with divergent stories, and honestly the overall balance is really messy, things like Rapid Stream, Mist Cover or first gen Quicktime are the rough equivalent of Ultima 5's Magic Axes in that they're wildly overpowered and ruin an otherwise really good system.
Mechanics wise I also don't like how it still uses experience points, or the weird WP/JP growth factor being tied to proficiencies, enemy design is also so so compared to later games, a lot of enemies are too simple and the BR progression is very uneven with a sudden, massive spike in the very last ranks after many tiers of easy enemies.
Can't say the series has ever gone downhill since every game offers different things, even Scarlet Grace with all its issues manages to blow the previous games out of the water when it comes to certain things
There's no multiple main characters, it's a generation game instead where you play with many, many different characters until a last generation of characters, similar to SaGa Frontier 2, it also has a soft class system and as a result 99% of the cast is made up of generics, even though each non starter class has a whole quest dedicated to it and a couple of "posterboys/girls" to it to make it stand out.
The campaign has a lot of reactivity to it, like Scarlet Grace, and is very open, but slightly more guided than RS3, there are many quest options that are not just not immediately evident, but can also be locked behind your current emperor's class and gender, this means you're rewarded for experimenting with different classes, especially because nearly all the recruitables can also create new formations in the dojo.
Unlike the other games and most RPGs around, the game doesn't end if your party wipes, outside of when you play as Leon and the last generation of emperors, instead you'll be prompted to make a new party whenever you wipe or your emperor dies in battle.
Other than that it's mechanically similar to RS3, with some differences here and there, a bit less polished in some things but also a bit more complex in other things.
As for tips: >After you get to Gerard's generation sit on your throne often as you'll get prompts from your ministers to do various stuff, namely building facilities in avalon, this is crucial, do it every time you get a generation change just to be sure you're not missing anything >Don't stick to one class for your emperor, always choose different classes and speak to the formation captain so you learn new formations >Save your state coffers for building facilities rather than just investing in your blacksmiths >BR rises every time you TRIGGER a fight in this game so make sure to not run away too much or enemies will start to outrun you >Magic is seriously OP
And try not to use guides of course
The general structure and narrative is very unique, since it's a generational game where YOU are the Empire, and the emperor at that, trying to keep order around and save the world.
Outside of being very rich mechanically it is also rich in reactivity, especially for its time, with all quests having different ways to be completed and many different flags for event routes, which make the world feel very alive since even the order in which you do things matters.
Lastly, the music is fantastic and the main villains are particularly iconic and compelling, but really the quality of the campaign is where RS2 buries most of the other entries, the following games are a lot more mechanically polished, look better, have richer soundtracks etc. but RS2's campaign is just incredible in terms of depth.
Pro:
Very unique premise. You aren't some kid whose village got burned down, you're a legendary warrior (the game literally begins with a bard singing the tale of your deeds, this is some Ace Combat Zero levels of bad-ass) uniting an empire and fighting corrupted heroes.
Magic actually feels powerful instead of just being Nuke1, Nuke2, Heal1, HealAll, etc.
Total party wipes are not the end, but rather an opportunity to change your strategy.
Lots of different ways to tackle the big baddies which encourage out of the box thinking.
You upgrade your gear by exploring and researching instead of getting better stuff at the weapon shop in each new town.
Con:
A lot of stuff that is vital to progression (like, say, the magic research lab) is hard to figure out without a guide.
Bare bones storytelling (I consider this a plus, most RPGs nowadays are too chatty, but this is what people might criticize the game for)
I really like this game and I'm glad it was brought to the West.
Im coming off of octopath traveler which saga entry should I try out? Any other JRPGs worth looking into? Looking for stuff with great 2D art. 3D is ok as long as theirs great gameplay.
>Im coming off of octopath traveler which saga entry should I try out?
RS3 if you want something similar but actually good, SaGa Frontier if you want something more crazy
Eh, Octopath is something of a FF5 meets Romancing SaGa hybrid but it leans much more on the former than the latter, mechanically they share nothing at all outside of the same premise of having multiple main characters, but in SaGa those actually matter.
The character building and battle mechanics are wholly different, Octopath has an orthodox level based job system, SaGa games use freeform learn by doing systems which might or might not include soft classes, races etc.
Story wise you'll see some similarities with the first Romancing SaGa but overall, the narrative style is still very different, as Octopath is character driven while SaGa is more about the worldbuilding.
You might enjoy Octopath but not enjoy SaGa because outside of surface level similarities they're really nothing alike, you might wanna try out Romancing SaGa 3 or Frontier and see if they click with you at some point.
You'd have to find which one is the best for you. People have their favorites due to varying reasons. The two easiest entries to get into would be SaGa Frontier and Romancing SaGa 3. The first two Gameboy games are good as well and short, but they are very linear.
The games are all very different so it's more of a personal thing.
It's not a series that strictly builds upon itself with each title, every game goes in different directions, some are linear dungeon crawling romps like the Gameboy trilogy, the Romancing games are all different elaborations of Ultima style RPGs with free progression and a more sandboxy structure, Unlimited and Scarlet Grace are more or less virtual tabletop games etc., you gotta find the one you personally enjoy the most.
As for the ones that are better suited for beginners, it also depends, if you're somebody used to the medium and aren't afraid to dip your toes in something on the experimental side then you can start with any of the games, there's no continuity to worry about either, if you want to start with something on the easier side in terms of mechanics, design or difficulty, RS3 or Frontier are usually considered the best entry points, the Gameboy games are as well but they're also much older and much more archaic so unless we're talking about the DS remakes of SaGa 2 and 3, they're not really representative of what the series became outside of having really basic implementations of core mechanics that still exist to this day.
MQ "We have a greatly simplified overworld for ease of travel."
SaGa "Yeah we do that too."
MQ "And visible enemies on the field."
SaGa "Yeah, us too. It's an important aspect of the game"
MQ "You can also save whenever you want."
SaGa "Oh? Same here."
MQ "And you can carry multiple weapons and spells into battle."
SaGa "Awesome, we've done that for a long time too."
MQ "The story is also straightforward, but has high stakes."
SaGa "Oh yeah, we often have battles where the fate of the universe hangs in the balance."
MQ "To give you a fighting chance at the lategame we give you Phoebe."
SaGa "Ah yes, we did that with Goddess Isis in our second game. You'll need her."
MQ "Our final boss is a bit of a bastard too."
SaGa "We're notorious for our final bosses, except that one incident with a chainsaw. It was worse than your Cure bug."
MQ "It's so good that we're both great choices as an entry level JRPG!"
SaGa "Yeah w- hold on what?"
MQ's core team was also the team that developed the original SaGa 3 on GB, it's not surprising they share many similarities, Ide and Fujioka were behind both of those games after all so MQ does have some SaGa DNA.
Well, it still did reuse some of the ideas from the previous two games, while it's true that it's not really a SaGa game it's easy to see how Ide and Fujioka grabbed some elements they liked from the SaGa games and reused them in MQ.
Chainsaw was meant to kill things with less strength than you but it instead killed things stronger than you. MQ Cure uses a formula based on the target's max HP that when used by Benjamin causes it to overflow into damage, but when used by Phoebe it does so much healing it overflows TWICE.
The bug actually got acknowledged in Re;Universe where Creator states he remembers being chopped up by a chainsaw.
No need to look for Re:U, they already did say they were keeping the bug for the Wonderswan remaster because it was such an iconic and beloved bug, kinda how they also kept the Coppelia bug in RS2 among some others and even gave an achievement for triggering them.
