SaGa Franchise

[Wolf Kanno]

Update Time:

RS2 - Beating Rocbouquet did end the era so I reset and opted to go through the Maze of Memory and unlock the Onmiyoji class which is my only means of using dark magic though I'm limited to whatever they start with. I also grinded a bit in Wynaga Lake to try and spark a few more techs. I finally have all the Bow skills. Afterwards, I decided to go the Mermaid route because it is such a cool quest. I did have to save scum a bit to get a better draw of choices for successor though. I'm doing a Female Nomad who specializes in Bows and Axes. My team will be a Martial Artist so I can try to spark the last few Melee moves, a Samurai to check them out and hopefully spark the remaining Sword/Greatsword moves I'm missing, a Salamander to check them out, and finally a Nerid to give them a second opportunity to impress me. I'll likely tackle Rocbouquet first since I have enough Charm protection accessories to protect my three male party members. Afterwards, I plan on taking down a souped up Subier since I opted to let him take the Narwhal Princess and I'll finally unlock the Diver class. Sadly, I think I screwed myself out of the Victor optional boss fight since I think one of the prerequisites is earning the Amazon class and I accidentally screwed that up.

RS3 - Well I put my sweatbands on, through in my favorite 80s montage music and trained in this game, effectively doubled my party's HP and Katarina finally earned a Crown for her Tech attacks. No magic for her it seems. I reached the sealed dorr in the Archfiend's Lair and returned to Lance to recieve the Royal Ring from the Matriarch's descendant. I traveled to the east and found Romancing China, did the quests and got the Archfiend's Armor. Came back to the west and tackled Forneus again. Managed to squeak out a victory but it was close. Would not recommend starting with him. Having Black over Herman though is a nice boon and my team's been doing better ever since. I completed the Maximus quest which was fairly entertaining and cool. Like the Sinistrals are kind of just chaotic evil in this game, but it was nice to have a serious antagonist you could really love to hate. Maximus is a real bastard in this game, and for those who may have started the mobile entry, he's a bastard in that game too. Of course completing this quest unlocks a crap ton of gear belonging to both the Archfiend and Matriarch, so I'm swimming in good gear now. I also won back the Masquerade which started Katarina's quest in the first place so now I was able to return to Loanne which also meant I could finish the Merchant Trade minigame.

I love how the final mission of this quest involves you ''saving capitalism'' by trying to stop an evil monopoly from taking over all business... by forming your own monopoly. I don't know if the devs were making a joke about this or they didn't realize the delicious and sadly real world irony of it all. This ended up being a bitch though because while I bought out like 95% of all the businesses in the second part, it turns out I failed to get a particular business to go to market so I could buy them up and that was the last one the Abyss Co. had. So I spent a good chunk of my time just trying to raise the prestige of two lowly companies to get this missing one to go to market. It took awhile but I got it done and saved capitalism by cornering the market on everything.

I also took down the Road Machine for the Professor and ventured into Leonid's castle to receive the Holy Grail. Surprisingly I took down Yama with little problem unlike my first playthrough. Helped that I had more experience this time and actually went in prepared with Blunt and Lightning defense. I did have to reset here because I accidentally let my inventory fill up and couldn't get the Holy Grail of which Leonid ridiculed me for. So resetting and emptying out some junk I didn't need, I got my grail and Leonid. I did have Tiberius for the Maximus quest but opted to drop him because I didn't feel like trying to build another mage on my team and frankly, he's a bit of a dick anyway to Khalid and his people. I did like his Scottish brogue he talks in. I recruited the Fairy temporarily to earn the trophy, but for now I'm sticking to Leonid to get his trophy and to play around with his kooky design. I will say I am having a hell of time trying to spark techs. I even ran into an Asura doing the Thieves Monster hideout and that ended disastrously because my team was ill prepared for the fight, and since he's a boss of the mission, it wouldn't let me run when I did spark something. I guess I am lying when I say I'm not sparking anything, I did earn a few weapon skills for weapons, and I've been sparking a lot of defensive techs just not the ones I would want. I also managed to finally spark the awful Disarm tech for Greatswords. Ugh this move has been a pain. Ward had sparked it towards the end of my first playthrough but never mastered it and the move is a costly counter that doesn't have nearly as high of a success rate as I would like. I'm also having issues getting Nora to master a high end Club move she sparked during the Forneus fight. I hate mastering moves in this game, it slows down the process of earning new moves since I now have to dedicate so much time spamming the moves to keep them permanently.

My next move is to take on the wind Sinistral and not fight her with an awesome dragon this time to earn the other trophy. I'll likely take on the Earth Sinistral next and leave the fire one for last. After that, it's just exploring the Ruins near Romancing India, tackling the Ancient Cave, and then grinding in the Remaster only Phantom Maze to build a killer team for the final stretch. I need to give Muse another magical element to make her more versatile for instance. I don't know how I feel about tackling Oblivion's True form. The final boss continues on CoD's whole ''defeat my servants first to weaken me, or fight me at full power'' nonsense. There is an achievement attached to it though.

[Wolf Kanno]

RS2 Update only:

My Nomad Empress was very short lived. She took down Rocbouquet with little issue. Since I failed to slay Noel, I still fought her basic easy form with the spirits and not the one where she starts sprouting wings. I then went to the Sunken Ship of Garon and fought my way through all the ghosts only to be greeted by the souped up Subier for my troubles. Thankfully I took him down with little issue but this ended up finishing her era and shot me straight into the Final Empress. The Final Ruler gets a unique sword, for the Male it's the Daybreak sword which casts heat based Sun magic spells only enemies get to use. For the Empress I get the Moonlight which has a healing spell and a group hitting offensive spell to boot. What's really nice about her sword is that it's treated as both a Greatsword and 1-handed sword so I can keep her lightweight with sticking to one sword. I also discovered that beating Rocbouquet is the only per-requisite to earn the Amazons so I did successfully gain all of the classes this round. Well almost, I have one last class to unlock. For my final team, I'm using a very unlucky Samurai who seems to always be the main target of the enemies, an Amazon, the awesome Pirate class, and because I've apparently been thinking this game was too easy this time through, I recruited Coppelia as my final party member. You may remember her from my last playthrough, she's a rude automaton created by the local scientist who has a whopping 99 LP. You can even make her an Empress if you play your cards right. the reason I'm implying this is a bad thing is that I completely forgot that when she's not the empress, she's a berserker type character who plays by her own rules and won't take orders from you, playing into her rude and powerful ego. You can't dismiss characters in your team either, you have to let them die instead. She has 99 LP, so that ain't going to happen. So I effectively have a team of four and one guest character. Thankfully you can still control her move set so you can sort of control what she does in battle but she won;t use magic, so I may need to shuffle my team around to get all the support magic I need.

With the final empress, I stormed Wagnas' lair, which I forgot was an obnoxious two part dungeon with small rooms and loads of enemies. Wagnas is also a bitch to fight and he managed to party wipe my team thanks to all his Confusion based attacks making my own team buff him to invincibility and kick their own asses. I got him on the second attempt but it was much closer than I would have cared for. Unfortunately for me, beating the last of the Seven Heroes and completing a certain other quest unlocks the invasion mission. So my return back home was greeted by the place being run over by enemies. I had no patience to fight through them and probably made this fight harder on myself but just before I reached the boss of this section, my samurai got perma-killed since he was taking way too many deaths in Wagnas' fungeon dungeons so I reset, but that may have shot me back to fighting Wagnas again. I figured it was time to call it a night.

The one great thing about this playthrough is that I've sparked a number of great techs. My monk from my Nomad empress sparked the most powerful melee tech, my Samurai has managed to spark both Victor's signature attack the Flowing Sword tech and the powerful Dark Blade move as well. My Final Empress also sparked Prism Blade. This leaves only four non-weapon specific techs left to speak, two melee which ain't going to happen now, and one move left for 1-handed swords and Greatswords.

Once the invasion is over, I think I only have two missions left before the final dungeon. The Bard quest and then reaching the lost city of the Ancients. Interestingly enough, I got even more backstory on the Seven Heroes this playthrough as Subier decides to be fairly chatty before throwing down, so that was neat.

[Wolf Kanno]

RS2 Update again:

I finally fought off my invaders, which was a tough bout that involved me needing to save scum my way out of issues. My big problem is that my Samurai is a bit of a glass cannon and easily killed. He's been hovering at 2LP for awhile thanks to all the frequent deaths. Normally I would just let him die and replace him but he's sparked a few moves I can't transfer to the Dojo until I beat the game, so... going to have to dip into my Anima Draught collection to keep him alive.

With the invasion over, I headed back to Romancing Nihon so I could cross the mountains, befriend the Irises which is the final race/class to recruit. I reached the forgotten village and got the backstory on the Seven Heroes. Have we discussed how often precursor races are total assholes in media? Like if they could find a way to get their revenge without smurfing over the world and the dominant races, I would be fine with letting the Seven Heroes get their revenge. The issue is that I'm sure world domination is right after revenge on their to-do list. In fact thinking about how their powers actually work and thinking about their final form, RS2 goes into some serious eldritch territory not seen again until the PS1 entries.

I also unlocked the final expansion to the capital that isn't the Orchard. The new neighborhood where all my foreign based classes get to live. Which frankly I feel this should carry over into NG+. I mean you would still have to do the missions to unlock them but having them available in the capital afterwards would cut down on a lot of time in this game. I think I've also finished every possible weapon/armor idea I can make in the blacksmith shot that isn't the remaster exclusive Sevens gear. I made the armor in the first playthrough so I'm making the sword for this one, I just need to get the item from the Maze of Memory. Speaking of...

I've opted to do all the new side content this time around. I basically sacked the Maze of Memory for the loot but never bothered with the bosses. So I'm going to tackle them this playthrough. I already beat the Crimson Dragon of Sin who was surprisingly easy. He's tanky, but his over dangerous move is a very powerful physical charge attack that hits my whole team but can be mitigated with Earthen Shield magic. I'll tackle the other three soonish and unlock the game's ultimate optional boss. Speaking of optional bosses, collecting all of the classes unlocks an optional duel with the spirit of Victor, Gerad's older and more talented brother who dies in the prologue. It was a surprisingly tough fight even though I have a bunch of broken magic including one that no sells half of his attacks. The guy just hits like a truck. Beating him puts his soul to rest and earns you a special ring that is the closest thing this game has to a Ribbon so that's neat!

