>has pretty unique combat and progression systems
>the proper way to play it is to avoid engaging with these systems since you're punished for fighting and skilling up.
Explain yourselves, SaGagays.
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nah homie
> We have 'Princess White Rose' at home!!
FIE UPON YOU.
>I don't know, Ildon, this princess seems a lot less intelligent and charismatic than White Rose...
>Maybe, but she makes up for it in moxie.
>That moment when 5 int Pirate Princess Ogniana is giving Urpina shit for walking right into the obvious Fomoire Trap
>Urpina's just like "Doesn't matter, anyone who stands between me and the other side will just be cut down"
Princess of the House of Swords does a real casual murder to get her way
Honestly, Urpina was the protag I expected to enjoy the least and she grew on me the most. Still don't know how to feel about Mondo.
Mondo is a bro, would go Bigfoot hunting with him.
Urpina is best and cutest girl.
Mondo is best and most wholesome retainer
>Mondo getting way too excited and invested in the rumors around Bicyniro
Pretty wholesome and cute.
>mfw he thought those fiends killed big foot and ran straight in
Honestly some of the hardest I laughed at a jrpg in a while
>play as muslim girl in burka
Japan has fallen...
>the proper way to play it is to avoid engaging with these systems since you're punished for fighting and skilling up.
What the frick are you talking about? How are you punished?
Why are you lying?
Enemies scale to a point where the average trash mobs can one-shot you if you fight too often
Sounds to me like YOU are the one lying. BR increasing is literally mandatory for your party to get stronger in the first place, the stronger the enemy is the more likely you will spark moves and get stat gains. How is this punishing the player?
>the average trash mobs can one-shot you
If this happens to you its an unironic skill issue. These games give you the tools to deal with that and you failed to use them. Especially by the time you reach a high BR where you should already have most of the good shit.
>these games give you the tools to deal with the rng letting the mob kill you before you get a chance to act
Do tell.
>stronger enemy = better spark
Nullified if you can't survive them
I know it probably hurts to go into a Dullahan fight, get hit with Siren, and get wiped, but that's indicator that maybe you need to go battle somewhere else or equip gear that nullifies sonic damage, anon
>Nullified if you can't survive them
Then just survive, lol
People regularly use King Sei and Pyrix as overtuned encounters they can spark tons off of early.
That honestly should not be an issue due to how good the skills you learn are
The enemies scale, but the point is that you scale harder
If you grind one place without trying to progress for a couple hours, then sure. On the other hand you often have tools to deal with enemies like that. Like termite soliders that often one shot you in Romancing SaGa 2. Just stun or paralyze them so they don't even act.
There is no battle rank in the Gameboy games. Enemies are a push over in Romancing SaGa 3 and SaGa Frontier.
>he doesnt know about ER in romancing saga
ohnonono
You're moronic and you didn't play Romancing SaGa. ER is literally required to progress the game, and tons of quests have extremely generous ER windows
"that example doesnt count"
these homies would even defend the battle of south moundtop. kawazu is a hack auteur shitter.
buck broken
ER doesnt punish grinding. all the content in the game is optional aside from the intros and final boss.
yes, that's Romancing SaGa 1
how's it apply to the SaGa 1-3, Romancing SaGa 2-3, SaGa Frontier 1-2, Unlimited SaGa, etc?
>punished for fighting and skilling up.
That's false though.
>b-but your battle rank goes up!
And? This is only a punishment in most SaGa games if you explicitly go out of your way to grind things for no reason in which case you deserve it. If you play normally you will generally grow much stronger than the enemies do especially if you spark good shit. Most of the games really boil down to spark this thing/get this good spell, get some equipment that doesnt suck, and you are free to rank up as much as you want without worry.
I played Frontier Remastered yesterday. Blue's route. Holy fricking shit that was an underwhelming ending. Is every route like that?
>Holy fricking shit that was an underwhelming ending
>He thought one of the most kino endings in gaming was underwhelming.
Really? Anyway no all of the endings are different, the way Blue's end works is a complete outlier but it's also famous because of it
The fight against Rouge is kino, yes, but defeating Satan just for a "The end LMAO" to appear in the middle of the screen and be booted to the title screen, it's just anticlimactic as frick
I'll keep it in mind, thanks.
you dont defeat satan. the game ends abruptly because theres no real end to the fight. it continues eternally.