Outside of his top hat version, Kami's downed state sprites in Re:U are also cut in twice in reference to the chainsaw bug, and Human Male's Chainsaw skill causes critical damage to God type enemies in that game too.
Is it normal to feel that some quests have no closure in Romancing Saga 3? For example, the war between Stanley and Faros, or Robin's quest, barely any dialogue mention what happened.
Minstrel Saga is fairly tight about it as 90% of quests are results of the same group of villains fricking things up. It's a very good game, I just beat it for the first time a few weeks back. Took me a few two-three hour tries before it clicked, did Claudia til it opened up but got bored, then did Hawke for four hours but lost the save, then started Aisha and plowed right through.
I love Minstrel Song, but there are quest lines that go on for a LONG time and you can miss them. That was fine for me because I played through Minstrel Song immediately after I beat it and was amazed about the things I missed on my initial play through. I also don't play the same RPG back to back after beating it.
All SaGa are like that, there's not a lot of stuff you hear from NPCs after you complete quests, their narrative purpose is usually different.
The war between Faros and Stanley is more of a worldbuilding thing regarding Ludwig, though it is one of those cases when NPC dialogues do change depending on who you side with and whether you win or not, Robin's quest is more about building up Dophore as the big bad when it comes to the commerce quest related to Fullbright, so the player does see how corrupt and scrupleless Dophore is through facts rather than just hearsay.
RS2 was the same for most of its quests, most NPCs do not have new comments after you're done with the quests in their regions, nobody in Nuono acknowledges what went on with Gallon if you complete that quest, the amazoness never return to Eirunep even if you defeat Rocbouquet there, most of the time the narrative is more about offering context about the world rather than a closure.
Sorry about that, it's 1 AM over here and I had a long day.
Also I want to add another small thing, to me the issue RS3 has in terms of narrative is that certain things are spotty compared to other games, it's kind of the same issue SaGa Frontier 2 has, there's some characters who just don't live up to the hype or suddenly just stop existing.
You hear so much about Ludwig throughout the game but he doesn't really appear or do much of anything despite being a pretty important figure in the world, considering he's Khalid's former buddy, the one who ousted the Claudius family and the current ruler of Messina it's kinda bad that he doesn't really do much in person, I was hoping for the remaster to fix that but they just added insult to injury with that flashback with Khalid and yet he of all people doesn't get to settle things with Ludwig when you play as him.
It's a waste really, maybe one day a Minstrel Song tier remake will fix that, but it sure as hell won't have Kawazu behind it and that pisses me off.
I believe there is one for RS1, but play at your own risk for that one. Nothing compelled for RS2 outside of possibly a few menus. RS3 is complete, but the translation isn't good. The two remasters and the remake would be the best way to go.
I never trust people who say this, especially about SNES JRPGs that tend to have notoriously bad remakes with awful clashing styles and fonts (looking briefly at the Steam version of RS2, it doesn't look like an exception to the rule).
Nope, he's right. RS1 is shit and an inferior game to Minstrel Song in every way, RS2 has an annoying drop bug that was fixed in the remaster and no fan translation, RS3 has a machine tier translation.
You don't even know what you're talking about when it comes to Minstrel Song. I won't even tell you how you're wrong because it'll be spoon feeding you on something you're ignorant about.
Seems like pretentious EOP cope to me, especially considering how a lot of original games were also guilty of having clashing styles and terrible fonts to begin with.
It's not like RS2 was ever a looker anyway, so the remaster was nothing but a net gain considering how they kept all the good sprites for characters, battle effects and enemies and did away with the background tilesets and menu, shame about the 30FPS lock but I'd never go back to the buggy original just because it's 60FPS, RS3 might be more of a fringe case because the original was a looker but the remaster is competently done and with a couple of really nice additions outside of again, the 30FPS lock which is the only objective drawback.
>It's not like RS2 was ever a looker anyway
That's true. I wouldn't mind playing it as it's original form but I'll admit a lot of early 16 bit JRPGs were lacking in the visuals department. I'm playing Phantasy Star II right now and the town, over world, and dungeon tile sets are very lacking. Same with Final Fantasy IV. I believe most people just don't care about clashing styles too much, mostly purists which are few and far between. Personally I don't mind the redone backgrounds with the original sprites, especially since the original enemy sprites always looked good.
phantasy star always compensated for it's boring dungeons and overworld with eccentric music and anime stills
2 years ago
Anonymous
The monsters in PSII look great as well, detailed and animated.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Phantasy Star 1 enemies look fantastic as well, especially when you compare them with the competition at the time easily the best looking console RPG back then
Breath of Fire had some great enemy and character graphics. III and IV were wonderful, with the original and second game being okay if you don't mind a lot of QoL lacking in places.
>I'm playing Phantasy Star II right now and the town, over world, and dungeon tile sets are very lacking. Same with Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy IV looked fantastic for 1991.
It's not that long. There's all sorts of hidden ranges and geometry that effect attacks in SaGa games changing where they can target and how fast/what order they come out. Spears do have skills that can hit the back row but you need to learn them first. Axes and Bows can do it much sooner. Or just use magic to hit whatever you want.
That's the transformed form of the Bilqis from Minstrel Song when you use the Fury/Wrath of Bel'kwinith tech, which was already a homage to the chainsaw in that it has a chance to instakill things, so it's a triple cross reference.
Now that I think about I'm sure there's also an entry in the Melvir Library that also references the chainsaw glitch.
The only SaGa game I've played was RS3 and I didn't finish it (killed one of the demon lords). I enjoyed what I played but my favorite part was the business system. Are there any other games in the series that have a system like that? It doesn't have to be exactly the same.
RS3 is the only game with minigames so no.
There are various economy submechanics in most other games though, like gold exchange rate in Frontier, market ranks in Minstrel Song or really just the basic economy meta in that game or Unlimited, which is really satisfying to get down.
A crucial part of efficient progression in Minstrel Song is investing money in the trade companies that deal with the goods you need, the more money you spend by buying goods from a certain company, the higher their market ranks and the better goods they'll sell, coupled with how the game handles money in general it makes for a pretty tight but straightforward economy system you rarely see in the genre.
RS3 is the only game with minigames so no.
There are various economy submechanics in most other games though, like gold exchange rate in Frontier, market ranks in Minstrel Song or really just the basic economy meta in that game or Unlimited, which is really satisfying to get down.
A crucial part of efficient progression in Minstrel Song is investing money in the trade companies that deal with the goods you need, the more money you spend by buying goods from a certain company, the higher their market ranks and the better goods they'll sell, coupled with how the game handles money in general it makes for a pretty tight but straightforward economy system you rarely see in the genre.
I never got how the business minigame worked. I kinda wish they actually went with their original concept where you could beat the game through the minigames. A businessman saving the world by doing business is a cool idea.
You headhunt related companies to spark the larger groups they belong to so you can win on action economy and money by using them then you boost your action speed and spam the action that reduces the chance of an individual company going bust until they're safe to use. It's a lot simpler than it seems.
You headhunt related companies to spark the larger groups they belong to so you can win on action economy and money by using them then you boost your action speed and spam the action that reduces the chance of an individual company going bust until they're safe to use. It's a lot simpler than it seems.
was exactly saying but I feel like I winged it. I overwhelmed the smaller companies with the money I had so that I could buy them out and used whatever actions I had to delay the opponent from funding those companies somehow (mechanics are never clear). Then there's some weird synergy bonus with the companies I happened to get which netted me more money and that let me snowball through eventually getting everything.
