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Thread: SaGa Franchise

  1. #61

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    Interestingly enough, assuming this isn't changed in MS from the original, both Grey and Claudia start with two party members, so I can't use that to offer one over the other. xD Grey starts with a knight and mage, so you get to toy around with magic early, and Claudia gets a bear and wolf to play around with, which is pretty spiffy. Personally, I think Claudia is the more interesting of the two, but, like Wolf said, all of the characters work out about the same.

  2. #62
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    Hawke is probably the character that appeals to me the most based on aesthetics (I feel he’s the only character whose redesign was an improvement actually - poor Barbara ), but since he’s a pirate, isn’t it like things would be way more open from the start with him?

  3. #63

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    Only moderately; he's limited to a small sea for his starting chapter and the events that knock you out of there take your ship, so he's on roughly equal ground with everyone else, the biggest difference being the island he starts on lets you pick which side of the main continent you land on, so while most characters start on the western side and two start in the east, he can go either way.

    Also, yeeeeah, not a fan of the redesigns at all, and I can't pretend to particularly like the graphical direction they went with the game as a whole. Some people, like Jamil and Hawke, are roughly on par with their original designs, and I do give credit to Hawke for looking his role a hell of a lot more than he did in the original, but most, Sif and Aisha being the two in particular that bother me, aren't . . . uh, good.

  4. #64
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    Tbh I think all of the new designs look good on their own, just fall flat compared to the originals. The Barbara example I mentioned - she looks perfectly fine now but I just loved that full mane of curly hair if only because it’s so rare in Japanese games (plus she was really similar to my wife before). At the very least, I’m glad it was still Tomomi Kobayashi redesigning the characters, so at least it was HER remixing her designs, and not someone else butchering them, so I’m honestly A-OK with that, even if I preferred the older designs.

    I guess I might just go with Hawke then! Still, it’s interesting since whatever guide I look up online, everyone has a totally different opinion on who is the best and the worst. I’ve seen Gray consistently appear on both lists, never really in the middle

  5. #65
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Grey is actually one of my better party members and I still amazed that his heritage of Warrior/Thief is doing better on his melee stats than Hawke's Martial Artist/Warmaiden. Granted, Hawke has like a hundred extra HP.

    While I know Minstrel Song mixes things up with customization, the leveling mechanics are similar to FFII, so essentially anyone can be awesome if you take the time to level them, course this also tends to dissuade you from recruiting new people, except for the odd quest. I do know that starting with later entries, including Minstrel Song, their is suppose to be a stat preference scale that adds more variety to characters. In my SaGa Frontier 2 file, my main issues with Wil Knights was trying to play him as a melee character when his stat upgrades favored magic, so once I started playing him to his strengths, we got along groovy.

    I will give you the warning Rez09 gave me about the RS1, try to avoid battles as much as you can, cause the quests available to you are based on a timer. Doing quests move this timer forward, but so do battles, so don't grind too much if you can help it in order to get access to the most story quests.

  6. #66
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    Yeah, I heard about that. Apparently there are field skills that help you avoid battles for that? Might just rely on that to try to avoid encounters altogether

  7. #67
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    And... DONE!

    My initial strategy of just powering up and changing out some weapons helped immensely, along with a surprise of the RNG just seriously going my way. Saurin kind of kept wasting turns on buffing or ineffectual skills instead of spamming his powerful group attacks, and the extra damage allowed me to finish him off without too much trouble. Got to see Albert's ending and the final sequence was pretty cool. Kind of liked the psych out ending.

    Overall Romancing SaGa was pretty interesting. I liked the variety of characters and the quest lines gave a nice lore to the world that kept me invested. Hawke, Claudia, Gray, and Sif were my favorite characters. I think of the main cast, Jamil and Aisha were the only ones I didn't bother with cause by the time I found them, my main party was pretty much set for me.

    My favorite quests involved the Knights/Theodore, as well as the Geckling and Assassin's Guild quests. My least favorite was probably the one that involved acquiring the four summons.