Well I guess I'm moronic because I never got the implication. I guess I'll stick to something more my speed, like Neptunia.
The ending is the Rouge fight.
Satan's the epilogue and >implied to be a fight with no end. That's the point.
>Massively climactic battle to the death with your twin that is the culmination of your magical journey
>underwhelming
Everything after that is epilogue, and besides
>Revelations about the truth of the Magic Kingdom and Blue/Rouge
>Fighting Lucifer for eternity to ensure that the legions of Hell don't overtake the mortal regions
>Underwhelming
To each their own, I guess. I think it took balls to make an ending like that.
But to answer you, no, not every route ends like that. Blue's is notorious for having an ending, credits sequence, and then having a 'true ending' that is a fade to sepia in mid-fight.
The main storylines are hit-or-miss in Frontier.
As far as kino to kusoge goes, I would rate them as:
Red > Fuse > T260 > Riki > Blue > Asellus > Emelia > Lute, but that's just me.
But seriously, do Lute's last.
All endings are kino due to the final bosses being great. Lute's final boss and also Diva crashing through the roof is great.
You can say that the final boss fights are kino for everyone and I'll agree with you, but I'm not going to pretend that everyone's scenario was great or well written.
Emelia's story was really fricking stupid even if it was supposed to be a parody of Charlie's Angels and you've read essence.
>oh, this random encounter with this dinosaur underground locks you into the bad ending and you have no way to know about this
>oh, your fiancee wasn't dead after all
>oh, you can just shoot the mask off
>this macguffin is of no importance to this character but we'll bring it up anyway
>Diva serves literally no purpose and is a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, but because everyone has to have a final boss, here's your BLAM
>oh, and we're going to have her go to a church and put on this conveniently placed wedding dress that's just her size....because WE JUST HAVE TO OKAY!?
Like shit Black person, the only reason I didn't put Emelia's story dead last is because unlike Lute, at least she actually has a damn story instead of going straight to the final dungeon/boss in under 5 minutes.
Lute's got a story. It's just not very long-winded or nuanced.
Several SaGa games have a 'freeform' character that's allowed to just go do all the content right out the gate without restrictions. That's Lute. The whole point of his story is that he makes his own journey. From a player's PoV, he's the option you want to pick if you don't want to be shackled to a big narrative that forces you one place or another and you just want to explore the world of the game.
I also generally don't like him and tend to prefer the other protags over him but that's because I liked the unique affordances that Frontier had for the other characters.
Any time I replay it, I pick Lute first just because I enjoy fricking around so much. Getting a bunch of spells and splitting my parties spell casting. Getting the odd characters like Slime. Abusing the gold system and the junk yard system.
I probably like... Emilia's the least. I like Riki's for what it is, but dread it because I'm a shitter.
T260G is my go-to for a first choice on a return playthrough.
That final boss music fricking slaps me hard.
>The whole point of his story is that he makes his own journey
Except he has doesn't have "his own journey" outside of his obligatory final dungeon and boss that everyone has. Him being the "do anything" character means frick all when literally anyone you pick can do the exact same side quests with few exceptions.
But the biggest flaw of Lute is being unfortunate enough to pick him as your first character, especially if you're new to the game/series as a whole, because you can end up getting royally fricked through no real fault of your own.
All the main characters have something unique about them from the other regular recruits. Lute's specialty is he is the only main character you can take out of party kek
I always used Lute on my teams as a kid because I thought he was really good
>mfw finding out recently he's supposedly one of the worst characters in the game
>mfw I still used him in the remaster anyways
Huh. I never would have thought people didn't like Blue's ending.
SaGa is just the contrarian jrpg just like trails was until it became popular
Was always popular in Japan FFbab
That's where you're wrong, anon.
The scaling is there to ensure you don't just waste time to get Bigger Number to defeat enemies. You can't just grind to overpower something brainlessly in most these games.
>proper way is to avoid engaging with systems
SaGa only ever rewards engagement, though? You could complain about BR locking out some quests in some of the games, like Minstrel Song, but that's not what you're saying here.
By engaging in more battles, you unlock more skills for your party, which means you have more options in combat. In most titles, having those options means being able to more readily defeat bosses.
