Been playing Romancing SaGa 2 recently and holy frick this game is fantastic. Takes a bit of time to get into but once you understand how the underlying systems work it is a fricking jam. About halfway through (3/7 heroes, going to deal with Noel then Hoe-bouquet and leave fishmeister and Wagnas for last). Any good strats?
General SaGa discussion welcomed.
RS2 was way the frick ahead of its time. One of the best games ever made in terms of telling a story directly through gameplay.
The highest tier of magic and the fusion spells are busted as hell so make sure you're always casting and levelling up the different schools.
I went full unga bunga melee for most of my first playthrough and Wagnas fricked me up near the end
Right now I've got everyone running water (heals mostly) because I know how busted Hasten Time is from Minstrel Song, but it's behind from my unga bunga-ing with Sword/Spear.
Current team is Emperor Mole, Amazon, Nereid, Lady Imp. Guard and Ninja.
Yeah Wagnas just blew me the frick out after three or so tries I fricked off and fought Subier instead. Now on last emperor and feeling underpowered, despite slaughtering everything but Wagnas.
>Now on last emperor and feeling underpowered, despite slaughtering everything but Wagnas.
Probably wasn't the best plan anon I gotta be honest.
He's waiting for you now
Yeah but I'll be stronger by then.
I made a save right before Subier so if necessary I'll reload that, respec and kill Wagnas in the castle.
I couldn't find Subier on my first play through and I saved the whales. I think I had him and Wagnas last.
My battle against Dantarg is what made me love RS2. I had to try so many different formations and use a bunch of different magic until I found something that allowed me to finally edge out a victory.
The wagnas fight is more about your defenses than about your levels. Though you can ignore strategy and brute force anything in RS2 if you're strong enough
Protip for RS2 if you don't like fighting tons of battles: use the pause button when an enemy is moving toward you and you're not directly in front. Then when he's beside you unpause and run past him.
I could give gameplay tips to cheese the bosses but you don't really want that. One of the nice things about this game is that you can get your party wiped then build a team to counter whatever gimmick screwed you over.
Did they ever fix that Switch version input delay? I loved the game, but the delay was so obnoxious.
Noel pacified and Rocbuqet murdered (b***h did Temptation 9/10 turns the fight lasted. Cmon now).
>b***h did Temptation 9/10 turns the fight lasted.
Good thing there are no lesbians in the Kingdom of Avalon, that's why I bring an all female party
Oops!
I don't know if anyone has tried it. In Romancing SaGa 2, what happens if I am playing as the male Final Emperor, with only female companions, and finish the mermaid quest? Can the quest even be finished or started?
Never tried it myself, but apparently completing the mermaid quest with the Final Emperor will get you a game over screen
Move over Avalon, a new kingdom is in town.
>what happens if I am playing as the male Final Emperor, with only female companions, and finish the mermaid quest
its a game over, same as running out of LP as the final emperor
Thetys' Thetyses...
Would abdicate the throne for
I like replaying Romancing SaGa 2 with extra gimmicks to spice up my playthroughs
>solo final emperor
suicide until you get the final emperor asap, and don't recruit allies (except to reach wagnas)
>shortest campaign
beat the game in year 1019
>fewest emperors
kill several heroes early so you get the final emperor after the second timeskip
Now I'm out of ideas.
Now play some other game, you fricking madman
Snes or remake? What is the to go version?
Can't go wrong with the remasters
Good to know. Hope no troony translations await me. Or god forbid modern font remaster.
I regret to inform the font is modern.
SE can die now
pretty much all saga remasters are great
Sure, play the SNES game if you can read Japanese. I don't think anyone will finish it or pick it up. The remaster essentially killed the person who was perpetually squatting on the translation project.
Pretty sure I played it in snes on English years ago. Idk how faithful the translation was, but the text did make sense.
The edition I played had cut content in form of text? Possible, I never finished it. Played as the king or prince in rs3.
Super Nintendo Romancing SaGa 1 is literally an unfinished game. The other two Romancing SaGas don't have full complete translation patches for Super Nintendo, so the remasters are the only way to actually fully play them in English.
So I just beat Kzinnsie again and the Termite Queen but haven't gotten the invitation to the final dungeon. Is it because I dealt with Noel peacefully? Can I hunt his ass down? Don't feel like traipsing through the Flying Castle again.
>noel spares your life
>you immediately go murder his sister
bet he regrets it
>start Hawke playthrough on Fast Progression for Minstrel Song
>Get to the part where the pirates betray you and you have to fight your way out
>Surrounded by a billion pirates I can't flee from and can barely move to escape
>Have to kill a lot of them to even get out of the room
>Event rank goes up by five before I even get to Godango
Um... was there anyway to avoid that or was I fricked from the start
If you immediately start hauling ass you might be able to avoid them if you're lucky.
Wagnas is slain. Stupid invisible defense stats.
the spell "self-immolation" gives you fire immunity
I know, but I had most of my party rolling Hydromancy for the cheap utility heals. Ended up stacking heat resistance and got lucky that he didn't spam light magic.
Can you get the New District in your final generation or does that require a time skip? I just invested it but am unsure if it was a waste.
pretty sure you just have to fight some battles
>rapid stream in boss fights
gross. but if it works it works
yeah i'm thingken i'm almost done
>kill all dragons in Firn dungeon easily
>rape Noel in 3 turns
>get to Seven Heroes
>utterly destroyed
oosh
Yeah that's a common experience
You can get to the final boss with skill levels around 10, but you'll need skill levels around 20 if you want to win without insane luck
It's just an equipment issue I think, I'll try to get enough mind immunity going around.
Party is Emperor + the four elmental species.
if you have the amethyst axe it's really great here because it's very SP-efficient and you're likely to run out
formation also makes a big difference
and you can change the field state with light magic
Does Elixir heal Temptation? I fought Hobouquet with a party of broads (and mole). That's my big problem for the boss too, Mole is lagging on damage and Nereid was mostly for grinding hydro spell levels.
yes elixir heals temptation but it shouldn't be a problem with your party
if your mole and nereid joined with a decent axe/mace level they can do decent damage with reverse delta (in the remaster). They're good choices for this fight since you might as well use someone with good resistances for healing.
Or grind hydro spell levels a bit more and win effortlessly
I've got Hasten Time but not enough MP across the party to spam it. Currently have my Salamander being the axe wielder but by best attack is Treefeller, best spear (on mole) is Petrify, MC spamming Vacuum Blade. Got Izuna on the Iris.
not ideal but not bad either (except petrify kinda sucks).
Remember to use buffs and debuffs in this fight. Set up at the start when the boss isn't very threatening, fight through the first phase, then spam hasten time when it gets tough.
Emperor and Salamander have Pyromancy, will swap that for more Hasten Times.
>Hasten Time cheese
Well that is how I did my first playthrough of RS2 but I felt dirty about it
The Seven Heroes are a bunch of scammer auto-life-ing unique ailment-ing go seven times per turn homosexuals. Frick 'em. They deserve and warrant cheese.
Imperial Lineage was this:
Leon-> Gerald -> Brawler -> Lady Crusader -> Mole -> Mole -> Final Emperor
I still remember my Brawler DYNAMITE who punched a volcano to death
Many such cases. During my first playthrough they legitimately didn't get to act at all.
I do think it's fair to cheese it out if your first time through if you figure out how to break the game on your own, especially for SaGa final bosses since they're consistently cheap c**ts
>consistently cheap c**ts
If my math is right, the Seven Heroes have around 95k HP total (including their "budding" form changes), which is almost three times the amount the previously strongest bosses have (Wagnas 2 w/ 35k).
Plus the regen.
However, if you're a high enough level to learn hasten time you're strong enough to win legit.
>especially for SaGa final bosses since they're consistently cheap c**ts
Reminds me one time when I fought Saruin. He used Deus Ex Machina on Sif who was a greatsword user. He got priority next turn and used Necromancery on her. She used wheel slash on my party. Not to even mention shit like the random damage rolls on Arsenals smasher, or you might fight your first real boss with Chaos LP slapping your party into oblivion, or if you choose a slow formation and get full party stun locked by the first form the Firebringer. Then all of those people getting softlocked in SaGa Frontier because they have only one save and can't beat Diva.
I learned my lesson, now I always remove multitarget skills before fighting a final boss
Yeah what fricked me over against the Seven Heroes on the first run wasn't actually losing the damage but the Emperor casting Light Ball on the team and blinding them.
Also, speaking of Saruin('s minions)
Passionate Rhythm isn't the same without the
guitar but man the energy in that performance is fricking incredible
Like this version?
Yeah, of course. That's *the* GOAT
But I do really like the audience and the orchestra going nuts in the new one.
I just can't believe that the chubby mom looking jap woman has pipes that good
She should be doing gospel music
>I just can't believe that the chubby mom looking jap woman has pipes that good
One of the most famous sayings in the English language is "it ain't over till the fat lady sings", all of those would honestly be qualifiers for her having amazing vocal range if anything
Genuinely one of the greatest vidya songs ever composed, I remember being completely fricking blown away by this song the first time I encounter a Saruin minion at Twin Moon temple, I had no idea what to expect for the music
>Getting stuck on a SF final boss
Really, I don't know why but I considered it to be the most laid back in terms of difficulty, the only one I could see giving a lot of people trouble was Genocide heart.
Also there's really nothing stopping you from farming right before the final boss if you were stuck.
I've dropped in on streamers and people that post on Ganker saying that they'd get to Diva and essentially soft lock. Starlight heal isn't going to do squat for them in that fight and with how open and optional a lot of places are it is highly likely they will miss out on mind heal. Frontier is on the easier side, but there are points which lock you in (like going to the church) so you can't get new items or learn new magic to change your strategy. They were probably going in there with 500~600 HP with MAYBE starlight heal and maybe a couple cures. Diva would destroy such a woefully unprepared party. I'd have to urge some to use runes since they didn't do so to get the vitality rune up on their party.
I'm guessing Emilia is a lot of people's first playthrough and they probably aren't used to the game yet, I never had trouble with Diva but I became depressed when I realized I had got the bad ending based on a harmless decision I made earlier
>500~600 HP with MAYBE starlight heal and maybe a couple cures.
i pretty much beat all the Frontier bosses with 500-600HP, except for T260G and Red's scenario, because Alkaiser stat boost and it's easy to bulk up on Mech HP and Defences.
that said i needed to reload an older save to train up the mermaid to beat Diva.
i really don't get the people having trouble with Genocide Heart. with a full mech team, it's easy. unless you decided to equip the mechs in a way that would make them glass cannons. and that scenario pretty much pushes you into using a full mech team.
You could play any character in SaGa Frontier for like 15 hours or more if you wanted to, but if you actually go back and try pretty much all of them can be done in less than 4 hours without even going into speedrun strats or luck on the diceroll
>Genocide Heart
It's the AOE that fricks you up if you have low hp and/or no heals, I went into it with almost no way to heal and had to reload a previous save before the final area to get everyone healing magic/the mech kit thing so I could actually survive the fight.
The insta-death on Carnage is also brutal if you don't know about it in advance and you're not running 5 mechs
Swapping everyone's pyromancy for Hydromancy was the answer - Seven Heroes down.
So who should I have as my RS3 MC? Leaning Katarina due to her theme.
Khalid is my favorite but Kat is an interesting choice, she's the only of the MCs who is just straight up not recruitable in any of the other scenarios. She's also one the few characters in the game who's actually innately proficient with greatswords (at least by default, since you can change the other MCs default weapon type when you're starting the game)
kat is kinda cursed in terms of sparking greatsword skills, I'd rather have ward or fairy's spark type for a greatsword user
Personally I picked spears with kat and used 1h swords
Kat amusingly best as a martial arts user because of her supreme speed and strength. Just ditch the sword, ditch her plotline, grab a bunch of waifus to Ara Ara, and use your fists to Ora Ora the noble devils into submission.