In tech world, my Empress managed to spark the best 1h sword move in the game, Still Blade. It looks pretty snazzy and the best thing is that it's damage goes up the more times she takes hits. I've seen this move do 4k damage so that's awesome. I've also sparked a bunch of weapon techs and I hope I can find the Soul Sabre as it has the most powerful tech in the game, Kzinssie's Soul Steal. Course the spark rate of that tech is abysmal. Apparently you can use it to one shot all of the Seven Heroes. I'm still missing the final techs from Epees and Greatswords, as well as the Berserk move from Martial arts. Also my Empress is a seriously broken Red Mage build. Offensive magic is usually nothing to talk about in SaGa games outside of maybe the Game Boy entries but my Empress can do mad damage with her magic. Helps her Light affinity is almost 40 but hot damn it's great to use her to thrash trash mobs with a quick spell.

So the game plan here is that I'm going to finish the Maze of Memory and face off with the game's ultimate boss Dread Queen. I also plan on finishing the Avalonian Orchard. This will help me obtain all but two trophy's from the game. One is the usual collect them all one, but the one I'll need for the next playthrough is beating the game before using the Final Successor. Yes, it's actually possible to unlock the final dungeon without reaching the last successor but it's a bit of a completionist nightmare as it involves screwing yourself out of a few classes and events since you're not allowed to complete them. I will also have to do my best not to fight too much which is why a third NG+ run will make it easier.

I did learn this playthrough that the Final Successor activates once you reach the 1900s on the calendar, so much like RS1, there is a reason to try and avoid battles early on since the amount of battles increases the amount of years that pass between successors. I'm pretty sure my first playthrough had three to four more successors not counting ones who died in battle. So that's good info to know. I may do a write up on some tips and tricks for this game while it's still fresh in my mind since I know a few people have wanted to play this entry.

I'll try to get back to RS3 soonish, but I am itching to start SF1. I'm thinking I'll start with Red.

[Wolf Kanno]

Got a bit done tonight. I finished taking down all four dragons in the Memory Maze and they were pretty much pushovers when it came down to it. My Samurai also sparked the final greatsword move and wouldn't you know, it was a total waste of my time. It's basically an instant death attack and loosely based off the Ianuki move by the Samurai class in FFV. Dark Blade is definitely the Greatsword's best attack, though I still love Scattered Petals as well. In addition to the Maze, I also finished one of the original optional dungeons that was dragon themed down to its bosses, and all the loot was the Dragon Gear and sword.

I am sadly about 400 fights away from getting the Orchard trophy, so that will be a bitch but I'm surprisingly not far from getting some characters to max HP which is nice. I may dive back into my Emperor's file and try to finish up some of this nonsense in the future as well, but that will likely happen whenever I opt to get the non-Final emperor trophy in a third playthrough.

The interesting thing about the Memory Dragons is that their dialogue ties into the backstory of the Seven Heroes and yet beating them has you face off with another antagonist from this game instead. The Dread Queen was certainly a handful. She hits hard, but the real challenge was all of her status magic. SaGa does not like to give you crap like Ribbons. I mean even its equivalent in this game, the Intalgio Ring is exclusive to the remaster version. Thankfully, I actually managed to spark the defensive moves for all three of her main status spells but I sort of forgot this until I had already lost to her.

My first bout ended fairly disastrously, she kept me on the defensive for too long and managed to perma-kill my Samurai and Pirate before I beat her, only for her to reveal she has a second form that proceeded to slaughter my battered survivors. So I regrouped and looked through my inventory to figure out a plan.

There are a couple of things that make her a real challenge. For one, she actually will stop Hasten Time from activating making it harder to control the fight. She has five different status spells she likes to use. One puts the team to sleep, one confuses everyone, one damages and poisons the party, one that paralyzes your team, and the worst one charms your team. Mind defense items are very rare in this game and I only have enough for my team because this is NG+ but two of the items are cursed so I'd rather not use them. That's why I was grateful I had already sparked all the defensive moves except for Paralyze and poison.

She gets two moves per round and her primary offensive attacks are blunt mace based based meaning that usual no sell magic like Sword Guard are useless and I have to rely on the less reliable Earthen Shield. I also managed to spark a defensive move against one of her blunt mace attacks so that helped my doll and empress avoid extra damage. Mitigating her status spell nonsense allowed me to control the fight better and so I beat it with little stress this time around and managed to keep the whole team alive.

Her second phase is the more offensive one. She trades most of her status spells for Dark Magic attacks and some fist based attacks like Hell Claw that does absurd damage. Thankfully Sword Guard does protect against this attack but a lot of her other moves has Stun as a secondary effect and like her first form, I can't get Hasten Time to work so she can seriously disrupt your rhythm. She also gets access to a powerful party hitting bug attack called Swarm but thankfully Earthen Shield is effective against it and my characters can actually dodge it even without it for the most part. This fight was a bit grueling especially since her dark poison spell hit way harder than I would have liked and I seriously needed a second character with the Elixir spell on them. Sadly, my Pirate was perma-killed in the fight, but outside of a sword defensive move he sparked, he didn't have anything terribly important on them like my Samurai. I ended up replacing him with his next counterpart, who is unfortunately not in a cool green garb like his predecessor but instead is in a boring Beige brown looking one. On the brightside, Mahan gets to take advantage of all the extra Global levels I earned since I started this generation and he starts off with much higher HP and weapon levels than his predecessor. I also decided that I was wasting my time by having him be a Water/Wind combo mage as Wind is the least useful element unless you're building a groups slaughtering mage since you can get access to Lightning and Diamond Dust. Pirates have abysmal magic stats so support is the only magic they're good for. So now he's a Water/Earth combo giving him access to Hasten Time, Elixir, Sword Guard, Earthen Shield, and Light Wall. So I'm feeling better about the final boss battle now.

My next goal is to finish the Avalonian Garden to earn the trophy, and I feel the best way to do that is just replay through the Maze of Memory. Unlike the main game, the Maze doesn't bother with Battle Level and instead has set levels for every floor. This will work out for me because the tree doesn't care how weak the enemy is, so I can beat up on early game mobs to fast track those 400 battles I need. Secondly, the Maze works a bit like the optional dungeons from The After Years and the treasure resets every time you go in and is randomized. The big draws here are Anima Draughts that restore LP and each Maze has the ''ultimate'' weapon lying in there for a few weapon classes. I've earned the Rapier one, in fact I got one in my first playthrough as well, but one has the best Axe, the best Bow, and the best spear in the game. So I have some incentive to go through them a few more times to try and earn those weapons. I also have an accessory that improves the drop rate of items in the game, and I can get a few more in one of the Blue Maze, so I'm finally able to get some of the rare enemy only drops in the game like some cool accessories and some unique weapons. So that will be fun. Overall, I'm fairy close to ending this playthrough as I really don't have much left to do but fight the Seven Heroes. I am curious to see if something plays out though. In my first playthrough O had Kzinssie guarding the entrance to the final dungeon but seeing how I never killed Noel, I'm curious to see if he'll be the one guarding the door this time.

Anyway, I'm getting excited at the idea of starting SaGa Frontier soon.

EDITGA: I forgot to mention this in my previous post but I was super nostalgic when I did the Minstrel quest in this game. I don't think I noticed this the first time around but the song you play to impress the Irises/Harpies is the main SaGa theme from the Game Boy entries. That was a super cool touch.

[Wolf Kanno]

Empress run of Romancing SaGa 2 is done.

I finished getting to 2000 battles needed to complete the Avalon Orchard and I save scummed my way to getting the best weapons from the Maze of Memory. The chest seems to be set once you enter the floor, but if you save on a previous floor and go in, it will shift around. The weapons spawn in chests on the last three floors, usually after the second event area. Check the chest, didn't get it, quit to title screen and try again. Didn't actually take too long but the Eros Bow in the Jungle zone was a bit of a pain since the treasure is fairly far from the starting point of the floor I chose to spawn at.

The final dungeon was a cakewalk to navigate compared to the optional dungeons but I did mange to get some HP boosts from my few fights I did get into. As I suspected, Noel was waiting for me at the entrance to the boss room, but he was a joke compared to our tussle in the first playthrough. Access to Sword Guard trivializes like 90% of his move set and I went into the fight with a better team.

The final boss fight was a bit tougher, mainly because I got wee bit too cocky and almost lost it towards the end when the boss showed off secondary effect of a move. Soul Steal is Kiznissie's signature move and usually it just works like an instant kill move taking out 1LP from whoever it hits who doesn't have the defense for it. If they use the move on an unconscious character though, it takes ALL OF THEIR LP. I suddenly found myself with one less healer than I intended and my second soon fell as well with no means to save without jeopardizing the rest of the team to a TPK. As usual, Subier's Tidal Wave is the game changer for the boss in terms of raw damage, though Wangas' Psycho Shot isn't any better. At least I had enough Mind protection accessories among my team to not have to worry about Rocbouquet's Charm move and Wagnas' confusion magic. In fact the fight was a joke up until the final phase when they change the background, the boss starts regenerating 999hp per round, and they get multiple turns per round. Thank god Still Blade does higher damage the more hits you take because that likely gave me an edge over the regen.

My final team was:

Empress Alma - She was my 1handed sword expert and touted the best gear in the game including the Sevens Armor, the Intalgio Ring, and Quicksilver boots. She was using the Sevens Sword and her unique weapon the Moonlight Sword. She had Light, Fire, and Wind magic with Revivar and Firestorm being her most useful spells and Still Life being her most useful Weapon Art.

Pirate - Mainly used axes but had Water, Earth, and Light magic. Elixir and Hasten Time are excellent spells. He was outfitted for physical defense wearing a full armor set but it made him the slowest party member. Reverse Delta is just as broken in RS2 as it is in Unlimited SaGa. Pirate might be my favorite class in this game as they are fairly brutal but also surprisingly durable.

Amazon - She was actually my main mage funny enough with Light, Earth, and Water magic. Her spell selection was the same as my Pirate but she has better speed. Shh used bows and spears for her weapons depending on the situation. Her best spear move has a secondary effect that lowered the enemies stats. Unfortunately, she was the one who got killed first in my battle. Overall though, I really did like the class. They are fairly well balanced in both use of weapon arts and magic and the spear/bow combo is actually a nice selection.

Samurai - These guys are a bit for a glass cannon, they have excellent strength and speed, so when you combine that with how strong greatsword techs are, these guys can often outdamage the Final Successor. Sadly they are fragile when it comes to defense and they don't gain HP as fast as other classes. I had mine with Light, Fire, and Earth magic giving me a second Revivar spell and access to the Earth boosting spells. Dark Blade was his strongest move. In hindsight, I should have given him Water instead of Fire magic since a speedier character with Elixir would have been useful.