>But what's the point if everything just scales with you?
You don't ever need to grind or go out of your way to do battles, like in other RPGs. There's very few times in the franchise where you actually need to manipulate your BR and, again, those are almost never for the sake of an easier/harder fight.
>You can't just grind to overpower something brainlessly in most these games
tbh that's just false
If you're just getting stat ups and not sparking better skills, it's usually not going to make a difference and only result in higher BR where enemies have more efficient ways to wipe your team.
Yes, you can 'grind' in the sense that you can take the time to make a specific team stronger through shooting for certain skills, abilities, drops, etc. but that comes with having system knowledge and it's less the grind being rewarded and more the leveraging of systems. That all said, I don't think there's a single SaGa game where I've felt the need to grind outside of Frontier, and that's only ever been when I wanted a higher BR so I could absorb better monsters with my own monsters / mystics, so I wouldn't really count that.
I don't call things a filter very often, but apparently SaGa is a filter.
People go into the games with the wrong mindset because they look like mechanically generic square games, when they are emphatically not.
I think it's more than that. Squaresoft games often have great systems.
SaGa is an unusual holdover from an older era in that it has mechanics you have to discover yourself, an open setting, but one where you can make wrong choices.
In particular, I think one and three there are uncomfortable for modern gamers because they hate being told they played the game wrong. This combines with 2, where more open ended games tend to have no wrong answers as a philosophy.
Some SaGa games do have wrong answers. You don't have to optimize too hard in more games with most characters, but you can actually screw yourself in a few of the games.
I just think that's part of the appeal. Restart and try again. They're short games.
I still remember my last playthrough of Minstrel Song, getting to the israeliteel Beast just handful of encounters too late
>Restart and try again
Loaded my last save, did the bare minimum fights for the last seal, perfectly got back to it, was still too late
>They're short games
But anon, my save file was already at 32 hours...
Your next try will go much faster because you have information now.
I would agree MS is one of the harder ones though. Feels good when you win.
I have no fricking idea how young me managed to clear this game considering young me would grind like a madman...
If you grind a bunch in Minstrel Song, you just push the ER to the point that the finale snags you regardless. It's kind of funny, the joke being that the chosen one Main Characters just kinda spent all this time levelling up wherever while the dark gods enacted their plot unmolested.
We found that grinder.
I love Dantarg. I kept coming back to him periodically, testing whether this would be the time I finally beat him. Eventually sparked a Grand Slam avoid near the end, so in my next generation, I gave it to everybody and was able to beat him. If course, that time, he only used it once, but still.
Agreed
Older me went back with an ER guide and it was quite pleasant.
Skipped israeliteel Beast though. Frick israeliteel Beast and his filtering ass...
it's the opposite, saga games require you to grind trash mobs instead of going from boss to boss like in other jrpgs
No they don't
alright then how do you beat rs2's final boss with 200hp and weapon skills below lvl10?
sounds like you have skill issues
Record a gameplay of you beating the 7 heroes (not the final boss but if you want to include them) with the 1st emperor and less than level 10 techs
nta but you can only beat noel and rocbouquet with gerard and I've done it. You can beat most of the game at very low levels. But then you reach the final boss and MUST grind.
you grind until you spark what skills you need and then you frick off because you usually have finite resources
How do you know what skills you'll spark if you're going in blind though?
you just have to know
>you grind until you spark what skills you need and then you frick off because you usually have finite resources
So... the optimal way to play is to not engage in battle because you're punished for fighting too much?
playing "optimally" in SaGa games is not the best way to approach it
each game is unique and has experimental aspects to them that encourage different things. i wouldn't call it punishing if you grind your face off and use every LP you have on trash until you realize you can't spark anything new, more educational than punishing
Ok. Bros. I'm trying to get into RS2. There are so many mobs everywhere that it's impossible to avoid fighting, especially with the input lag. So I fight, trying not to worry. Finally spark an AoE with my bow user. But now, because of how many fights I've been in just to get that spark, every fight is one-shotting the bow user, regardless of formation.
What am I missing? Only so much LP, which isn't recoverable.
Use a faster formation and use things like short sword feint, long sword knee split, greatsword blunt strike, or use your bow users stunner to disable threats early in battles. Worse come to worse you can recruit a new one when she dies. I had someone die on a long quest chain and had to complete it with a four man party.
