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Thread: SaGa Franchise

  1. #1
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Boco SaGa Franchise

    So after ignoring the series for years outside of FFLegends 2 (a.k.a. SaGa 2) I've finally taken the plunge into Square's second oldest franchise and Squenix's third oldest, SaGa, the franchise helmed by the notorious Kawazu of FFII fame.

    At the moment I'm playing Final Fantasy Legends on my GBA because the TV that my SNES is plugged into is about to die. Meanwhile I've been plowing through SaGa Frontier 2 on my PS3. Two pretty different games but some interesting ideas nonetheless.

    In FFL, my party consists of two humans, one mutant, and a monster. Money is tight, so I have been really slow to develop the money gobbling human characters and I'm at the annoying point where all the monster meat I find seem to alternate my poor monster between three basic forms. He's currently an Albatross, which is actually better than that sounds. My Mutant has quickly turned into my MVP. While her strength is horrendous, she has 4x as much health as anyone on my team, and her magic is amazing. It's just really annoying that the game doesn't tell me when she actually gets stat boosts, and even more annoying when the game decides to randomly change one of her useful spells. Currently, I'm still trying to find the Hero's Armor set so I can enter the Tower of Paradise. I just obtained the armor after saving a village from Lizard bandits and brought together the very human king with his new bride that is either a slime or an octopus-thing... This game is trippy as hell.

    On Saga Frontier 2's front, I'm feeling very conflicted here. This is definitely a game that unfortunately falls short of its full potential. Like from the outside it looks like it has all the ingredients to be really epic, but there are just too many nagging issues. Nothing that keep it from being fun, but this game could have been the title to really launch this series in the West had it handled it's elements better.

    Gustav is a very intriguing protagonist. In fact, he's almost a damn villain protagonist in some ways, and his story is very cool on paper but less engaging in execution because the plot jumps around too much in his scenario and it's very obvious that it's not really going to spend much time developing most of the cast in his story as well as him. Still, there is some cool political intrigue and Gustave feels like what it would be like to play as a weird combination of Delita and Algus if they were a bit more sympathetic. I like the fact that we have a reversal of some usual tropes here as well. Gustave XIII was suppose to succeed his father the king but due to lacking Anima, the magical power that just about everyone in this world has, he ends up being disowned and exiled. His steel sword he builds has wound up being one of the best weapons in the game since it's one of the few that can't break. So his chapters are fun to play, but I wish more focus was being placed on the other characters to help really expand the political intrigue cause some of Gustave's planning falls a bit flat since the rest of the cast feels a bit one dimensional at times. Sadly, I can already tell that Gustave may wind up being the villain in the other guy's plot.

    Wil Knights story has been harder to get into. On the one hand, I appreciate finally having a full party, on the other hand, Wil's scenario is significantly harder and Wil is not exactly my ideal MC character gameplay-wise. His story is also a bit more... typical RPG since it deals with searching ruins for lost artifacts and Wil searching for the cause of his parents mysterious deaths. So in essence one scenario feels like some lost chapters from FFTactics, and the other kind of feels like a typical JRPG plot. Which is only made worse when I learned that Wil's family scenario actually makes up the bulk of the game and Gustave, who is plastered all over the cover and media artwork for this game has the shorter less interactive scenario. Luckily Wil's party are actually very personable, but sadly, since Gustave rarely gets a party and his steel sword is his best weapon, the fact that Arts cross over between the casts doesn't do much since Wil's group uses different weapons and have access to magic.

    Speaking of which, holy hell does this game need a tutorial to explain everything. It's like Vagrant Story all over again where the combat is incredibly deep and complex but the game never explains any of it. There are two different combat styles depending on whether you fight as a group or one-on-one. You don't really have traditional levels or stats, everything is based on what armor you're wearing and what your proficiency is with certain weapons and elements. Weapons can break in combat and skills actually break them faster. There are combo attacks, and apparently there are even Suikoden style army battles as well. I've had to scrounge around for some guides just to make heads of everything.

    Overall, it's been pretty fun with both games. I also have Romancing SaGa waiting for me as well, but I'll likely wait until I've finished one of the two games first.