Coppelia - Was surprisingly not as useless as I thought. You just need to set her up right. She gets HP and weapon proficiency boosts very quickly and I was able to take her starting martial art stat of 15 up to 45 in a few short hours which is something. She had the second highest HP on my team as well and with her 99LP she's built for taking damage despite her inability to wear armor. The trick with her is to just make her a specialist since she'll gain boosts in that particular weapon quickly, and then limit her move set to just a few powerful moves. Afterwards, just load her up on defensive moves to improve her survivability. I read that she'll actually give LP to your Final Successor if they are killed in battle, so that's pretty sweet.

The ending was still pretty awesome and I had a total of six rulers in this playthrough with their accomplishments spread out much better than my first playthrough.

I'll probably jump back into RS3 a bit, but will more than likely start SaGa Frontier 1 instead. I'm still debating about starting with Red or Asellus as my first character and this should be interesting since this is my first time through. Will be interesting to see the middle child between RS3 and SF2.

[Wolf Kanno]

Been wanting to write this up since starting my second playthrough of RS2. I know a few people around here have talked about wanting to play this entry, and I get that like any SaGa game, it can be fairly daunting at first since the game explains nothing. So here's my not-so-short guide to playing Romancing SaGa 2.

Gameflow
RS2 is a generational story about a kingdom trying to fight the legendary Seven Heroes who once saved the world a millennia ago and have returned as evil monsters themselves. At first you're part of a small kingdom, but by liberating other countries with your exploits and investing your resources carefully, you can transform you kingdom into a mighty empire and have warriors of great ability waiting to help your current ruler go kick ass and take names.

Gameflow basically takes the form of you exploring the available world and helping out various kingdoms and communities with their problems. The game is fairly open ended after the Gerad generation and several events actually have multiple ways to complete them depending on the order you take them on. For example, early in the game you're asked by the neighboring Cumberland kingdom to come and intervene in a succession crisis. You can either go do so to see the scenario play out, or you can do something else, watch a generational skip occur and come to the land to discover it is now under the iron rule of a despot and needs liberation. It's actually surprising how many scenarios have at least two ways they can play out and they do affect a few things later on.

Likewise, the player can commission and fund their empire to research various weapons or building projects to expand the empire's abilities. These are finished based on the number of battles you fight or generational skip. Money is generated by either finding it in treasure chests, having human enemies drop it after defeat, expanding the Royal Orchard, and mostly from taxation from your territories which are collected after a certain amount of battles are fought.

Avalon itself serves as a hub for your ruler where they can recruit certain warrior classes. It also has a Dojo where you can customize a characters Weapon Arts or learn Formations with certain classes. When you build a Magic Research Lab, you gain access to most of the elemental mage classes and can now teach spells to your party.

Building Stuff
To commision a great works project, you'll need to do a few things. The main thin is sit on the throne, if your character doesn't just sign for a moments rest then they'll likely call on their administrator to start a project. Projects unlock as you fulfill certain requirements. The main one to be concerned with is the Magic Research Lab, you'll need to raise your Successors magic level to like seven or ten I believe to get this opened up. You'll need the cash to get these projects started, but money from chests are ridicukously high. Most of the time, the expansion won't appear until after finishign a lot of events or instigating a generations jump.

the other building is the small building on the second floor of the courtyard of the castle. You'll find a blacksmith and his assistanct. The blacksmith makes weapons, the assistant makes armor. They can only research one at a time and it costs a bunch of money but in addiiton to the stuff being available ins hops, you get a freebie from them as well. The time is takes to finish an item is based on the number of battles you fight. It doesn't take than many so be sure to check back. If the generation skips then the item will be lsot and you'll have to wait until they have the idea for it. So be careful when making commisions if you know you've done a lot.

Stats
RS2 doesn't follow a conventional leveling system. It instead uses a streamlined version of FFII's system that focuses mainly on HP growth and proficiency with the various weapon and elemental magic classes. With that said, there are technically three types of stats to be aware of.

Raw Stats - This is a character's main stats and it's based on the character's class. These are the usual Strength., Defense, Magic type stats most people know from other RPGs. These stats will never grow and can only be modified by equipment. With that said, gaining a point of two in a stat does reflect a big difference so you shouldn't ignore them. The only stat you can technically manipulate is HP and to a lesser extent MP. HP rises as you survive battles with strong enemies while MP will slowly rise as you raise proficiency with various magics. No, the HP/MP trick from FFII does not work here and you can't target your own party anyway, so don't bother.

Proficiency Stats - This is the main stat you can alter by your actions and they are a huge part of the game. Whenever you use a certain weapon or spell, there is a possibility your character will increase their proficiency with that weapon or spell. The tech points you gain in battle will raise the likelihood of getting a stat to go up, similar to leveling up in Crisis Core.

Weapon proficiency will alter how much damage you do with the base weapon attack and also slightly alter the damage your Weapon Arts do as well. The other reason to raise these stats is that the higher their level, the more likely it is the character can Spark a new Weapon Art when fighting stronger enemies. This is very important because as mentioned, Weapon Arts don't get as much of a boost to damage with higher levels, so low level techs will leave you under-powered until you start gaining more powerful ones.

Magic works differently (of course) so magic is divided into the six elemental classes of Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light, and Darkness. A character can equip up to three magic elements of non-opposing elements and they can increase their proficiency by using that particular elemental class. Raising magic is imperative to making this game less of a nightmare due to how powerful and broken magic can be in this game. So unlike weapon arts, raising your proficiency in a magic field will have a much more noticeable affect on the spells powers. Magic can only be learned by either using a class that starts with it or having a mage teach you spells from the Magic Research Lab. Raising Magic levels will allow the researchers to discover new spells for that element once you reach the correct Global level to unlock it.. Once you've raised two non-opposing elements to certain levels, the research institute will begin researching Fusion Magic. Every element has at least two spells with each non-opposing element.

Global Levels - This is the biggest stats to be concerned with and the one the game hides from you. Global Levels are basically a party average of all the various proficiency in weapons and magic you've earned between generations. The purpose of this stat is dictate the starting proficiency of new characters you recruit so that the player doesn't have to spend time grinding in case someone dies while on the field and also to make sure new generations start at a similar level as the previous one so there isn't any difficulty spikes. GL is gained from the points earned after battle which goes towards every weapon and magic type used in battle. Once the weapon/magic stat earns enough points, it goes up a Global Level permanently and the next generation will start with a higher proficiency with it. Global Levels are imperative to magic since new spells and fusion magic are tied to the Global Level instead of the character's personal proficiency. So if you get a mage with level 18 proficiency with Fire and Earth magic and wonder why the Fusion spell hasn't become available, it's likely because your global levels are not high enough. The biggest pain of Global Levels is that it's an unseen stat. The game will never directly tell you what they look like and instead you'll simply have to see what a new recruit's stats look like to garner a guess. It's annoying, but having played later SaGa entries that drop this and force you to grind new recruits, I honestly wish this mechanic remained in later installments.

Difference between HP and LP.
LP is a new mechanic introduced in this entry and would remain in all future installments. HP works pretty much like it does in all other RPGs, once it's depleted to 0, your character will lose consciousness and lose one LP. LP is pretty much what it says, it's the character's actual life. Once it's depleted to 0, the character is permanently killed and will need to be replaced. When a character is knocked out, they can be revived with a simple healing spell or item, no life spell needed. When their HP is depleted again, they will become unconscious and lose another LP. The biggest thing to understand though is that unconscious characters can still be targeted by enemy attacks, but since they have no HP they will lose LP every hit instead. So it is important to heal characters ASAP when they get knocked out unless you're purposely trying to kill them off to recruit someone else. If the Successor gets LP killed then Succession takes place, unless it is the Final Ruler, if they get LP killed, the game is over and you have to restart from the last save.

Generational Skips and Succession
The Ruler of Avalon uses a forbidden magic called Inheritance which allows them to pass on their power and abilities to a successor thus allowing the player to hold onto any progress they've made. Succession can occur one of two ways, either by Generational Skip or a direct Succession cause by letting your ruler die from LP death.

Generational Skips will automatically happen after your ruler accomplishes enough events. Each story event or quest in the game is worth a certain amount of points, and once enough has been completed the game will jump a number of years into the future and ask you to choose between four randomly selected successors. Liberating a territory or defeating one of the Seven Heroes are worth the most points, while doing smaller quests are worth less. So it's very possible you can have a successor who accomplishes ten things because they were all small quests before getting a generational skip, whereas another can liberate one region and take down one of the Seven and get the boot as well.

Succession occurs in one of two ways. If the current ruler is LP killed in battle, then a new successor will be chosen among the remaining party members. If the whole party gets knocked unconscious though, the game treats it like a generational skip, and isntead you'll have to choose between four randomly selected classes.

I advise players to save before and after every boss fight to ensure they can go back in case a generational skip occurs and you're handed a bad selection of successors. I say after as well because not all events end after a boss defeat so you can often save afterwards and either leave the area or talk to the right NPC to officially end the event as well and give you a stress free means of re-rolling your possible successors. I will say that any new classes you unlock in a generation often have a high chance of being one of the successors.

Time passage
Another factor at hand is time. Time passes in this game based on how many events you complete and how many battles you fought. Certain events, once activated must be completed in that generation or you may lose out on somethings but more likely you'll just miss the event and have to do a different one instead. Examples are Cumberland or the landship scenario. Other events won't activate until a later event happens like the Camroon Volcano events or the Narwhal quests. This system is much more forgiving than RS1's mechanics. This is most evident with combat and its role in time. Fighting a lot also makes time pass but it happens rather slowly during the Successor's tenure. It really kicks in when you have a generation skip as the amount of time between generations is directly proportionate to how many battles you fight. The important thing to remember here is that you do have a soft time limit in this game as reaching the year 1900 kick starts the final successor. So don't think you can grind in Gerad's time consequence free as it can potentially lock you out of some later quests that require a generational jump to activate.

Combat
Mostly works like typical RPGs where you select the weapon or spell you wish to use. A character can equip about four items to their hands, be it four weapons or items to use in battle. Bare Handed is always an option for battle regardless of class. Only equipped items can be used in battle and even then, only healing Balms are available. Because of this, your character is allowed to use multiple weapons in battle. All characters have three equipment slots but certain classes have access to a fourth slot where they can utilize a unique piece of equipment only their class can use and cannot be removed. The Crusader for instance always comes with a special Crusader Shield equipped so they can't equip other shields but they also get an extra equipment slot.

One unique element of the game is that your HP is restored to max between battles so you never have to use items of magic outside of combat except to restore MP. It is also possible to run from almost every battle in the game including bosses so you can regroup.

Weapons
There are Eight weapons in the game with three damage types. Certain weapons are classed together in the proficiency stats to make it easier to raise their power.