There's also some mechanic for material supply that I'm sure is supposed to contribute to combinations of companies producing more money or something but I never really figured it out. I'm sure that's the point of the game where you know nothing but you suss out whatever you can to get ahead.
Basically companies that are within related groups of companies(like the jungle ones) can randomly spark the larger group they belong to when used for capital. There's also a bonus for companies that are related to the company that's currently being traded for: a porcelain company will give out more money when you're trying to purchase more porcelain related companies, for instance.
>playing scarlet grace and on urpina's campaign >Very cute girl with swords >For some reason brain goes full moron and make her a mage and want to learn every spell with her despite her int not being that high
Every time, first it was making red a Kamen rider mage and now this. That aside, is it just me or do enemies hit extra hard across the board in this game? Not even shit like Kurt's surprise gauntlet boss enemies in unlimited gave me that much of an issue
Things hit harder in Scarlet Grace because of the new battle meta, it's quite different from the rest of the series, on the other hand AoE healing is quite strong and kind of on demand if you know what you're doing so it's not quite as frightening as it looks, once you start getting into the rhythm and understand how to plan ahead it becomes just as manageable as the rest of the games, despite the higher lethality.
Also Urpina is not completely hopeless as a mage if you get the right constellation from the quiz, she's still pretty meh but she's no Leonard at least, he's the one that's completely unsalvageable as a mage.
>she's still pretty meh but she's no Leonard at least, he's the one that's completely unsalvageable as a mage.
Leonard can BP loop as well as anyone using Hyper Gravity and has easy access to Earth Heal, and his high strength and acuity means he actually does very good damage with the staff techniques that there are. He also has much greater resilience than any actually dedicated mage character.
There basically aren't any characters in SG that are bad at magic because magic itself is too OP.
Scarlet Grace has a really weird scaling where it's designed to landlock you somewhere with a boss fight and only one repeatable cave or something with monsters, and then you'll be forced to train your party in one location to make up the difference, but if you keep doing this you'll actually pass the battle rank and become stronger than it. You can grind in SG but if you have the option you really shouldn't. Continuously fighting in different locations only makes the game more fun (hard) but you can always fix it by hunkering down on some specific battle.
Learning this almost ruined my enjoyment of the game but I got over it.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/07/switch-listing-for-classic-square-rpg-saga-frontier-2-surfaces-online >Frontier II Remastered is slated for late August
SaGabros, we're eating good next month!
It was the only one announced. Makes me wonder if they straight up didn't touch SaGa Frontier 2's graphics at all. I highly doubt they have any of their old work left to do high quality scans of the backgrounds, and you can't simply just AI scale it neatly. Could be wide screen plus speed up.
Caves of Qud, mutants and true kin use different progression systems, think Espers VS SaGa 3 Cyborgs, you roll for physical/mental mutations on the former every 4 levels or so while the latter has to hunt for cyber augs and credits to install them in their body and run off those, additionally many consumables have different effects depending on the race, it's a more direct vut slightly tweaked adaptation of 1E Gamma World, which was partly what inspired the GB SaGa trilogy in terms of mechanics and races.
Some content that was originally cut from Asellus's route and the entire Fuse storyline which is a lot of fun, along with some QoL stuff like story logs
It's similar in the sense that RS3 reused the idea that RS1 first used, giving you a sandbox world with a main quest and different main characters with their own quirks and unique content in it, Minstrel Song has the advantage of having several different games behind it so it's obviously a lot better in most regards when it comes to mechanics and content.
On the other hand its systems are pretty different from RS3, there's no minigames either and the Shitennou trope is also different from RS3, I like it more than RS3 but in some ways it's also a fair bit more "vanilla" than RS3, where you have crazy shit like Nacht Zweiger, Vanguard and cool non human party members, RS1/Minstrel Song only has Guella-Ha and two other "secret" characters I won't spoiler, as much as I like the overall cast and MCs more than RS3 it's not as varied. It's easily the best Dragonlance game ever made though and one of the overall peaks of the series, mechanically, writing wise and in terms of music.
No, RS2 is completely unique in that regard and it's a part of why I like it the best.
I just wish you didn't have to run around your castle every time to recruit party members. They really should've made it into a menu you get by sitting on your throne.
>I just wish you didn't have to run around your castle every time to recruit party members.
That's what killed it for me. Having to spend 15 minutes to rebuild the same exact party over and over is mind-numbing.
There's nothing wrong with save scumming every once in a while, but I'd make it a rule of thumb to not always reload since new formations are added when you select a certain successor, as well as new sparked moves to the dojo.
Is this the official SaGa thread? I kneel before all Scarlet Grace anons. I played Romancing 2+3, Frontier, SaGa 1+2 and Last Remnant before, and the battle system in Scarlet Grace is easily the best of them all. It especially makes simple fights where just want to spark something way more fun, instead of spamming the move that is most likely to spark something over and over you now need to go with the flow of the battle, which makes sparks feel way more random and way more rewarding.
>instead of spamming the move that is most likely to spark something over and over
But you do exactly that for Scarlet Grace, arguably even more so than the previous games considering the sparking submechanics that kind of encourage things like Dimensional Cut cheese, or the fact that the new tech tree forces you to use only certain techs to learn new ones, unlike the other games where you'd get a bonus to learning rate and no malus to learning rates either.
You don't know true pain until a SG character learns two of the three possible forks for a tech and you're left with a minuscule chance to learn another base tech that you need to learn something else, it's especially bad for martial artists since the learning trees are fully linear, good luck learning any grapple on somebody who learn Sliding and Chop before getting Tumble, the previous games didn't have this issue.
Even if you ignore how the modern designs of the seven heroes are wuxia flavoured, SaGa 2's main lore element was about cultivators fricking people over and that was 30 years ago from now, and Kawazu never hid that Dragonlance was his favorite D&D setting, even FF2 is quite literally just a Dragonlance module down to having guest party members, dragon knights and magical flying castles.
He needs to get off his ass and finally make a Lankhmar inspired SaGa that takes place in a single massive city, kinda like Dragon Age 2 but actually good.
Wait until the ending, that's when the salty water will start rushing out of your eyes. Make sure to check Viktor's room if you haven't already, and the village of the ancients too of course.
It kind of varies wildly from being very satisfying and hard right at the start to being ridiculously easy to being absurdly hard right at the end of the post game content
it's extremely difficult to manage to get the firebringer to actually be a great and satisfying fight after the first playthrough unless you fight the true firebringer which is a huge investment of time and strategy, though honestly it is one of the best fights I've ever had in a turn based game
A great game severely hurt by lack of budget, thus unable to realize a lot of its potential, I honestly dislike a lot of the mechanics but I still played the shit out of it because what's there is that well done.
Everything about Firebringer alone is absolutely fantastic, especially if you come from the previous games and get all the metanarrative.
>especially if you come from the previous games and get all the metanarrative.
I've played a lot of the previous games, is there a quick run down on what you mean?
There's a shitload of references to the previous games including a stealthy FF2 reference, you can play without knowing and still be fine because the game is overall well written, but if you do catch the references here and there you'll enjoy it a lot more, Firebringer is special because 90% of his moveset is iconic player spells or techs from the previous games including some of the cheesiest ones
Yeah, they're overall the best versions of the games, the only notable advantage other versions have is that you can use cross save files between the Vita and PS4.
PC is the way to go for this series nowadays.