    So this is a SaGa thread, which games have you played? Which ones do you recommend, and am I the only one who finds it weird that Hamauzu reused the Battle themes from Unlimited SaGa for FFXIII?

  2. #2
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    I’ve beaten the Wonderswan version of SaGa 1 and it was pretty cool, though I couldn’t really pick up the momentum to keep going with this series. I do have my eyes on Romancing SaGa (especially the sexy PSVita ports of 2 a d 3), so hopefully I can get my hands on those too. And Unlimited SaGa has one of my favorite Hamauzu soundtracks. It is gorgeous

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    WarZidane's Avatar
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    The only one I've played is Unlimited Saga, which was..really damn confusing to me at the time, dunno if I'd be any better off now

    I didn't get far into the game before giving up on it. Maybe sometime I'll try out the Romancing SaGa 2 port.

  4. #4
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WarZidane View Post
    The only one I've played is Unlimited Saga, which was..really damn confusing to me at the time, dunno if I'd be any better off now

    I didn't get far into the game before giving up on it. Maybe sometime I'll try out the Romancing SaGa 2 port.
    I've heard it's really quirky since everything is determined by a slot machine.

    In FFL News, I've collected all of the King's gear to access the tower properly, but also stumbled on a guide for monsters. Learned I can actually make a pretty strong monster in the first area with a little farming so I'm doing that at the moment while also trying to raise the stats for my humans. Despite common sense, agility seems to be the premier stat for everyone as it's surprising how many early weapons and skills scale with that stat as opposed to strength. My Mutant is doing super awesome and just broke 400hp, to put this in perspective my humans just broke 100hp, and my monster is a Tier 3 (out of 15) creature with about 150hp. Her magic and agility is through the roof as well. My only beef with her is that her spell selection is mostly awful. She has one good spell, two that are completely useless, and one that would be more useful if it wasn't a "affects caster only" type spell. The real issue here is that whenever the game decides to change one of her spells, it's always the useful one. It never touches the other spells and I don't know why. So I've been save scumming like hell to keep it.

  5. #5
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    I heard the thing that confused people was basically that all the dice rolls that are usually hidden were in plain view. So the slots weren’t exactly an additional factor of randomness - it was just something that was usually sound behind the scenes, except visible this time.

  6. #6
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Actually combat does involve a slot machine that you can customize with moves, it also has misses. The game has an interesting Tabletop style "weakness" mechanic where you can give your characters huge stat boosts by equipping them with a weakness to certain attacks or monster types.

    From what I've read, the game is some odd amalgamation of Tabletop RPG, Board game, and slot machine. In fact, you have a limited amount of turns to complete a "board" and if you run out of turns by making bad rolls, you have to start it all over. I'll probably have a better understanding of it when I get around to that entry.

    In my own SaGa news:

    I've beaten Genbuu and I am now ascending the tower. My Mutant still has her same four skills but close to 750hp, I'm sporting a Salamander Monster who is sporting mid-game stats. My humans, who are considered the best race, are the loads at the moment because I simply don't have access to any money or good gear for them. I did get a fun taste of power with the King's Gear you needed to collect, it's a shame you lose it permanently in order to get the Black Sphere to enter the tower.

    In SaGa Frontier 2 news, I'm starting to come around to Wil. I think my issue here is that I went from melee focused Gustave to pure mage Wil, and I was trying too hard to play Wil like Gustave. Wil is just not a fighter, his best weapon proficiency is the Staff, which is easily the weakest melee weapon with some of the worst Arts attached to it. Sadly his secondary weapon are swords, but he starts at an abysmal level with them so even using high end Arts gained from Gustave's chapters can't compensate for his general weakness with the weapon. On the other hand, once you actually to bother learning magic Arts, Wil becomes a much better fighter though he pales in comparison to Crutch Character Narcisse who has way better elemental proficiency, starts with Fire magic, and has access to the better Bow weapon letting him be more versatile in combat.

