I'm still going slow in SaGa 1, I believe I'm in the dungeon of this particular area that I need to leave. I was happy that for once, my intuition was correct and I found the Blue Key needed to access the treasure/encounter rooms on my way up. The level design of this game is what ultimately reminds me the most of FFII, which is not saying much... On the other hand, due to the quirky leveling system in this game, running from battles is actually a more practical strategy in many cases, especially to conserve spells and weapon durability. My Mutant has not learned anything new, but I did find Cure Tomes which I can equip to give her the spell though it's limited. The tomes are useless in human hands cause they don't gain magic ability. I also forgot to mention what I named my team. Usually I give people names I like such as Tilos or Alma, but since I'm dealing with a four character limit and I feel my classic FFIII playthrough taught me the fun of theme teams, I gave my party a night theme since I'm a night owl. So my two humans are named Nite and Star, my Mutant is named Luna, and my Monster is named Dark.

In SaGa Frontier 2 news, I did my first war battle in Gustave's chapter It was interesting, feeling like an odd combination of Suikoden II and III's system meshed together. You control units on a grid like field similar to Suikoden II and units adjacent to you can offer support like both games, but when you engage in battles it turns into a regular battle mostly with generics, but story characters can lead units and like Suikoden III, they carry their skills with them. Battles are fought for one round and the unit who suffers the most damage retreats. Killing all four units defeats the unit for good. Victory conditions in this case involved killing the leader unit. So this was all pretty cool actually though I wish Kelvin had been available in later chapters and your other General was actually a playable character. The biggest problem with Gustave's chapters is the fact they are mostly story centric and Gustave tends to work alone despite having so many potentially cool party members.

Wil's Chapters have slowed down a bit in the story department, but I appreciate the fact they still maintain a sense of progress as well. With the matters of his parents death resolved, Wil is actually trying to accomplish his original goal in his plot, which was to strike it rich as a Quell/Anima Ore Digger. So he's latest chapters have been more about him establishing himself within his field. I saw one comrade leave for good to retire of all things, I mean can you actually do that in RPGs? I thought RPGs were more about pulling people out of retirement.

The interesting thing now is that Wil has hooked up with a new team. Labella is looking for her wayward brother and joined up when she needed help crossing the continent, she's actually a pretty decent replacement for the character who left as she is a bow user as well who even begins with the Marksmen Role to help her out and she's not too shabby with magic either. Patrick is a wandering and very hungry soldier who is basically a beefier version of Tyler, who despite being one of the few characters who can equip not only heavy armor but steel armor no less, his main weapon is a staff of all things. The final new member is William... well he reminds me of Wil when this game kind of started, in the fact he's kind of useless, but he does seem to have several proficiencies in weapons unlike Wil, so here's hopting he'll pull a Prince Gordon a la FFII and actually be a decent character if I can raise his weapon skill levels. Oh, and he's also Labelle's brother. Despite the new faces, I still have two of my old teammates here as well and will likely drop William for Cordelia. So William and Wil are checking out a major ruin to find a big haul but seeing how we're in a snowy mountain path with baby dragon-like enemies that have way too much health, methinks the team may have bitten off more than they can chew.