I used fists with khalid, he was underwhelming for most of the game but did huge damage at endgame after he sparked some skills. Kat never reached those some highs with swords but she sparked gale slash quite early and endgame doppelslasher did good damage for relatively little SP.
Is this a good first SaGa game?
No, start with Minstrel Song.
Yeah, it has a lot of similarities with the series but many differences as well. One thing being no dungeons and how combat centric it is compared to other games in the series. Phenomenal battle system on the other hand. Really satisfying to get counter attacks.
Nah bro, people new to SaGa should go Minstrel Song to either Frontier 1 or Romancing 2. Scarlet Grace is simply too hardcore the non-initiated.
Am I moronic (yes), or is Minstrel Song ont as good of a game as RS3 or SG? Ive started as Jamil, and, while his quest isnt bad, everything else feels very empty. Oh wow, a quest to save a child that ran off inside of a cave, maybe theres some twist to it, or something interesing info/equip to find? No, get fricked. Maybe theres a better character to start out with?
Personally I like SG more than Minstrel Song, but I'd say RS3 and MS are more similar than they are different
Like both have a bunch of playable characters with very minor differences, mostly different openings and everything else are shared quests which advance over your playtime
Personally I like Minstrel Song more for the better battle system and I prefer the OST
Yeah, I like the battle system as well, but the world seems to be rather empty? It feels like ubisoft game, for the lack of a better comparable game.
I get what you mean, my first playthrough was a lot of fast traveling around finding quests to do and having youtube or an audiobook on the side made that part a lot more bearable
Once you know where/when the quests are there's a decent amount to do and getting all done before your event rank gets too high can be quite tricky
Its such an odd design, tho. Is there anything more to this missing child quest? Have I missed something? I liked the mummy one, gave me a chuckle when I met the guy trying to sell if afterwards, wish there were more of this, and less kids.
Don't be hasty to judge a game just because you're at ER1-2 and you don't know how to proceed through the game, and yes, there is a twist to that quest in the Frontier.
Mardias is much bigger than you think, but if you wanna travel around the place you wanna speak with people and recruit characters, there's plenty of stuff to find even in the first three ER, but you're not gonna get it for free, you gotta find it out on your own.
Yeah, im about ER2 or 3 rn, thats is true. Dunno, Ive unlocked lots of zones, Im talking to every npc in every town, in one town they told me theres this lake with ritual and shit, I go to the lake, it a small location and there is nothing there. Am I supposed to visit it way later, or did I miss something?
Lake Malar has a long chain of quests that will open up a bit later.
Did you get to Oapu or Godongo? The Knights' Dominion? Valhalland? Melvir and the rest of the places around Bafal?
Did you go to Crystal City in Rosaria? How about Jelton?
All of these places have things for you to do in that ER range, but you gotta get there.
Crystal City, yeah. Gotta check out the quest log for that, maybe I forgot about something in there
Don't be afraid to recruit and kick out people just to get to certain places, take Gray, don't like him? recruit him and kick him out instantly so you still get all the info regarding the places he's been to and can open up for you.
There's some caveats like needing Albert in your party to enter the palace in Crystal City and meet Neidhart (who can give you a quest at some ER range), you need Sif in your party to start Gato's quest about monster hunting in Valhalland, there's also many other smaller details in certain places which aren't framed as quests, like the optional cyclops fight in the abandoned keep in the Knights Dominion, finding the Falcata and so on, MS is very dense in content but you gotta work a bit on your own to get it.
It's not really different from RS3, after all that game was originally a return to what RS1 started and they're definitely very similar in some aspects, MS might be a remake but still has a lot of the original DNA, also don't forget to talk to the Minstrel as you travel around, he'll have a lot of tales to tell.
The threats of the world escalate in Romancing SaGa as more time passes by, along with the areas you find. You're in the section when it is a low level, grounded adventure.
All of those quests that seem basic at first unravel over time, give the game a chance. I will still discovering new conditions and alternate methods on my 6th goddamn playthrough
I like it
>Invite Galahad to my party then boot him, then proceeded to kill him for the ice sword
>Sacrificed four people to death
>Sold poached Dinosaur eggs
>STILL GET TRIALS OF ELORE
What the frick am I doing wrong? I'm literally trying my best to be evil as frick
It makes sense once you know Elore
Who're you playing as? Did you buy a lot of Cosmology spells? Some MCs have skewed alignment with Elore so getting the underworld ending is harder if you don't time things right.
I also don't think selling the eggs gives reps with any of the dark gods, good old pillar grinding in Jelton or the jungle is never a bad idea in any case.
I was playing Hawke but I did end up getting cosmology spells for people with pyrology for emergency healing without being able to use water heals. Shoulda figured that'd get favor with Elore.
I also tried to go for the underworld route with Gray and similar actions but still ended up with trials of Elore but I guess I know the reasons now
I usually just go to Waulon and spam pillar vortex when I don't want Elore's boss rush.
Is there a reason why that area specifically? Does pillars activate there more often or something
each area is associated with a different god, walon and jelton are the ones associated with the evil gods so fighting there brings you closer to them
Gods are so fickle... I wish there was an ending where you could side Saruin and fight Elore.
don't be fricking stupid anon
I'm near the end of SaGa1 on the Wonderswan (killed Suzaku) and I am worried about my weapons not surviving the endgame
Can always buy some more
true but the grind to get the money and already existing weapon durability is going to be an issue.
Not to mention my fricking mutants don't have any magic
Playing Saga Frontier Remastered as my first foray into this series. Picked the hot chick with the gun. We broke out of prison and I got spooked right proper by the guy in the backstreets who turned into a skeleton. I have no idea what's going on. What the frick is cube.
>I have no idea what's going on.
That means it's working
Great. I'm still incredibly confused. Bosses are the most confusing thing - every enemy is a complete steamroll with kicks and tumbles, then the bosses one-shot me. The wyrm spawn in the starting area, even now with my party of 4, outheal any damage I can possibly do. Tremor one shots any character. I once got really lucky with a string of deflects and got to get a big ass combo off on one of the spawn to kill it before it got magical-heal'd to hell and back, but then earthquake wiped my team. The backtracking from this area to town to go do anything else is killing me.
No idea what to make of the dude with a katana, gun skill, AND magic.
You can avoid ground attacks like Tremor with Jet Boots, and yeah, SaGa bosses don't frick around, even in Frontier where the game is overall easy, the thing is that since you can explore freely you can and will end up in some nasty places.
Normal encounters eventually pick up once your BR is high enough, but most zones in Frontier are rather generous with their BR so you won't fight things that are too dangerous for you, unless it's the biolab in Shrike or Yorkland's swamp, they kinda lull you into a false sense of security initially, but easy as they might be they're still worth fighting unless you've got a full mech party, in that case anything that isn't another mech is a waste of time.
Roufas is good at whatever, Mind Magic is really good for warrior type characters since it's all about self upkeep and buffing, Mind Heal alone is extremely powerful, you can build him however you like, though mixing up things too much isn't ideal, your ability slots are limited and growth become too chaotic if you don't stick to one thing or two.
The thing with SaGa is that as you might have noticed, you get individual stat ups depending on what you do while fighting instead of points buy or level up templates, so you kinda have to play with your characters the way you want them to develop, at least for humans, other races are their own cans of worms.
Since both Annie and Liza are innately focused on melee it wouldn't be a bad idea to diversify your team a bit, turning Roufas into a gunner would add some variety and different tools, guns and magic have a strong synergy in this game when it comes to core stats and growth, good mages are also good gun users, this means you can also turn Roufas into a caster should you want or need one.
>you get individual stat ups depending on what you do while fighting instead of points buy or level up templates
Not that guy, but I still don't know how I feel about this system. On the one hand, it's super ludokino and it rewards you with characters getting better at the things you already were doing with them. On the other hand, it sometimes gets stupid and exploitable like having to always jump in TES to raise athletics/acrobatics/whatever or having to punch your own guys in FF2 to get a sliver of HP. And sometimes the RNG decides to frick you over and your mutants barely get a single point of agility despite poking enemies with rapiers all day, yes I'm still mad.
I don't know how much rhyme or reason the Mutants have in the first game. You get more of a feeling that you gain stats through actions you do later. Personally I prefer stats that raise through actions over proficiencies that are raised with fixed stats. If you want to switch weapons then it's just learning skills compared to learning skills and raising proficiency levels. Even more so with magic in which you'd need to increase proficiency levels with the magic school more so than just having a solid magic stat and slapping a different school's spell and it being useful right away.
I prefer the proficiency system to the variable stat system but it works way better than it used to in FF2 or the GB games, mostly because in Frontier in particular you still have each character have their own specific growth factors to play around with, which makes things less random compared to the GB games.
TES' issue outside of the stat growth formulas being primitive is that it's an action game so it's impossible for it not to be exploitable and horribly cheesy since there's no brakes to your experience checks, SaGa's fully turn based and outside of Unlimited your only growth happens through battle only so you don't really have things like Morrowind's nonsense about jumping in place for hours to level athletics, though you do have similar silliness like chest farming in Unlimited.
Granted, other systems aren't particularly better off either, at some point we all experienced the dissonance of something like points buy systems where you level up after talking with people but put your points into strength and buy yourself a weapon feat, no system is unblemished, as much as I like SaGa it does have its fair of cheese and weird technicalities.
Personally I really like the way it works in Scarlet Grace, where characters have set stats that just make them good at certain things, it feels more similar to table top RPGs, maybe there should be some opportunities to raise them, but I've gotten screwed in the other SaGa system quite a few times and that can be frustrating
The biolab is supposed to be hard?
Anyways I've been fricking around a bunch trying to get the runes. There's still no "main story" progress which is a little strange. I found a guy named Rogue who is NOT a Rogue and is, in fact, a wizard.
Once I got a set of 5 I've had no trouble beating bosses. I don't even remember my combos, dead end + suplex is normally enough to end things. The skeleton king in Sei's tomb is kicking my ass though, I just can't live through Minion Rush.
Current crew is:
>Elaina - Gunner, a few martial arts
>Annie - Swordswoman
>Liza - Martial Arts
>Rufous - Mixed sword/gun/mind
>Rogue - Realm Magic
I realize that I'm about to get the gift of rune magic for the three ladies. I can't have magic mastery if I have any weapon skills equipped right? That makes things hard.
His name is Rouge all dyslexic one.
>The biolab is supposed to be hard?
The enemies there are set to always be at a higher rank than whatever your current battle rank is
If you want story progression, check the scenario log in the menu, it'll generally give you a good idea where you're supposed to go. As for mastery you don't really have to worry about it, the lower WP/JP costs are nice in the early game but it's not something you necessarily need to always aim for.
don't teach magic to weapon users until you've sparked good skills
Well in SaGa Frontier you can just seal the magic skills if you want a crown for physical attacks. So not a biggie if you get some magic.
ah I thought he was playing RS3
I think RS3 crowns are overrated, and it's nice to have 11mp by endgame so you can use shadow servant
What makes a skill "good"?
I'm also mad at myself for not writing down what skill combos I had been enjoying.
Starting RS3, it has much less of a hook than RS2. Just kinda wandering around as Katarina.
katarina has a shorter intro then most characters
but yeah there's a lot of wandering around in a first playthrough
It's more fun when you replay it imo because you can go straight to the quests
and once you've played a few times you can skip the optional stuff and beat the game in 4 hours
>you can skip the optional stuff and beat the game in 4 hours
wait really?
yeah you basically just grind up and fight the four big bosses
There's only five mandatory quests in the game, you can finish it rather quickly if you know what to do
I'm unlocking towns and shit now, got Robin in the party and got raped by the ice fish.
The RS3 remaster script is a little odd - intro calls it the Rise of Morastrum (bleh) but everyone in game calls it the Death Eclipse.
Wish they did the same for Matriarch and Archfiend, which are both awful fricking titles.
Do they not call her the Holy Emperor?