• Rapiers/Epees - Lightweight weapons that do pierce damage and have access to buffing/debuffing Weapon Arts. They share a stat with Spears. Their damage is calculated by a characters Speed and Dexterity stat.
• One-Handed Swords - These are medium weight all-rounders that have techs for dealing with anything. They do slash damage and share a stat with Greatrswords. Damage is calculated by strength. This is the hardest weapon class to spark all techs for because there are four types of sword sparking classes in the game.
• Greatswords - These are two handed weapons that are very heavy but do greater damage than regular swords or epees. They do slash damage as well and their techs are primarily big damage against single targets. They calculate damage by Strength and share a stat with 1h swords.
• Axes - Are very heavy slash dealing weapons. Their damage is calculated by strength and mainly targets a single opponent. They can do more damage than greatsword but their accuracy is poor so you may see more misses. They share a proficiency stat with Maces.
• Maces - Are heavy weapons with average blunt damage. Their techs are kind of all-rounders like 1h-Swords but they trade raw damage for buffing/debuffing effects. Most of them have a unique weapon tech attached to them. They share their stat with Axes.
• Spears - Are a heavy pierce damage type that focuses mainly on doing damage to a single target. Their skills do have some nice debuffing effects and they get a really great defensive one as well. They share a stat with rapiers and use DEX for damage calculations.
• Bows - Long range piercing weapons that can hit the back row. They are medium weight but some bows can get pretty heavy. They do fairly good damage and their design is for crowd control over doing big damage to a single target. They also get a fair amount of debuff techs. They do damage based on DEX and have their own proficiency stat.
• Unarmed - lightweight weapon that can do heavy blunt damage depending on the strength of the character and the class. Their techs are all-rounders but the game only has really one class dedicated to sparking new moves. Ki Meditation is a must have skill that is a free healing spell for the user. Their damage is based on several stats which is why only a few classes can do some serious damage with it despite being a weapon type all classes have access to. They have their own proficiency stat as well.

Magic
Magic is broken down to six elemental types as mentioned before. Each element will learn a total of five spells and their are two Fusion spells per non-opposing elements. That means there are thirty pure elemental spells total and twenty four fusion spells. You can only possess three elemental types and are not able to use others. So if your character has fire magic, they can't learn water magic unless you forget all of their fire magic. Thankfully, once a spell is unlocked its unlocked for good, so it's easy to swap around spells and doesn't require any grinding to get them back. All magic remains unlocked into NG+ with the exception of Dark Magic's availability. It has to be unlocked by its quest line every playthrough to gain access to.

• Light - The first element you have access to. This is a great magic class and one of the few where almost every spell is useful. Sword Barrier is one of the best defensive spells in the game because it negates all edged and melee attacks on the caster. It has some very potent fusion spells for a battle mage and the Fusion spell Light Wall is one of the best group defensive spells in the game.
• Fire - Fire is a pure damage element with one exception. Fireball actually remains a potent spell throughout the game due to the fact it can be powered up into a group hitting spell with enough Fire Proficiency. The elements best spell is Revivar which is the game's auto-life spell and the last spell you'll learn. The best thing about Revivar is that when it activates, the character doesn't lose LP. The majority of the Fusion spells it makes are offensive but Fire Wall is an excellent defensive group spell that no-sells Fire and Ice attacks for a turn.
• Water - Mainly defensive and healing. It's the only spell class that has status removal magic as well so keep that in mind. It's best spell is Hasten Time that is basically Hastega. It's offensive magic only comes into play with Fusion magic the best fusion spell is Elixir, which is a single target spell that heals for max health and removes all status magic except petrification.
• Wind - Is the weirdest magic type. It has a mix of spell types that do interesting effects. Wind Guard protect against all bow attacks and HP Suction is a drain spell that's good for causing damage and healing. Wind God Sabre allows a character to use swords without needing to equip one which is neat but not very practical. It gets some potent offensive magic with Fusion spells but this is honestly the least useful element.
• Earth - Possibly the best element behind Light. This element gives you some great buff spells, a healing spell and one of the stronger group hitting spells in the game. It's fusion magic is also fairly strong since it's the other half of the Light Wall and Fire Wall spells. This is also the other half of the Dark Wraith spell which is the best offensive spell in the game since it doubles your characters attack. The biggest drawback is that you have to choose between other elements is it's impossible to get all of these spells onto one character.
• Dark - Is mainly Debuffing and damage focused. Dark is actually optional and can only be earned by doing a certain event at Camroon Volcano. If you're hoping to build a powerful combat focused mage, Dark is definitely the way to go about it. It's best spell is Wraith Form which creates a doppleganger of your character that repeats any action the character makes every round. The rest of it's magic varies from powerful group hitting spells to devastating single target spells. Most Dark magic also has a secondary status affliction element to it as well so even if the enemy resists it, they can still get stuck with a devastating status effect.

Weapon Arts and Sparking
New to this entry and a standard of the franchise ever after is the concept of Waza/Sparking/Glimmer in relation to weapon arts. Weapon Art are basically powerful techniques associated with each weapon type. Sparking is when a light bulb pops over a character's head in combat and they create the technique. Once a move is sparked, it's permanently learned for that character. When a generational skip occurs, all sparked moves are added to the dojo, allowing future generations to use the techniques as well. Even if a character dies, any moves they spark will be in the Dojo the following generation. Sadly, sparked moves are not available to teach to other characters until the following generation, meaning that any moves sparked during the final successors era will not be available even in NG+.

Despite what people say Sparking is not entirely random. There are several factors that go into whether a character will spark a move. Their weapon proficiency level, the Enemy level, the spark type of the class, and the difficulty of the move are all factors that determine whether you'll actually spark a move or not. This is why skills will still often unlock in a specific order of weakest ability to strongest.

One more important thing to remember is that a character will never spark a new move if their move list is full. So always make sure you have an empty slot or two to encourage more sparking.

Spark Type
Every class in the game has a spark type. There are fifteen different spark types in the game. One type, the Stagnant Type which is relegated to Leon, Pre-Succession Gerad, and Coppelia is unable to learn any techs. For the most part, a classes spark type will be explained to the player when they are recruited into the party. Usually telling you what weapon type they're best in. Mages are their own class and can only spark low level techs with weapons. The one kicker here is that Spark type can sometimes be split between genders if the class has different genders. For instance the Crusader class varies between the character you recruit and their gender as males tend to specialize in Spears and women specialize in Maces. Occasionally a class can have an outlier such as the Amazons who are spear specialists but have one member of their group that is a Bow specialist. The problem is the game only uses the generic message about specialty so you'll never really know without a guide the biggest offenders are 1h swords and melee since both have a few specialty spark types that have a higher chance to spark specific moves. For the most part though, you only ever really need to know this info for some endgame techs. For the most part you can use the class and safely get all the techs you need from them. Low level techs can often be sparked by any class, but more powerful ones will require a specialist to earn.

One other factor at play with sparking is that certain moves are connected to each other. So using these weapon arts a lot gives you a higher probability of sparking their advanced form. Granted, not every art has a corresponding art associated with it, but some of the endgame weapons arts tend to be directly connected to mid or even low tier techs. An early one is how Double Cut can be used to learn Slice much earlier.

Weapon Arts
The big thing to understand about Weapon techs is that their power is connected to the Art itself rather than your stats. Granted having a stronger weapon, strength boosts, and high proficiency will give the move a significant boost compared to working with lower resources, but Prism Blade is going to average between 2k-3k of damage most of the time whereas the early Double Cut will rarely go over 1k without some end game stuff. So it is important to switch out weaker moves with stronger ones as you progress the game.

Specific Weapon Techs
Many of the game's weapons actually have special techniques attached to them. These moves need to be sparked like any other weapon art, but once they are sparked, they remain on the weapon forever. Even if you get rid of the weapon and acquire a new one, the new one should still have the Weapon Art activated. Many of these weapon specific arts are unique moves and the best part is they don't use up a Weapon Art slot. This is one of the reasons why you might want to forego using a strong weapon for one that has a more useful tech attached to it. The biggest advantage is with mages since they are terrible at physical damage and sparking, so saddling them up with less than powerful maces to use their special skills is often a better strategy. Also, the unique signature attack for most members of the Seven Heroes is available on a specific weapon.

Defensive Arts
Easily the most useful and difficult moves to spark. Defensive Moves are basically a move that allows the equipped character to completely avoid the specific attack of the Defensive Art. The game will automatically give you one for plot reasons in the early game with Soul Steal, Kzinssie's signature instant death move. With this move equipped, Gerad is able to completely avoid the art. You can Spark a defensive move for almost every move in the game. The chances are rare but getting the defensive skill for moves like Terror Voice, Death's Scythe, Hypnosis, and Pheromone can make certain boss battles less of a nightmare. The one thing to know is that these skills do take up a weapon art slot, so choose carefully.

Armor and Accessories
Easily the biggest headache in the game is the terrible UI when it comes to what equipment does. The main stat you see only details protection from Slash damage, but there are three weapon damage types (Slash, Blunt, and Pierce) and six elemental types. So you can easily have a character sporting a 90 in defense that is still getting KOed in one hit because the enemy is using Blunt type attacks. Likewise, the armor descriptions give incredibly vague ideas of other things they can do, so you might bypass a piece of gear that has poor protection but offers a huge boost to your strength or magic stats which I might add, make a big difference.

Likewise, there are two main types of armor Basic, and Full Armor. Basic works like normal games, equipping them allows ou to also equip helms, gauntlets, and accessories. Meanwhile Full Armor offers better overall defense at the cost of restricting a character to only being able to use rings and usually being heavier.

Accessories mostly come in the form of Rings, they garner a single point in most defense areas, but make up for it by either giving a sizeable stat boost or protection from harmful status magic.

Speed
A character's speed is determined by both their speed stat and the weight of all their equipment including armor. While a character can equip up to four weapons at a time, it's not very sound to do so since each weapon weight will slow them down. There is a scale in the Storehouse in the castle that will tell you what your teams weight is.

Formations
This is the other unique element to this game and something that made the BoFIII fan in me smile. RS1 had a stuffy grid system not too dissimilar to the equally awful one from Persona 1 when it came to party formations. Getting attacked the side or behind would scramble the formation and make it impossible to attack with certain weapon types until the character spent a turn moving into place. RS2 thankfully drops this whole mechanic and instead offers a new formation system where the party can use pre-set formations to garner special benefits in battle.

There are a total of eighteen Formations in the game. Two are given to the player at the start being the Free for All that doesn't garner any benefits or penalties and the other is Leon's Imperial Cross which makes creates a meat-shield around the Emperor and protects whoever is in the back row. Formations can honestly make or break the game, so it's important to use them as effectively as possible as some formations boost counter rates, magic power, bow power, gives initiative to the whole team, or has the party auto-defend after finishing their turn.

