I'm getting filtered real quick.
Someone please tell me why I can't equip my mutants.
>>3603966They're mutants
>>3603970So it seems.
>>3603966Muw is pumping that mana gain but still not a drop of HP
buy rapiers
There is no Gameboy game worth playing in 2024
>>3603979Then explain this.
>>3603980My skellybro became a lizard... Kinda sad.
>>3603981Your monster will mutate into new forms instead of leveling up.Choose poorly and he'll be worse than before instead of just different.
>>3603959>filtered real quick.literally the easiest SAGA. except maybe Frontier.>>3603966you level them up like a normie RPG, except they get random stat gains and 4 of their slots are used for randomly learnt spells or passive abilities. most passives are useless so it depends on your luck when leveling. ESP is useless though.>>3603975with high MP, you should equip a magic spell on that mutie. rapier is a decent backup weapon if she keeps increasing her Agl.>>3603981there's an FAQ which tells u exactly which meat to eat to get endgame monsters in early game before u even enter the tower.
>>3603979play the Wonder Swan Color version.
>>3604100I used that FAQ and it's just wrong in a few placesBut just keep eating meat and eventually you'll get a good monster, they're supposed to be kind of random
You might want to play the Wonderswan remaster, it adds a lot of QoL.
>>3604101>>3604295I don't wanna get used to the Wonderswan version and then have to go back to Gameboy for the next two.>>3604100Does magic have limited uses like weapons?
>>3604319Wonderswan version of SaGa 1 is the defacto definitive version of the game to this day, and it's not so drastic a change that it would be hard to go back to the GB version of the other two, which also have fuill remakes on the DS anyway.>Does magic have limited uses like weapons?Everything is limited in GB SaGa, everything has durability including magic and martial arts.There's also some specific gimmicks related to durability in particular, martial arts for instance get progresslively stronger as they lose durability, once you get to SaGa 2 you'll also have mechs with their own specific twist on durability mechanics that other races do not have.
>>3603959didn't they release the whole compilation on steam a while ago? I'm curious how I'd fare playing this again. I got fucked in the ass hard last time. >>3603979bullshit, dude.
>>3604486>didn't they release the whole compilation on steam a while ago?Yeah, I almost bought it but I saw this and went back to old faithful emulation.>>3604458>Wonderswan version of SaGa 1 is the defacto definitive version of the game to this dayI dunno, I don't want to play the DS remakes unless I've played the originals first. And if I'm playing the GB originals for two of them anyway I may as well play the first. It's not bad anyway.>Everything is limited in GB SaGa, everything has durability including magic and martial arts.I've noticed my monster's attack durability and my mutant abilities refill after battle though, is magic the same?
Luce learned Stench and Gas. I guess this guy smells.
Genbu got bodied
This game has my favorite soundtrack by Uematsu, followed by FF2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-mHH-XVX1I
>>3604689Had no idea it was Uematsu. There was a song that reminded me of the FF2 world map theme, guess that explains why.
>>3604689I thought FFL2's soundtrack was better. And so is the rest of the game
>sail to the edge of the world map>instead of wrapping around there's an actual edge of the worldI'm actually shocked, I think this is the first time I've encountered this in a JRPG.
>>3604710you're inside of a tower thing, so it does make sense. pretty neat imo
>>3604711I thought I stepped outside the tower onto another level of reality or a heavenly sphere or something, not that I was still inside it. Still cool, I like the idea of it.
With the amount of money that drops here can't I just grind my human up to 99 in both stats pretty easily? Seems busted.
screenshot lets play?
>>3604716Just talking about the game with screenshots.
>>3604712The tower continues up through levels of reality. >>3604715For reference, though the displayed value of the stat maxes out at 99, it can go higher internally. Be careful when super increasing your human, though, because it can also overflow.
>>3604720Is 99 a practical place to stop for beating the game or am I expected to keep boosting?
YOOOOOOOO THERE IT IS
Skellybro ate Seiryu's meat and now he's a beast, I always knew he had it in him. I'm afraid to feed him anything else now though.
>>3603959Jesus I beat this game when I was 12 and it was new. WTF are you retarded? Oh you're here, of course
>>3604789I just had to get my bearings. I'm in jail now.
What a twist
>>3604724I went a little past it, you definitely want to go past it if you're going to chainsaw godBy the end my mutant had also gone past 99 in a couple stats. Use your best judgement when you get there.
My mutants are struggling pretty hard, their HP gain has really stalled. Wish the stat growth was like FF2.
Ayyyy I know this guy!
How come Monsters are extremely underpowered in all 3 FFL games? You'd think they'd have fixed its most interesting mechanic by the 3rd game at least.