Nope, Matriarch for some reason.
what the actual frick why would you ever do that
YAS KWEEN SLAY DEM SINSTRALS mmmmHHHHHH
dese 'byss gates be heckin chuds y'all
that doesn't even make it better, she was more of a feminist icon when she just called herself an emperor
Was she an emperor? It doesn't seem like she was a direct ruler. I know Holy King is the literal translation but Saint seems more appropriate.
But an emperor is better than a king right? and she was presumably top dog while someone like Mikhail is just a king.
no frick now I don't remember anything
it was definitely Emperor in Scarlet Grace regardless of gender right?
What about Unlimited SaGa and Last Remnant? There it's "Imperator" as in commander of the army right? But there it's given in a legendary context, like Rush technically losing his humanity by ascending through the selection ritual and becoming some sort of divine battle computer cyborg, resulting in him subconsciously dabbing on every monarch he encounters.
What about Alkaiser? Does being a hero and punching the shit out of death machines and destroyer gods make you the spiritual, moral leader and example for all the powerless and innocent people who can't wade through the wilderness of monsters like you do?
The Morastrum is the Death Star that causes the Death Eclipse, the phenomenon, they're different things, the localization is not wrong in the use of the terms as much as they do omit the Death Eclipse part from the intro and only mention the star.
>Wish they did the same for Matriarch and Archfiend
There's no real good translation for 聖王 either, at best you could have called her the Divine Ruler, but that would have caused confusion with the divine cult in Pidona which is a completely different thing and worships a different entity, so they stuck to the Matriarch instead of being literal and calling her a Divine/Holy King when she's not, in fact she's not even a sovereign in any capacity, it's a silly title that was given to him back in the days by Fullbright's ancestor as literal propaganda against the Demon King/Archfiend and they ran with it.
She never called herself an emperor, I have no idea what you're talking about, in no material including the spinoffs she calls herself that, in fact the only consistent thing she does is downplaying herself, for good reasons since she's essentially a cheerleader for the most part, she's was modeled after Joan of Arc and she plays it straight, Paulus, Hilda and later Ferdinand were the only people who were or became actual rulers, the Matriarch never assumed any position of power other than giving a title to Ferdinand (redundant since he married Hilda in the first place, who was a noble) the title of Marquis of Loanne after the fight was over.
In the SaGa series are emperors people who don't actually rule anything then?
皇帝 is not a term that is very common in the series, generally you have other titles as most nobility in the series is not at that level, you have marquises, earls, some kings but emperors are not at all common, all of them rule something though.
In Romancing SaGa 3 you have Ludwig, who's Messina's RULER, read ruler because Ludwig is no nobility, he's a former Pidona general who, after fighting in the Gessian war with Khalid (and betraying him), carried a coup to depose the previous ruler of Pidona (Muse's father) and the entire Clemens family (probably Paulus' descendants), Ludwig is not given a specific nobility title in game, he is responsible for creating the future Empire of Messina, but iirc that came later after his rule, I should recheck side material.
Khalid is a former Gessian prince, it's implied he was in line for becoming the next King of Gessiah but we know he's not directly related to the previous king, as Gessian kings are chosen through the Khamsin rather than having a stable bloodline, Fatima is a princess that is implied to be THE princess though, in any case he has nothing to rule since Gessiah was destroyes, he CAN become a new king of Gessiah and bring his people back together if you choose to take the Khamsin though.
Mikhail is a Marquis and rules over Loanne, he's a descendant of Ferdinand and Hilda, though he carries' Hilda's family name as Hilda was originally the one who held the noble title, Ferdinand was a commoner and he took Hilda's name after they married.
Then you have the eastern lands and that too is an empire when it comes to the people in the far east, which are modelled after the chinese empire.
As for the Matriarch herself, that's a long story so bear with me for a while:
>>>
She was born in Lance 300 years prior to the events of the game, she was that cycle's Child of Destiny, and a no name commoner, she had a sister who also stayed in Lance.
During her youth she was attacked by slavers and monsters sent by the Archfiend's army to hunt down the child of destiny, that lead her to live like a hobo for some time around Lance and the other cities in the northern regions (she accidentally met Hilda and Ferdinand around here) until Fullbright's ancestor, Fullbright XII, found her and witnessed how she fought against the archfiend's monsters even as a young child, so he took her under his wing.
After finding out she was the child of destiny, Fullbright XII decides to try his luck and turn her into a hero for the people and came up with the title of Matriarch/Holy King as a way to rally people under a single banner, initially this was a way for him to basically get financial backing, but after some small victories he actually decided to go with it.
Fast forward some time later the Matriarch reunites with Hilda and Ferdinand, they join her in her quest and her name becomes a lot more well known as they keep driving away the archfiend's forces, eventually they get into some skirmishes with Paulus, a lieutenant in Alloces' army, Paulus starts considering switching sides around this period.
After this, the Genbu wizard Vassault joins the ranks as advisor and magician for the armies of the Matriarch, this eventually leads to the construction of Vanguard and Forneus' defeat somewhere down the line.
Paulus switches side, there's a massive battle in Pidona against Alloces, one of the matriarch's army captain's, Ottoman (The owner of the Silver Hand) dies here, Alloces is felled, his spear is then modified into the Matriach's spear.
The Matriarch befriends Dora, Gwayne's mother, Dora recognizes the Matriarch as equal and lets her ride on her back, together they destroy Byunei in an epic fight, which you can reenact with Gwayne.
>>>
>>>
At some point Aunus goes down too, the Archfiend follows and gets defeated during the last fight, mankind is finally free from the rule of tyranny.
What happens next is a series of minor events
>Dora goes back to her dragon routines, the matriarch tries to reason with her and stop her from pillaging by appealing to her as a "sister of war", Dora refuses stating nobody can give orders to a dragon and that humans and dragons cannot live together, Dora and the Matriarch do battle and Dora is slain, Gwayne's egg hatches right after Dora's death, the Matriarch is the one who gives him is name.
>Paulus becomes the first King of Pidona
>Hilda and Ferdinand marry, the matriarch appoints them as ruler of Loanne and the marquisate is formed, since there's no semblance of a world government around they just take it as it is
>Vassault fricks off back to Mahzoz to research more magic, nobody knows what happens to him past this point
>Fullbright XII also goes back home and reaps the fruit of his marketing campaign, the house of Fullbright becomes very famous from this point onwards
>The Matriarch finally goes back to Lance to retire and live together with her sister, she eventually dies and gets interred in the mausoleum there, whether the current line of descendants is the Matriarch's or her sister's is unknown, fan theories say Vassault and the Matriarch had an affair but that's just that
So the Matriarch, despite being called a "holy king/ruler", didn't really do any real ruling when all is said and done, the title was a historical marketing campaign done by Fullbright's ancestor but has no actual political weight, the title was given as a way to oppose the Archfiend/Demon King but has no real political weight to it beyond that, it's also why her descendants are some nobodies in Lance rather than ruling class nobility, despite their origins.
>the Archfiend follows and gets defeated during the last fight
Didn't the archchad just vanish long before the matriarch began her campaign (reuniverse states he fricked off to outside the material world, because he was sick of fate)? He was never really defeated by anyone. Unless you got that from, dunno, some side material.
It's not explained well from what I read through the various games, it looks like a continuity thing more than anything.
In RS3 the prologue states the Archfiend was defeated in some measure 300 years ago and his rule came to an end back then with the fall of the four demons, but after 300 years he comes back, the remaster adds that new cutscene after you close the four Abyss gates which confirms how he's indeed still alive, somehow.
In ES he's reported as MIA at some point iirc, RSRS is where they come up with the whole mumbo jumbo about him wanting to detach his existence from the world of RS3 and his plan to use the Destroyer to create a universal reset that would allow him to become something like Iskandar, but this is not mentioned anywhere else afaik, RSRS doesn't mention his backstory with Galatea either, or at least it still didn't mention that despite adapting the Matriarch's backstory from ES, the stage play doesn't mention any of this either.
I never read the old RS3 booklet though so I'm probably missing something from that though.
You can poison both of them and win by doing nothing but defending and healing.
In the old games it's mostly a power vs cost ratio, something like BoundShot or most gun techs in Frontier are good because they cost next to nothing but have high power, especially if you can dual wield guns.
Other than that it's looking at their combo properties, whether they have some built in effects or how easy they are to learn, techs that can combo with anything, AKA linkers, are very strong usually.
As for magic it depends, magic tends to be more complex since it's more about gimmicks than damage, Light Sword for instance is a great spell because of the stat buffs, the light sword itself being extremely strong and the fact that it comes with a built in Deflect too, Vitality Rune is good for its HP regen buff, Shield Card is good because of the potency of the buff etc.
>You can poison both of them and win by doing nothing but defending and healing.
Ended up getting really luck with Backstabs and Shadow Weaves. Volc died first turn, Undine never got to move.
Yeah those are good options too, status effects are pretty useful in the series, especially if you don't wanna waste time fighting too many things.
Yeah, take out Robin and you got your team.
Bonus points if you add Leonid and play on commander mode.
matriarch makes me think of an old granny rather than a heroic joan of arc type figure
yeah i'm thingken i've only got a final bossu left
what are you recording this with?
why the frick would square enix have that ugly watermark but not state the name of the fricking game
a snoystation
a lot of nipponese companies seem to do that
the final boss should be no problem with your team
Stupid sexy termite
>just got to THE END on Blue
I don't know how to feel
Some say, the battle still continues
They closed the door behind you and freeze time while you're still in there.
He did it for the children ;_;
>Killed the final boss with K.O Throw (out of WP for DSC)
>End screen is the Hell Lord getting so long gay bowser'd
Man frick the Undine/Volcano fight. I killed Volcano one successfully but then Undine wiped us out. They definitely have more than 3.3k hp.
Use commander mode
or try instant death
>You can use lurk and move silently at the same time
What the frick why did I never try doing this before
IT'S OVER
Well done, Dekker
game time?
148:37 according to the game. Switch claims it's 195 hours but some of that was probably idling while I was doing something else
it's actually 50 hours of loading times
ah, the Sonic 2006 issue
In RS2 I beat it with the meme team of the four elemental races, what's the equivalent for RS3?
Elephant, Snowman, Lobster and Robin or Fairy?
RS3's random encounter difficulty curve sucks. I can one shot everything with basic attacks but bosses utterly demolish me. Now I've got Herman and Minstrel wasting slots in my party and can't dump them til I kill a Sinstral.
yeah random encounters are worthless
either you power up against some enemy that doesn't depend on BR or you put the strongest units on your team and fight in commander mode
It feels almost scripted at this point because I've said so multiple times in regards to other design aspects, but I like Scarlet Grace the most in this regard as well, even in comparatively easy battles you usually can't afford to snooze off and boss battles feel challenging without being such massive spikes relative to other battles
Overall it's definitely my favorite SaGa game with only Minstrel Song being close due to the massive amount of soul that game has, so I'm really hopeful that Emerald Beyond will be similar, but with more budget and enough time
TLR is pretty stable difficulty wise
I guess you could say that every other fight being a difficulty spike is sort of stable.
What's the consensus about TLR counting as a SaGa game? I mean in terms of a lot of design elements and some staff involved it's clearly closely related, but in a lot of ways it's also very different and clearly doesn't count for stuff like the gacha
Are there any characters in SG that are clear expys of TLR characters?
Not acknowledged in the portal site or by Kawazu=not a SaGa game.
>Are there any characters in SG that are clear expys of TLR characters?
Not really, if anything it's the opposite.
The only thing they're carrying over is some weapon assets.
I wonder what critiques Kawazu would make for TLR
From my observations some count it as SaGa because it involved people who previously worked on SaGa at the helm, had references to SaGa (like move names), rank, combos, formations, and a heavy emphasis on sidequests and exploration with tons of missable recruits. Others discount it or consider it honorary SaGa at most simply because Kawazu wasn't as involved and doesn't say it's SaGa himself. I think the most he mentions SaGa in TLR context was that the team set out to make something different than previous entries in an interview for TLR Remastered.
Personally SaGa and TLR are still heavily linked in my mind while still being their own thing so I could go either way.