I've only played Romancing. Good skill system. Bad everything else.
Edit: It might have been Unlimited. It was one of the PS2 ones.
it's good
a couple entries are kind of rough for a beginner
not much story, more gameplay oriented and doing your own thing until you have to slap the final boss
A series that doesn't hold your hand. Some entries are easier to know how to progress, other entries you will feel hopelessly lost. Has different growth mechanics compared to other JRPGs with natural growth and learning weapon skills during battles. The entries in which races are unique will have various differing growth mechanics for the different races that stray far away from the traditional filling up experience points and gaining levels.
The games are very love them or hate them. If you expect JRPGs to progress in a certain manner, tug you along to story points, and the mechanics to behave similarly across different games then there will be a lot to irritate you here. For me it's easily my favorite JRPG franchise.
Seems that the biggest indicator of whether you'll like them is how comfortable you are with not understanding what to do.
Though, after writing that I think of the earlier SaGa games on the Gameboy and you always know what to do. The mechanics are sometimes obscure, which maybe is the better hallmark of the games, but the game is straightforward. Seems like Romancing SaGa onward is where it gets more obscure.
Though, SaGa Frontier 2 is as linear as possible. I don't know. I'm rambling and can't easily summarize the games I've played in this series.
SF2 is linear, but hard as nails and difficult to understand with all sorts of arcane mechanics under the hood.
SF2 is linear but I also bricked my save as a kid by locking myself into a situation where I didn't have enough LP or stats to beat the egg
I honestly hate the hand-holding trope JRPG's and RPG's in general have embraced as of late. It's even infuriating on WRPG's when I get treated like a fricking child without an option to skip.
Really miss the PC98-PS2 era of experimentation.
>5 monsters
Huh, that's something for me to try out next time I play
Go maximum autism like me and complete every character's story with a theme. Riki has 5 monsters, T260-G has 5 robots, Asellus 5 mystics, Blue 5 mages...
>A series that doesn't hold your hand
Whenever someone says this it's usually just to excuse something being poorly designed and confusing
SaGa is definitely confusing, but it's not poorly-designed. They aren't really something you can just pick up and just play. You need to invest the effort to actually understand the mechanics.
I've only played a few of them. SF1 was my first. It's a fantastic game with a lot of comfy, but it's not easy to play, difficult depending on who you play and in what order. It is confusing, but it's got charm.
>activate this mission early
>make it to boss
>kill him
>holy shit
>wait no
>he's transforming
>wipes me out with ease
Love this game
Salsa
I'm playing Final Fantasy Legends and what's the deal with Mutants just randomly rerolling skills after each battle? Is there a way to influence it or do I just need to just accept that I can't rely on any specific native skills long term? I refuse to savescum on principle so if it's really just random I'll just accept it and adapt as I go.
In Final Fantasy Legend you just have to deal with it. I haven't played the Wonder Swan remake but maybe they have changed how it works there. In the sequel, Final Fantasy Legend II, you can reorder your spell list and the last spell will be the one always rotated out. Not only that but mutants tend to learn and retain much better spells in the sequel as well.
Thanks anons, was playing the gameboy version. Good to know. Sounds like the second one will be a lot easier to deal with. This is my introduction to the series but I'm enjoying it enough that I want to play the rest eventually too
SaGa 2 polishes a lot of stuff from SaGa 1, it also adds Mechs as a playable race so you have even more choices for party building.
It's also the game where Kenji Ito starts composing for the series.
>It's also the game where Kenji Ito starts composing for the series.
Bleh
It's ludo
Espers/Mutants in classic SaGa just roll for new esper skills randomly, there's not much to it at all.
If you know what Gamma World is, they're very similar to 1e Gamma World's mutation mechanics, as in you roll for random mutations and deal with what you roll, it's kinda rough but it was the late 80's and that's how things were back then.
Later on in Frontier Espers were reworked into Mystics/Youma, where you don't roll for your three skills anymore, instead you absorb any non human/mystic/mech enemy in one of your three mystic slots and get additional stats and an ability depending on what you absorb and in which slot.
Shoulda played the fan translated DS version.
There's only the Wonderswan remake for that, the DS games are SaGa 2 and 3. I can't comment much on any of those remakes since I only played the original Gameboy games.
Yeah I'll be looking up definitive versions to play or emulate for future entries now. I wasn't looking to actually get into the series and didn't know much about it before; just started playing a gameboy game lying around due to needing to travel a lot recently and it seems I've stumbled into a nice long series to enjoy
From what I remember, SaGa was basically created by a guy who loved Ultima 4 but didn't understand English well if at all.
That's probably the best description of SaGa there is. Great series, once you get the hang of it the games are a ton of fun. Frontier is an easy starting point
I thought it was created by the director of FF2 to flesh out the gameplay
Yes it is by Akitoshi Kawazu. He also stated that Ultima IV did inspire him as well in an interview.
rs1 is probably the game that comes the closest to feeling like u4
It's a pretty explicit homage to U4/5
Will I like Ultima 4 if I like SaGa games?
They're pretty different kinds of games, mechanically speaking they don't really have much in common at all, narrative wise they're kind of similar in the sense that both series tend to be open ended and focused on building worlds, though again Ultima focuses on a single world, Britannia, while every SaGa game creates new ones, so this is where similarities end.
SaGa games also progressively shift to defined main characters, unlike Ultima where the Avatar is still a sorta fully customizable insert for the player, so again, there's not really much in common between the two even though once you play the games you can see what he was trying to do with RS1's multiple main characters when it comes to the U4 roots.
U4/5 are still good classic games despite their age, as long as you can deal with some jank and a couple of balance issues, playing U4/5 will give you greater insight in the Romancing games in particular, the first one especially since again, a lot of it is a direct homage or elaboration to things from those two particular games, it will also let you understand some specific design decisions he chose for FF2, such as the password system.
Kawazu's most influenced by Ultima 4 and Hack/NetHack when it comes to videogame design, but he considers himself a tabletop RPG player first and foremost, so the other things that shaped his tastes are 1e D&D/AD&D, Dragonlance and specifically the Mentzer/BECMI school of design, and Avalon Hill historical wargames and RPGs.
Here's some interesting links if you wanna read/listen more to Kawazu himself talking about his design choices and development history
https://web.archive.org/web/20190819184025/https://retronauts.com/article/670/akitoshi-kawazu-on-the-reasoning-behind-sagas-insanity
https://twitter.com/SquareEnix/status/1339013074934624257
https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2017/12/14/akitoshi-kawazu-on-his-journey-from-the-final-fantasy-games-to-the-saga-series/?sh=5313c79d51c6
sagagay strikes again
who cares he's harmless. as far as fandoms on here go having him as our village autist is getting off lucky imo
Hipster series for contrarians 'too cool' to shill Dragon Quest
the new cool namedrop for contrarians
SoYa
As a SaGa fan, will i like this?
It's kinda divisive because it uses RS3's Commnader mode as its gameplay basis and streamlines a lot of things, sometimes not a in a good way, and has some odd decisions here and there and a couple of big issues like most of the other games.
Most people dislike the main character and story bits, so I guess that might be your problem as well, it's still a solid game though, if you played the SaGa games you'll have fun looking at all the references and meta jokes like a certain bunch of bosses.
>Most people dislike the main character
you just don't understand the imperator grindset
I've seen people call it SaGa 4, if you want something more like the rest of the series Alliance Alive is great.