Formations are earned by having the current Successor speak with the Dojo instructor who teaches formations to the troop. Every class not found within the castle ( so no Light or Heavy Infantry, Archers, Mages, or Mercenaries. Also non-human races and Coppelia will not teach a formation) will teach a new Formation. You can honestly go through the whole game and not see all of them and sadly the game makes you earn them again every playthrough even with NG+. The only way you'll likely My personal recommendations are:

• Imperial Arrow - Learned from Imperial Guard - Good speed bonuses to the whole team, everyone auto-defends after turn. Great for Blitzkrieg strategies.
• Desert Fox - Learned from Desert Guard - Great decoy formation with strong boosts for frontline melee fighters.
• Amazon Strike - Learned from Amazon - Great damage focused formations with good speed and melee bonuses.
• Whirlwind - Learned from Nomad - Good defensive formation that doesn't have a speed penalty.
• Goblin Attack - Learned from Scroll found in Maze of Memory - Best offensive formation in the game.

Classes
At the start of every generation after Gerad's reign, you'll need to recruit a new party. You should choose wisely because once a character is recruited, they can't be removed until they are either LP killed or until a new generational skip. There are twenty five classes you can recruit in this game. Your five starting classes are: Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Court Mage, Ranger, and Mercenary.

• Light Infantry - These are all-rounders with stats and their Spark Type is also all over the place so they can be useful for sparking lots of early techs for various weapons. The female variant are a bit better about sparking techs since they have better spark types within their ranks. They mostly specialize in swords of all types so experiment between all three.
• Heavy Infantry - These guys are meat shields who come with a full suit of armor. Place them in the front row and let them soak up damage. They are mostly 1H-Sword Generalist in spark type so keep them with swords and shields.
• Court Mage - Your starter Mage class. Most of them are not good at sparking anything excpet possibly clubs, but agin, don't expect much. Their real strength is in their magic with Males usually specializing in water magic and females specializing in fire magic.
• Ranger - These are your main bow experts and you can easily just stick to one to spark all the bow techs in the game since all of them are bow specialists. There is not much difference between gender expewct females are slighlty better casters.
• Mercenaries - These are your heavy hitters in the early game. They all have fairly good stats and most of them start with high proficiency with swords. Oddly enough though, their spark type is all over the place, especially the female variant. They are also not the best for sparking later weapon arts.

The recruitable classes include:

• Mage for Hire - These are spell casters that often have sparking types that allow for more variety. They are not as powerful as a court mage but they are a bit more well rounded. They are acquired once the Magic Research Institute is built.
• Vagabonds - The series version of the Thief class. Their high speed and dex makes them good for Bows, epees, and martial arts. Males have poor spark typing though while females are more consistent. Females get a unique footwear allowing for an extr a slot for armor and the it allows them to learn Stomp.
• Brawler - Martial arts experts and the games version of monks. These guys will be your main source of melee moves. They are useless against slimes but they can spark several great techs any character can use like Ki Meditations. Keep an eye out for a monk named Liger, he's a rare spark type that can spark certain moves the others can't.
• Crusader - These are your upgrade to the Heavy Infantry. They are meatshields that can also use magic rather proficently and they have better spark typing. Males specialize in spears, females specialize in clubs/maces and are far better with magic than their male counterpart. The class also comes with the Paladin Shield which is fairly awesome in the early to mid-game until R&D catches up. Their only downside is that they are slow.
• Nomads - Better class than you would think, they specialize in Axes and Bows. Males will be your earliest access to axe specialists while the females are bow experts with good potential in magic.
• Tactician - This class has some of the highest speed scores in the game and they are experts with magic usually starting with three elemental spells ight out the bat. There biggest flaw is their durability and the fact most of them are terrible at sparking anything. You acquire them once you complete the University and graduate from it.
• Armed Merchants - These guys are basically pirates. They are also serious badasses with great defense, high speed scores and good strength that helps with their Axe proficiency You can never go wrong with this class.
• Hunters - These people are your upgrade for the Ranger class usually sporting higher dex in echange for overspecialization.
• Saigo Clansman - Another meatshield class, they can specialize in melee or clubs. If you're missing some techs in clubs this is your class.
• Imperial Guard - These are an upgrade to the Crusader class just with their usefullness reversed. Females are kind of all over the place and while they have better magic ability, they have nothing on their crusader counterpart. Male members are the game's best spear users and sport some of the highest attack in the game.
• Desert Guards - These guys are a cross between mercenaries and heavy infantry. They are good fighters with the ability to take a beating or two.. These guys are pretty good mid-tier to endgmae fighters.
• Amazon - Amazons are fairly well rounded. Their stats say boy, but their spark type is spear. They make decent mages as well and have good speed. Sadly they can only be recruited by a female emperess until you build the city expansion.
• Divers/Ocean Woman - One of the weirder classes. Depsite starting with two magic types, they are mediocre casters. Their main weapons are spears and they come with a rare Trident that only drops from a certain rare enemy in the game. I found them to be a bit too fragile.
• Levante Guard - Call it like it is, this is your Samurai. These guys have high strength and speed making them great blitzkrieg options. They are the best greatsword specialists in the game and a usual pick for end game teams. they can be a bit on the fragile side though. They are surprisingly decent mages as well. Oddly enough, one member of the class who has the best stats also has only 1 LP.
• Mole Men - The games best epee/rapier wielders, moles are earth experts and all can cast Earth Magic. Like all of the non-human races, they get a regen effect when earth magic has been used enough to change the environment to earth focus. They also come with the Iron Will helmet that makes them immune to mind status effects like charm and confusion. They are also excllent craftman and you'll need to rescue them if you want to get Nerids or acquire the Darkstone Ring.
• Nerids - The mermaids are not as useful as I would like considering the headache you have to do to recruit them. They are magic users who get a regen effect aroudn water and when water magic is used a lot. They are not good at sparking, being the mage of the four non-human races. They do come with their unique Mellow Ring which makes them immune to cold and gives them a good defense against both status magic and Fire magic.
• Salamanders - This class is pretty powerful. The y are Axe and Melee specialists who come with a strong unique armor called Red Heat Scalemail that makes them immune to fire magic. They also get a regen effect around fire magic or fire centric locations. They are fairly strong and very beefy, the only issue is that recruiting them negates your ability to get dark magic... Apparently the Salamanders are also all female so Rocboquet should be in trouble.
• Irises - Though they primarily use bows, this harpie inspired race are actually better spell casters and they are also extrememly quick. They get a regen boost when wind magic is used a lot. Their unique equipment is the Kazanaha Scarf which makes them immune to cold/water magic and gives them a good boost to status magic. Like Nerids' they are all female. The only real drawback is that they will usually be the last class you will recruit, though the quest to do so is actually one of the most amusing.
• Ninja - New to this entry is the Nija class which was added when the game got remade for cell phones. They are a female variant of the Battler class, being mainly Melee specialist. Despite that, they start with great proficieny with swords and have the stats to make them perfect with greatswords and on par with the Levante Guard. Their main weakness is their poor magic ability and their low defense. She's recruited in the optional Maze of Memory Dungeon in the Red Orb section. They come with a unique accessory the Dash Ring which gives them good status effect defense.
• Diviner - Man I wish they had stuck with the Japanese title of Onmiyoji. This is another class exclusive to the post Super Famicom version. They are comparable to Tacticians in stats but their spark types run the gambit of Bows, Clubs, and Epees making them a bit more versatile. They're real unique trait is that they are a class that specializes in Dark Magic which was incredibly rare in the original game. So this class was created to make better use of the magic. Even if you opt not to get Dark Magic, they will usually start with it and will be you only means of using it on that playthrough. He is recruited in the optional Maze of Memory Dungeon, in the Black/Purple Orb area. They come with a unique accessory called the Demon Ring which gives them boosted defense against all of the elements.

Resources
It's hard to find great resources for everything, but these are the two I like.
RS2 Data Sheet - Pretty much a spreadsheet which is great for learning what armor and weapons do as well as a more manageable spark table.
SaGa Wiki - It still needs to be updated for the remake but this gives you a better breakdown of the classes and formations.

Misc Tips:

Emperor vs. Empress
You get to choose the gender of your final successor and there are some reasons you may want to choose one over the other. Each of them gets a unique greatsword that is also capable of using 1h sword techs as well. Neither is stronger than the other, nor even the best weapon of their categories but it does free up a potential weapon slot if speed is a factor. Both swords come with two unique abilities.

Dayblade (Male) - comes with some fire and holy based attacks that are great against enemies weak to fire or holy power.
Moonlight (Female) - Comes with a group hitting ice attack and the holy Moon Light healing spell.

The male emperor has far more LP than the empress. close to 20 compared to her measly 10. On the flip side, the Empress, being a female, is automatically immune to Rocboquet's Temptation skill giving her one free equipment slot for the final battle. This might not sound like that big of an advantage but it really is because Charm is the second worst status effect behind Petrification.

Dark Magic vs. Salamanders
You're going to have to decide which one you want. Salamanders are debatably the most useful non-human race in the game since their only real weakness is how slow they are and their inability to use Water Magic. Fire locations are also rare, so you won't see their regen bonus as often but the class is physically powerful, their special armor is pretty strong and frees them up to use an extra slot for equipment and their specialty for weapons are axes, which are the strongest weapons in the game. They are real power houses. Bonus points, Salamanders are all female so Rocboquet's Temptation spell has no effect on them.

Dark Magic is the best offensive magic in the game outside of a few Fusion spells and two single element spells. They also have the benefit of causing secondary status effects which can turn the tide of battle for you. Dark Magic also gives you some of the best offensive buffs in the game and are best used with the new Onmiyoji/Diviner class as well as certain members of the Samurai class. If you plan on having a powerful offensive mage this magic element is pretty much required.

Seven Sword vs. Seven Armor
Unique to the remaster is the ability to forge a specific weapon or armor with an ore from the Maze of Memory. You can only forge one per playthrough but at least it transfers into NG+. So the questions is which one?

Personally, go with the Armor first. the sword is great but there are several weapons close to it in power and Weapon Arts are still fairly potent without the extra points. Defense is more important by the late game and the Seven Armor gives you a great stat spread while also being criminally lightweight. It really is the best armor in the game overall.

Bejeweled Ring vs. Potency Ring
There is a shop in the Maze of Memories that offers these two items but it costs 10,000 Crowns which is your max amount of money you can carry on you. You can lower the price by asking him to lower them and then exiting the dungeon so you can get both, but if that's too much time wasting for you, I would choose the Bejeweled ring first.

The Bejeweled Ring raises the probability of enemies dropping items in battle. There are lots of weapons and armor that can only be obtained this way and they are far more valuable, especially if you sneak in and grab this item as early as possible.