OP are you the guy who's playing through the FF games on /v/?>>3604957Monsters are underpowered in all the games they're available in, they're a gimmicky RNG race where you can bank big time in the early game if you know what you're doing but as the game progresses they get relatively weaker.Even the DS remake of SaGa 2 and 3 didn't really change much, and while EB monsters are not crippled by static stat sheets anymore they're still crippled by natural equipment and super limited guard properties on their movesets.I still love them though, not everything needs to be Iskandar levels of broken, it's also fun to play with more limited options sometimes.
>>3605032Emerald Beyond was so fucking good. People trash it and SSG for their budget and lack of dungeons but I'd honestly put them up their with RSMS and RS2.
The Suzuku zone and the last part are the one you could get filtered
>>3605064People are shallow and boring like that, SSG and EB were made with very little and have a lot of issues but are still very good games, far better than a lot of AA/AAA stuff.EB in particular is one of the very few RPGs of the modern era that actually ended up breaking new ground with its unique NG+ progression and the quest design, easily one of Kawazu's greatest achievements as a game designer and a truly impressive feat.
>>3604957Monsters are only underpowered at the first world in FFLII and right at the end. I've had monsters that carried my party through most worlds. In FFLI it just takes awhile to get forms with AoE attacks. They're solid end game. In FFLIII I just go the hybrid route with cyborgs and beast-men.
>>3605032>OP are you the guy who's playing through the FF games on /v/?No but I have been replaying through all of them over the past year or so.>>3605073Suzaku got bodied but I did have to run a lot because my mutants have no HP. Is there an easy way to get back to the starting zone so I can buy more magic?
What party should I do for my first runs of saga 1-3I got the collection on switch
>>3605312OP here, I'm far from an expert but I will say that I regret taking two mutants so maybe don't do that.
>>3605312For the first game most people stick to two humans+esper+monster baseline, or swap one human for one more esper.The other two are whatever, you also get mechs in the second game so having a rep for each of the four races is sorta popular in there, third game has dynamic race swapping with added hybrid races so there's no real common setup
>>3605312I went with human+esper+two monsters which was a little too much monster. It did mean I could always keep one at something decent and let the other one eat meat randomly.Two humans is expensive, but reliable. Two espers is pretty random, though I think you're unlikely to get as screwed on HP as OP is here. Make sure they get hit occasionally.For FFLII one of each race is nicely balanced for a first run.
God got GLASSED. I tried to chainsaw him like one anon said but it didn't take.Cool game with an expected level of 1989 gameboy crust. I'm excited to see how the series evolves. Started up the second game and I'm already liking the improvements I see.
>>3605729SaGa 2 is already a big glowup, it's really jusst more of everything.
>>3605869Robot stocks are SOARING, what a beast
>>3606086Make sure to get that tasty Giant equipment once you get to that specific point in the game, it will carry you all the way past Venus' world.Also little trick unique to mechs which you can't use in the DS remake: You can equip and unequip martial arts on them over and over until the DP goes all the way down to 1 and then use it to one shot most bosses in the early-mid game since in the old games martial arts get more powerful the less DP they have
>>3606216>Make sure to get that tasty Giant equipmentI had enough to buy a glove and yeah just that piece was an insane boost.>You can equip and unequip martial arts on them over and over until the DP goes all the way down to 1 and then use it to one shot most bossesI was wondering if that would work because I noticed the durability dropping but I've been two shotting the few bosses I've seen anyway.
>>3604715You can grind them up to 255, then it wraps back to 0. Game only shows up to 99. Equipjng armor also ca wrap it if you go too high. Same with the mutant. When the mutant stats get high, dump the armor to free some slots.
>>3604267>they're supposed to be kind of randomthey're not. they never were. in Frontier they MIGHT FEEL like random because of conflicting skills pushing you into crappier monsters, but even that was figured out in a mechanics FAQs, which state EXACTLY which skill they check for in which order, depending on current HP. the monster transformations all go through a very exact checklist in the code.>eventually good monsters.you could also just wait till the final town, where you can hire as many dragons as you like. but they're slightly weaker than the best monsters of every type.
>>3604702FFL/S3 had the best music but not a real SaGa.
>>3604957>Monsters are extremely underpowered in all 3 FFL games?2 of them have a Chainsaw and high enough STR to OHKO god in SaGa1. and no i don't mean you need STR higher than the endboss. Chainsaw like any other physical weapon uses the STR for accuracy. so even if it's bugged to only kill enemies with higher STR than you, you still need a decent amt of STR to accurately hit a boss enemy most of the time. i tried chainsawing god with a Mutant with only 1 STR, and it always missed. it also missed when chainsawing all the other monsterschainsaw on the 2 monsters worked just fine.
>>3605257>my mutants have no HP. Is there an easy way to get back to the starting zone so I can buy more magic?you should be able to find and buy some warping/escape spells later IIRC. also you can purposely kill off your mutants and replace with new mutants or monsters if their RNG screwed up too much. of cose you will need to spend time retraining them again.