RS3 is a unique case because the BR is split among enemy families instead of being a global value like in the other games, so common enemies basically never, ever grow beyond mid BR ranks at best, other games don't have that issue.
Scarlet Grace has another issue of its own with BR being just a general stat scaling adjustment which kinda sucks because enemies always stay the same and there's also very little to no variety, it kinda gets away with it because the new battle paradigm is less about party building and more about patterns, which isn't particularly wise either imo and I hope EB manages to patch it up with new mechanics like showstopper and the return to combos, different races and being able to equip multiple weapons.
Pretend I'm moronic. Explain how monsters in SF1 work to me.
Super condensed
>The only stat that grows is your HP, the more moves you learn the more your HP grows
>By eating monster meat you can learn some skills from the monster you killed, or not
>Once you get a certain combination of moves and a certain HP threshold you can change your form
>Different Monster forms change your stats
>To change into a certain monster form you need a set of skills that said monster uses, most of the times you can absorb them from the target monsters themselves, some forms like Black Dragon aren't as straightforward though
>You have an anatomical order in your menu, arranging skills in an anatomical order helps you changing into the correct monster form, the order from up to down is Head>Breath>Body>Arm>Magic>Leg
If you want the long explanation
https://essenceofsaga.wordpress.com/home/book-index/monster-system/
I am getting some conflicting info about Excalibur in SaGa 1 Wonderswan.
Wiki I am looking at says 50 uses, the game says unlimited uses
On Wonderswan it should have unlimited uses, on GB it had 50.
It's not like you really need even 50 uses at that point though.
I feel like I need it with this fricking encounter rate
Elephant and lobster obtained.
found some shit that makes this final climb more tolerable.
a 2nd unlimited use melee weapon and a monster with a teleport move that sends me back to town
oh my god they never fixed this
There's nothing to fix, it's working as intended
Is the pilgrimage to saga prefecture worth it?
Never been to Kyushu, a friend of mine did and said the place is quite beautiful as a whole.
The Saga prefecture itself has quite a lot of SaGa themed stuff including a stable exhibition so I guess it's worth it if you're a fan and are interested in the prefecture itself.
Which version of the GB games would you recommend? I think there's the DS remakes for 2 and 3, and a Wonderswan version for the first?
The DS remakes are Minstrel Song style remakes, nothing wrong with them as far as I'm concerned but purists do raise an eyebrow when it comes to the new artstyle, imo they're best experienced after the original games because they have a few clever additions and fixes on top of new systems, though it's hard to honestly recommend GB SaGa 3 in particular.
SaGa 1 only has the Wonderswan remaster and that's pretty much the best way to play that one game in particular.
The good thing about the GB games is that, being ancient handheld games, they're all pretty small and you can handily finish them in a couple of hours, so if you wanna try SaGa 2 and 3 GB before the remakes you wouldn't really waste too much time on either of those, and since both remakes add quite a lot of meat (no pun intended) they manage to stay fresh even as replays.
So I guess I'll follow your advice and play the original version of at least SaGa 2 first, would you recommend the 2021 collection or emulating some version of it with a patch or whatever?
Play SaGa 1 too, either one's fine. The collection's okay, the best feature it has is gameplay speedup without speeding up music, other than that I don't recall it being any better than emulating originals.
Probably don't play SaGa 3 GB, it's not really a SaGa game since it was done by the people from the Mana series I think.
Fricking Oblivion.
Any of the Saga-sages have advice for this frick? I barely squeaked by the true Sinistrals and keep getting stonewalled by his phase changes wiping out buffs.
I'm far from being a sage but having at least 1 character with revive and feather seal helps a lot
If you've got some staves of vivacity now's the time to use them too
Use any kind of magic to overwrite his field effect and find any enemy you can farm to dodge stuff like reaper slash or fascination. Use multi hit attacks if you can and grind it out!
Before going into the abyss you should collect as many staves of vivacity as you can. Your axe users can break them for an aoe heal that restores your entire party to full.
You can cheese the fight by abusing the hasten time spell, especially in the wedge formation (from the fairy). The shadow servant spell is also very effective.
Alternatively if you bought some quality balms you may find success with commander mode. The 4p desert lance and spell pyramid formations are good options. If you need to conserve SP then use basic (preemptive) attacks during the first phase, then switch to spamming your strongest skills. If you've sparked reverse delta you can use it in spell pyramid formation whenever you don't need to heal. This works best if your party members have high LP, because the idea is that you get revived every turn and get to attack before you are killed again. Remember to remove any skills except for your strongest ones, and especially remove any aoe skills so you don't wipe out your own party if you get charmed.
>but I don't have any of this and my only save is in the abyss
you're FRICKED
>but I don't have any of this and my only save is in the abyss
>you're FRICKED
Luckily I have a save outside. Not looking forward to rolling through Huang and fighting the abyss lords, but this time I'll bring a variety of armors and accessories.
I was being kind of cheap so I didn't even put Solar/Lunar magic on most party members outside the healers. Big mistake.
If you have a Shortsword/Spear user, give them the Nightengale, it can act as an extra form of healing.
You should have at least 100-125 WP or JP for Oblivion. Also Minstrel is insanely broken if you have not gotten him, his Folk Song ability buffs your party's stats for free and it stacks atop Paeon of Victory.
I intend on trying to cap out his WP and JP and max out all his weapons in addition to Solar magic. Not during this playthrough though.
The +10 is from the 2 Mages rings I gotten from the Phantom Maze, I fricked up as Sarah and went NG+, currently just levelling his sun magic to have an extra amount of healing for later.
>100-125 WP
only if you have a very high level in one weapon plus extra levels in other weapons, like the fairy.
>folk song
buffs fade over time so I think you're better off with just paeon of victory
Doing much better now - took down Bunny and Arrocel with no major issue. Forneus I can probably cheese again but am not looking to Aunas, as I don't have much in the way of fire mitigation (forgot to get wall of fire, whoops)
The armor he dropped in the fire dungeon is very useful, otherwise just avoid counterattacks
Yeah it meant that Katarina didn't take any of the counter damage from attacking, meaning her shadow servant stayed up the whole fight.
All that is left is the final boss now.
>All that is left is the final boss now.
Who is still raping me. Think I just need more SP/MP. Is the switch between light and void wing based on HP thresholds? I know you can manually switch him back from void by casting sun/moon spells, but it seems like a mixed blessing due to his defense being lower as void.
At the start of the fight he has super high defense and low offense
In the middle of the fight he starts hitting harder while in light form, at this point he can switch to void form and you can switch him back. You might want to leave him in void form if you want to rush him down with chained hasten time at this point. Otherwise it can be hard to deal with constant end of turn damage, especially if you don't have many staves to break.
Either way at the end of the fight he goes into void form and moon/sun magic doesn't revert him.
If you're running out of SP/MP try being more conservative at the start of the fight and hope you get more value out of shadow servant
I beat him. The problem was I barely used magic in my entire playthrough so everyone but Black and Boston could only cast their relevant spells once per fight. Spent a half hour grinding MP and then beat him with little difficulty, only had to smash one emergency staff.
Team was Katarina, Robin, Boston, Black and Elephant.
Guess Katarina decided to stay single because I didn't bring Mikhail?
Congrats man, facing Oblivion the first time was a trip.
Slam him with your strongest stuff, abuse things like Shadow Servant if you have them.
Break your staves of vivacity for mass heals, you did save them did you?
Buff yourself with the Matriarch's Spear, remember buffs scale with your weapon levels.
If all else fails and you don't wanna abuse Commander Mode, Hasten Time will let you mostly ignore the Dark Wing shifts and basically anything he does on the round you cast it. in any case when he does go into Dark Wing you should cast Moon/Sun spells to get him outta that mode and retune the field to some other element than Abyss.
There's more indepth weird strategies like getting Rukh/Zo in a particular formation and combine Dragon God's descent and Shadow Servant but that's minmaxing nonsense and you gotta be pretty familiar with the game.
>Zo in a particular formation and combine Dragon God's descent
Does that get canceled by dark wing? If so, do you need to get enough MP to cast it twice?
Pretty sure it doesn't.
Nonsense, the games are not gonna eat you or anything, just take the plunge, you won't regret it
>the games are not gonna eat you or anything
two weeks later
>hey guys I'm at the seven heroes and I can't make it past the third spawn
SaGa 3 was made by Fujioka, Ide, Sasai etc., none of the people involved with it were part of the Mana team iirc, most of those left the company past the SNES days too, iirc a couple of programmers are part of Monolith nowadays (?).
Some of the people from the old Mana team have actually been around for many of the other games in some measure, Ishii in particular has been around until the PS2 days in some capacity and was one of the major team members during the PS1 days, Ishii and Kawazu are close friends and often helped each other out with their respective games, SaGa Frontier in particular was one of their strongest joint projects.
Yeah I mixed up Adventure and Mystic Quest, oops.
I've went with SaGa 2 on a gameboy emulator first, definitely has that old school JRPG zaniness to it
Balance seems a bit wacky too, with my robot being a total death machine and the rest picking up the pieces and barely getting any stats aside from HP, I read up a bit on it and one mistake in the early game was probably just gunning down a lot of encounters with an SMG without even getting one turn in with them, but even now grinding for it and giving them turns it's slow going
Mechs are pretty busted for most of GB SaGa 2, they're still strong in the DS remake but the additional mechanics and some exploit fixes in there rebalance things quite a bit.
They are well aware of the hilarity
one video game completed except for those 4 cheevos i'm missing
congrats
>achievements
I've played this game several times and I'm still missing one for the orchard, it's a waste of time
I love when games do these kinds of recaps, kino
And it's interesting how different our Emperor choices were, I mostly went with Crusader's once I unlocked them
mad cuz bad
>beat first sinistral
>can finally kick minstrel
>talk to him in another bar to get info for quest
>forces himself into the party and won't leave til we kill another one
I understand why Saruin wanted to kill Elore.
lol
>kill elore
that's actually an option, make him run out of LP
for future reference, you can talk to him if you have a full party
Wait RS1 and 3 are in the same world?
No, the Minstrel is kind of a mascot that appears in all the Romancing SaGa games though.
Honestly I'd love to have a playthrough with the Minstrel in the party in Minstrel Song, but it's such a pain in the ass if you want to swap around party members
It's worth doing at least once, for the hilarity of the situation at least.
The real joke party is bringing only non-humans to subvert Elore's bullshit entirely (Aisha, Minstrel, Guella Ha, Silver, Schierke)
>Guella Ha
He was a true bro, I honestly hope we can get a geckling/lizardman protagonist and not just a party member
Not happening in EB, maybe in the next game though, we might see some successor to Wild Card's Sook.
Mechanics wise they're the exact same outside of some bugfixing and the removal of the FoW while dashing.
>removal of the FoW while dashing
RS3 still has it, at least on the vita port. RS2 doesn't.
It has it in some dungeons in which enemies are reduced to their shadows, but not every location. I honestly thought it was an interesting mechanic coupled with breaking formation while running. While you have an advantage in being faster, you may trip on enemies.
It's pretty damn annoying if you don't have Sif, Guella Ha, and Hawke in your party if you're trying to be super efficient, but in that case it's clearly (you) that's the problem because why wouldn't you want to have them?!
Raphael is a silly boy though I never used him outside of being forced to
Wouldn't have to be, given Gods and Celestials can frick off to different worlds whenever they feel like.
i still haven't beaten the ice wyvern at wagnas castle. i'm only one timeskip away from being the final emperor trying to unlock new skills before inheriting them for the next generation. i don't know if i can unlock south Avalon (where the old graveyard was replaced with) due to salamanders being gone.
you can spark skills with the final emperor and register them in the dojo during a 2-year timeskip in the final generation
is the remaster as brutal as the famicom version? (battle counter etc)
They removed the limited scope of vision while running.
So it's been seven and a half years since the revival of SaGa. I remember being hyped when this trailer dropped.
that was the first and last time I ever bought a phone game
thankfully they ported it to proper consoles afterward
Either I got really lucky or Forneus's first fight doesn't Maelstrom if the field isn't Water.