There's not really an 'optimal' way to play.
Just fight enemies as you play through.
These game aren't designed to force you to have to do a lot of pointless battling like in other RPGs.
In some games, like Frontier, yes, you can absolutely just get the setup / skill you want and ignore all random fights.
In others like Scarlet Grace, the fights are tied to all the content anyway and you can always be striving towards new roles or higher ranked versions of skills so there's almost never a reason that a fight feels like a dud encounter.
I like to grind. I don’t want to be punished for it. Give me diminishing returns tho.
If you like to grind, then avoid RS2 and Minstrel Song and play Frontier and Scarlet Grace. Easy.
You don't necessarily get punished for grinding even in a game like Minstrel Song, you just need an actual reason to grind. For example you only have to worry about missing quests at the start, later on BR goes up stupidly slow and you'll be going out of your way to make it higher. And then you have stuff like the ecology quests where you'll be grinding your ass off. Just don't be an idiot about it and you can absolutely grind in these games.
Sparking system is fairly generous in most games, don't really need to go out of your way unless you want one skill in particular you'll usually get 1 or 2 really good skills just playnig normally.
>you're punished for fighting and skilling up.
what? Kawazu made the systems so you would have small rewards (stats and skills) over the course of the game, because of this you will never truly be weak and, if your party is falling off in damage, it's merely a matter of changing/upgrading equipment/skills, in the latter's case to glimmer different skills, changing formations if that particular game has them, maybe switching up your party a bit, etc. if you do any of this you will be doing normal or even better damage again
the only times you will get one-shot is by encountering what I call a "saga moment" like getting spooked by the Earth Dragon in the bio lab in Frontier or running into the israeliteel Beast in Minstrel Song
I seriously dont get it, why is it this site in particular, not even this board alone, that seems to have a really hard time grasping how saga games work? every complain I see is of people who seem to think theyre playing a standard rpg where grinding is the answer to everything and end up getting destroyed because they dont bother reading and taking in the info that the games give you, or even pay attention to what happens when they play to infere things on their own.
It's not unique to Ganker, anon. When Scarlet Grace came out, it was fun to see the threads of people complaining about how impossible Firebringer was despite them having 'the best gear' and 999 HP.
I should say that I followed threads on GameFAQs, forgot to add that.
> it was fun to see the threads of people complaining about how impossible Firebringer was despite them having 'the best gear' and 999 HP.
Can't really blame them for getting filtered by him, It's extremely rare for a final boss in an RPG to be a DPS race rather than an endurance fight.
>grinding is the answer to everything and end up getting destroyed because they dont bother reading and taking in the info that the games give you
SaGa in game doesn't tell you shit, the game manual and tutorials are very basic at best. You have to scout hundreds of FAQs and threads on GameFAQs just to understand how to play the game. Or you can be a schizo and figure it out yourself after playing the game for 100 hours.
>Or you can be a schizo and figure it out yourself after playing the game for 100 hours.
Wow getting better at games by playing the game
Imagine that damn
SaGa takes more skill than FF.
SaGa is more RPG than FF.
Salsa
I picked Leonard first in scarlet grace and ran into the last boss totally unprepared. He would wipe out my party before I could act no matter what setup I used. I ended up getting distracted by something but I should go back and replay that game.
I played frontier 2 and couldn't beat the egg final boss without cheating. was it really because I levelled up too much? I spent a bunch of time unlocking all of gustav's moves but then it didn't matter because you never got to play as him again.
the EN version of Frontier 2 was made to be harder than the JP version, final boss fricks you up with LP attacks. game doesn't quite warn you of how difficult the final dungeon is, kind of have to get your shit together and have Soul Hymn or know your combos
Can't blame you for getting filtered by the Egg.
That c**t is an absolute damage sponge and can win by attrition even if you're trained and killed off some of the Lords.
People give the SaGa series shit for punishing you for grinding, but at least you're not railroaded as hard as you are in Frontier II.
It's a series for schizos that think they're cool because they can spend hundreds of hours studying obtuse gameplay mechanics designed by morons at Square.
Everyone in the 2000s who played RPGs will tell you Unlimited SaGa is the worst video game of all time. Yet we got genuine schizos on Ganker who think the game is cool.