FF Legend 3, or Saga 3 whatever, is my childhood game. Getting the robot that has a move that can either deal a lot of damage or instant kill was OP until you got the legendary weapons.I found it hard to get into the previous two games due to how different they are.
Other than for variety is there a reason to use a human over a second robot in FFL2?(assuming you have one robot for tanking / gunning / agility weapons, one esper for passive skills and healing magic, one monster for general good stuff)
Some of these encounters are starting to get pretty nuts. This is a fairly small one too but each of those ogres will one-shot any of my characters.
>>3607006The mechs' big handicap is healing, so yeah, humans grow a lot slower but have no real big handicap, granted GB SaGa 2 is not particularly hard enough for you have issues with two mechs outside of the very last boss which does force a DPS/Heal check.SaGa 2 DS is more balanced so you'll notice that handicap a lot more since enemies, and bosses especially, are stronger, which means multiple mechs with their healing restrictions can actually be a liability.
>>3606825For me it was the opposite. Loved SaGa 1 and 2 but found SaGa 3 boring when it opted for the generic exp+level progression. Haven't played the DS remakes yet but I would really like to at some point.Even recently when I played SMTVV it was an adjustment because going from SaGa's used based systems felt like going backwards, though I ultimately enjoyed the game overall.
Does enemy relative strength influence stat boosts like in FF2? I've noticed my human is having trouble gaining STR but when I use a whip she's much more likely to gain AGI.
>>3607037Yeah, the system is the same, past a certain point your stats won't grow as much in a given world since you hit the growth softcap
>>3603959bought the squaresoft versions of these games at funco for 10-20 bucks each cib. 10 for a sealed ff1 nes in the discount bin and kb toys.
Cool last boss. Did Uematsu do this one too?
>>3607447Yeah, Uematsu wrote that one, the other two battle themes are Ito.Congrats on beating Arsenal/LSD
>>3607449I was ready to get my shit pushed in after that Apollo fight and the two minibosses in that last dungeon. Almost did but one last clutch Flare cast got him.
>>3607450Star Smasher is pretty rough, eh?Creator also pushes the DPS checks but even without chainsaw cheese the Glass Sword melts him pretty fast, Arsenal/LSD is a bit tougher, plus the animated smasher and dynamic music make the fight much cooler.
>>3607450The minibosses were way stronger than expected
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I77PDAZudo
>experience based level ups>no durability on weapons>white and black magicThis is SaGa right??????
>>3607492Not really. Totally different team.
I want to try SaGa games, where do I start? I see there's remasters on steam, but I'm unsure on the order, although I'll probably go in release order of the original since they're not connected.
>>3603979Red and Blue are a nice trip down memory lane once in awhile
>>3607492No, after SaGa 2 Kawazu moved immediately onto Romancing SaGa 1, Square execs wanted another GB SaGa because those games were printing money, Kawazu told them "no way fag" so they forced this shit anyway and gave it to a completely different team who made a Final Fantasy game with some copypasted stuff from the actual SaGa games.Said team would later go on to develop FFMQ and Rudra no Hihou, if you want the real SaGa 3 you need to play the DS remake as Kawazu and the lads completely reworked the mechanics and turned it into a real SaGa game, surprisingly while also keeping most of the stuff unique to the original release such as the hybrid races, and put some nice spins on the time traveling mechanics too.Sadly, Ryuji Sasai didn't return to work on the music, but Ito adapted the original music very well and added some really good new earworms toohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUy01CU3wcQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGN5RrQP3xshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIACDeM43Gs&list=OLAK5uy_krt73-Z2Ezp3Lw3olPdxcPYPEnQE_ptXI&index=7https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3_lmDCuSFM&list=OLAK5uy_krt73-Z2Ezp3Lw3olPdxcPYPEnQE_ptXI&index=16>>3607713Release order is fine, the games are still unique and distinct enough to be fun even if you pick them up in your own order, the GB games are probably the only exception as they're really old by now and feel pretty archaic coming from the SNES and beyond games where the series truly came into its own.
>>3607713Release order is fine, even the GB games are still pretty fun of you can handle old-school encounter rates. SaGa is one of the only series where the remakes/remasters are worth it, so you don't even have to be careful about that.
>>3607505>>3607728Damn, so far this game doesn't feel as engaging as the first two but I also don't want to leap forward and play a remake without playing the original.
>>3607914It's not downright terrible but yeah, it's not a SaGa game at all, it's still pretty short though so it's not like you'll waste too much time on it.If you do play through it you'll also appreciate the DS remake a lot more since again, Kawazu made sure to carry over most of its key content while also redesigning it to actually play like SaGa, and of course adding some unique mechanics as well to make it stand out as a proper entry in the series.
That doesn't seem ethical.