The Potency Ring doubles the amount of Points you get per battle raising your Global levels and speeding up how often your character raises their proficiency. Great item in early game but becomes useless by NG+ since a regular playthrough should have you reach the cap on both Global and personal levels.

Empress Coppelia?
Yes, the foul mouthed automaton can actually be turned into a successor. You simply need for the current successor to die in combat while she is recruited as a party member. Coppelia on her own comes with some disadvantages but they mostly disappear once she's made the successor. For one thing, you can control her now and secondly, she can use magic finally. She has fairly good stats and while she can't equip armor, her Prima Tutu accessory is just as powerful as Full Armor so she's pretty tanky. Take advantage of her fast growth rate to raise your global levels.

Darkstone Ring/ Demon Crystal Ring
There is a quest midway through the game where you'll acquire a cursed dark crystal. If you take it to the mole men later on, they can crafy it into the Darkstone Ring. This ring will grant you immunity from mind status effects like charm and confusion as well as good defense against the elemental magics. But the item is cursed and won't be able to be removed. If you sleep anywhere that isn't the Successor's personal bed, then they user will drain an LP from each party member refillign their own even if they have full LP. Save this for the final battle.

Hopefully this will help some of you. I'm hoping to start SaGa Frontier 1 tonight.

[Wolf Kanno]

SaGa Frontier 1 has been started and holy hell is this a weird entry. It almost feels like Kawazu and his team decided to ignore the SNES entries and that last GB entry and went back to SaGa 2 (FFLII) as the main basis of the game. I'm not complaining though because it was a fave of mine.

Basically we're back to having characters broken up by Humans, Mystics/Espers, Monsters and Robots. Humans largely work like they did in SaGa 2 but now have the Romancing series spark/waza element to actually learn skills. Monsters absorb defeated enemies to learn new skills and possibly transform into a new form, and I haven't ran into the other two races yet to get an idea of how they work. It's interesting how the game feels both streamlined and more convoluted at the same time compared to RS3.

I opted to go with Red as my first character. His plot is based off a bunch of tropes from Tokusatsu genre, specifically Henshin Hero's like Kamen Rider. So his dad is killed by a mysterious organization called Black X and he himself was nearly killed until he was saved by a superhero who granted him his similar powers to save his life. Now Red is trying to find out more about the mysterious organization while fighting off their henchmen as his alter ego Alkaiser.

As a fan of Super Sentai shows like Power Rangers growing up, this has been a fun blast so far. My only real beef is that while he can spark techs in his Alkaiser form, including some cool exclusive moves he can only use in said form, he can't get stat boosts if he transforms. Granted his Alkaiser form like quadruples his stats but it makes it harder when the game kind of makes it a crutch mechanic in the early game.

I am currently trying to increase his levels and techs in the Bio Research Lab and was thrashed by the areas boss. I'll need to come back with a full team I feel because he one shot my whole party. I did recruit a monster named cotton and after a lot of trial and error, I mange to strike...metal? and got it to transform into a SaGa brand Liquid Metal slime with ridiculously high stats for this point in the game. With my mon on the team, I've finally been able to get Red's stats to go up, but since we're playing Henshin tropes to a tee, I've lost the ability to use the Alkaiser form because Red can't use it in front of other people and must keep his identity a secret, even to his own teammates apparently including a monster that can only say kyu kyu...

Music is good, graphics and setting remind me of FFVII, controls are a bit janky for my taste but I remember SaGa Frontier 2 was pretty similar in that regard. It's interesting how SF1 feels like a send up to the GB entries while SF2 feels like one for the SNES ones.

With the Golden Week sales going on, I may finally pick up SaGa Scarlet Graces and perhaps the SF1 Remaster. I really want that SF2 remaster and new SaGa game Kawazu hinted at.

[Del Murder]

Are you playing the original SF1 or the remaster?

[Wolf Kanno]

Broken ass original. Which means it's missing a bunch of stuff and Fuse doesn't have his chapter.

I will say that the game is more difficult than some other entries. While dying from a random encounter is not uncommon in any of the entries I've played except maybe FFLIII, I definitely feel like this game has already killed me more times than usual in the early game. I had to recruit Cotton the monster from the Bio Research Lab just so I wasn't spamming Alkaiser every round and never growing Red. I'm actually partially stuck at the point where Pirates take over the Cygnus because one particular fight against four monsters. The big issue is that the tankiest of the four is the one that likes to cast a massive buff on the rest of the group making them go first and hit ridiculously harder than I feel they should.

Shops are also rare and most of the equipment I've gained are from random drops. In fact the best drop I got was a shield in the Bio Research Lab which increased Red's poor survival rate significantly. I've had to go back to an old save to grind a bit. Cotton has been transformed into a Zeroworm which is some gnarly looking creature that looks a bit like the centipede boss fought in the Future in Chrono Trigger. I also find it hilarious that after how much SaGa 2 made monster evolution more convoluted, SF1 was like ''hold my beer''. It's interesting how they work but much more complicated, which is likely why they have such a bad rep among fans.

I've been using an old guide from a magazine as a helper and it's hilarious how much it trashes this game.

[Wolf Kanno]

Still stuck on the Cygnus, I fear my bout of grinding caused my Battle Lv. to get too high, but the enemies you encounter on the Cygnus are really scattershot. The first enemies you will likely encounter all feel like they are much higher than average. It includes some monsters that look like potential bosses in some story paths, and some deadly Robots that tear my team a new one if my my monster wasn't OP. The main set that kicked my ass are mid tier monsters I occasionally encounter but have been upgraded to boss caliber stats. This fight is what I was mainly leveling for, but I discovered too late there is a trick to this fight. The lookout monster can be sneaked past if you're observant, at which point you can find the other monsters from this fight in rooms and tackled them one at a time making this significantly easier. The last set are the respawning enemies you can grind against, and they are pathetic and closer to what I was actually fighting before this event, so maybe my BL. isn't as high as I think.

I was finally able to recruit a full party though, as I found Asellus, Princess White Rose, Fuse, some mercenary guy, and my first robot. So I finally have one of each race. My goal now is to take the dangerous route to get to the main bridge and retake the ship, but there seems to be a trick because I fell off and lost my progress during my first attempt. I'll do a team breakdown later after I spend a little more time building them up. Mystics are certainly weird and my robot suffered a huge downgrade due to losing my progress since I couldn't get certain weapons to drop from the fights again. Red is doing fine, but I really wish I could find a shop to upgrade his armor and weapons. I stole the Samurai Katana from the merc to give to him.

I also took advantage of the Golden Week sale and finally picked up SaGa Scarlet Graces Ambitions. I did check it out a bit but chose not to devle too far as I don't want to get distracted from SF1.

Game looks good and feels a bit like Unlimited SaGa in presentation minus the board game elements. They brought back formations after being absent for three games (almost twenty years real time) and strangely enough, brought back Roles from SF2. You can choose to lie to the game to unlock extra scenes by saying you completed the game before with certain characters, but I'm opting to go through cold turkey since replay value is the series main draw. You get to answer a fun questionaire at the very beginning which decided which of the four main heroes you get to start with. My understanding is that it's overwhelmingly rigged to make sure you start with either Leonard or Urpina since they are the most user friendly, but your answers also alter their stats a bit. You can technically bypass this and just choose a character but you lose the bonuses unfortunately if you do. I got Urpina for my choices, and I'm pretty content since she was my first choice anyway. SaGa tends to do justice to female leads in this series as they are usually either more interesting story wise or way more OP than they theoretically should be. Urpina sounds to be a bit of both. I watched the intro of her story which quickly shoved me into the game side and then stopped. I haven't even had a battle yet but she does start with a full team.

I like how the background of the game is a weird combination of the first two Romancing SaGa games with the main bad being some former evil god that rebelled against his brethren, but then it follows RS2 by the gods blessing a human to build a mighty empire to eventually slay said god each time he tried to return before finally finishing the task. Then the game takes on a darker version of the RS2 ending and now we're in the aftermath of that fallen kingdom. Urpina's father is one of the military noble houses who dreams of restoring the empire with his family as the head, so this should be interesting. Alas, I got SF1 to go through.

I did have some extra credit for another game, I was thinking of Trials of Mana but I didn't really want to a digital version of such a huge game and would prefer a physical copy instead, so I might just use it to pick up the SF1 remaster as well. Keep the SaGa love going. I am so happy after all these years, Squenix is finally trying to release all of these games.

[Wolf Kanno]

Update time!

Oof, what an evening of wasted time. So I finally finished the Cygnus pirate issue, the boss of the area wasn't too hard but I was a bit annoyed to discover everyone I recruited left afterwards. I was able to recruit the robot doctor back but I've lost my Mystics and my other two humans.

My next stop was a slums type place where Red spend his time chasing after a monk who is selling some kind of drug related the Black X. The annoying part was accidentally discovering a side dungeon in the middle of the main sewer dungeon and wasting a bit too much time there. I was not doing too bad until my monster got killed because every power form I get for him also gives him ridiculously low LP. So I had to reset and lost a lot of progress. That mission is a bust for Red as well. In the next town, which is Japanese theme, we meet a robot trying to find enlightenment and just as he was about to spill the beans on Black X, Red gets called back to the Cygnus. The last area was a jungle world where a tournament is being held for masked fighters. Red slips away from the party to enter the tournament as Alkaiser and I managed to spark like four really good techs. The final boss of the tournament said some cryptic things that has me a bit worried, but we'll see where that leads. Afterwards, Red spots Dr. Klein, the former colleague for Red's dad and the man that got their family involved with Black X. We chase him through the castle and I manage to get a new sword for Red, but this leads nowhere as well and Red gets called back to the Cygnus once again. Deciding enough is enough, Red quits the crew to strike out on his own and from here the game has opened up. The first town I was left at is some backwoods sake making country town that is filled with some high end monsters that allow Red to spark an endgame sword tech I recognized from Re: Universe. I explored a few other places and recruited another Robot to the team, but I'm actually looking for a specific character named Gen who is the game's best swordsman. I also want another shot at a Mystic, but I'm not sure if Red gets to recruit any full time ones.

My team so far:

Red - Has been doing a fairly good job sparking techs between both swords and melee. He's got a good assortment but I'm trying to get him to spark a defensive sword move he sparked in one of my botched attempts at the pirate quest. Otherwise, I'm also hoping to spark more of his Alkaiser moveset but I may have screwed myself in this area. My monster character prevents red from using the transformation and that guy is also tanky as hell so if he does get knocked out, it usually means I'm in trouble. The other issue is that with all the stat gains I've given to Red, his Alkaiser form is scary overpowered so it's hard for him to spark his signature moves when his basic attack is OHKO things. Otherwise I'm pretty content with Red.