Not being able to explicitly choose what your unions do can be annoying, especially if you need healing. They have to built a particular way, with certain commanders and types of units. Even then, getting the correct commands to pop up can be a bit of a lucky draw.
Still, I managed to play through it and finish it, and my butthole is still puckered 3 years later.
I started with RS3, didn't enjoy it much. I expected storyline variations of every quest for each character, but what I found was quests that ended suddenly without being satisfying, felt lost, didn't had fun with char building and combat.
Then I played Scarlet Grace, it made the combat fun for me, the story was a clearer, but I got tired of only combat after combat.
Tried RS3 again, I'm having a blast, now I understand the mechanics, it's fun to build my characters, to fight and explore dungeons, to learn about the world, understand that the storytelling is simple but still enough to build a little world, looking forward for more SaGa games, especially the Minstrel Song remake.
If you want entries where the personal quests are more important you should play Frontier.
RS3 is more like RS1/Minstrel Song where the personal quests are just optional side stuff you do or not while doing everything else, in Frontier the personal quests are the main quest for each main character and everything else is side stuff, you'd probably enjoy it a lot.
It's takes awhile before the games "click" with a player.
I think R. Saga 3 is the most underwhelming entry in the series. Takes out everything that made R. Saga 2 innovative and fun, and reduces it to a rather bog standard SNES rpg with random ass quest triggers. End-game is just a glorified boss rush/grind area.
saga frontiers are great, scarlet grace is great, rsaga 2 is great, etc etc
>R. Saga
Glad I'm not a part of this fandom. You're all mentally ill.
Are you okay?
Don't feed the trolls, you know they're just here to shitpost
You could've said RS2, but you had to be a special snowflake and shorten Romancing to R. You're a fricking israelite.
I'm not even that guy you moron
R. Saga.
Hi. I don't post in these threads, I just scanned through it and responded to that one post. I don't give a fig what you think about how I shorten game names.
now that's a nice substantive post. I would agree its better than saga3.
Don't really agree as much as it's on the lower end of the list for me.
RS3 isn't bog standard at all, it's mostly just a retread of RS1 which is not a common formula at all, its actual issues are the godawful mechanical balance for a lot of things, from enemy design, to the terrible monster family type BR, the awful implementation of ER being tied to the MC's HP pool, the sin of creating what will later become rare hunts in other games on top of doing it in the worst possible way, there's a lot that went wrong despite the good intentions.
But it's not that bad, it did polish many things RS2 introduced, like making the Master system a lot less clunky, nerfing a lot of things that needed to be nerfed like Afterimage Blade, Hasten Time etc., having a creative although rather broken alternate fighting configuration, and some great dungeons and questlines despite being less reactive than RS2, it has as many strong points as weak points, and as flawed as it is it's still better than SNES RS1, SaGa 3 and Frontier 2 as a whole.
Bro, you don't know shit about R. Saga.
RS3 is still good but you're right that it's worse than RS2.
The only good game in the series. It's been downhill ever since.
I'll concede the other SaGa games aren't better than RS2, but they are still great. Give them a try.
I'm just gonna say that I really really like SaGa Frontier and Unlimited SaGa and leave it at that
Hardly downhill. RS3 is great, SF is back to form with different racial growth mechanics and seven different routes. The Romancing SaGa remake is phenomenal, and the battle mechanics and what goes into them in SaGa Scarlet Grace is awesome. The first two SaGa games are also excellent games to play on a whim due to how short they are and you can choose your party among 3/4 races that develop differently.
god damn humans are so rad in the gameboy games
I wish the remakes would get some updated versions so I didn't have to emulate the DS and look at all the jaggies
RS2 has the best and most complex campaign in the series until Scarlet Grace came up and somehow beat it, but it doesn't offer things other entries do, like multiple protagonists with divergent stories, and honestly the overall balance is really messy, things like Rapid Stream, Mist Cover or first gen Quicktime are the rough equivalent of Ultima 5's Magic Axes in that they're wildly overpowered and ruin an otherwise really good system.
Mechanics wise I also don't like how it still uses experience points, or the weird WP/JP growth factor being tied to proficiencies, enemy design is also so so compared to later games, a lot of enemies are too simple and the BR progression is very uneven with a sudden, massive spike in the very last ranks after many tiers of easy enemies.
Can't say the series has ever gone downhill since every game offers different things, even Scarlet Grace with all its issues manages to blow the previous games out of the water when it comes to certain things
Coming from RS3 and SG, what should I know going to RS2?
There's no multiple main characters, it's a generation game instead where you play with many, many different characters until a last generation of characters, similar to SaGa Frontier 2, it also has a soft class system and as a result 99% of the cast is made up of generics, even though each non starter class has a whole quest dedicated to it and a couple of "posterboys/girls" to it to make it stand out.
The campaign has a lot of reactivity to it, like Scarlet Grace, and is very open, but slightly more guided than RS3, there are many quest options that are not just not immediately evident, but can also be locked behind your current emperor's class and gender, this means you're rewarded for experimenting with different classes, especially because nearly all the recruitables can also create new formations in the dojo.
Unlike the other games and most RPGs around, the game doesn't end if your party wipes, outside of when you play as Leon and the last generation of emperors, instead you'll be prompted to make a new party whenever you wipe or your emperor dies in battle.
Other than that it's mechanically similar to RS3, with some differences here and there, a bit less polished in some things but also a bit more complex in other things.
As for tips:
>After you get to Gerard's generation sit on your throne often as you'll get prompts from your ministers to do various stuff, namely building facilities in avalon, this is crucial, do it every time you get a generation change just to be sure you're not missing anything
>Don't stick to one class for your emperor, always choose different classes and speak to the formation captain so you learn new formations
>Save your state coffers for building facilities rather than just investing in your blacksmiths
>BR rises every time you TRIGGER a fight in this game so make sure to not run away too much or enemies will start to outrun you
>Magic is seriously OP
And try not to use guides of course
Why does everyone say this is the best one?
Its the most infamous in japan whereas us or sf are most infamous in the west
>Why does everyone say this is the best one?
Because it's a roguelike which is a popular genre with zoomies today
Not according to the berlin interpretation
It's very unique. I've played a lot of JRPGs but this one is gonna stick with me after I finish it.
The general structure and narrative is very unique, since it's a generational game where YOU are the Empire, and the emperor at that, trying to keep order around and save the world.
Outside of being very rich mechanically it is also rich in reactivity, especially for its time, with all quests having different ways to be completed and many different flags for event routes, which make the world feel very alive since even the order in which you do things matters.
Lastly, the music is fantastic and the main villains are particularly iconic and compelling, but really the quality of the campaign is where RS2 buries most of the other entries, the following games are a lot more mechanically polished, look better, have richer soundtracks etc. but RS2's campaign is just incredible in terms of depth.
Pro:
Very unique premise. You aren't some kid whose village got burned down, you're a legendary warrior (the game literally begins with a bard singing the tale of your deeds, this is some Ace Combat Zero levels of bad-ass) uniting an empire and fighting corrupted heroes.
Magic actually feels powerful instead of just being Nuke1, Nuke2, Heal1, HealAll, etc.
Total party wipes are not the end, but rather an opportunity to change your strategy.
Lots of different ways to tackle the big baddies which encourage out of the box thinking.
You upgrade your gear by exploring and researching instead of getting better stuff at the weapon shop in each new town.
Con:
A lot of stuff that is vital to progression (like, say, the magic research lab) is hard to figure out without a guide.