Does anyone know what tribulation stones in SG do for difficulty vs just setting it to strong engagements?
They add one level to your battle rank iirc
RS3 seems like a pretty major step down from RS2. World feel a lot smaller and with no connective tissue, unlike Minstrel Song and RS2 where everything revolved around their core antagonists. Still a decent game but would be more likely to replay the others.
After this, SF1, SF2 (which I played about half of when it came out but got stonewalled by the midgame Egg) and finally SG.
Oops meant to @ this post
not yours
Forgot Unlimited between SF2 and SG.
RS3 isn't as well connected so I wasn't impressed after my first playthrough but replaying it is better. It's worth doing a mikhail playthrough for his minigame + using commander mode for the entire game if you haven't already
My biggest complaint is that the encounter scaling is totally fricked up. I beat all four sinistrals but the majority of enemy types are still their most basic enemy. It makes it difficult to progress mechanically, meanwhile RS2 dropped boss equivalent monsters on you towards the midgame and that made it easy to get more powerful and felt great when you stomp something that chewed you up when it was a rare spawn.
I get why they tried that, maybe make a universal BR/ER and average that with the monster family one? As it is in game, it's just not good.
Yeah RS2 has smoother progression on a first playthrough because of the BR and because it's easier to find the quests. But when you know what you're doing you can get overpowered quickly in both games and play through with minimal filler so the difference isn't so big.
And the different MCs, recruitable characters, extra minigames, formations and commander mode all add to RS3's replayability.
RS3 might not be as tight and emotional as RS2 overall but it still polishes a lot of things coming from RS2, the reduced complexity and level of difficulty was a byproduct of RS2 being perceived as too complex back in the day so they scaled some things down.
Outside of some critical mistakes like the new BR mechanics I wouldn't say it's strictly worse however, the world being a bit less focused on the big bads and with more narrative threads like Ludwig or Jackal existing outside of the main quest makes is interesting in its own right, and there's also quite a few great quests like the entire chase in the divine king tower, the Gwayne bro-op against Byunei, Nacht Zweiger or Muse's Dream, the world building is good and with lots of secrets as usual.
It doesn't reach the peaks of RS2 but it's also a good elaboration on the formula RS1 tried to create, it feels a bit archaic now because Kawazu made things like Minstrel Song, but it's still a fairly solid game for its time and it tried a lot of interesting things, even though many didn't end up as good as they sound.
I actually prefer the more freeform nature of RS3 as opposed to being tied to the narrative in RS2 with its generational system, you are free to consider RS2 as the better game but RS3 is much closer to the iconic SaGa experience of "just pick your character and explore".
My only complaint is that gerard can't access the remaster dungeon. The guy in mobelm won't tell him about the dungeon until after you beat up the pirates, which causes a timeskip.
At least you can kill noel and rocbouquet.
how the hell did you do that?
As long as you can ride the ship from Somon you can get to both of them. You just have to tread very carefully.
There are two options after RS2's intro
>canal fort -> take a boat -> go wherever you want
or
>brawler stuff -> gemstone mine -> east dungeon of nazelle -> boat to mermaid town -> talk to witch -> access desert -> go wherever you want
But note there might be a timeskip when you do the canal fort or the gemstone mine. It's impacted by the number of battles you fight so if you don't want to learn the specifics you can just fight a battle before finishing the quest and repeat until you avoid the timeskip. Also it helps to delay killing the goblin king until afterwards.
gerard can also get wrecked by the sorcerer, and he can do the mermaid quest. He can't fight bokhohn because he's too wimpy to be captured as a slave.
>he can do the mermaid quest
what would his brother Victor and father Leon react about this love for a mermaid?
RS2 progression is deeper than you'd think.
I don't think they'd mind considering official art has James (?) frolicking with Tethys, now Gerard abandoning his imperial duties to frick the fish might be another matter entirely.
In my headcanon he marries Cat anyway, if dad and oniichan have no qualms with a clumsy thief they wouldn't mind a fish.
has anybody ever got a compilation of the imperial log for RS2? you would need multiple saves for them. imagine doing a Bad End run where you chose to ignore/decline orders.
don't think so, I've never heard of anyone caring about it
RS2 has convinced me that I straight up suck at these games. Really wish all the defensive stats were clearly stated for equipment.
*RS3
The struggle is part of the fun.
time to start this after spending like 2 hours getting xDelta to work with this and 3
Why bother with xdelta when you can be a lazy c**t like me and grab a prepatched rom
I guess I wasn't searching hard enough
>Didn't put these and Wonderswan SaGa in the collection
Man.
fascinating. so you can pull The Stage since Gerard is supposedly dead due to Rocbouquet match?
I still havent played a saga game
Kind of scared to start.
Like all JRPGs its about 5% as complicated as people pretend it is and its balanced for literal children.
>balanced for literal children
Just make sure you have multiple save files
Are the various NPCs that join or available monster forms a good bench mark for stats I should have at that point in SaGa 2? Because I'm far behind either with my Human and Mutant, their stat gain is so fricking slow and I basically already decided to only raise Agi for the Human and Agi/Mana for the mutant
Kinda rusty on the guest NPCs for GB SaGa 2, but iirc some of the early game ones like Sensei, Ki or Mask are actually above your intended power levels since they're more or less glorified bodyguards.
As for the late ones you'll easily be above them.
Yeah, moreso talking about the late ones Lynn had shit HP, but way more agility than my characters
I'm done with the racetrack world now and my Human has like 20 agility and some strength from when I used strength weapons, my Esper has like 17 agility, 20 mana and I also got her some base defense through shields
Seems like the stats increase extremely slowly unless you're grinding a lot
You have to show us what you end the game with. Maybe the SaGa RNG gods hate you.
Are you the guy from the last thread who got absolutely fricked by mutant growths in FFL1?
No, but I've also started FFL2. Haven't had much time to play lately though, kinda scared my human will repeat the fate of those mutants now that humans gain stats the same(?) way as them.
No, but his posting contributed to me actually wanting to check out the GB games
I think the main issue is that I just ended a lot of encounters in the early game without my human and esper doing anything because the SMG on the robot was too OP (and stacking agility on it too)
These are my stats without equipment boosting it after the Dragon Race world:
>Human M: 620 HP, 24 Str, 27 Agility, 9 Mana (gave him some of the boosters so he'd get healed a bit more, no idea if that's dumb, but the limited inventory discouarged me from hoarding)
>Esper F: 328 HP, 10 Def, 20 Agility, 25 Mana (does equipping Magi make it harder to level stats like stat boosting equipment does?)
>Robot has 528 HP, 42 Def 61 Agility with its current setup of a million laser swords, a bazooka and some defensive equipment
>Monster became a dragon after eating Watcher meat so it's suddenly really strong too: 614 HP, 64 Strength, 61 Def, 55 Agility, 60 Mana
So because of the HP I assume I did an expected amount of fighting for where I'm at (did a bit of grinding with speed up, mainly to get some defense on my esper and to switch my Human to using agility as well), but Mana/Agility are so far behind that it doesn't seem like they'll catch up without grinding
You shouldn't expect to get str/def/agi on your mutant. Just hope you get a reasonable amount of mana (yours is doing fine, especially considering she didn't get all the boosters) and enough hp to survive a hit (give her hp boosters).
No. After a couple worlds you can obtain monsters that are much more powerful than any of your characters. They aren't great in the first world and everyone else surpasses them power wise by the end game but monsters have some pretty good skills depending on the form they have during the end game. There will be a good chance that a robot and monster will carry your party.
Don't may any attention to NPC stats. Your mutant will have shit stats in comparison, but you still want a mutant to prevent ambushes and use full party healing.
Humans just suck.
Taking another crack at Urpina’s route is Scarlet Grace, couldn’t beat Firebringer at the end last time, can anyone explain why Solon’s natura based healing spell is only doing like 7 or 8 points of healing? I got the nun who’s doing much better with healing thankfully, but wondering what’s going on there. Thanks, love the SaGa threads on here
>can anyone explain why Solon’s natura based healing spell is only doing like 7 or 8 points of healing?
Restoration is something you use for removing status effects, the healing power is low because it comes with mass status cleanse.
That and it's a pretty bad spell in general, it doesn't have any real use.
The more you know. Cheers, amigo
Honestly, if you're not
>Poisonous Mist
>Water Pressure
>Rain of Life
>Call Lightning
>Hyper Gravity
You're not worth casting, there's some spells that kinda have their own niche like Tailwind or Flashfire but generally speaking that niche is too niche and only really relevant when you want them to be relevant, as in you purposedly deny yourself other strategies to justify using them.
Spells in SG can be busted but the actual spell variety is very low and there's entire spell schools that are pretty much useless, hopefully EB isn't like that.
Yeah, rain of life has gotten me through a few tough slogs but nothing else really has been of much use. Magic definitely helped a lot with clearing RS2 and the Frontier routes I’ve managed to finish but I guess maybe not the best option in SG. Thanks
>That and it's a pretty bad spell in general, it doesn't have any real use.
you can get it to pop off in one turn
It's pointless when Benisons exist, same reason why spells like Armor Bless or Power Raise are useless, there's benisons for those effects that are MUCH better.
In the early game there's hardly any scenario where Restoration comes into play and in the mid/lategame Rain of Life is just better, if you really are put in the situation where your caster has to cleanse multiple people from status effects then it's already a reset scenario because in the time it takes for you to pop off Restoration your retinue is a bunch of sitting ducks that will take loads of damage, having two or more characters shut down by statuses is a death sentence, which is why there's Benisons that go off on their own to heal you and prevent that from happening.
You cast the restoration before you get inflicted with status effects because you already know they're going to happen
There's no guarantee those Gaze or other status inflictions will land at all, you don't even know which character is being targeted anyway unless you inflicted Rage on things and they're using status effects, and again, Benisons will just go off on their own in that case, and also heal you more than Restoration, your caster has no business using Restoration preemptively, if it did heal more than that maybe it would be worth considering but it doesn't, even Grail is a better use of your BP and casting rounds.
sounds like you have a skill issue
Started Frontier as Red, loving how abrupt everything is.
>two paragraphs of exposition
CAR CRASH
Thank God, I hate text dumps. I just want to play a game.
>play for 5 minutes
>trapped in a dungeon with prank boss fight that you have to run away from to get out
>Hit start game
>You're instantly in battle
>Your entire party gets cut down
>enter a burning house
>go right instead of left
>instantly mauled to death by a giant maneating tiger
Yeah but FF2 is largely a psych-out. Just build everyone with sword/shield+cure and you'll dominate 100%.
frankly not as bad as the start of Assellus scenario. ran around in the castle to figure out how to progress the plot.
T-thanks...
>LifeStone.jpg
Redpill me about Scarlet Grace. Who should I start with and why?
not leo
Start with Leo and end with Leo
Starting with Leo means you can do the Trading sidequest and unlock material conversion and carry it into NG+, meaning you never actually have to try to farm high-tier elemental mats.
After beating it with everyone, I ended up doing that on my fifth run, and I got an Urpina with 15 Strength.
Pick whoever the comet gives you and have fun
The big ball of fire surely knows best
Jesus frick Romancing SaGa 2 is stressful but I can't stop playing
Don't stress out, you have a frick ton of generations to accomplish everything. Just beat it in the past week and its at the top of my favorite JRPGs now. Final boss fight is a frick trip so be ready.
Oops wrong link
there's no reason to be stressed in rs2, no matter how badly you frick up you can always win after a bit of grinding
I like that in Romancing SaGa 2 there is a reason to use status effects so your characters don't get one shot in battle. Along with that they are often cheap to use resource wise and you have five characters in a party.