    Not helping matters has been the fact Wil's first chapter is pretty hard even when you kind of know what you're doing, and my knack for always forgetting to save often cause I don't like the "save anywhere" feature because I will forget to without a visual reminder. There are two types of combat in dungeons: Duel and Party. Party works like you imagine it would. Duel is a bit unique because it's one on one, and instead of selecting Arts you've learned, you have to select up to four commands associated with your weapons and gear. Every art is made up of a combination of these commands, so you have to put them in the correct order to activate any Arts you own. On the brightside, you can actually teach a character Arts easier by inputting the commands of Arts they don't know yet if you have a guide though it's not a guarantee it will activate. It's still faster and more efficient than the random Spark factor in party battles. Now, the thing about Duels the game doesn't tell you but you'll likely figure it out pretty quickly is that enemies threat levels are different depending on if you're dueling them or fighting the with a party. With very few exceptions, if a monster battle gives you the option to duel them, you probably should because two of my most painful game overs were from fighting them as a group, whereas they are much more manageable at duels.

    The main problem with duels besides being incredibly time consuming, is healing. There are no healing items in this game, and in order to use a healing spell in battle like duels you'll need to know the correct combination and hope it activates. The other way to heal involves consuming Life Points. All characters have HP and Life Points. HP works as you imagine but LP is actually more important and significantly smaller. If your character loses all of their HP, they are knocked out for the duration of the battle unless you use a healing spell on them. If LP is depleted, they're dead and can't be used for the rest of the chapter. So long before you actually gain healing magic, you have the option before a round starts to let a character sacrifice a LP point to restore all their HP. Thankfully everyone has enough to not make this a problem but some duels and particular monsters can make you blow through all your LP if you're not careful. To make matters worse, some monsters have the ability to attack your LP directly. It all sounds confusing but it's an interesting set of mechanics.

    Anyway, tangent aside, the reason why Wil's chapter is so difficult is because the majority of battles are duels, so combat becomes quite a bit of a slog. I did acquire an overpowered item or two, but by the end of the chapter when they weren't as useful.

  7. #7
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    In FFL news, I've reached the second area you can fully explore in the tower where I'm hunting down some dragons and the orb their guarding that I need to proceed up the tower. My Mutant has reached the visual cap on Magic and HP, but I'm aware that the cap is actually higher. I was able to upgrade my humans, and I'm debating about just farming the are to raise their stats. I've sadly hit the max on HP200 Potions so I'll have to go after the more expensive HP400 Potions instead. The better weapons are much appreciated and nothing in the are poses much of a threat.

    SaGa Frontier 2 is the tale of two very different games. I did a few more of Gustave's chapters and he's easily the best part of the game. I did one of his very few optional quests which involved him getting mixed up between two pirate factions fighting over the chance to go legit. Was a pretty cool side story and Gustave continues to impress me.

    Wil is like dating a porcupine. I want to like him and his side of the game but by god is he going out of his way to piss me off. Wil's plot has gotten a bit more interesting now that we''re actually trying to get to the bottom about his parents mysterious deaths. You have to traverse this awful desert area to reach a small town where his father went on an expedition with some unsavory characters. When you finally reach the town, you have to talk to everyone who only gives you bits and pieces of the full story but it's interesting nonetheless. The next chapter was better cause it thankfully didn't involve dungeon crawling. Instead, you have to choose one of Wil's team (Tyler is technically the only real choice) and then infiltrate a gang run by the last surviving member of the Expedition that Wil's dad was a part of. Wil finally gets some interesting plot build up and the whole chapter involves running around the town and trying to find an old man and his grandson that the gang is after. It's a bit time consuming but more fun that most of Wil's chapters have been. The next chapter involves going after the gang.

    Wil's Chapters are unfortunately very frustrating. The dungeon maps are confusing as hell and it's very difficult to discern what's a path and what's just pretty background as well as what doors can be opened and which ones are just wallpaper. Graphically the game is similar to Legend of Mana, which isn't surprising when you learn that Kawazu worked on that title as well. Yet it doesn't lead to the most intuitive level design which is probably why it;'s a rare sight in the medium after the PS1. None of this would be too problematic if enemies didn't respawn when you re-enter an area. The more annoying part are the battles. Wil's team just isn't that good unfortunately. Wil is a fragile mage and even with some buffing here and there, he is still the most fragile member. Cordelia the guardian and front line fighter kits way harder and has access to the Spear weapons, but she's just as fragile as Wil sadly. Aunt Nina is durably, but she's another pure mage like Wil and she only brought one new spell to the team. Narcisse is a bit more flexible but I'm learning quickly (and this applies to FFL as well) that Bows just kind of suck in this franchise. Maybe I got spoiled with Tactics Ogre... Tyler is the only heavy on the team but his best weapons are the Axe and Bow. Axes are powerful but lack the amount and variety of skills like the Spear and Sword have.