Yeah, Unlimited Saga is cool. At least i enjoyed it more than certain classics.
Legitimately ahead of its time. If it came out in 2014-2018 it would be a critical darling.
I started playing Scarlet Grace after seeing many people commenting saying it's got one of the best battle systems of any rpg. I don't really get what makes it great though. It doesn't really seem that fun to me. I started as the pottery lady and am just wandering around
How does it not seem fun?
I dunno I feel like I enjoy press turn more, and half of what you mentioned is in DRPGs like Demon Gaze. I can see why people said The Alliance Alive is very SaGa like though, now that I'm trying out an actual SaGa game. It also has formations and getting skills by using stuff.
The battle mechanics are easily deeper than press turn. With press turn the proper actions will be to increase your actions by extending your turns through gaining half turns. What's great about Scarlet Grace's time line combat is one it doesn't devolve to out initiative all the enemies/delay them to the point they never act, and two is that there is a shared pool of battle points for the party to delegate actions per round among other aspects.
>Timeline combat where positioning and manipulating the timeline actually matters
>Damage typing matters to the point of offering critical damage on any type advantage on every hit
>Formations dramatically alter how you can approach fights
>Status affects are massively important
>All of this holds true for boss fights as well
>Enemies can and will use all these systems against you
>Access to healing is minimal--there is no way to outsustain any battle
>Because HP is restored every fight, expectation is that even normal fights can be challenging
>No random battles, you choose every fight you do with each being specifically tied to a reward or exploration point
How is that not the best battle system of any turn based RPG? Unless you enjoy the mindless 'press x to win' infinite meaningless random battles as you trudge from boss fight to boss fight where the systems amount to 'press x for damage or press y for more damage tied to a resource that is not all too limited'?
>Timeline combat where positioning and manipulating the timeline actually matters
nothing new
>Damage typing matters to the point of offering critical damage on any type advantage on every hit
nothing new
>Formations dramatically alter how you can approach fights
nothing new
>Status affects are massively important
nothing new
>All of this holds true for boss fights as well
this is more rare, but ultimately not unique
>Enemies can and will use all these systems against you
nothing new
>Access to healing is minimal--there is no way to outsustain any battle
i'll concede this one, usually you'd have a healer and a full bag of potions
>Because HP is restored every fight, expectation is that even normal fights can be challenging
>removing the resource management/rationing aspect of JRPGs (especially when you use it as a positive literally in the previous point) is somehow good
okay
>No random battles, you choose every fight you do with each being specifically tied to a reward or exploration point
nothing new
Oh, I'm not claiming what Scarlet Grace does is entirely new--it's definitely built out of a lot of the ideas from the franchise it has come out of. It's just got all those ideas combined in a way that is more fun to engage with than any other RPG I've played.
Thats not even true in any way.
>saga filters westoid cucks
No wonder the series is so fricking good
I don't know how it consistently does it.
Okay, so what's the "optimal" order of getting into SaGa games? Do I start with RS3 or Frontier Remastered or Scarlet Grace? What's the deal with the fan-translated DS SaGa game? And will I absolutely need guides for these games if I'm a sub-90 IQ FF/DQ enjoyer?
Also, less relevant, but is The Alliance Alive secretly (or not-so-secretly) a SaGa-like game?
Yeah you can start with any of those. Most important thing is to pick a game that interests you the most theme or mechanics wise.
>pick a game that interests you the most theme or mechanics wise
I have no clue about any of that, to be honest. Frontier seems cool for mixing fantasy stuff with some sci-fi, but I'm afraid it might be a bit too freeform and I'm not that fond of the idea of replaying the game 8 times, even if the protags stories are totally different. From what I've heard RS3 is generic fantasy and you can see 95% of the game as a single protag, which is nice. Scarlet Grace seems to be the most robust and interesting mechanics-wise, but I have no idea what it's about (and honestly it looks kinda ugly compared to the earlier games).
You'll have to accept that there will be many SaGa games that won't hold your hand much for progression. You just have to know if you're into that or not.
I started with minstrel song.
How much did i frick up?
SaGa Frontier 1 tends to be the best entry to the series imo. Got some story, go some on rails on some characters and the more esoteric stuff of SaGa doesn't really wiener block you at all.
