SaGa Franchise

[Wolf Kanno]

Update time.

In SaGa 1 news, I've beaten Bya-Ko and I'm heading up the Tower once again. One of the more interesting things about this game is how it starts off "questy" and now has grown more story driven as you climb up. Granted, the stories are simplistic but it's pretty cool when you remember this is a Gameboy title and even the console entries weren't exactly the epitome of storytelling at the time frame of this game's release. My only beef right now is my poor Esper/Mutant, who refuses to learn new spells, or at least seems to have a knack of only wanting to replace the only good spell they have instead of the other three worthless spells they've been carrying since the beginning of the game. On the brightside, I've finally acquired a few of the game's only magic based weapons and on my Mutant, they out-damage most of what my party can do. The difficulty spike has finally kicked in, and my party is finally having to really be careful about weapon durability and spell charges, so that's been nice as well.

In SaGa Frontier 2 news, I've reached the final generation of the Knight's family, Richard's daughter Virginia "Ginney" Knights. She's been amusing so far and has some incredibly luck cause the party she quickly amassed is easily the best team I've had all game. Ginney is an good combo of her dad and grandfather, being very Mage-centric like Wil, but enough points in swordsmanship to switch to being a frontline fighter if need be which is more in line with Rich. Her only bad trait is her low health like her grandfather. Primera is an Ax user with strong stats with spears as well. She's also a steel warrior who comes in the party with a full set of steel based armor. Her growth is low but she's still a pretty good fighter. Roberto is basically Narcisse merged with Labelle, a strong mage character with some actual expertise in Bow weapons. His WP is incredibly low, but he starts with more health than everybody and his magic stats are incredibly high. Gustaf is probably the best of the whole team. Despite looking like a JoJo character with his rams horn hairstyle, Gustaf is almost a copy of another character whose name rhymes with his. Throw in the fact he begins with two different unbreakable swords which the game has poorly hidden the fact they are actually two very plot-centric weapons in Gustave's story, and you've got a wrecking ball of a fighter. Ginney's plot starts off amusing enough but right now she's just meandering around with her team in her dad's old stomping grounds. Contrast this to the Gustave scenario where we've watched the fall of one character and the rise of who I imagine is going to be the main villain. One thing that has bugged me right now is that I'm looking at my inventory and noticed I have two pieces of armor I acquired ages ago in the early game that both have great stats but for the life of me, I can't find anyone who can wear either of them. Inventory space is limited so, it's annoying carrying around stuff that's going to go to waste and the game only allows you to sell stuff at special vendors, of which I haven't had access to for a few scenarios now.

In Romancing SaGa 1 news, again, not far in but this is partially due to both bad luck and my own stupidity making me reset. I'm still in Albert's scenario trying to get back home. I've met with Sif, another player character, who has proven to me that Albert just starts incredibly weak in his scenario. He's a good mage, but his melee stats are several points lower than everyone it seems. Right now I'm trying to help Sif clear some monster in a cave south of her village. Progress was slowed due to dying a lot when I was just Albert, and accidentally selling a valuable piece of equipment I didn't mean to. Money is incredibly rare in this game, and I was recently informed by Rez09 that quests are on a timer determined by how many random encounters you've fought, so grinding is kind of out of the question. Not helping is that leveling up stats only really works if you fight something strong, so it doesn't take long before your characters are too strong and the fights turn into wastes of time since they hardly help your stats or give money. I'm enjoying it still, but know I'm going to need to really sit down and focus on it if I want to make real headway into it.

Had to show you what Gustaf looks like to understand what I mean by JoJo character.
Gustaf_Roberto.jpg