    The problem here comes back to what I was talking about in my previous post about Duels. Only Tyler is really built for dueling on the team, unfortunately I need to duel to learn new spells for my mages, but unlike Weapon Arts where they either activate or they don't, Spell Arts have this annoying thing where they activate Custom Spell Arts, which is a fancy way of saying a boosted basic elemental spell. To give an example of what I mean here, if you build a combo using Stone magic three times in a row, you may eventually learn Stone Armor which is an equippable Art that raises a charcter's defense, or you'll get a Lv.2 or Lv. 3 Stone Custom Art which lowers the enemies defense, which is something the basic stone spell already does. You can't actually use these Arts in regular battles and since only three of the eight elements actually do damage, they're not great in duels either. Even worst is that I discovered some of the higher tier spells actually use the same spell order as the level one trout, which means I now have to pray to the RNG Gods to let the spell work. This blows through your SP like no business and while they're are ways to regenerate it, it's a slow process.

    What's really been irking me are the enemies. As I stated before, several enemies are easier as duels, but sometimes the game makes you face off with creatures that are frankly harder than some of the bosses. The Gryphon enemy in the chapter I'm currently on is a team battle only enemy, most of his attacks are OHKO to my fragile party, the one that doesn't kill them has a high chance of charming them, and he has more health than anything I've encountered in the game including bosses. It's times like this where I learn to hat Wil's team cause it's just way too fragile for its own good. The issue is that this has been common for every dungeon in I've been in for his chapters. He always has one or two enemy types that have ridiculous health and can usually take out a character per hit. HP is rewarded randomly and like most of the franchise it doesn't use a conventional level system. Money is also incredible hard to come by in his chapters and it's rare to find armor in this game, so trying to get around the Squishy Wizard Brigade has been a bit of a chore for me.

    What's ultimately happening to me is that while I'm getting the usual RPG High of progression in Gustave's story, the same can't be said for Wil, he's just been an up hill battle from beginning to end. It sucks getting lost in a dungeon, worrying about blowing through your LP and then suddenly getting ambushed by a Boss in Mook's Clothing and watching your whole team get wiped out.

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    Skyblade's Avatar
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    They can't release these games in the West any more because of the copyright on "saga" by the Candy Crush guys, right?
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    Actually, Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 got phone and Vita rereleases with actual English translations! Though I don’t think 3 is available here yet

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    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
    They can't release these games in the West any more because of the copyright on "saga" by the Candy Crush guys, right?
    I'm pretty sure that case got thrown out for how ridiculously stupid it was.

    Interestingly enough, the only main entries that have never gotten a release of some form in the West is Romancing SaGa 3 and the recent SaGa Scarlet Grace which was a Vita exclusive in Japan, but might finally get a western release if it we get the Switch port. The rest of the entries never seen here are mostly mobile titles.

    Granted, the series still traditionally does poorly out here. The Romancing SaGa remake on PS2 did abysmal, we didn't receive any of the DS remakes of the original SaGa (Final Fantasy Legend series), and I'm pretty sure Romancing SaGa 2's sales numbers are not that great. It's why I felt it would have been better for SE to release the series as a set of titles with straight ports.

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    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Didin't play a whole lot of SaGa 1 today.

    In SaGa Frontier 2, I learned the Gryphon enemies that murdered me last time have close to 22,000 HP. T put this in perspective, I just fought my first boss in Wil's Chapters in this very scenario and he has about 3,300 HP. So close to seven times the normal health of anything I've faced before. Salt aside, the chapter turned out to be a pretty interesting one and in hindsight, I must say that SaGa is not afraid of killing people off in this plot. I've already seen several prominent figures in both stories die off, and I even learned one of my playable characters would have actually died had I chosen her for a particular chapter.