Bare bones storytelling (I consider this a plus, most RPGs nowadays are too chatty, but this is what people might criticize the game for)
I really like this game and I'm glad it was brought to the West.
Oh yeah, also REALLY good music that sets the mood.
Im coming off of octopath traveler which saga entry should I try out? Any other JRPGs worth looking into? Looking for stuff with great 2D art. 3D is ok as long as theirs great gameplay.
>Im coming off of octopath traveler which saga entry should I try out?
RS3 if you want something similar but actually good, SaGa Frontier if you want something more crazy
How does this compare to Octopath Traveler? I really enjoyed the demo of OT, gonna buy it later but I'm also interested in this series' aesthetic.
Eh, Octopath is something of a FF5 meets Romancing SaGa hybrid but it leans much more on the former than the latter, mechanically they share nothing at all outside of the same premise of having multiple main characters, but in SaGa those actually matter.
The character building and battle mechanics are wholly different, Octopath has an orthodox level based job system, SaGa games use freeform learn by doing systems which might or might not include soft classes, races etc.
Story wise you'll see some similarities with the first Romancing SaGa but overall, the narrative style is still very different, as Octopath is character driven while SaGa is more about the worldbuilding.
You might enjoy Octopath but not enjoy SaGa because outside of surface level similarities they're really nothing alike, you might wanna try out Romancing SaGa 3 or Frontier and see if they click with you at some point.
Which game is the best in the series? Which game is the best to start with for a beginner?
You'd have to find which one is the best for you. People have their favorites due to varying reasons. The two easiest entries to get into would be SaGa Frontier and Romancing SaGa 3. The first two Gameboy games are good as well and short, but they are very linear.
The games are all very different so it's more of a personal thing.
It's not a series that strictly builds upon itself with each title, every game goes in different directions, some are linear dungeon crawling romps like the Gameboy trilogy, the Romancing games are all different elaborations of Ultima style RPGs with free progression and a more sandboxy structure, Unlimited and Scarlet Grace are more or less virtual tabletop games etc., you gotta find the one you personally enjoy the most.
As for the ones that are better suited for beginners, it also depends, if you're somebody used to the medium and aren't afraid to dip your toes in something on the experimental side then you can start with any of the games, there's no continuity to worry about either, if you want to start with something on the easier side in terms of mechanics, design or difficulty, RS3 or Frontier are usually considered the best entry points, the Gameboy games are as well but they're also much older and much more archaic so unless we're talking about the DS remakes of SaGa 2 and 3, they're not really representative of what the series became outside of having really basic implementations of core mechanics that still exist to this day.
For me it's Minstrel Song
All of them suck besides SF.
Take all the shit that makes Mystic Quest an Entry Level RPG and remove the "Entry Level" part.
MQ "We have a greatly simplified overworld for ease of travel."
SaGa "Yeah we do that too."
MQ "And visible enemies on the field."
SaGa "Yeah, us too. It's an important aspect of the game"
MQ "You can also save whenever you want."
SaGa "Oh? Same here."
MQ "And you can carry multiple weapons and spells into battle."
SaGa "Awesome, we've done that for a long time too."
MQ "The story is also straightforward, but has high stakes."
SaGa "Oh yeah, we often have battles where the fate of the universe hangs in the balance."
MQ "To give you a fighting chance at the lategame we give you Phoebe."
SaGa "Ah yes, we did that with Goddess Isis in our second game. You'll need her."
MQ "Our final boss is a bit of a bastard too."
SaGa "We're notorious for our final bosses, except that one incident with a chainsaw. It was worse than your Cure bug."
MQ "It's so good that we're both great choices as an entry level JRPG!"
SaGa "Yeah w- hold on what?"
MQ's core team was also the team that developed the original SaGa 3 on GB, it's not surprising they share many similarities, Ide and Fujioka were behind both of those games after all so MQ does have some SaGa DNA.
SaGa 3 is also as far from SaGa as it can get.
Well, it still did reuse some of the ideas from the previous two games, while it's true that it's not really a SaGa game it's easy to see how Ide and Fujioka grabbed some elements they liked from the SaGa games and reused them in MQ.
>SaGa "We're notorious for our final bosses, except that one incident with a chainsaw. It was worse than your Cure bug."
neither are bugs
Chainsaw was meant to kill things with less strength than you but it instead killed things stronger than you. MQ Cure uses a formula based on the target's max HP that when used by Benjamin causes it to overflow into damage, but when used by Phoebe it does so much healing it overflows TWICE.
The bug actually got acknowledged in Re;Universe where Creator states he remembers being chopped up by a chainsaw.
if you find a bug and leave it in your game on purpose then it becomes a feature
No need to look for Re:U, they already did say they were keeping the bug for the Wonderswan remaster because it was such an iconic and beloved bug, kinda how they also kept the Coppelia bug in RS2 among some others and even gave an achievement for triggering them.
Outside of his top hat version, Kami's downed state sprites in Re:U are also cut in twice in reference to the chainsaw bug, and Human Male's Chainsaw skill causes critical damage to God type enemies in that game too.
Is it normal to feel that some quests have no closure in Romancing Saga 3? For example, the war between Stanley and Faros, or Robin's quest, barely any dialogue mention what happened.
Yes.
Is Minstrel Song better? I'm looking forward to playing the remaster.
Minstrel Saga is fairly tight about it as 90% of quests are results of the same group of villains fricking things up. It's a very good game, I just beat it for the first time a few weeks back. Took me a few two-three hour tries before it clicked, did Claudia til it opened up but got bored, then did Hawke for four hours but lost the save, then started Aisha and plowed right through.
I love Minstrel Song, but there are quest lines that go on for a LONG time and you can miss them. That was fine for me because I played through Minstrel Song immediately after I beat it and was amazed about the things I missed on my initial play through. I also don't play the same RPG back to back after beating it.
All SaGa are like that, there's not a lot of stuff you hear from NPCs after you complete quests, their narrative purpose is usually different.
The war between Faros and Stanley is more of a worldbuilding thing regarding Ludwig, though it is one of those cases when NPC dialogues do change depending on who you side with and whether you win or not, Robin's quest is more about building up Dophore as the big bad when it comes to the commerce quest related to Fullbright, so the player does see how corrupt and scrupleless Dophore is through facts rather than just hearsay.
RS2 was the same for most of its quests, most NPCs do not have new comments after you're done with the quests in their regions, nobody in Nuono acknowledges what went on with Gallon if you complete that quest, the amazoness never return to Eirunep even if you defeat Rocbouquet there, most of the time the narrative is more about offering context about the world rather than a closure.
anon the word is unscrupulous
Sorry about that, it's 1 AM over here and I had a long day.
Also I want to add another small thing, to me the issue RS3 has in terms of narrative is that certain things are spotty compared to other games, it's kind of the same issue SaGa Frontier 2 has, there's some characters who just don't live up to the hype or suddenly just stop existing.
You hear so much about Ludwig throughout the game but he doesn't really appear or do much of anything despite being a pretty important figure in the world, considering he's Khalid's former buddy, the one who ousted the Claudius family and the current ruler of Messina it's kinda bad that he doesn't really do much in person, I was hoping for the remaster to fix that but they just added insult to injury with that flashback with Khalid and yet he of all people doesn't get to settle things with Ludwig when you play as him.
It's a waste really, maybe one day a Minstrel Song tier remake will fix that, but it sure as hell won't have Kawazu behind it and that pisses me off.