>>3608179small beans compared to a gamer god or banana smuggling
>>3608192What does Edo have against bananas anyway?
Thanks dad!I liked the cameo of the family from the second game.
>>3608345>Quacer, invent time travel
>>3605312Do a solo human run for 1, sell your weapon, buy armor and a cheap weapon, and go to town.
>>3608194It's meant to be opium I believe.
>>3607941It's been a long time, but I seem to recall quite a few tracks being bangers. Maybe the spaceship theme near the end when you get it. I can't remember.
>>3608618Ryuji Sasai composed the soundtrack, so yeah, it had quite a few bangers, despite his short career Sasai was a great composer.
I got the ZSNES with the snow for Romancing SaGa, as God intended.
I don't really get it, why can only Diana fight? I guess I should read something about this combat system.
>>3608807Nevermind, turns out I just had to press left because for some reason everyone else defaults to the defend page but Diana defaults to the weapon page.
>>3608797Shieeet you're brave enough for SNES RS1?And yeah, from here onwards things get fairly different, while the basic core mechanics are largely the same the games get a lot more complex and start caring more about the RPG side, they're not simple dungeon crawlers anymore.Bear in mind RS1 is pretty messy, a lot of mechanics started here and the implementation is extremely spotty at best, moreover the game is massively unfinished because Nintendo refused to give Kawazu a bigger cartridge format so he had to cut most of the shit they made at that point so the game could actually fit, entire questlines, major ones at that, got cut as a result.Some time ago, Kazuko Shibuya made a funny post about the time she was working on Sherah/Sheryl's sprites for RS1 and was wondering how she would become a party member, so she asked Kawazu about that and he went>not happening anymore, we don't have the space on the cartridge lolhttps://x.com/Skazuko/status/1799447017992913154
>>3608866>Shieeet you're brave enough for SNES RS1?Is it a hard game or something? I don't know much about the series, I just decided to play through all of them.So far the weapon skill system reminds me a lot of FFXI, which is my favorite game ever. The first bow weaponskill is even a bow weaponskill in FFXI. I got some Chrono Trigger vibes from the previous games too and I know some of them went on to work on FFXI so I wonder if these are also some of the same people.
>>3608873It's not hard, it's just very, very janky and again, very unfinished as well.You'll appreciate the jump in quality with RS2 a lot more though, and of course, when you get to Minstrel Song you'll also appreciate that game much more.>The first bow weaponskill is even a bow weaponskill in FFXI.That's because a rather big part of the team behind XI was made up of former SaGa team members, so yeah, as you progress through the Romancing games you'll find some familiar names and concepts, after all the entire weapon system in XI is largely based on what the Romancing games did, even though it's not immediately evident in RS1 in particular, once you get to RS2 you'll notice it a lot more.
>>3608884>That's because a rather big part of the team behind XI was made up of former SaGa team membersThat's pretty cool, I had a feeling. Makes me even more excited to play through all these.
>>3608890During the Sakaguchi days they didn't really have divisions like they have now, so a lot of team members got shuffled around, Sakaguchi himself poached people from other teams pretty liberally as that was his development tactic, while the SaGa and Mana teams had a lot of shared manpower which resulted into some explicit cameos and crossovers between the games, XI was just on another level and had people from all parts of the company, many of which worked on SaGa and brought over some elements from that series into XI.XIV ironically ended up the same with ARR onwards as they also got Takai and some of his lads into it, which proceeded to bring over some SaGa stuff, although most of the references and carryovers are lost on the audience.If you played Legend of Mana I'm sure you'll also notice many things that got taken from SaGa as well, especially weapon skills.
>>3604710They had this in chrono cross too, the whole game takes place in a giant crater and you sail between different islands but at the top left corner of the map along the edge there’s what looks like an outlet you can pass thru (picrel) to leave the known map into a new area, except you can’t. It always bugged me and made me imagine the game world was much bigger than what was shown.
>>3608897>XIV ironically ended up the same with ARR onwards as they also got Takai and some of his lads into it, which proceeded to bring over some SaGa stuff, although most of the references and carryovers are lost on the audience.They're lost on me too, but not for long. Is that why the country in XVI is Rosaria? The first one here in Albert's story is Rosalia.
>>3608976You'll get a lot of them by the time you finish RS3, especially when it comes to certain things like the Matanga.>Is that why the country in XVI is Rosaria?XVI Rosaria and RS1 Rosalia actually don't have much in common, it's more likely the name is just a throwback to FFXII Rosaria more than anything, XVI does have a lot of things from TLR though.RS1 Rosalia is one of the many homages to the Dragon Lance lore and universe, so if you're familiar with that you'll notice a lot of nods to the old books in RS1 and all the following games.
>>3603959I really, really, really need to play this game.