Cotton - My monster has been pretty snazzy. Found a guide I'm using to navigate how he works and I must say SF1 might have my favorite mechanics for monsters. Basically the monsters form is not based on what it absorbs but what skills it has, so the challenge is to find the right combination of skills to get the form you want. The other trick is that Monsters get a permanent boost to HP for every new skill they acquire so even when you do make your main monster, there is still reason to absorb enemy monsters after battle. Cotton has gone back and forth between undead and bug type creatures. My endgame is to get him to become a Dullahan but this might be a bit more challenging than expected trying to get certain skills. For now, he's a Ahkegi which is some weird zombie centipede creature with good speed and strength. My favorite skill I gained for him was a party boosting stat skill that raises speed and power exponentially.

Robot - Can't remember his name but he's a doctor. Robots are a bit weird in this game as they are a cross between their SaGa 2 incarnations and monsters from this game. Like the old games, their stats are purely determined by their equipment and different gear raises different stats so it doesn't take much to make them beefy if you have a bunch of armor and weapons lying around. They seem geared around using guns as their main weapons but can't actually learn gun skills. Instead, robots learn unique robot skills by downloading data from defeated robots, the issue here is that while monsters seem to have a much higher skill set they can learn whereas robots feel a bit more limited. My robot for instance has learned two useful defensive skills against machine gun and missile fire, two status spells that are situational at best, and one support skill that raises the damage guns do. I get why a lot of guides love robots because they are mostly predictable in building them and they're pure stat creatures. Still, I kind of find him boring. The fact my fourth member is another robot doesn't exactly fill me with joy.

So I'm probably going to keep my main team limited to one monster and one robot. Robots are boring but practical and monsters are fun but way too time consuming to dedicate to multiple party members. I'm hoping to recruit one mystic and then will likely round out my team with another human. I'm thinking either Gen or maybe try out magic with Rouge if I can find him.

I think the biggest issue I have with the game so far, besides the pre-rendered backgrounds making it too hard to find your way around half the time, is that skills are limited to a character. Red may have sparked a crap ton of skills, but it does me little good because only Red can use them, if I get another human, I'll need to have them spark all those techs again if I want them to use it. It's mainly annoying because the SNES entries had better mechanics in place. Granted, sparking moves in this entry seems to be way easier than other entries so perhaps this complaint will be a moot point once I assemble a real team and get to spend more time leveling people up. I am also sad to learn that Red, much like Blue, is only available in his own story. Though it also looks like very few of the main characters really cross path with each other except maybe Lute, Emilia, and Fuse.

[Wolf Kanno]

Had a fairly productive evening. Spent way too long in the Sei Tomb, but manged to acquire the three artifacts to go further in though I opted not too. The Murkamo is a nice upgrade from the Ceramic sword, but oddly enough the better weapon I acquired was a cursed sword given to Red when he got possessed by a Living Sword enemy. Has about +10 more attack than the other sword and raises all my stats by 10 as well. Sure you can't remove it without using the Final Strike move but considering there are sword techs that require two swords and I have four weapon slots to begin with... yeah not a bad deal. May try to acquire a few more for the rest of the team after I read up on it a bit more.

I did finally acquire a few more party members, namely Rouge and Lute who both start off pathetically weak compared to the rest of my team. I kind of want to grind a bit with them, but the other part of me thinks I should wait until I acquire a few more people like Gen and Emilia. I also have the opportunity to start dabbling in magic but not sure where I really want to start. The first available to me is Light and Shadow magic. Light looks way more useful out the gate, but I get the feeling Shadow will prove to be more useful once you acquire the higher spells. It looks like magic is a bit more complicated in this entry than the others, barring Unlimited SaGa of course which is still the most convoluted entry in the series. Can't wait for the remaster of that game, since it's likely going to bring a few people around to this thread.

I also got to do the Junk shop trick, but I really need a faster way to get some cash. Which is one of the more annoying parts of the game. Money doesn't come easy unless you exploit a few glitches in the game. Unlike other RPGs I know of, you can't actually sell your full inventory. There are only three shops in the game that will buy stuff off of you and good luck getting any real cash for it either. I would need to grind the Junk shop glitch for 99 of both sword items I can sell from there to reach the money quota needed to start the gold glitch and make real money. The other two annoying things in the game is that their is no run command which is useful in other entries in case you encounter an enemy but don't spawn the monster you want to exploit sparking potential or rare drops. Likewise, the game has also decided to drop a Defend command which was really annoying when I had Mystics on my team because neither of them could fight fast enough to absorb monsters before the rest of my team killed everything. So it's a lot harder to control the flow of battle in this entry.

I'm largely in the open part of the game. I have a lead in Koorong and two other towns, but for now, I think I'm going to just see who I can recruit and level up a bit. I did manage to turn my monster into a Dullahan and I must say, I'm not disappointed with its stats. My only real beef with him is that I need some better skills for it. I can't decide if I want to keep Gale Slash or Light ball as my group hitting spell but I know I don't really need both, and I frankly bet there are better abilities than either if I play around a enough. I know I want to replace Stun Gaze with either the Stone or Charm version, but I'll need to be careful since Stun Gaze is one of the skills that allows him to have this form so I need one of the other of the Gaze skills to replace it in order to keep him how he is. I kind of want to get Scissors back because that skill was surprisingly powerful for a 0 cost physical attack. So I'll need to look up a guide and see what I want to build him up as. My monster is easily my most well rounded character in terms of abilities.

Another plan is to make a team of just Red and my robots so I can finally spark the rest of the Alkaiser skills since robots seem to be exempt from the whole secret identity clause Red signed. I'm specifically trying to get one skill because it's used in an event in the game that guarantees the best Alkaiser move with spark. I also just like how flashy the abilities look despite having way better normal skills already available. Still, I want to see everything he can do.

I'll write up a proper character breakdown after I've spent more time with Lute and Rouge. I also still plan on recruiting a few more people since I don't have to stick to a six party limit like RS3. The game is picking up.

__red_and_rouge_saga_and_1_more_drawn_by_tokinohiyoko__b340e7544def72d24e0283cc6f83df1d.jpg

[Wolf Kanno]

Oof, today was a rough patch. I made the mistake of returning to Lute's hometown of Yorktown and checking out the swamp. I was trying to get stone gaze off of the Basilisks in the area and instead moved the battle rank high enough to turn everything in the area into a Kraken because apparently this is one of two zones where the battle rank for the area is two levels higher than whatever your current rank is due to a quest here. So I had a hell of time trying to get out of here because the Kraken is likely an endgame level monster with boss stats. Like the critter has about 13,000hp, uses a powerful tidal wave that can OHKO everyone except Red because he's equipped with a shield I stole from Sei's Tomb that makes him immune to the attack. The critter can also attack up to six times in a round if it doesn't use the big attack. I had to make a team with Red and two Robots to get through the area because my team is too fragile to survive. I really wanted one of my mons to absorb the Kraken for that tidal wave attack but neither of them could survive the attack and their strong forms are countered by giving them low LP. It took me about an hour to safely get out of their and I had to waste a valuable item just so my team could survive.

Afterwards, I started the Aecane Quest so I could recruit Gen and with Lute in my team I recruited his friend Thunder the monster. I returned to Koroong and teamed up with Anna to infiltrate Shuzer's base and finally allowed Red the chance to avenge his family, but the evil Black X organization is still alive and well and Red won't stand for anyone to suffer what he had to so Black X must be stopped because of truth and justice. Other than that, I'm mostly just exploring the areas and seeing who I can recruit and realizing the only real quests are the ones connected to obtaining the higher tier magic. I am also abusing the Junk Shop glitch so I can finally get some money. I've burned through all my healing item and my biggest issue with most of my new recruits has been an issue of outfitting from better stuff than their starting gear.

Team build is as follows:

Red - Probably spent a bit too much time leveling him early in the game but Red is pretty awesome as a main lead. He's been switching back and forth between the stronger regular swords and katanas to earn more skills. I sill haven't done the serious training for his Alkaiser form, but it's nice to know I can build a team with just him and the robots. He is also one melee tech away from learning the DSC move. So overall he's a powerhouse. Iam not going to bother teaching him magic since I believe it affects his ability to keep his crown that lowers his WP cost. My main goal besides the Alkaiser list of moves is to learn Rising Sun and Sprinkler. While he starts with swords, Red is surprisingly good at sparking melee moves.

Cotton - Has finally become a Dullahan and after a few more misadventures where I lost if again while trying to get him better skills, he's back where I need him to be. He's the most well rounded member of my team with a strong party buff move, a healing spell and several offensive moves that his high stats take advantage of. Pretty content where he is and may likely bench him for the moment since I don;t want to risk losing his current form.

Doctor Robot - He's been a bit awkward. His innate weapons and skills are pretty useful but I've been having a hard time finding good skills for him. I think I may have finally got him some decent gear to round out his stats but I still have some serious qualms with guns in this game. Good for crown control, not as useful for killing things quickly except for the laser cannon he has permanently equipped. He's been benched at the moments since robots are not as common enemies and the ones I do encounter already have had their skills downloaded by him.

Engineer Robot - They are a bit more well rounded due to learning a mech skill for melee attack. His big issue is that his healing ability is only useful for other robots but he's been a happy accident with better overall stats than Doctor. He's also benched for the moment until I can get some money and fully upgrade his gear. Robots feel like one of those races that are boring but practical.

Rouge - You know outside of being a squishy mage, he's been surprisingly good so far. He sparks sword techs fairly well but sadly I can't let him use them since he loses out on his Crown to lower magic cost if he has any equipped. Realm magic is pretty good and he sparked Vermillion Sand fairly early which is surprisingly powerful. He's been gaining stats at a decent pace and I am coming close to deciding which spells I'm going for so he can gain their Gifts and learn their higher tier spells. I was debating about going with his skill set from Re;Universe but have decided against it. Light is just too useful. I really appreciate the fact this game let's you preview magic before you buy so you can finally see what spells do. I'm thinking Arcane, Light, and maybe trying to recruit the Time Lord so I can get Space isntead.

Lute - Lute could be better, he's useful for recruiting people surprisingly enough but he starts off with lower stats than normal so it;s been a struggle to keep him alive thanks to being a tad grind happy in the early game. He's good at sparking moves though, so his skill set is looking impressive, he just needs better stats to make them worthwhile. I'll probably spend a bit more time on him soon to get him back in the fold. I may experiment with guns with him as well. I did give him Arcane Magic so I could have a good defensive buff and a means to cure status magic.

Gen - Lives up to his reputation as a sword master. Guy not only sparks moves left and right, but he's been sparking high end skills fairly quickly. Here's hoping he'll earn Sprinkler soon. I'm keeping him sword focus and have him sticking to samurai swords. I may check to see if I can get him his own cursed sword to get a boost to his stats. He's been getting stats faster than the other humans and is starting to come close to catching up to Red which is nice. He just needs better gear.