You're mostly right but the Amazon and every other woman return to Eirunep after Rocbouquet
Are there good translation patches for the Romancing SaGa trilogy on SFC or do I just need to play the modern remakes?
they're notorious for having spaghetti code that no one can patch correctly
the rs3 patch is "okay" but the remake is fine even though it looks worse
I believe there is one for RS1, but play at your own risk for that one. Nothing compelled for RS2 outside of possibly a few menus. RS3 is complete, but the translation isn't good. The two remasters and the remake would be the best way to go.
The RS3 spanish patch is great
English patch is poop
There's zero reason to play the OG SNES ones compared to the remakes/remasters.
I never trust people who say this, especially about SNES JRPGs that tend to have notoriously bad remakes with awful clashing styles and fonts (looking briefly at the Steam version of RS2, it doesn't look like an exception to the rule).
rent-free
Nope, he's right. RS1 is shit and an inferior game to Minstrel Song in every way, RS2 has an annoying drop bug that was fixed in the remaster and no fan translation, RS3 has a machine tier translation.
You don't even know what you're talking about when it comes to Minstrel Song. I won't even tell you how you're wrong because it'll be spoon feeding you on something you're ignorant about.
Seems like pretentious EOP cope to me, especially considering how a lot of original games were also guilty of having clashing styles and terrible fonts to begin with.
It's not like RS2 was ever a looker anyway, so the remaster was nothing but a net gain considering how they kept all the good sprites for characters, battle effects and enemies and did away with the background tilesets and menu, shame about the 30FPS lock but I'd never go back to the buggy original just because it's 60FPS, RS3 might be more of a fringe case because the original was a looker but the remaster is competently done and with a couple of really nice additions outside of again, the 30FPS lock which is the only objective drawback.
>It's not like RS2 was ever a looker anyway
That's true. I wouldn't mind playing it as it's original form but I'll admit a lot of early 16 bit JRPGs were lacking in the visuals department. I'm playing Phantasy Star II right now and the town, over world, and dungeon tile sets are very lacking. Same with Final Fantasy IV. I believe most people just don't care about clashing styles too much, mostly purists which are few and far between. Personally I don't mind the redone backgrounds with the original sprites, especially since the original enemy sprites always looked good.
phantasy star always compensated for it's boring dungeons and overworld with eccentric music and anime stills
The monsters in PSII look great as well, detailed and animated.
Phantasy Star 1 enemies look fantastic as well, especially when you compare them with the competition at the time easily the best looking console RPG back then
Breath of Fire had some great enemy and character graphics. III and IV were wonderful, with the original and second game being okay if you don't mind a lot of QoL lacking in places.
>I'm playing Phantasy Star II right now and the town, over world, and dungeon tile sets are very lacking. Same with Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy IV looked fantastic for 1991.
RS3, my spear basic attack says "Long" but I can't target the back enemies.
It's not that long. There's all sorts of hidden ranges and geometry that effect attacks in SaGa games changing where they can target and how fast/what order they come out. Spears do have skills that can hit the back row but you need to learn them first. Axes and Bows can do it much sooner. Or just use magic to hit whatever you want.
The Emperor's Saw capable of slaying the Earth Serpent is a good one too.
That's the transformed form of the Bilqis from Minstrel Song when you use the Fury/Wrath of Bel'kwinith tech, which was already a homage to the chainsaw in that it has a chance to instakill things, so it's a triple cross reference.
Now that I think about I'm sure there's also an entry in the Melvir Library that also references the chainsaw glitch.
>salsa
I dont get it.
Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe is the only gacha game worth playing.
The only SaGa game I've played was RS3 and I didn't finish it (killed one of the demon lords). I enjoyed what I played but my favorite part was the business system. Are there any other games in the series that have a system like that? It doesn't have to be exactly the same.
RS3 is the only game with minigames so no.
There are various economy submechanics in most other games though, like gold exchange rate in Frontier, market ranks in Minstrel Song or really just the basic economy meta in that game or Unlimited, which is really satisfying to get down.
A crucial part of efficient progression in Minstrel Song is investing money in the trade companies that deal with the goods you need, the more money you spend by buying goods from a certain company, the higher their market ranks and the better goods they'll sell, coupled with how the game handles money in general it makes for a pretty tight but straightforward economy system you rarely see in the genre.
Minstrel Song sounds very interesting then, thanks.
I never got how the business minigame worked. I kinda wish they actually went with their original concept where you could beat the game through the minigames. A businessman saving the world by doing business is a cool idea.
You headhunt related companies to spark the larger groups they belong to so you can win on action economy and money by using them then you boost your action speed and spam the action that reduces the chance of an individual company going bust until they're safe to use. It's a lot simpler than it seems.
I dont understand what
was exactly saying but I feel like I winged it. I overwhelmed the smaller companies with the money I had so that I could buy them out and used whatever actions I had to delay the opponent from funding those companies somehow (mechanics are never clear). Then there's some weird synergy bonus with the companies I happened to get which netted me more money and that let me snowball through eventually getting everything.
There's also some mechanic for material supply that I'm sure is supposed to contribute to combinations of companies producing more money or something but I never really figured it out. I'm sure that's the point of the game where you know nothing but you suss out whatever you can to get ahead.
Basically companies that are within related groups of companies(like the jungle ones) can randomly spark the larger group they belong to when used for capital. There's also a bonus for companies that are related to the company that's currently being traded for: a porcelain company will give out more money when you're trying to purchase more porcelain related companies, for instance.
SaGa > Final Fantasy
Any good SaGa wallpapers?
>playing scarlet grace and on urpina's campaign
>Very cute girl with swords
>For some reason brain goes full moron and make her a mage and want to learn every spell with her despite her int not being that high
Every time, first it was making red a Kamen rider mage and now this. That aside, is it just me or do enemies hit extra hard across the board in this game? Not even shit like Kurt's surprise gauntlet boss enemies in unlimited gave me that much of an issue
Things hit harder in Scarlet Grace because of the new battle meta, it's quite different from the rest of the series, on the other hand AoE healing is quite strong and kind of on demand if you know what you're doing so it's not quite as frightening as it looks, once you start getting into the rhythm and understand how to plan ahead it becomes just as manageable as the rest of the games, despite the higher lethality.
Also Urpina is not completely hopeless as a mage if you get the right constellation from the quiz, she's still pretty meh but she's no Leonard at least, he's the one that's completely unsalvageable as a mage.
>she's still pretty meh but she's no Leonard at least, he's the one that's completely unsalvageable as a mage.
Leonard can BP loop as well as anyone using Hyper Gravity and has easy access to Earth Heal, and his high strength and acuity means he actually does very good damage with the staff techniques that there are. He also has much greater resilience than any actually dedicated mage character.
There basically aren't any characters in SG that are bad at magic because magic itself is too OP.
Sometimes it's a good thing they kill one of your party members because it triggers the thing against the enemy
Maybe that's the reason
Scarlet Grace has a really weird scaling where it's designed to landlock you somewhere with a boss fight and only one repeatable cave or something with monsters, and then you'll be forced to train your party in one location to make up the difference, but if you keep doing this you'll actually pass the battle rank and become stronger than it. You can grind in SG but if you have the option you really shouldn't. Continuously fighting in different locations only makes the game more fun (hard) but you can always fix it by hunkering down on some specific battle.
Learning this almost ruined my enjoyment of the game but I got over it.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/07/switch-listing-for-classic-square-rpg-saga-frontier-2-surfaces-online
>Frontier II Remastered is slated for late August
SaGabros, we're eating good next month!