>recommended to start on game 7
6 turds in a row huh? Sounds like another great rpg series from japan.
>I'm only pretending to be moronic
We know you are moronic you Ganker pass wielding moron.
You didn't. Youll just have to tough it out when you feel lost, but when you find your way it's very rewarding.
God they're such a cute couple... Why did they not end up together in the ending...
Frontier's 8 scenarios tend to be pretty locked in to their own thing with the rest of the 'game' being optional shared quests. One character's scenario is solely doing shared quests and then deciding to go to his last boss. Another character's scenario is basically a tutorial for doing all the magic sidequests. Stick with a character like Red, Riki, or T260G and you'll get a mostly-unique, not too freeform playthrough.
You're right about RS3.
Scarlet Grace's visuals grow on you, I'd say. All of its plots follow people living around the world after the collapse of fantasy-Rome during a time when the return of a Prometheus-like God causes lots of problems to happen. There are four big events that harken the arrival of this god and, as the player, you choose a character who has one of those events as their first act and the heart of their story, then are free to engage with the other two of four in whatever order you want. The order chosen drastically alters both the personal plot and the way the other plotlines play out. It's fairly well guided and can feel fulfilling playing just one character through or doing all four (without too much sense of overlap).
RS3 is longer and more freeform than the others you mentioned. High fantasy setting.
Frontier is much shorter and tends to be more approachable with a variety of scenarios that are either very narratively linear or more open in scope. Setting features multiple worlds and so is all over the place with a fun mix of mecha and magic.
Scarlet Grace has you pick one of four protagonists and tends to have the most variation on how you can follow out their plots. Most cohesive fantasy setting of those three, probably the most approachable but nuanced combat system.
You will probably need a guide for RS3. Frontier Remastered has a journal QoL feature added that really helps aimless players but a guide could be useful for the more obtuse elements of the game. Scarlet Grace has a little tutorial write-up that you can reference for every single mechanic as you encounter them and is probably the most straightforward from moment to moment, just don't start with Leonard's scenario unless you want to be lost, as a joke.
Alliance Alive is more like Suikoden than SaGa. It shares a handful of SaGa-like mechanics but also has some really long dragging moments whereas most SaGa games are quick enough about getting you to something new and interesting on a more regular basis. The unofficial SaGa game is probably The Last Remnant.
what is unique about levelling skills/stats by using them tons of rpgs have done this
It's less that and more that any character is emergently build towards what you play them as and then that happens across whole teams so you can have a lot of fun seeing builds come together that you feel you had some agency over rather than just doing what the game expects.
How are the ffl remakes?
kusoge franchise
is early game magic just doomed to suck in minstrel song or am I not understanding something ?
early attack spells feel completely worthless compared to early attack techniques
Yes. But you have to use them to make them stronger. I recommend starting with hydrology and getting the first healing spell because it stays relevant for the whole game.
>you have to use them to make them stronger
aktshually staff has a int growth comparable to most spell schools (only really losing to pyro and aero) and it also gives decent HP growth compared to the non existent hp growth from spells so it's probably a better choice early for a mage to spam staff
>staff has a int growth
>gives decent HP growth compared to the non existent hp growth from spells
And you're supposed to know this... How, exactly? Am I expected to sit down and grind out stat ups so I can calculate growths or what?
supposed to guide-gay after someone has data-mined. big brain gaming
realistically speaking the game is easy enough that you can just play normally and be fine, especially since the formula tends to average everything out over the course of the game, most characters end up having the same stats lategame
Paying attention to the minutia is actually completely useless in the end as long as you understand the broad strokes.
yea they are ez games. But other anon asked how other other anon knew that, and how he is supposed to know that. the answer is guide-gay after someone data-mines it
>game's vital and necessary mechanics are deeply hidden to the point there's no way to discover them during normal gameplay
>this is somehow a good thing
Why are you jarpiggay autists like this?
>vital and necessary
They aren't vital to understand to beat the game.
it's not a good thing. I said big brain gaming to satirize the situation. SaGa has a poorly made battle system (in general.) You are funneled down the path of least resistance.
That's not really the case. The point of SaGa combat is to be chaotic and unpredictable in the micro but broadly predictable in the macro, so that no two fights look exactly alike. You're not meant to micro manage everything, instead you should see it as stacking odds. It's fine if it's not for you, but it's not poorly made, it's perfectly good at what it's supposed to be doing.