The first time I played RS2 I remember therese got one-shot a few times. Now I always give her steel armor and other defensive equipment rather than sticking with the default setup.
the only stressful part in rs2 is thinking how you'll have to do annoying item/magic management in Avalon after each skip so you try to avoid that as much as possible
yeah when I replay rs2 I try to minimize timeskips
unfortunately that means I don't get the second phase of the gemstone mine or the volcano eruption, even if I do the first part of those quests with Gerard
The whole game is only like 5 skips. Building a new team is fun.
I've started the SaGa series recently, played through Frontier first, then to Minstrel Song and then to Scarlet Grace.
I loved Scarlet Grace so much I immediately started another playthrough after finishing my first character.
I'm very excited for Emerald Beyond. Should probably finish 2 and 3 before that though
Has anyone played this game?
I have it downloaded but currently going through SaGa2 DS.
Man, robots are freaking sweet
Yeah, it's pretty good, way better than the GB original which isn't even a SaGa game anyway.
I hope we get another SaGa collection that features both the wonderswan version and DS titles together in a package.
>A party of 4 complete blank slates that you're free to build however you want.
>A ton of races, weapons and spells to choose from
The hard part is honestly deciding what builds you to want to go for.
>a party of 4
>5 party members in the interface
Or is one of them a guest? Also is that SaGa 2 or 3 DS?
has to be 3 because I am playing 2 right now and 2 looks like this in the menu
SOVL
SOVLless
SaGa 3 DS. Dune/Polnaref/Milfie/Sireugh are fixed while the 5th character is a guest that rotates in and out.
The first miniboss is really exploitable for stat gains/sparks.
for SaGa2 DS, are the digging and break wall relics are worth using?
good lord Asura doesn't frick around
>fire immune
my Mutant is useless
>2 DS
>new glove gives +1 defense over current glove for Human and Esper
>gives robot like +6 extra defense and 30 HP
Robots feel OP as frick
Robots are super OP in the gameboy version too. Not only are they the best tanks, they are the fastest units by far so you can outspeed and wipe out groups of enemies with modern weaponry (or the samurai bow). And they also deal the best single target damage with the catclaw.
I don't think I found any of those yet but considering he has:
AoE Gun
Single Target Gun
Speed weapon
I don't know if I need anything else
they get splattered by any magic attacks though
as I learned with Asura.
Had to pray he would physically attack my mech because he was taking 0 damage from physical moves
everyone gets fricked by magic attacks
also with how mana stat works, they're shit at healing and getting healed
other races can just go nuts on the area heal staff and make the final boss a breeze.
I love these games but I must accept I will never defeat a final boss in any of them.
Why not? Final Boss of pic related can be trivialized by not giving it any Fate Stones.
I haven't got to Saruin yet, but I can't defeat RS3 final boss, even though I should be overleveled and with a decent build, who knows, I am just stupid at strategizing, it's okay.
You don't need to strategize with Hasten Time, just slap it on everyone and go to town, staves of vivacity will take care of the rest
Assuming everyone has 40+ MP, sure, but at that point you're probably better off running shadow servant.
26mp lets you use shadow servant + hasten time and act first next turn. 11mp doesn't guarantee you act first next turn but is still a big power boost.
a few characters can get the full combo from the start, e.g. robin, boston, undine. The rest of your team won't have enough mp but you might as well teach shadow servant to everyone if you have spare money, that way if you're stick you can just grind to 11mp in the abyss rather than having to load an earlier save
and of course, you start the fight normally, then you break a staff of vivacity and start hasten time cheese
Moving around in RS2 feels terrible man.
It was still tile based movement, so yeah, it feels a bit off nowadays.
wasd is way better for some reason lets you hold another direction while you're moving but dpad will just eat the input frequently if you don't wait until stop, looks like you have to tap each tile. Can understand why this got such bad reviews on steam on release.
No such issue on the vita.
I tried RS2 and 3 recently on the Vita because of comments like that and this is just completely wrong.
RS2 feels the exact same on the Vita as it does on PC, and just by going back and forth between 2 and 3 on the Vita there's a world of difference. I don't even think it's a matter of input delay as much as RS2 just locking you into moving a certain distance before you can change directions
biggest issue with vita are the load times
>but dpad will just eat the input frequently if you don't wait until stop,
I haven't noticed this at all, I always move whichever direction I hold
Maybe the issue is with the input buffer? e.g. if I press start while I'm holding the dpad I don't always pause, don't know if that's because the dpad is already buffered
Input buffering could be a problem as well, but to me the biggest contributing factor to RS2's janky movement is the distance covered by your character every time you move.
https://streamable.com/ua4n7a
https://streamable.com/uet4wp
In both of these clips I'm only moving by tapping the d-pad once at a time, in RS3 Sarah will barely move forward, while the Emperor in RS2 will cover more distance before stopping, and you can't really do much of anything (other than moving in the same direction) before he does, be it changing directions, pausing or opening the menu which I believe is the reason why the game sometimes feels like it's eating your inputs.
the full step vs half step movement doesn't bother me at all, either way you move quickly when you're dashing. As long as the next action occurs when you're done moving rather than leaving your character idle.
this
makes it sound like anon is holding the dpad left, then switching to holding the dpad up, and the character just stands still instead of turning. That would be absolutely infuriating if it was the case.
This is whats happening but only for the dpad, so worst case I'll use the stick to move. Switch version dpad works but has slightly more startup lag than pc, the original turning is way snappier.
That's because RS2 movement is tile based while RS3 isn't, it's as simple as that, in RS2 you always move one tile, which is also why speedruns abuse pause buffers to avoid enemy collisions.
RS2 feels naturally a bit clunkier than what came after it, SNES RS1 is the same.
>while RS3 isn't
isn't it just smaller tiles?
Iirc the tilesize for RS3 is the same as RS2
I'm around 20 hours in RS2 on PC and I haven't noticed any kind of input delay despite being warned about it and actually trying to feel it, maybe it's a controller or setting issue or perhaps people just aren't used to old RPGs not letting you move like it's Dark Souls 3.
Wait, are people just complaining about a lack of 8 directional movement?
I'm playing the steam and switch versions together now and switch isn't eating the inputs so it has to be a setting.
There is absolutely input delay but I have no idea if it's on PC. I played the game on Switch and there was a noticeable delay from simply trying to move one space down on the d-pad
Currently playing Romancing SaGa 2 and I'm glad I'm not the only experiencing random stopping when trying to turn my character as I'm walking. Shit drives me insane, happens on both PC and Steam Deck for me.
how does this Trap Disarm relic in SaGa2 DS work?
I have it active and yet still get hit by traps
>Touhou Souzengi V
>Little Hat World (usually has a thread up on this board)
>Legend of Legacy/Alliance Alive, guess I'll mention The Last Remnant for this category as well
You guys know any other SaGa inspired games?
of Legacy/Alliance Alive, guess I'll mention The Last Remnant for this category as well
Legend of Legacy and Alliance Alive are utter trash like all FuRyu games.
Agreed, I just already know about them, so I don't need them recommended
>utter trash like all FuRyu games
It's not that FuRyu games are utter irredeemable trash, they're just... Painfully mediocre. Usually pretty good in one or two aspects and bad to at best decent in others.
LoL 100% failed to grab me, but I bought AA twice, for both switch and PC. It feels like a game boy game brought up to modern standards, and I really appreciate that. It doesn't fall into the trap of "Man who stopped playing for a week may as well start over." Here's your overarching plot:
>It's raining
>All the time
>Because of the demons
>Go stop the demons
Plus you can talk to NPCs in town. Bravely Default seemed really hesitant to give you NPCs to talk to, as if they forgot what towns were for, and that left a bad taste in my mouth
I'll second that Alliance Alive feels a lot better than LoL. I still have both on the back burner though. They feel like very cozy turn your brain off games to me.
Threw RS2 and 3 back on my Vita. I've gotten as far as beating the 4 sinistrals in 3 before and barely touched 2, but 3 is a game I can just start over and over and still have a good time. Rn just beat Kzinssie in 2. Any general gameplay tips for me? How exactly does the magic/tech/inheritance system work in 2?
>Any general gameplay tips for me?
Sit on your throne after each generation change, and do it quite a few times, your counsellors and minister come to ask you for funds to builds shit in Avalon and you might miss some prompts if you don't sit in there often, 90% of the facilities you can build are crucial to access various game content, the Magic Research Center and the University are perhaps the most crucial of all, but you really should pay money to develop everything.
Also, switch your emperor classes often, almost any non starting class in the game can create new formations by speaking to the Dojo captain, the earliest examples of that are city thieves and brawlers.
>How exactly does the magic/tech/inheritance system work in 2?
See the Dojo in the castle's ground floor? every tech you spark gets recorded there and you need to check the board in the Dojo to teach techs you discovered to people, also you need to wait one generation shift to teach things you spark during a generation, they won't be immediately available.
As far magic, you need to build the aforementioned Magic Research Center to develop and teach new spells, after your global proficiency levels in two non opposing magic schools are high enough you'll also be able to research fusion spells, there are two tiers of those too, there's also a "secret" magic school you won't get unless you make a certain choice later on in the game, but you'll have to choose between that and a recruiting a new class.
I agree it's a good idea to save 1 million crowns so you can build the magic research facility, but the university stuff is not that important
Strategists are pretty good and help you do the easier route to one of the heroes.
There's also Touhou Devil of Decline.
So, I got the Steam version of this- should I use a walkthrough? I'm no expert in JRPGs but I've beaten a few, though I've heard this one can be pretty difficult blind, that you can easily frick yourself over given the strange mechanics. Non-conventional leveling, etc- similar to FF II but more fleshed out where what you use is what improves rather than flat gains.
>this-
>etc-
I think I've seen you somewhere...
Anyway, if you've got time, you can just frick around to learn the systems and find the content yourself. It will be pretty difficult at times, but nothing completely unmanageable probably. A guide will make things much easier, of course, but at that point are you really playing the game? Maybe only look up a guide if you feel you truly got hard stuck somewhere.
>I think I've seen you somewhere...
You probably have. But yeah, I figure I'll do that, did the same with Dragon Quest III (SNES) and Final Fantasy IX's Steam release. I prefer to play these games blind, but sometimes they can get pretty obtuse.
is that art from king of dragon pass?
No, but it should be. It's Diogenes vibe checking Plato with a chicken.
Don't use guides, especially for SaGa games where the exploration and progression is so satisfying due to how open the games are.
The game is only superficially similar to FF2, you have weapon proficiency levels but your stats outside of HP/TP/MP do not grow, your weapon classes have tech trees and lots of weapons have built in commands unique to them, the game has a soft class system where each class uses stat templates, similarly, magic has proficiency levels tied to specific magic school, there's no spell ranks even though spells still do grow stronger through use just like in FF2.
Like the other anon said, only resort to a guide if you feel like you're stuck somewhere and don't know what to do, even there though you have not only a journal that records the various quest states and rumours you've heard, in your castle you have ministers that will give you news about what's currently happening around the world and can help guiding your progression somewhat, there will be many different, untold choices and quest routes you'll have to find out and experience on your own.
Guides ruin the point
Just finished RS2 after 32 hours, it blows my mind that this game came out in 1993 and I wish the JRPG genre as a whole had used it as a golden standard rather than DQ/FF(although I like both series).
It doesn't top Scarlet Grace as my favorite SaGa game but I can definitely see why some people prefer it over RS3, the generation system combined with LP not naturally recovering and permadeath being expected made for an interesting experience.
One of the biggest things other RPGs should take away from it is that developing your characters and party should be fun. Often times the only martial skill is the generic attack command. Having cheap skills to use to stun and paralyze the enemy is great for martial characters rather than that always being abilities for magic casters.
Developing characters to have more options and then being able to use those options is always satisfying.
>Often times the only martial skill is the generic attack command.
It's interesting how SaGa is one of the very few RPGs that eventually completely erased the concept of the Attack command and instead gave everything a starting technique with its own specific attributes and functions, Scarlet Grace in particular makes this even more evident because even basic techs are not interchangeable at all and fill a specific niche.
>my human can't hit for shit
Level up AGI for a bit, martial arts will let you do that.
