Yeah, once I get a bit of money again, I'm going onto Amazon and seeing if I can't find the game. It's one of the few RPGs I've never beaten that still kind of haunts me. Lol.
Interestingly, a variation of that mechanic is used in RS1, although it isn't obvious that's what is going on and it just makes the boss appear to have much more hp than it actually does; it works much better in the Apollo fight, what with the storyline buildup and gooification.
No, I thought I had screwed myself over with how I developed my party and gave it back to my friend, I didn't realize there was a trick to the Apollo fight, and he's basically invincible until a few rounds in.
Oh? Did your battery die?
Yeah, I had something like that happen to me in FFL2. Sucked too cause it happened in the dungeon before you fight Apollo. Still salty about not getting to finish that game.
I'll have to look at that guide the next time I play, if only to avoid the constant headache of my monster changing back into weaker forms. There's nothing like losing the progress your character made because they ate the wrong steak. . _. I kind of like how they did it in Frontier, as you can choose to keep techs you want there and what you keep largely determines what monster you get.
I didn't grind a terrible amount in Albert's plot, just enough to learn the first weapon skill on the Rapier and Iron Sword, so I'm probably safe. Still, it's good to know that I should be careful about grinding. For S1, I found an actual list on GameFaqs that showed you what to eat so you can wind up with Tier 13 (out of 14) Salamand from just the creatures in the first world. The trick is exploiting how the game determined Tiers when you change class. Whichever monster is the highest tier will have it's tier level used to determine the final result. As long as you avoid feeding your high level monster any meat that will turn it into a class where there is no monster one level higher than it, then you can exploit the system to keep making a stronger monster until you get to the higher tiers even with weak creatures. What I didn't realize was how ridiculously high tier this thing was or I would not have done this cause having this monster this early has allowed me to wreck most of the bosses in this game, though that doesn't seem too hard to do with the other classes either.
It is possible you pushed the counter past certain events, depending on how many fights you had and when you had them. Albert and Sif are the only characters that start with the counter at 0 and have super generous early games because of that, and good ol' Berty also resets the counter once during his intro, I believe when you fight the boss in the cave near your starting castle, so you should be fine -- the only quests you are likely to have missed are the first gold mine, literally all the way across the map from where your ship crashes, annnnnnd maybe the early Harem quest that I only ever manage to get as two people anyway. The ones you most often see mess up are the ones in the Empire and dealing with the Water Dragon, since they have a lot of mini events in them with narrowish windows. Yeah, the super random nature of mutants in S1 can be really annoying, but I tend to get really lucky with them. You can also slap some spells or psi weapons on them if you can't get good abilities too, though I seem to recall a bit of a balancing act with armor or something when doing that. How'd you manage the monster thing? I remember hearing about a way to do that but never looked into it; I always just kind of spun the wheel and hoped for good things.
So what you're saying is that I may have screwed myself out of some quests in Albert's story cause I spent some time grinding the guards that keep trying to capture you if you talk to them? Well that's interesting and I'll keep all that in mind. Yeah, in SaGa 1 I'm finishing up Byakko. Mutants are interesting but I'm a bit annoyed cause while my Mutant has some ungodly high stats, she stopped trying to learn new spells after the first world and even when she was learning them, she only ever wanted to change the one good spell she had. My Monster is also a bit OP at the moment cause I found out there was a way to raise them to the second highest rank in the first world. It's been an easier game overall over SaGa 2 which is the first and technically only SaGa game I've played before this year.
Halfway point in SaGa 1 means . . . you just finished the island place, yeah? It's been a while since I played that game, but I love a lot of its ideas, especially the different worlds connected to the tower; it gives the game such an odd vibe. Also might be more than a little fond of my mutants randomly becoming super characters due to random skill acquisition. :3 You know I noticed they just polished up the sprites in RS2 but I didn't actually think about it at all, and I am pretty sure you are completely correct, because the style chosen for mobile V/VI characters looks terrible and almost no one I know was happy about it. Regarding the game itself, I don't know much about it other than it's the most highly praised entry in the series and its Steam controls are complete garbage, but it's probably worth picking up on sale if you have been eyeing it. I love RS1, but I feel obligated to throw out just how, uh . . . flawed the title is before you really dig into it. For all of the great concepts the game has there are a lot of execution hiccups that can lead to an extremely rocky experience, probably the most notable being the way world progression is handled. I don't know if you are familiar with it or not, and this isn't any kind of spoiler, but the game and its events progress on this invisible clock based on your total enemy encounters, and this leads to very odd moments where there are no quests, too many quests, certain quests you started can no longer be completed, ect. I played through that game about . . . fourish times in a row and I was still lost trying to figure out what to do / where everyone was a couple of times. So, if you ever find out something in a quest isn't working, be aware that you probably did it right and the timer just advanced past the expiration date. Also, keep the Aquamarine.