>no two fights look exactly alike
i beat Frontier recently and most battles looked exactly the same, except for bosses, so I don't really mind
there's no way you could figure this out from just observation, the formula is extremely complex and has a large degree of randomness
But jp autists datamined it years ago
Based boomer autist that SE can't get rid off because seniority matters in nipland.
you're supposed to play through the game a dozen times trying random things, then you'll gather enough data for you to start having fun
youre supposed to play the game normally. all those systems are hidden because they all work for you not against you. the whole hp growth thing for casters is mostly irrelevant since you put them in back row which makes them take less damage anyway, plus your shield/spear guys will often block attacks targeting the row behind them.
why did it suck?
I blame the artstyle
>Three character party
>Annoying magic mechanics in getting an elemental favor for your element so you have to spend a turn getting favor for your element you want to use thus using up a turn just to be able to not miscast a spell
>Cattle Call (who?)
>FuRyu (lmao)
Damn, why indeed.
>Characters suck
>Forgettable soundtrack
>Uninteresting plot
>Boring lore
Face it anon, the only thing it has similar to SaGa is the spark system.
It had an interesting aspect in which if a character got knocked out in battle their max HP would be reduced until they recovered in an inn.
is RS2 and RS3 worth playing if i've played literally every other salsa game
>He hasn't gotten to Romancing SaGa 2
You should play it.
Nta but isnt rs2 broken? Lag controls
Only for the Switch. I played it on the Vita and had no problems playing it.
What's so great about RS2 in particular?
The game goes on for many generations, as you complete more quests and gain more nations under your empire you can globetrot and recruit a party, first game in the series with glimmers, you can tackle the main bosses at various points in the game to the point that your order could radically differ from the order I tackled them in. While Minstrel Song is my favorite, the end game for Romancing SaGa 2 is probably my favorite in all RPGs as a culmination of the story and the players struggle against the seven heroes.
Saga games are shit and they should stop the "go anywhere!" Meme. It only hurts the games. Being directionless is annoying.
Buck broken
Guide reader
I agree. I didn't like RS3, because it felt like I was just wandering around every town, talking to every NPC, over and over, just waiting until I happened to be in the right place at the right time to trigger an event. I loved Scarlet Grace though, because there was always something to do in every single province, and the quests are amusing "that kid"-but-actually-real tier quests.
I think RS3 is a bad game to recommend to beginners(with the series) tbh
I played RS2 as my first and I still don't like RS3.
Unrelated, but Romancing SaGa is currently on sale and I've heard it recommended here before. Whats good about it? Why do you enjoy it? Been looking for a nice TRPG to play and I've already bought Bravely Default 2.
Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song is great because it's a non-linear RPG that doesn't hold your hand in where you should go and what you should be doing. Not only that the character growth and combat mechanics are great. You have natural character growth mechanics and you have skill acquisition built into the battle mechanics with sparking (learning skills mid battle) skills. Then you have a battle point pool you start combat with and you generate a certain amount based on your characters generation rate per turn so the games facilitate a platform for the player to utilize weapon techs in all battles rather than being stingy with resources for your skills to essentially "MP dump" on a boss.
Sounds interesting, I'll give it a try. Thanks, anon.
What game should I start the series with? What should I know beforehand?
SaGa Frontier is a good point since most routes are fairly short.
Anything I should know before playing?
Remaster is shit, but has some neat QoL in terms of giving you some more direction. You can probably substitute it with a guide and just play the original.
Why is it shit? Did they remove some stuff?
they changed the mech's FOCKIN' PRONOUNS
It isn't shit. They added speed ups to map traversal and battles. You can put on markers in places so you know where you can enter as a door. You can run away from battles in the remaster and you can choose what monster skill you unlearn rather than always the bottom skill in the original.
that doesnt sound like a downgrade
Yeah, well you know people on Ganker. If it is a remaster or a remake they have to shit on it. You can emulate the original or play the remaster, it's up to you. The only one you can't really do that with is Romancing SaGa 2 unless you know Japanese. You could potentially play the Romancing SaGa 3 fan translation, but I found the translation bad enough that I dropped the game and didn't play RS3 until many years later with the remaster.