>>3608985>RS1 Rosalia is one of the many homages to the Dragon Lance lore and universe, so if you're familiar with that you'll notice a lot of nods to the old books in RS1 and all the following games.I read Dragon Lance in middle school and I don't remember anything about it anymore except for Raistlin and Tasslehoff
4 hours of playtime so far and pretty much all of it has been me sitting on this bridge grinding skill ups. Something about being able to sit here and just have the enemies come to me so I can make number go up is really appealing to me.
>>3609159Heeey Stellafag, been a while since I last saw you.You'll get there eventually, did you manage to finish The Last Remnant?>>3609277Be careful about grinding, from the Romancing games onwards the series adopts mechanics called Battle Rank (BR in short) that work according to how many fights you get into and make fights tougher by updating enemy batches and making strong enemies spawn while removing weaker ones, RS1 has a very primitive and unique version of BR called ER (Event Rank) where actual quest progression is tied to it too, so if you grind too much you'll miss some shit as the ER works like a clock for the world's order of events.RS1 version of ER is again, very primitive though and generally the game content is fairly easy outside of the power spike where enemies such as elemental spirits start appearing, but it's still a thing, so if you start noticing how certain enemies do not appear anymore and you get bigger, badder, stronger enemies in fights all of a sudden it's because of the ER.Minstrel Song has a much better version of ER, Romancing SaGa 2 has just BR so only the fights themselves change and it's much more balanced than RS1, outside of SF2 every single game in the series has a variant of BR so keep this in mind as mindless grind is not particularly worth it and can be counterproductive.
>>3609473I loved it so, so, so, so, so much. I don't even know why or how I got filtered in high school. I WILL say I hated getting my shit kicked in due to the hidden event rank system, but I appreciated the deliberately unconventional combat system for what it is. Like the story, it's about managing power and empowering others (and the game, really) to do its own thing, and I got a great feel for that when I really paid attention to the story. I also remember getting my shit kicked in and I don't even want to remember how many times I died to the Seven, but I will say formations really do matter and I neglected to change them until 50% of the way through.That said, my next SaGa game might not be for a long while because I'm back on the LoM grind and Gogeta just released HD maps for Chrono Cross, but when I get to it, it might be either RS1MS or Unlimited. The Tokyo Team influence tracking takes precedence, so it'll likely be before, during or even after VII Remake (which I play after playing Dissidia 012 and KH2FM and at least one other Nomura project).
>>3609483For the record:Legend of Mana and Chrono Cross -> FFVIII and FFIX -> KH1FM -> Re:CoM -> KH2FM -> Dissidia 012 (with the first game's story) -> MAYBE NT -> VII Remake -> SoP -> Rebirth -> RS1MS -> XVIBefore, I was just doing this to prove a point against that one guy who hates me and everything I like so much, but now I realize it's fun to get to know a person's sense of style and direction by playing their games. I'm still biased towards Matsuno's games, though, but a Nomura game with unconventional systems that you end up sinking time into mastering will suck me in should he choose to do that.
>>3609483It's okay, Legend of Mana is also SaGa adjacent.Good to know you ended up enjoying TLR, once you'll get to the SaGa games you'll get a lot of the references like the Remnants, the Seven and a couple of other things.I guess you're starting to understand Takai's tastes a lot more after TLR eh? FFXVI in particular might feel pretty different after playing his previous project since there's so many common elements even outside of the cameos like Torgal.Who were your favorite characters in TLR? Any moment that stuck with you like finding out who Wagram really was or Glenys' sidequest?
>>3609492>spoiler 2>Sil'dih with lots of bugs to kill>but better>WAY betterK I N OINO
>>3609492>spoiler 1That said, it didn't dawn on me until much later. I didn't realize he left her for Marion Marshall until some time after I beat the game. Like... fuck, man. And trying to grow his power was his whole thing too.
>>3609495The bugs were honestly the worst part of that quest since they break the BR mechanics really hard, Flaumello Tower was more enjoyable, though the real hard hitter is when you take Glenys to Undelwalt and things start making too much sense.Wyngale's quest was also good now that I think about, all the stuff related to the first imperator was nicely done.
>>3609501You can probably guess how high my chain was with that one. It was mid-to-late game though, to be fair, and I will add that it wasn't enough to grow my Arts palettes (hahah Xeno) to really do well in battle.
>>3609487Legend of Mana and Chrono Cross had key KH staff? Also, who are you?
>>3609500In the end it's sort of implied he did it for the greater good of controlling the Remnants through Marion's power more than anything, same reason why he parked Wyngale in bumfuck nowhere to look after the seal for over a thousand years.It's kind of hard to blame him considering the true nature of the Remnants and how he eventually grasped how fucked everyone was, in hindsight it's kind of hard to hate him since he was acting in everyone's interest, even if it was done in a very fucked up way, at least you get Jaeger out of the whole dealZolean's quest also hits hard, did you do that one? Honestly all of the commander sidequests in TLR are really good, reuniting the old froggy trio in Royotia was a good moment as well.