    I have also learned that using the triangle button while in the equip menu will actually bring up the items stats, which made me realize that I actually did have some armor and stuff I could use to buff my party. If this game could use anything, it's a visual cue for your offense and defense so you can see which items are actually stronger without having to play menu tag.

    The most interesting aspect of Wil's plot is that it really has a JoJo's Bizarre Adventures vibe to it. I'm still in Wil's chapters, but I know his story continues through his bloodline and it involves a conflict with an ancient evil artifact.Basically the plot is starting to move away from Wil learning about his parents and is now starting to become more of a personal grudge against this magic Quell that has caused the death of a few relatives at this point. I'm glad it's finally picking up.

  12. #12
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    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.

  13. #13
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    In SaGa 1 news, I found the Red Orb and defeated Seriyu, making me half way through the Four Gods. I'm sticking around here for a moment cause money is easy to acquire and I want to improve my humans for awhile before I move to the higher floors.

    In SaGa Frontier 2 news, the game has finally picked up and gone in some interesting directions. Gustave's story remains pretty cool as you witness him expand his empire, deal with family trauma, and kind of fall back into anti-hero status as he conducts a few purges here and there. What's been really interesting is watching Wil's plot finally connect with Gustave's as the two have had a few missed chances of running into each other.

    Wil's plot is the one that really improved. His adventures with William ended as well as you expect and now I'm well aware of why Diggers (Wil's occupation) don't try to steal from Megalith's very often. Very spooky places that does things to people. It's weird to describe, but the locations kind of mess with your head. Anima, the source of magic in the world also seems to have some weird effects on people if it goes wild as I've witness two different people get transformed into monsters by this point. Probably the most interesting aspect of Wil's journey is the real sense of progress in his plot. You really do start to see how time passes in the plot as characters start retiring from the biz. I just did what I imagine is my final mission with Tyler, a character that's been in Wil's party since his first chapter as the guy is almost fifty now and is talking about retiring from the biz. Wil has also apparently moved to the kingdom Gustave's initially conquered and started a family even though he's still traveling and trying to hunt down the artifact responsible for his parents death. As it stands Wil's journey has largely seen him lost most of his initial team. Narcisse and Tyler have retired due to age, Cordelia has also seemed to retire, though it's implied in background materials apparently that her and Wil hooked up and started a family, course she decides to do this after the game starts handing me unbreakable spear weapons with rare elemental anima... Labella likely went home after the events concerning her brother. Patrick is still hanging around and we've been joined by Raymond, who is now my third Archer character.

    I have also been introduced to a new protagonist. Johan, a former assassin on the run from his own organization. First impressions were pretty good. His health and life pool are criminally low, but he makes up for it by his weapon specialties being the overpowered sword and martial art skills. He even starts with a powerful Hybrid Art which are special skills that combine weapon skills and magic spells. His scenario is also pretty interesting despite his story being a bit cliche. It also looks like he's going to be involved with Gustave's story, so that will be interesting. Beating his scenario unlocked one concerning the General character in Gustave's plot as well, so it's been a real treat to finally get some background on some of the side characters.

    Sadly, it looks like I may be at the end of this generational cycle as the three scenarios left to me all sound pretty ominous for everyone involved so we'll see.

  14. #14
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    The first arc of the generation story is over in SaGa Frontier 2. Oddly enough, Gustave's last chapter ended up being about Johan who frankly never lived up to the potential he should have had. Depends on if he pops up later but I don't think that's going to happen unfortunately.

    The Generals story was also a bit underwhelming except for once again showing how interconnected the two main characters kind of are. His flashback story allowed me to play as him, who is pretty snazzy I might add, but the real treat was finally being able to play with Master Clemir and being treated with a young Narcisse. The master guy is a background character important to Gustave's plot so it was nice to finally get to check him out. Sadly the chapter was kind of boring despite the minor treat.

    Wil's "last" chapter was actually the coolest largely because it's the only chapter where his group teams up with Gustave. The chapter had a kind of JoJo's Bizarre Adventures vibe to it, but then again, Wil's whole story feels like it is taking cues from the series. What made this really fun is that I finally got to play with old man Gustave. His sprite changes towards the end of his story to his more regal attire and he finally forged his real Steel Sword which is basically a Gut's sword. It's ridiculously powerful too and Gustave is so far the only character I've seen who has done over 1200hp of damage in the game solo. It ended up being a pretty fun chapter overall.