Thunder - I do feel monsters are more fun to develop than robots. Thunder lost his cool forms and is stuck as some lowly boar monster, but his skills et is shaping up nicely. I just need to figure out what I want his end game to look like. I'll need to level him up a bit more by eating more monsters, so he's doing more of the fighting than Cotton at the moment. I kind of hope I can get him back into his Ogre Lord form because that thing was a beast.

Annie - She's doing okay. She needs better gear but she's not quite as talented as the other humans in terms of sparking moves which has been a bit disappointing. Course that's likely my fault since the enemy encounters are strong and her starting gear does little to help her survival rate. Again, I'm hoping that better gear will see her shine, but she's likely going to get benched unless I use her as another magic guinea pig, Still, the biggest issues with humans is that the smaller weapon selections means they overlap too often, and while humans are scary overpowered, it makes team building boring.

Overall, I'm thinking my final team is going to be Red, Cotton, Gen, Doctor, and Rouge. Gives me a nice spread of everything the game has to offer except for Mystic but they don;t seem to like mingling with the other races.

[Wolf Kanno]

Huge update

I've mainly worked on doing all of the Magic subquests (unless you're Blue, then it's just your quest). I made the terrible mistake of giving Red Light Magic, which barred him from doing the Shadow quest and denied me my first possible Mystic recruit Silence. In fact getting a permanent Mystic on Red's team can be a real pain in the ass unless you're using a guide and even then I'm still miffed that of the three possible recruits, I only managed to snag one.

In fact, I have maxed out my possible recruits which is fourteen characters in the original. In the remaster, you can recruit everybody that's possible to recruit in your chosen MC's scenario. After getting Anna to join, I was able to speak with her boss and gained the opportunity to either recruit him, or Riza. I opted for Riza since I wanted more females on my team. Trying to get the Shield Card netted me Fuse finally, and goign after the Gold card earned me Emilia. So I have four of the possible eight main characters on my team. I could not get the Time Lord or Space Magic quests to start. One of the guides I was checking was done incorrectly and the requirement is that I needed to complete two of the trials for the Gift from two different schools on my main character. So I had to go get the final Arcane card by doing the drinking challenge that sent me back to Kraken swamp. Thankfully I had gained some better stats and techs by this point so it was less of a hassle. I still had to save scum my way through but that's because the challenge has you wandering the swamp while intoxicated and you start with a different status effect every battle that's associated with being drunk. Charm usually meant a TPK if it landed on enough people so save scum I did.

With Arcane out of the way, I was finally able to get Annie to drag me to Despair which was a pain to navigate. Afterwards I got swallowed by Tanzer and had recruit Fei-on and a Slime. With one slot left on my team, I opted to finish the Time magic quest and get the Time Lord, my lone Mystic, to join my team. I still need to find the other two runes. One I know is in a ave beneath Koroong but I can't get the quest to activate properly and the boss room just has me fight low level worms and then get booted out. The other rune is in a cave in Shrike that won;t let me in. I'm hoping that not recruiting Annie's boss isn't going to screw me out of that one, especially since Rune was the magic I was hoping to have Rouge master. Currently, I'm in a world created by the guardian of Space magic trying to earn the right to learn it. Not sure if I'm going to be able to kill the guardian for the gift either since I get the feeling that's a Blue exclusive event. The only other thing I need to do is finsih Sei's tomb and get the Kusanagi for Gen, though the Cometblade is pretty sweet as well.

Once these quests are done, I'll go back to finishing Red's scenario. As for my team:

Red - He's a beast to be honest. The dude managed to spark one of the best sword techs in the game and he's also gained DSC as well. I am a bit miffed that I managed to spark one of his last non-event techs for Alkaiser but then was promptly killed afterwards. Other than that, I think he's fairly close to having sparked most of the sword and melee moves. I'll have to double check.

Doctor - Not doing too bad once I moved around some of his gear, got him some Power armor, and managed to download some support skills that regenerate his HP and WP every round. I just wish I could figure out how to raise some of his mental stats so he can have better WP pool for the Laser cannon skill.

Gen - Is a beast on par with Red at the moment, in fact the only thing that's been bugging me is that he refuses to spark LifeSprinkler the best sword tech in the game. The Cometsword has been a great weapon since finding good katanas in this game is a hassle. Not helping things is that the skill that gives the best spark potential for Life Sprinkler is combo friendly. Otherwise the guys stats are great and he's a second Red on my team minus the melee potential.

Cotton - I've been having a hard time trying to fix up his skill list without losing out on his awesome Dullahan form. I'm probably going to give up since the stats on the form are too good to waste hours trying to get back. I did manage to learn Stone Gaze with him, and wouldn't you know that the Kraken enemies are susceptible to it...

Rouge - Finally got him and upgrade for his starting armor that doesn't lower the magic focused stats. He's been doing great for the most part and has quickly caught up to the rest of the team, he's still a little flimsy for my taste but his magic packs a punch so all is forgiven. I just hope I can get him the Gift for Space magic.

Engineer - Not doing too bad, I just wish his support skills weren't geared towards a robot team. He would be more useful.

Thunder - Managed to turn him into a Thunder Dragon and I'm digging the results so far. He could use some more health but his skill selection is pretty great for offense. He's not as well rounded as Cotton, but he's a decent brawler. I love the fact the Thunder Dragon looks like the Mana Beast from Secret of Mana. In fact there was another Mana reference somewhere else in the game as well. I am thinking of making him a dragon so I might work towards that next.

Lute - Lute is suffering through the issue of having no direction, which is ironic because that's a core part of his character. He's pretty good at sparking stuff, but his stats are just not anywhere to make any use of his skill set. The main issue is SaGa's habit of punishing players who try to make a Red Mage build. It takes too long to make a character an expert in one path, so trying to do multiple means they fall behind really quickly and that's been Lute's issue. Currently I'm making him a second mage, simply to spark the higher spells for Shadow and Arcane Magic. He's been fairly good with arcane but refuses to spark Shadow which has easily been the weakest magic set of what I've used.

Annie - While Lute's issues has more to do with my wishy washy nature on what to do with him, Annie is just been awful. Girl refuses to spark sword techs and strangely does better with guns. Her stats are also just not where I want them to be, and while she's getting closer to Lute's HP gains, she still hits like a wet noodle and refuses to spark sword techs, which are suppose to be her specialty. She's kind of been benched at the moment.

Riza -You know, despite being more fragile than I would care for and not quite at Red's strength, Riza had been a machine. She's sparked a good chunk of her melee skills and has even managed to earn the DSC skill meaning she's the real powerhouse of the second stringers. I just need to spend more time leveling her stats and maybe invest in some Power armor for her as well. Overall, she's been a pleasant surprise.

Fuse - I haven't spent as much time with Fuse as I would like but at least he's starting to spark stuff. He also gains stats better than some of the other characters. I want to make him a gun specialist, but I have a feeling his strength lies in swords. I need to paly with him more and upgrade him to second string.

Emilia - She's just as bad as Annie in terms of sparking anything and I'm starting to learn that guns are just not that great of a weapon set outside of Robots being armed with cannons and plasma weapons. I did give her some Mystic magic to hopefully raise her INT score since I've heard it helps with sparking gun techs but so far, I'm not impressed.

My last three characters are Fei-On a monk, Slime the... slime, and I managed to recruit Time Lord the Mystic. Of the three, Time Lord looks to be the most impressive since he starts with far higher stats than the other two and Time magic looks to be a wee bit on the broken side of things.

I will say the game has some things I love and things I dislike. I appreciate the fact the game has a more intuitive equipment screen that lets you see immediately what equipment does for a character. I am remembering that I still dislike pre-renderd PS1 backgrounds, as it makes navigating dungeons a real pain in the ass. Guns are terrible weapons since gun skills only work with weaker guns. I'm disappointed that despite the game giving you a much larger roster of playable characters, they chose to cut down on weapon variety making said roster feel a little too samey after awhile. I do appreciate bringing back Monsters and Robots from the GB entries though. We'll see how I feel about Mystics. The game has been fun though, and I'm looking forward to getting back into Red's actual story soon.

[Wolf Kanno]

Minor update:

Got Space Magic. I almost lost out on it by accidentally asking the Monster who teaches it to join me but thankfully I had a save before it. Sadly, I learned you can't acquire the gift for either Space or Time magic unless you're playing Blue's scenario. You can access the higher spells by recruiting Time Lord or Kyrin and using them, but no one else can get them except in Blue's story. Thankfully Space magic's higher spells are mostly useless. Vortex is probably the best spell since it nullifies status buffs, but seeing how it affects everyone on the field including your own party, doesn't seem like I'm missing much. The base magic spells Kyrin teaches on the other hand are far more practical and useful.

Finishing that quest had me teleported back to the Koorong sewers with Liza/Riza finally activating the quest for the Hidden Rune, so I got that finished and played around with the new characters.

Fei-On has largely earned my ire since the guy joins the team fairly weak compared to some of the other characters. I mean Slime is pathetic too, but at least as a monster it doesn't take much to upgrade him. Fei-On dies a wee too often for my taste and he doesn't spark as many moves as you would think. He's got nothing on Riza. So he's tied with Annie as my least favorite team members at the moment.

Slime's main issue is that he starts with too many slime abilities so he has a bad habit of evolving into this giant slime monster that has just the worst stats imaginable. I think with the exception of his HP, the original slime form is actually stronger than this one. So he needs some work. I also got greedy and lost Cotton's Dullahan form so I'll need to earn it back. Thankfully, I managed to learn Charm Gaze which is suppose to stabilize that form better once I get it, but we'll see.

Time Lord has been interesting. Time Magic is fairly broken if a bit situational. The annoying thing about Mystics is that they can't really learn weapon techs like Humans can, the nice thing about them is that they sort of work like monsters and absorb enemies into their armor to gain stats and seeing how I'm at max enemy level, jumping his stats up to end game didn't take much effort. They also get to use one of the monster skills as their techs so they are an interesting mix.

Fuse and Emilia must have read what I said about them the other day because they were doing a better job sparking gun techs. Guns are still not great weapons imo but I do like the variety they add to combat. In Fuse's case, I think the real issue was learning he won't spark gun techs if you use his default gun since it doesn't count as a normal weapon. In fact the skills attached to that weapon are unique to it as well it seems. Also Gen was reading it as well and finally sparked Life Sprinkler so I have a nice boss killing team almost ready.

I only have one more rune to find to finish the Rune Magic quest, afterwards I can finally move back to Red's plot with what is essentially an end game party despite being about halfway through his actual story.