>>3603979WarioLand4
>>3609517Reuniting war buddies was a very anime questline that somehow didn't feel out of place in what was a Kawazu-Matsuno's people collaboration, and it was really good. In hindsight, I'm actually quite glad I swapped TLR for LoM, but now I have to master cancelling again or whatever. Nomura had the right idea stripping out half the techs.
>>3609524Yeah, LoM has quite a few clunky combat mechanics, to be fair it's because combat was admittedly rushed as they were way behind the release schedule as making all the various assets and building up the questlines took way more than anticipated and Kawazu himself said he got too complacent with the development pacing until it was too late.Still, you can definitely see how KH1 took a lot from that game and polished the concept a lot, I personally prefer the SaGa style of developing characters through actions rather than stand alone choices like Shield/Sword/Rod selection, but it's undeniable Nomura made a much better combat system, especially when it comes to the mobility options, it's nice that LoM gives you a lot of weird techs like dashes, backflips etc. but it really doesn't make good use of those unlike KH.It's also easy to see how he elaborated on boss design, coming from KH you can really see how a lot of ideas for bosses being built around specific gimmicks come straight from LoM, but again, executed better, bosses like the centaurs, Labanne or the Jewel Beast wouldn't really feel out of place in KH.On a side note, you REALLY should play Emerald Beyond, knowing you I strongly feel that this will be one of the SaGa entries you'd enjoy the most, you'd get hundreds of hours out of it easily given how Kawazu built it, I really look forward to the day where you'll dive deep into these games.
I'm actually not a fan of JRPGs but have been loving the first SAGA game. Was planning on playing 2 then Romancing Saga. Any suggestions after that?
>>3609604Just keep playing them, I guess. I love Frontier. There's a new one that came out this year that I've hears good things about.When you're finally ready to become a true hipster, Unlimited Saga is out there.
>>3609604Play Romancing SaGa 3, then 2. 2 is notoriously difficult while 3 is far more lenient. Then move onto Frontier and then Scarlet Grace/Emerald Beyond, do NOT touch Unlimited as it is a massive departure from what you will come to know about the franchise.
>>3609636What's the issue with it? I've seen a few minutes of gameplay and it looked really weird. I heard it's supposed to simulate a TTRPG experience.
>>3609604Past the GB games the series changes quite a bit in terms of format, I don't honestly recommend the first Romancing game, unless you're highly tolerant towards jank it's not a particularly good experience, RS3 would be a better introduction to the formula RS1 tried to create.If you like how the multiple races of the GB games play out you must definitely play SaGa Frontier and Emerald Beyond as they use almost identical race mechanics but with an overall richer structure and with some key differences, you also get the same funky world hopping setting compared to the Romancing games where the games play out in a single world with a more standard high fantasy setting.>>3609638Yeah, Unlimited and the following games that aren't remakes are sorta like virtual tabletop games in some ways, most people don't really like the format because it's too abstract, the games completely let go of a lot of things players take for granted like explorable cities and such, the general game design gets much weirder as well which turns off a lot of people.
>>3609636I didn't think rs2 was difficult, and the structure made it easier to learn the series mechanics, whereas in rs3 I was wandering in circles looking for a way to proceed
>>3609473>Be careful about grinding, from the Romancing games onwards the series adopts mechanics called Battle Rank (BR in short) that work according to how many fights you get into and make fights tougher by updating enemy batches and making strong enemies spawn while removing weaker onesI guess that explains why 4 hours into my grind I suddenly started seeing new enemy types. I thought they were just rare spawns or something. Hopefully I didn't miss any cool quests.
>>3609636I think RS2 difficulty is overblown, for every bad situation it throws at you there is a bullshit solution available to the player, it's like FF5 where you fight cancer with bigger cancer
>>3609654Yeah, with each step in the ER ladder the game updates enemy batches and you get completely new, stronger enemies.Think of it as a GM regularly going through the encounter tables as the campaign progresses so he can adjust encounters to match with the party, except in here there's no levels so you have to make the best of each fight as progression in power between your party and the enemy is not necessarily synchronous.As a result the more efficient way to get stronger in these games, especially in the early games, is to play around BR mechanics by acquiring very powerful equipment as fast as possible, something the games are very much designed around due to their nonlinearity.
>>3609660With this in mind I'm considering restarting the game. It will hurt to lose all that grinding time but I kinda don't wanna miss out on anything, though as I understand it you can't see everything in one playthrough of this game anyway.
>>360971111We all go through this once we find how Battle Rank mechanics work.You'll also very quickly find out that simply managing your money efficiently and spending it on good equipment or spells makes you grow strong much faster than just fighting enemies over and over, upgrading your stuff to things like Garal equipment alone makes a very noticeable difference.And yeah, I wouldn't really worry about missing stuff because that's just how these games play out, they're designed around that and replaying the games multiple times, even if RS1 doesn't really have a lot of differences or content unique to the main characters compared to the following games.