    So with their tales over, I'm given two new characters to play with. Technically Kelvin is Gustave's friend but he hasn't been playable since the very early sections of the game and like Gustave, his story so far is mostly plot focused and dealing with the aftermath of Gustave's last chapter and is deliciously realpolitik as a certain background character is a making a move that could spell the end of Gustave's empire.

    Elenore is the new kid on the block. She's a treasure hunter leading an expedition with Patrick and Raymond tagging along and with another new face in the swordsmen Rich. What's interesting about her story is that judging by the ages, we've jumped a good twenty years after Wil's last chapter as poor Patrick has gone from being in his twenties to suddenly being in his forties. So far her story revolves around being lost in a forest and having a map that looks like it was drawn by a child as the group's only clue on how to escape. We'll see where this goes.

  15. #15
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    I have finally obtained Unlimited SaGa, and I hope it is as deliciously bad as I've been told considering the struggle it took for me to get a copy of it.

    in SaGa 1, I'm traveling up the tower again, but I'm a little lost and the encounter rate is getting a wee bit annoying, though that seems to be a thing in this franchise in general.

    SaGa Frontier 2, finished Elenore's first scenario and learned that Rich is actually Wil's son, who is apprenticing under her for the moment. Sadly, the Lost Woods scenario was actually kind of annoying but I got it done. In the Gustave path, the political situation of the game is getting interesting and I still really wish the game had an in-game glossary to keep tabs on characters. Gustave's scenario has switched to his best friend Kelvin and his son Philippe, except due to how a certain scenario played out, I don't think Philippe is Kelvin's biological son and instead might be Gustave's nephew except he might have been killed, but this kid has the Firebrand which is the holy relic of Gustave's former home and then he gets saved by a certain dragon that popped up the last time the Firebrand showed up, and all I really want to know is who the hell half these characters are. From what I've gathered on the Wiki/TV Tropes, a lot of the plot kind of got cut and only appears in the game's Ultimania of which there are no real translations cause SaGa doesn't have as big and resourceful fanbase in the West like FF does. Ugh...

    To put this into overkill, I've also started dabbling in Romancing SaGa 1 via emulator. It's really interesting playing a game that graphically feels like the missing link between FFIV and V. You choose between eight characters at the start to be your lead, each with their own scenario. While you can rename them, the really interesting part is you get to choose their parents profession, which in turn changes the characters starting stats. I started with Albert, who pretty much looks like how I imagined the son of Cecil and Rosa would look before the After Years changed that. So I gave his parents their profession. Albert is the son of a local lord whom everyone pressures with his eventual rise to be a warrior king like his dad. Unfortunately, Albert is still young and his older sister is far more talented than he is which gives him a bit of a complex. When his scenario opens, a local cave near the castle has become overrun with monsters and Albert's hot-headed blood knight sister feels it is there familial duty to clear it out, so she drags you and some guards over to the cave to clear it out.

    Mechanically it's interesting. Enemies can actually be seen on the field and engaged that way, though they tend to gravitate towards you. Also, depending on what direction your facing when you touch an enemy will change your party formation, so getting attacked from the side or behind can be quite disastrous cause formations are super important in this game as it utilizes a grid format reminiscent of Persona 1 but less stupid. It's also a bit scary when you walk onto a field and watch as fifteen to twenty monsters swarm you, so if you hate fighting in RPGs, you might want to set this one out.

    On the brightside, weapons don't break like they do in the other SaGa games I've played, though I've read they will break if you use Weapon Skills you learn in battle too many times. Leveling is a bit tougher and I kind of feel like the game has two superflous stats that for some inexplicable reason get priority in leveling over something useful like HP or vitality. It does look like the game still takes points from SaGa and your equipment determines which stats go up. Albert begins with a Rapier, which is usually a speed/dexterity stat based weapon, and so he gets a few point in DEX but not strength, but once I equipped him with his sister's Iron Sword, he is now finally getting Strength stat upgrades. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

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