    I only have three gripes with the game overall:

    1) No surprise since I believe everyone hated it, but the way Weapon Skills were handled in this game was tiresome. I probably could forgive having to learn each weapon individually if your character didn't lose all their XP with them if you so much as unequip one. Doesn't make sense. Like somehow Albert drops his rapier and magically forgets all of his skills. Speaking of which, rapiers suck in this game.

    2) The Jewel mechanic makes no sense to me in this game beyond being another anti-grinding tool to punish players who fight too much. I never mentioned this mechanic in SF2 because it made sense in that game. Cash can't transfer between characters but the Jewel equivalent currency could, and so you needed to convert cash to jewels as the story went along. Here it just gets in the way as you'll quickly hit the max cash limit halfway through a dungeon, making most treasure chests moot and making any money you get in battles worthless until you leave the dungeon and start converting your Gold to Jewels. It just felt like a tiresome mechanic.

    3) This last one is probably the least bothersome of the three, but I felt a need to mention it. I kind of wish the narrative had just a tiny bit more structure to it. Albert's story arc really has no meaningful closure, and then the game sort of just becomes "do quests until we tell you to fight the final boss" which is like 80% of the game. I appreciate the open-ended quest aspect of the game, especially coming off a Super Famicom title, but it sort of felt like I was just wandering around instead of working towards a goal. I get the feeling RS2 will fit better for me as the open questing serves to reinforce the ultimate goal established in the beginning whereas Saruin's resurrection in RS1 doesn't really feel like a big deal until nearly the end of the game when his dungeon unlocks.

    With all that said, I enjoyed the game and happy to have played it. Looking forward to Romancing SaGa 2 which I picked up for the PS4. I also have Unlimited SaGa to play but I may save that one for later cause I want to play it around the same time I play Dawn of Mana just to get a double taste of the two PS2 games that nearly ended both franchises and see if that reputation is truly warranted.

    Course I'll be taking a break from SaGa for a moment as I really want to start my FFV LP, and I need to finish Legend of Mana as well. I'll keep checking back with this thread, and who knows, I may end up jumping into RS2 anyway pretty soon. Not like I haven't beaten LoM before.

  8. #68
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    Btw, what hero did you start with? Also, I can’t wait for that Romancing SaGa 3 port they have coming along that’s supposed to release on all the things RS2 did, so I hope to get both on Vita soon!

    I am also actually kinda considering streaming my RS: MS playthrough, but there are two issues. 1) I have never streamed anything so I have no idea how to do it and if my PC can even pull it off and 2) my PC currently has no internet connection and I can’t afford a network card yet so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  9. #69
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    I used Albert. He's kind of a Red Mage type character with a focus more on healing since I chose Paladin and Priest as his heritage. The nice thing about him is that his story gives the game a book end type of feel cause his story more than others plays up the rising monster surge and inevitable resurrection of the Big Bad.

  10. #70
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    Hmmm... sounds enticing but I kinda really don’t dig Albert’s design -_-

  11. #71
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    I have been inspired to buy Minstrel's Song. Haven't continued RS3, but I'm going to try progressing a bit tonight.

    Hmm, I wonder, is there an uptick in RS-related sales recently? I feel like it's getting more traction than it used to. (that is, more traction than none at all)


  12. #72
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    It probably helps that they’re actually marketing new games. Has Scarket Grace been confirmed for the West yet?

    I also think Western gaming sensibilities (and attitudes toward JRPGs) have also shifted considerably. Minstrel Song was panned both critically and by fans here, mostly for its lack of structure and open ended nature, while Romancing SaGa 2 is getting heaps of praise today for those exact same things. I think it’s all because open world and sandbox games have become such a huge influence on gaming in general

  13. #73
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Yes, SaGa Scarlet Graces has been confirmed for the West, though it doesn't have a release date just yet. Chances are they're waiting to release the console ports in Japan first. And yeah, Kawazu has stated that the reason RS2 got a release in the west is due to the growing popularity of open-word titles.

    They did release a new trailer:

  14. #74
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    S, when are you picking up Minstrel Song? It’d be cool to start around the same time Which hero are you choosing?

  15. #75
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    So I just started with Hawke. Got a bit lost at sea but I’m at the port now reading tutorials. There’s a lot to take in but it doesn’t feel TOO complicated. Yet

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