>my monster is doing no damage
It's normal, you need good monster forms
>and spells are deleting my crew in 1-2 hits
Also normal
>Level up AGI for a bit, martial arts will let you do that.
okay, will do that once I am done with that darn dragon race
alternatively, give up on str/agi and stick to guns
AGI determines turn order, right?
yes
either I am doing something wrong in SaGa 2 DS but: my human can't hit for shit, my monster is doing no damage, and spells are deleting my crew in 1-2 hits
>Feed Polnaref a random fairy
>He inherits Magic Boost
I guess he's pretty much set as a caster for the rest of the game then.
but Silver Chariot doesn't use Magic
Frontier is moronic and I love it.
I got oneshot by a slime bros and my emperor died I wanna go back to hat world
Remember when you kill the slime go into the room after it and kill everything in there as well.
What am I supposed to do in this game if you cant grind to get stronger
You can beat the slime, you just need to go to a free for all formation, go to your castle inventories vault and withdraw some balms and equip them, then use magic attacks, or at worse slashing and piercing attacks. If you got party wiped try building a mage team, you can recruit two in the castle to tackle the big slime.
You shouldn't need to grind. How the game works is that there are character exclusive skill levels and universal skill levels. Every time your party gains a new skill level, your universal levels get a bit of XP. Whenever you roll over a new generation or recruit a new unit, the universal level (plus or minus some modifiers based on their class) is the new floor.
This is very useful for magic levels, as a character's MP is the sum of their magic skill levels (+/- some modifiers). This means you want to give every party member at least one type of healing spell, even if they're a physical attacker, so you can pump that magic stat up.
Once you get two to three generations past Gerard you'll start to see how drastically this spiral out of control.
>if you cant grind to get stronger
What are you talking about? Of course grinding makes you stronger.
If you don't want to level up your team until you can beat this you can also choose to do a different quest and come back to this later.
Use Free For All and magic with Gerard/Emerald, Gelatinous Matter is there to teach you about positioning and resistances, inorganics have really high physical resistance and its lightning attack hits really hard on a row, with Free For All you minimize casualties since you're set up in two columns and have no rows at all, Fireball can make short work of it provided you can survive the constant lightning spam.
If you can handle Hat World you can handle RS2, just don't underestimate things too much only because it's an oldass game, things do get considerably easier once you start figuring up stuff and stumble into the broken shit, but you gotta get there in the first place.
Anyone had this issue with the Rune quest? I got Annie in my party for Shuzer's arc, then got the other three runes. Beat Shuzer and Annie left my party but isn't offering to take me to the last rune when I talk to her. Tried leaving the region and coming back, tried talking to the Rune magic teacher, nothing works thus far.
>first playthrough
picked emerald
>second playthrough
picked aries
>third playthrough
killed aries and sagittarius in the first five goblin fights, then recruited libra with lvl5 wind and water, then demolished kujinshi and gelatinous matter in the 11th and 12th battles of the game
minmaxing is fun
Just beat Red's campaign in SF. Was pretty good. Big complaint is that transitions are very abrupt (oh Cygnus is calling - black screen) but I guess that's the fat you trim when you're making eight extremely divergent routes in a game.
Probably going to start SF2 and play that and sub in SF1 campaigns as I work through it. Then hopefully I'll be able to get a loop of SF1 route -> Unlimited Saga route -> Scarlet Grace route and be fully done by the time EB comes out.
EB is coming in late february/march at the earliest so don't worry about it, you have plenty of time
They'll probably announce the release date in their December event right?
I'm actually pretty hype, I'm about halfway done with my 3rd run of Scarlet Grace, then I only have a super completionist Leo playthrough to go, I really appreciate the game a lot now and how Emerald Beyond will be even better
Seems like it, yes.
Kawazu said they're currently putting the finishing touches on the current game build, by December they should be in the last debugging phase so we'll have a release date by then.
Hopefully we'll also get news regarding what they're remaking and remastering.
So what's the deal with progression in SF2? What transfers from jump to jump or does everyone and every branch have different inventories?
Basically there's two main branches, Gustave's side and Wil's side, both of these are generational stories like RS2, unlike RS2 the game is divided into self contained mini scenarios however, where you play with premade parties.
The main differences between Gustave and Wil is that, outside of being two different families, Gustave's side is more focused on narrative while Wil's side is more focused on gameplay, Gustave's story is mostly cutscenes with some normal gameplay and army fights once in a while, Wil's side is the complete opposite, it's mostly dungeon crawling and fighting with some cinematic scenarios once in a while.
As you progress through the story some characters will become permanently unavailable due to dying of old age, but you'll also be able to play with their children and new people too, there will be an NPC in places like Westia that will let you unequip anything other characters are using, so don't worry about losing any equipment you find.
Two more questions: is there a BR/ER scaling equivalent? Do related characters inherit anything from each other or are they "fresh"?"
Any tech or spell you learn is remembered by every character forever. To get all of them you should expect to use every character at least a bit.
>is there a BR/ER scaling equivalent?
No, SF2 is the only modern SaGa without any of that.
>Do related characters inherit anything from each other
Any tech or spell learned by other characters can be taught to anyone else, outside of Gustave for obvious reasons, you never lose any of the stuff you learn through the game.
>does what world I am in influence growth?
No
>do Mutants also gain AGI with Martial Arts?
They do, I'm unsure whether the stat gains ratios are the same as humans however.
Some other weapons like rapiers also give AGI iirc.
>what is a good AGI to aim for?
Grug says big number is good number, but if you're using a caster AGI is fairly irrelevant, AGI is something you'll want on melee users but gun or magic users don't really need it other than being able to act faster.
Cool sounds like I can just freeball it then. Really liking the music thus far but obviously it doesn't have as good hooks as SF1 does.
>Grug says big number is good number
except that means your healer sometimes goes before the aoe-spamming boss and sometimes after, whereas your 0 agi mutant is consistent
so stop raising AGI on mutant but keep raising AGI on human, got it
Oh frick I got to my final guy in RS2 while still having two of the heroes to find and kill, how badly did I frick up?
that's normal
Ok that's reassuring. I made peace with Noel and the only other one left was Rocbouquet.
It will be like that every playthrough, although making peace will Noel counts as defeating one of the seven, so you have have three left alive at most. Who you gotta kill? Wagnas and Subier?
questions about leveling stats in SaGa 2 DS:
does what world I am in influence growth?
do Mutants also gain AGI with Martial Arts?
what is a good AGI to aim for?
>what is a good AGI to aim for?
0
About 3 hours into SF2 and getting the groove of it - item durability makes me nervous though.
Anyone know how you get Gustave and the Pirates to proc? I've got Volelang, Father's Sudden Death and Infilitrate the Alexei Gang on the map.
How do we fix Unlimited Saga's magic system?
Didn't play Unlimited yet, but how did they manage to make Time Stop useless
there is no time stop
The magic system is good outside of Magic Tablets taking too long to learn most spells, it has cool mechanics, cool lore and the spell list itself is pretty good, not many games use taoist elements either which is a plus.
As for the spells themselves, most are useful in one way or another, there's the odd ones like Ice Nine or Spell Magnet that do need a rework though and things like Firewall just don't have enough relevance because most things don't play around them.
I also don't really agree with that list, the detect line spells are good but the issue is that most of the times Detect Blood/Aura will be better and the map use is really not as good as it could be, Veil spells are good for the sole reason that they make learning spells faster, even if the HP damage multiplier is too low it's unarguable that they help making spell learning less annoying, Meditation is also busted.
Time Stop in Unlimited freezes all stat buffs/debuffs on a target, making them permanent, it virtually has its uses since buffs/debuffs decay pretty rapidly in Unlimited but since you got plenty of turns and a lot of broken shit like Acupuncture it ends up being kinda redundant, it doesn't help that the game balance doesn't really push you to use buffs in the first place unless you're speedrunning through the game and challenging yourself in some way, the buffs themselves are good but it's so easy to get powerful in the game once you know what you're doing there's not a lot of reason to buff yourself outside of maybe prebuffing before the final boss fights.
Veil spells/Ice Nine have a similar issue where the buffs to spell damage are too low, but at least they still make spell learning faster. even the ideas behind spells are good there's lot of math that needs fixes in Unlimited.
im playing minstrel song remastered and im lost as frick. im using claudia and completed a couple of quests, but like i dont know how to follow the story again. is there a way to know where the frick am i? the last quest i completed was the gecko one, and they gave me a map for a treasure
Check your quest log and talk to people
Being lost is the name of the game, even more so in MS, talk to people, check your journal, revisit places you've been in before, there might be new stuff to do at times.
Remember this game uses ER so there's an internal clock for quests too
>but like i dont know how to follow the story again.
Heh.
Chech your event clock on your main menu. It will slowly advance as you kill monsters. Once it hits the sunshaped spot the final boss will be available, but you'll still be able to complete quests until you feel you're ready to fight him. Just go around killing stuff and talking to people. There's barely any story in the game beyond the characters' intro quests anyway, so don't worry about that.
yeah what i meant about the story was, in the beginning my quest was "leave the forest" then i went to the capital and shit, but then i got lost in some mummies quest, then geckos, then valhalland and now i have so many things in the journal that i dont even know if some of this is the "main" thing to do or not, but gotcha, i'll explore some more and thx for the ER thing, didnt know about that. mind you i played RS2 years ago on the vita and got filtered by the 3rd or 4rd phase of the final boss
The thing with MS is that the "main quest" is just getting to Saruin's awakening, everything else is optional.
You know how in RS2 you have to defeat six of the seven heroes to proceed to the final boss? MS has even less mandatory steps than that, past the prologue everything between you and Saruin getting out of bed is technically optional, even though a lot of it is part of the "main quest", but even so it only becomes relevant to you on NG+ where you really do want to get the Fatestones.
For now just focus on making sense of what's happening around Mardias, explore, get lost, get into crazy shit, frick around and find out, Mardias is bigger and busier than it looks at a first glance.
Though technically the only main quest in MS is killing Saruin for most of the game your basic objective before that is to collect all the Fate Stones before anyone else can get them. The game sure drip feeds you that realization however.
While it's part of the main story it sure isn't essential. Which is why I love Minstrel Song. The realization on my second play through that everything is optional and the world doesn't wait for me. What a fantastic game, and the reasons I like it are reasons why others might hate it.
So this is your second SaGa game? Yeah, feeling lost is normal. Romancing SaGa Misntrel Song and Romancing SaGa 3 are similar to one another as well. Romancing SaGa 2 has a lot more discernable progression while others you'll be wandering around. SaGa Frontier has more defined and linear plot progression but you're free to explore the regions often at your leisure.
My hoarding instincts are fricking me over in SF2. Wish there was a way to not only receive items from party members no longer available, but also to send them. Have like 15 arkstones to deposit and only halfway through Gustave dead, Wil retired, fricking around as Rich
for SaGa 2 DS, what does "Taijustu Handling skill" mean?
and I hate end of world bosses because they feel like overpowered pieces of shit, even with the best gear.
Like that fricking Shogun
>/vg/
>Dozens of TES threads are fine
>Dozens of FO3 threads are fine
>Dozens of FF shitposting threads are fine
>A SaGa thread? With actual discussion? AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Nobody likes backseat moderators, moron
Why is there a Muslim in the new Saga? WTF?
why not?
the new girl is intriguing because she is quite clearly an evil cultist, rather than someone who just happens to have a particular ancestry
Because there were never real world religions in SaGa games. It's weird as frick.
Formina is as much of a muslim as Khalid, Lawson or Sharrkan, that means not really, it's just morons from Ganker who are pushing the meme because of the character design, and OP who is of course a massive homosexual for obvious reasons, he wouldn't be OP otherwise.
yeah and there isn't a recruitable cat either, morons are just pushing that meme because of the character design
There are multiple cats, we've seen them in gameplay videos.
>seen them
Exactly, you think they're cats because they look like cats. That proves you are unintelligent. Maybe they're actually dogs.