>>3609483I keep hearing about how you play RPGs for combat but i didn't take you for this much of a battle system autist even if i said you were to other people. Stellafag you might want to get into RS3 or the DS remake of 2 first. TLR isn't a good first SaGa game even though I'm glad you enjoyed it.>>3609503>He chained more than 99Why
>>3609758I mean, battle design is the 'main' system of interacting with a game's world in most FF games, and I say this though due to the lack of level interactions. This thinking has applied to other Square RPGs, which is weird because I came from the world of Pokémon and Fire Emblem, two games where level design is thought of as secondary to the turn-based combat, but I find myself being less immersed in combat there than I am in story and level design. That said, they really do try (and slip in later games). That the Nomura and Matsuno teams were the first to creating ways interact with 3D geometry only makes KH more intriguing, especially in light of Takahashi saying level design is the most important part of any Japanese RPG. I know I don't speak very highly of Kitase's games a lot, but the game's his people (Toriyama and Tabata) were involved with really didn't feature in the much of the way of verticality and making meaning in the game's setting. FFX had those dull puzzles, X-2 had tacked on minigames by a team that didn't really know how to do 3D combat very well, and the sea change with Dirge and Crisis Core that was clearly meant to train potential XIII teams, and even XIII itself doesn't do that much even if it was an all-hands-on-deck situation for Square.What's even more disappointing is that once you pull back all the jargon, it's a very vanilla story about people being played around like puppets so the puppetmasters can be free and they do it anyway, XIII bared itself too quickly for a story people find convoluted. Like, are they stupid?
>>3603959that's fine, it wasn't made for you
>>3604712>I thought I stepped outside the tower onto another level of reality or a heavenly sphere or something, not that I was still inside itit's literally both at the same time, if you can wrap your head around that
>>3604957they're not, you can literally solo monster run saga 1 in a fraction of the time it takes to do a solo human run
>>3605312for saga 1, my favorite way to go through it is a solo human, pump dex to near overflow and buy martial arts "weapons", nothing besides magic and some specific oddball skills can ever touch you and you do obscene damage to everything with flurries of kicks and punches and you'll always be able to saw down warmachine/field su zaku/ashura/creator
>>3604957I just played through all three and my monsters were always really weak the entire game then turned into absolute beasts right at the end to carry me through the worst of it all. It was a fun dynamic.
>>3607713if you can't handle old school obtuseness, i'd say scarlet gracealternatively, if you can't handle the new school seachange in presentation and format, rs3, maybe rs2 or frontier 1
>>3607814>of you can handle old-school encounter rates.the nice thing about saga 1 and the high encounter rate is it takes no time to save literally anywhere and no time to 4-button reset and reload out of encounters if you get into them, so if you really want to you can just avoid any encounters completely at any time, so you essentially get to take battling and farming for gold entirely on your own terms
>>3610108>it takes no time to save literally anywhere and no time to 4-button reset and reload out of encounters if you get into themWhen you reload a save it gives you the same encounter tho.
>>3608873>Is it a hard game or something? kinda but that's not the problem, the problem is it's very incomplete and minstrel song (the ps2 remake, and then the remaster of the remake later on) completes the game and adds a ton of qol improvements (doubly so for the remaster which features a god tier speedup function) that pretty much makes the original a completely obsolete relic, most people outside of japan don't play the original, but a few japanese seem to have quite a lot of nostalgia for it
>>3609604>I'm actually not a fan of JRPGs but have been loving the first SAGA game.it's still my favorite turn based jrpg of all time, it's short and sweet, not babby easy but not wizadry hard, doesn't take itself too seriously but still has its moments in the story beats, plus it has a variety of settings and setpieces and none of them are too drawn out (even if the post-apocalyptic tokyo one does drag itself out a bit) plus it's got enough little janky things here and there to make you laugh (and/or get on your nerves, like accidentally re-stepping on the tile that makes you sift through the bookshelves again even though you already found the thing) plus it gives the player enough agency to do solo runs which later games usually don't (or even if they do, it's not even remotely possible to complete the game as a solo artist run, unlike saga 1)
>>3609657>it's like FF5 where you fight cancer with bigger canceraccurate, but generally the player isn't gonna know how to get the bigger cancer in their first blush with the game (and the game isn't gonna hold your hand to guide you to it either), that's where the notorious "difficulty" comes in
>>3610109it actually doesn't though, if you move in the same exact way at the same exact time as you did last time, then it does, due to the way the encounters work, but this can be easily manipulated on reloads
>>3610112Well I am still at the beginning (because I restarted after finding out about battle rank) but so far any jank seems standard for a SNES era RPG. I have Minstrel Song too, but I don't really want to play a remake before the original. I'll probably take a break after I finish the PS1 games and then go back and play the remakes of the GB games and Minstrel Song.