August seems way too early for a game that hasn't even been announced yet especially if they're banking on a physical release
Isn't Minstrel Song remaster coming first?
It was the only one announced. Makes me wonder if they straight up didn't touch SaGa Frontier 2's graphics at all. I highly doubt they have any of their old work left to do high quality scans of the backgrounds, and you can't simply just AI scale it neatly. Could be wide screen plus speed up.
Is that an actual screenshot from the remaster? Doesn't disgust like the original did.
Yes my homie, it looks cute now if you enjoy chibi.
Could just be a placeholder date until a proper announcement.
It's my favorite underrated jrpg series and Kenji Ito produces bangers for days.
im about to start unlimited saga, which character should i choose? this will be my third saga game
Ventus is essentially the designated starter character for Unlimited.
I'd say Laura isn't too bad
some say start with Ruby but then you get all the most interesting dungeons frontloaded before the other playthroughs, which is kinda sad
thanks, started with laura because she looks cute
You're getting an extra dose of the feels with auntie Laura
Ventus or Laura
Is there any other RPG with multiple races that play differently with their own progressions like the GB SaGas or Frontier
Caves of Qud, mutants and true kin use different progression systems, think Espers VS SaGa 3 Cyborgs, you roll for physical/mental mutations on the former every 4 levels or so while the latter has to hunt for cyber augs and credits to install them in their body and run off those, additionally many consumables have different effects depending on the race, it's a more direct vut slightly tweaked adaptation of 1E Gamma World, which was partly what inspired the GB SaGa trilogy in terms of mechanics and races.
what an I missing out on if I play saga frontier on PS1 instead of the new remake? I’m not a fan of how it looks.
Some content that was originally cut from Asellus's route and the entire Fuse storyline which is a lot of fun, along with some QoL stuff like story logs
it only takes like 5 hours or less to beat any character, you can play both or switch it up no problem
your eyes kinda adjust to the new graphics even though they're worse
Being able to run away from battles, being able to choose what skills to unlearn for monsters, and a speed up option.
Don't listen to the haters unlimited SaGa is really fun
Bros, almost done with RS3, how does Minstrel Song compares? I'm excited for the remake.
It's similar in the sense that RS3 reused the idea that RS1 first used, giving you a sandbox world with a main quest and different main characters with their own quirks and unique content in it, Minstrel Song has the advantage of having several different games behind it so it's obviously a lot better in most regards when it comes to mechanics and content.
On the other hand its systems are pretty different from RS3, there's no minigames either and the Shitennou trope is also different from RS3, I like it more than RS3 but in some ways it's also a fair bit more "vanilla" than RS3, where you have crazy shit like Nacht Zweiger, Vanguard and cool non human party members, RS1/Minstrel Song only has Guella-Ha and two other "secret" characters I won't spoiler, as much as I like the overall cast and MCs more than RS3 it's not as varied.
It's easily the best Dragonlance game ever made though and one of the overall peaks of the series, mechanically, writing wise and in terms of music.
Does the rest of the series do the successive generations thing that RS2 does? I'm honestly not a big fan of it.
No, RS2 is completely unique in that regard and it's a part of why I like it the best.
I just wish you didn't have to run around your castle every time to recruit party members. They really should've made it into a menu you get by sitting on your throne.
>I just wish you didn't have to run around your castle every time to recruit party members.
That's what killed it for me. Having to spend 15 minutes to rebuild the same exact party over and over is mind-numbing.
To be fair, I kinda consider it a punishment for getting wiped. The problem is that you HAVE to do it eventually.
Sure, if you don't save scum. But yeah, you're forced into doing constantly anyway.
There's nothing wrong with save scumming every once in a while, but I'd make it a rule of thumb to not always reload since new formations are added when you select a certain successor, as well as new sparked moves to the dojo.
SaGa Frontier 2 kinda sorta but not really.
In Romancing SaGa 2 it's a part of the gameplay mechanics, in SaGa Frontier 2 it's a plot element
It's also a plot element in RS2, you drooling moron.
Is this the official SaGa thread? I kneel before all Scarlet Grace anons. I played Romancing 2+3, Frontier, SaGa 1+2 and Last Remnant before, and the battle system in Scarlet Grace is easily the best of them all. It especially makes simple fights where just want to spark something way more fun, instead of spamming the move that is most likely to spark something over and over you now need to go with the flow of the battle, which makes sparks feel way more random and way more rewarding.
>instead of spamming the move that is most likely to spark something over and over
But you do exactly that for Scarlet Grace, arguably even more so than the previous games considering the sparking submechanics that kind of encourage things like Dimensional Cut cheese, or the fact that the new tech tree forces you to use only certain techs to learn new ones, unlike the other games where you'd get a bonus to learning rate and no malus to learning rates either.
You don't know true pain until a SG character learns two of the three possible forks for a tech and you're left with a minuscule chance to learn another base tech that you need to learn something else, it's especially bad for martial artists since the learning trees are fully linear, good luck learning any grapple on somebody who learn Sliding and Chop before getting Tumble, the previous games didn't have this issue.
>R. stands for Romancing
Am I the only who thinks this or are the SaGa series like western fantasy(Dragon Lance inspired) meets Wuxia?
That's literally what they are.
Even if you ignore how the modern designs of the seven heroes are wuxia flavoured, SaGa 2's main lore element was about cultivators fricking people over and that was 30 years ago from now, and Kawazu never hid that Dragonlance was his favorite D&D setting, even FF2 is quite literally just a Dragonlance module down to having guest party members, dragon knights and magical flying castles.
He needs to get off his ass and finally make a Lankhmar inspired SaGa that takes place in a single massive city, kinda like Dragon Age 2 but actually good.
I recently got my Final Emperor in RS2 and I'm feeling emotions. What a great game.
Damn man I really want to play all SaGa now that I have clicked with RS3 and SG.
Save Unlimited SaGa until you've finished SF2 so you have something to fill the void
Wait until the ending, that's when the salty water will start rushing out of your eyes.
Make sure to check Viktor's room if you haven't already, and the village of the ancients too of course.
An amazing ending indeed. Shame I couldn't get the Victor scene because I left Bokhohn last
thoughts on scarlet grace?
Fun battle system, poor enemy variety.
It kind of varies wildly from being very satisfying and hard right at the start to being ridiculously easy to being absurdly hard right at the end of the post game content
it's extremely difficult to manage to get the firebringer to actually be a great and satisfying fight after the first playthrough unless you fight the true firebringer which is a huge investment of time and strategy, though honestly it is one of the best fights I've ever had in a turn based game
A great game severely hurt by lack of budget, thus unable to realize a lot of its potential, I honestly dislike a lot of the mechanics but I still played the shit out of it because what's there is that well done.
Everything about Firebringer alone is absolutely fantastic, especially if you come from the previous games and get all the metanarrative.
>especially if you come from the previous games and get all the metanarrative.
I've played a lot of the previous games, is there a quick run down on what you mean?
There's a shitload of references to the previous games including a stealthy FF2 reference, you can play without knowing and still be fine because the game is overall well written, but if you do catch the references here and there you'll enjoy it a lot more, Firebringer is special because 90% of his moveset is iconic player spells or techs from the previous games including some of the cheesiest ones
So are the PC versions of Romancing Saga 2 and 3 the way to go? They're both on sale right now so I figure I'd buy them if they're the best versions
Yeah, they're overall the best versions of the games, the only notable advantage other versions have is that you can use cross save files between the Vita and PS4.
PC is the way to go for this series nowadays.