Technically cats are classified as monsters in EB and we still don't know exactly how monsters will work in EB other than being able to absorb skills from other defeated monsters, so LoLo and Miao at least are indeed cats since it's their base form.
Odin is a fricking chad, very excited to see him in back in EB
sufi islam is basically not even muslim, it's also the only real islam
To provide aesthetic counterweight to the cowboy stripper.
Wouldn't an injun make more sense as a counterweight to a cowgirl bawd?
The intuitive pairing would be a cowgirl bawd and a modest, traditional woman. As of yet we don't know why they specifically chose to use a religious zealot rather than any other variant, e.g. the standard yamato nadeshiko
>Odin fight in SaGa 2 DS
holy frick this is a spike.
I always found Odin a difficulty spike. I just nuke him.
with what?
His adds and AoE just wipe me out in 2-3 turns.
Just grinding now to get enough stats just to survive
With a nuke. In the Gameboy game you can find a nuclear bomb in the big nasty dungeon.
sounds like I need to dip in there
(on gb) I ran two robots, one equipped tons of agi boosting gear to do massive damage with catclaw. Mutant spammed aoe heal of course
>Mutant spammed aoe heal of course
she doesn't have an AoE heal skill and the rods do shit to robots for healing
they must have nerfed heal rods on DS, my robots healed ~200hp
one of those fights that made me GB playthrough stumble
iirc I relied on a mec tanking the hits and resetting when the damage humans fell too early
Beat Saga Frontier 2. It was alright. Biggest problem in my eyes was the encounters being almost impossible to avoid in certain areas (Water Tower being the worst). Liked the Duels a lot.
It is the only SaGa game I haven't beaten and I booted it up yesterday. I got into a battle and remember why I dropped it.
>Touch an enemy
>Screen transition
>Camera pans on the terrain
>Characters and monsters hop in one at a time
>Asks if you want to use LP to heal or continue to the battle menu
>Finally can start selecting actions
>See the actions play out
>All the spells they have a pretty cast animation and then you finally see the spells animation
This game is so slow.
https://www.gematsu.com/2023/10/saga-frontier-character-designer-mentions-saga-frontier-2-re-release-in-2024
On one hand, the game's structure means it would be very easy to add new content seamlessly. On the other, there's not much that needs to be added.
There's a shitload of stuff that needs to be added
>Cielmer's past as an Anima fundamentalist and him falling in love with Sophie after she tells him to stop being a fricking moron
>Cielmer and Narcisse being traveling partners in their youth
>Johan and Ventarbre becoming best friends
>Gustave and Leslie's relationship being actually explained instead of getting cut the moment Gustave returns to Finney
>Making Eleanor, Patrick and Raymond actual characters
>Johan's death during the duel with Judah at the siege of the citadel instead of being just a slow fade out during random fights
I'm not counting on them restoring early dev stage stuff like the various cut cities and small kingdoms in central Sandail since it's clearly going to be a remaster, but they absolutely must add a lot of stuff for the game to not feel awkward, they've already published a novel for that and did a similar thing with SF1 and RS3, if they don't at least give Gustave and Leslie a proper closure I'm going to be mad.
>Johan's death during the duel with Judah at the siege of the citadel instead of being just a slow fade out during random fights
Big thing they'd need is a chance to swap his equipment - one of the only scenarios without a chance to do so. Luckily you can lose the first fight and continue on - otherwise would be unwinnable.
All I want is some kind of high level dungeon where you can use any character in the game.
Leslie would be cool to expand, also Gustave reigns before the war against his half brother
Unlimited SaGa remake confirmed then
How do you rest in Unlimited Saga?
press the analog stick
Thanks bro, wish this game had a tutorial.
You get use to it when it comes to this series. Personally I got Unlimited Saga disc only (for like 1.50$) so I had to look up a PDF of the manual. I broke down to Google it when I had to clue how to get out of town and fight shit.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://archive.org/download/SonyPlaystation2Manuals_201812/Unlimited%2520Saga%2520%2528USA%2529.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj-lonzh5WCAxXCDkQIHa7PDm8QFnoECBAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1ZCb7PUwhkWANqWFTnF5mT
Why isn't The Last Remnant officially part of the series?
Not sure how true this is, but I heard it was originally pitched as SaGa Frontier 3.
I've never heard that. Perhap you're conflating it with the fact (discussed in the artbook) that Saga Frontier was pitched as Romancing Saga 4?
While I wouldn't doubt TLR started as an official SaGa title, I've never been able to find a source for this claim. I did some searching around a while ago. The earliest thing mentioning SF3 I could find was an article from 2007, a year before the game's original release: https://www.ps3fanboy.com/2007/06/02/some-news-on-last-remnant-saga-frontier-3-almost/
On the Japanese side, all I could find were pages stating how TLR plays like a SaGa game
Also I found this cool Japanese page detailing remnants and the SaGa games they reference
https://wikiwiki.jp/remnantpc/%E3%83%AC%E3%83%A0%E3%83%8A%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88
>Directed by Takai
>No involvement from Kawazu other than writing the main scenario and some lore bits
>Mechanics on par with GB SaGa 3
>Character building is just not there outside of Rush
>Literally not part of the series
I don't know, why isn't Crystal Chronicles part of the series?
brainlet take from someone who doesn't know how to play the game
Spamming Mixed Message and the occasional Cachexia doesn't take much, the game lacking something as simple as sparking and preventing you from actually building anyone other than Rush outside of choosing whether you want a Mystic or Weapon focused character (when 90% of the times one is clearly the better choice) doesn't mean the game is a SaGa game.
It has too much strategy to be a SaGa game, hasten time spam is better
building is just not there outside of Rush
This is like saying SaGa Frontier 2 isn't a real SaGa because all you do is build Gustave, Wil, and Rich.
Nonsense, every character in SF2 is buildable on the same exact rules.
No?
You can build anyone in any way you want in SF2, in TLR the only character you can build is Rush, everyone else is locked to one weapon type, a nonexistent choice for classes and a preset skill set.
I have no idea why you're bringing Gustave and Rich into this either.
TLR has less strategy to it than even RS2 at its worse, mostly because outside of not being able to build characters everything revolves around Morale in one way or another and anything else is barely even window dressing.
But that's not the reason it's not a SaGa game, even if it did have more strategy or mechanical depth than those, it's because it lacks the mechanics past a very thin surface level and because the game is heavily railroaded and not focused on player freedom, you can cope, you can seethe, but that's the reason why it's not a SaGa game and never will be.
it's not a saga game because kawazu wasn't significantly involved and it doesn't have saga in the name
doesn't matter if it's good or bad, doesn't matter if it's railroaded or not, saga is a series not a genre
Not either of those anons, I'm new to SaGa having played RSMS, SF1, and currently at the end of RS2. I don't have a stake in this argument but a few things I want to touch on
>everything revolves around Morale
I feel that this is largely exaggeration. Most boss fights in TLR I got through with mid to low morale. Whenever I got fricked it was largely due to my party composition and sometimes formations, which after rectifying I would succeed. I never even heard the final boss music proper before beating him because I had 0 morale the entire time. I had arts that boosted morale but never did it prevent me from getting my shit pushed in more than composition. How is morale more than minor global stat buffs/debuffs and why does it trump the aforementioned in battle?
>sparking
This was mentioned in an earlier post so I'll ask about it here. Sometimes moves will rank up during battle (ex. Cutting Lunge I -> II). Is this not a mechanical analogue to sparking (with the benefit of still learning new moves after battle)?
>railroaded
As someone who hates railroading in RPG, calling TLR railroaded to me is like calling a game like Dragon's Dogma railroaded just because there's a main quest to follow. The moment you get to Athlum you can start doing sidequests which probably took up 90% of my playtime. The game gives you so many opportunities to go off the beaten path and get lost in something else so I can't agree with this.
>Is this not a mechanical analogue to sparking
No
No, sparking is gaining new skills, not leveling them up. That'd be more akin to Final Fantasy II when you get a new spell and then you level it up with usage.
He's grossly oversimplifying his interpretation of the game because he probably looked up info online before ever beating the game the first time and thusly knew all the hidden grind mechanics and probably sat around killing wienerroaches for 4 hours to shift the stat table. In reality, creating balanced unions with a correct flow of AP in and out of them, using the correct formations to optimize your stats and combination of roles, and building your characters to have classes which correctly match their abilities are all fairly nuanced systems that can make or break a battle if you haven't given yourself 40 points of speed higher than you're expected to have at your battle rank. If you play the game correctly you will never even see cachexia because it takes too long to grind it out, by the time you get it the game is literally over already. It's the equivalent of walking into the Seven Heroes fight with level 40 magic schools.
>It's the equivalent of walking into the Seven Heroes fight with level 40 magic schools.
So what you're saying is that it's the intended way to play as well? Got it.
This dude just admitted to grinding through RS2
At least True Firebringer is actually balanced for max level like 10FS Saruin so I know you'll never beat him without having any Time Magic or Ninja clones to crutch on
maybe you can watch a guide on youtube and copy it exactly you actual dick sucker
Imagine getting this buttblasted over how someone else plays a single player jarpig. Pathetic.
>I feel that this is largely exaggeration.
It isn't, Morale is what makes or breaks TLR because 90% of what you do involves Morale in one way or another.
>Multi Deadlock something? You get Morale
>You understand enemy aggro patterns? Now you get Morale for intercepts
>You rolled for a critical? You get Morale baby
>You're using Hexes? +1 to Morale
>You're using Traps? Aye, Morale
>You terminated a Union? You get Morale, how about that?
>You're using a weapon art? Yep, you get Morale.
>You're using Psionics? Guess what, you get shitloads of Morale
>You ambush somebody? Hey, you're starting with higher Morale, howzat
>Your enemy has higher BR than you? Bruh you finna have mid Morale fr fr, go stack Morale
it's in no way minor either, the buffs on your side stacks with the stat debuff on the enemy side, Morale means you take way less damage and the enemy takes more, Morale means you're more likely to get combo prompts or deflects/evasion etc., the more you play TLR the more you'll understand it's 95% about stacking Morale, it's inescapable, it's also no big mystery why bosses past GoH have ways to flip Morale.
And just because you CAN spend most of your time doing filler MMO quests like killing 10 black spiritbirds doesn't mean it's not largely linear, the only choice other than deciding which Jorgen you want and giving Irina the sword or not is doing the various city quests for preventing Remnants from getting stolen, which is barely a choice and horribly designed too.
>Bro he read guides thowever
>But you really should learn how to use formations
>which outside of making nearly no difference are impossible to use correctly without guides because the actual core mechanics like tags are fully hidden and not even hinted at
>Also SPD and Glenys' worm farm are busted...because guides say so!
Your clown mask slipped bro, if you want to play "correctly" Morale is even more important, take if from somebody who played TLR on 360 first.
>seethes for 2 hours before samegayging
>took 3 more hours to write a reply
jesus christ dude I hope you got some sleep at least I didn't mean to ruin your already pathetic life
>S...SAMEgay, NO WAY MORE THAN ONE PERSON THINKS I'M A CLOWN
My bad, looks like your clown mask is still on
yeah I'm sure you're just screaming in all caps over your hurt feelings because of how funny you think it all is
less talk about feelings, more talk about how to not suck at Unlimited Saga please.
just play the game and put your panels where they make your stats big. it's honestly not that hard a game. making damascus is pretty much optional even.
is there something specific that's bothering you? I think you can just do some adventures and eventually end up at the end
>is there something specific that's bothering you?
Lack of clear direction. Nobody ever tells you what direction your next objective is in.
outside of making nearly no difference are impossible to use correctly without guides because the actual core mechanics like tags are fully hidden and not even hinted at
Leaving aside the rest of your shitty post, if you had ever actually played the game itself at least once before you went straight to the wiki, you would at least know that the game will show you on screen how each position effects the stats of the character you assign to it. To miss even that you basically didn't play the game.
In Unlimited Saga, the maps should really stay uncovered once you've explored them. I guess I should draw them out?