It looks like ass, I can't look at these mobile game tier smooth sprites for longer than 5 minutes without wanting to gouge my eyes out.
they put a bra on a mermaid so it's basically the worst version and you definitely shouldn't play it but you should buy a copy anyways
SaGa FRONTIER 2 HD REMASTER WHEN, KAWAZUHACK?
how do Germans feel about SaGa Frontier 2?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masashi_Hamauzu
>He was an actual german born into a music family
holy shit it all makes sense, I remember seeing a german pianist on youtube liked to play his music
?si=Ba5Y_kZuLtQ_rboS
>get Meteor Kick
>think it's the shit
>it never hits and now in the final dungeon I can't get sparks outside of the bosses
Yeah frick you too.
I beat the final boss with Meteor Kick in RS3, with Boston
I'll be honest, I think my team comp fricking sucks. On top of it I picked the game back up after 3 years of not touching this first playthrough and I was apparently close to the end, so I forgot a lot.
>SoYa
Saga sucks
I agree, SaGa on the other hand rocks
based kawazu finding the formula to mind break anon into making a constant general thread for sagaCHADS
How do I break Minstrel Song? I'm bad at these games and need all the help I can get.
I stopped playing months ago because o got filtered by a couple of fights. One was the monster/pirate invasion in Melvin (where I died to the wyvern), and the other being the fight with the cultists(?) after coming back from the underwater temple. Maybe I could actually win the fights if I changed my strategy somehow, but I don't know if any significant way to do that.
This months long break hasn't been kind to me, because I don't remember where I was or what I was trying to do. I think I'm just gonna go to gamefaqs and read a bunch about combos/blacksmithing/sparking good techs/classes, and whatever else might be useful.
>the last saga related job the battle director for the new game had was designing maps for unlimited saga
>>the last saga related job the battle director for the new game had was designing maps for unlimited saga
Scarlet Grace showed SE and Kawazu what was possible. SaGa buyers will buy anything with the name on it. Gacha audience will participate to some degree, they have the numbers on this. I imagine the gacha audience is much larger than the "old guard" (fictional largely, revised history.)
remasters and co sold way above expectations esp in TW/CN/SEA/NA which gave Kawazu a license to do remaster/remake every game.
JP audience for RSRS is SaGagays (everyone I know who plays RSRS outside of JP is a SaGagay too) for sure and they make 5m+ every month with very low overhead. Ichikawa works directly with Kawazu and they use the game to market every single remaster down to even when one of them gets a new translation.
Expect SF2, Unlimited, FFL DS remakes to get remasters(Kawazu has mentioned SF2 and US directly on streams previously) in next 2-3 years hell you might even see a wonderswan FFL release in the vein of the FFL gameboy games. SE needs these high profit games to offset the insane expenses of other crap.
Why would they remake FFL when they can just port the remakes from ds?
"FFL DS Remakes to get remaster" i said that anon
>the last saga related job the battle director for the new game had was designing maps for unlimited saga
Kuwazu will make RPG Maker games by himself once he retires for real, madman is like 80.
hes only 60 we are in for at least 2 more decades of him making whatever tf he wants
I am worried for the series once the SF2 and US remasters are out and they can't get easy money anymore to fund future games.
Don't worry, the remasters aren't the easy money, they're the long term strategy.
Gacha is the easy money.
>the proper way to play it is to avoid engaging with these systems since you're punished for fighting and skilling up.
Absolutely not, dog. You're gonna get railroaded for having an unskilled unsparked team by any first boss if you do that. There's a difference between engaging in the combat and repeating combats against lowlevel enemies to gain exp, which you seem to be trying to do hahaha
Quick, RS2 or RS3 and why?
Never played Saga before, these two are the cheapest right now.
RS2 has more "story" to it while RS3 is pure gameplay pick either one
Idk I like to have both story and gameplay in my vidya. RS2 it is then.
How are the ds remakes and wonderswan ones? Or is the better the collection? Or will they get a remake
going into SaGa with expectations is how people frick up
you're supposed to just dive in and enjoy the ride, don't play it like it's another RPG because it's not going to work, don't expect them to work like other RPGs, don't expect fricking anything
take everything as it comes and treat it as its own localized experience because chances are there isn't going to be another game even in the same fricking series that follows all of its conventions