>>3609538Why EB for Stellafag?
Six party members feels like a bit much.
>>3610246eh not really, considering the kind of cancer the enemies can throw at you, and the racheting belt-scrolling field aspect of the battlesgranted, you won't hardly ever see the latter if you don't allow the on-field enemies to mob up on you, but sometimes that's pretty damn hard to manage
Is there a 2D remaster of the first Romancing Saga game? There seem to be 2D re-releases of 2 and 3 but only Minstrel Song for 1.
>>3610010As usual, you look at things from the point of view of somebody who's interested in the unique nature of the medium and its potential in terms of human expression, most people don't care about any of that, even most creators don't.You mention Kitase, who studied cinema and directing and got hired by Sakaguchi for that very reason since he wanted FF to be cinematic, Kitase is a director in the movie sense, he's not concerned with the inner workings of the medium, much like Sakaguchi himself wasn't, he's a completely different breed from people like Matsuno, Nomura or Kawazu who look at games like a watchmaker looks at a movement, the former are concerned with delivering a piece of narrative through a medium, the latter want the medium itself to enable narrative by virtue of its parts.This was also why Kawazu refused to work on Final Fantasy after 2 after disagreeing with Sakaguchi, to him every element of games is a moving part with unique potential for interactions, not just a passive vehicle for narrative that might as well be a book, a movie or a TV show.And ironically this sort of thinking is also reflected in the narrative of the games, SaGa 1 is, outside of a pretty cool story, a very meta game about (You), the player, proving to the Creator of the game (Kawazu) that you're good enough to beat it, which is why fans affectionately call him 河津神, and you can see similar metanarrative themes in games like TWEWY, but in things like FF? Not so much.By the by, did you know Takahashi was also the field map designer for the first Romancing SaGa? >>3610142If there's anybody who can appreciate the narrative built around loops and alternate world states, or even the decision of building every world is around a specfic map gimmick, it's him, plus it has that KH flavour.>>3610362Kind of, there's the old Wonderswan port which has some QoL like a dash function and some restored quests, but no modern remaster exists and probably never will.
>>3610379Would you say it's worth it over Minstrel Song? I actually don't mind the goofy visuals of MS but I'd feel weird playing that then going back down to 2D for 2 and 3.
>>3610386No.Wonderswan RS1 is still fundamentally RS1 with its fucked growth mechanics, absurd amounts of enemies, questionable weapon mechanics and many other janky details, it does have some interesting restored questlines...which also exist in Minstrel Song and are handled way better on top of just having a lot more content as well and better mechanics.Minstrel Song, specifically its Remastered version which adds even more stuff and many needed bugfixes, is the definitive release of Romancing SaGa 1 and its fully realized version.I know some people who are even more of an extremist than I am and will say that Minstrel Song is not a subsitute for RS1 since some mechanics like the advancing fields weren't brought over and the general aesthetic is different, but after all these years I stand by this opinion, if you want to play the original version of RS1 you'll have a lot more insight on just how big of an improvement Minstrel Song is over the original and just how respectful it was to the original material, but at the end of the day there's nothing more than that when it comes to SNES RS1.
>>3610387i'm the guy who laments the loss of the advancing field in minstrel song, but i don't think that it invalidates minstrel song or makes it worse. i just wish that it was retained in minstrel song, and no the chain battle kludge doesn't equate to or make up for it, but the rest of the game is too much of a general improvement for me to disregard it just because it doesn't have that one extremely unique aspect that i really love and think is ultimately underutilized even in the original itself and is a shame it was never used again nor expanded upon by the genre in general, because i find it to be much more representative of realitylikein a jrpg with random encounters:you get into a fightand then all these other monsters that would otherwise be wandering into you and getting into fights with you normally are justsitting therewatching?waiting patiently for you to finish with the small subsection of fiends that you're dealing withand then waiting for you to start walking around again before they engage you?like, lol, that makes no fucking sensewho knew monsters were so noble and honorable?fuck that, that's some pansy ass shit, i love the gritty realness that monsters being able to add on to the fights entailseven rs2 should have had it, even though mob density in that game is much less than the madness of rs1, but in that case thematically it makes more sense, the seven heroes only just recently came back (though, as you go deeper and deeper into the generations, the mob density should generally increase to reflect that) whereas in rs1 saruin has been building up to this shit for a long ass time so it makes perfect sense why you cannot even spit without hitting a fiend in the field in original rs1
>>3610387Noted. Minstrel Song it is. Once I beat the 2nd GBC game I'll move over to that one.
>>3603979Tons of them are worth playing, the issue's just finding the time to play them. They're always on the backlog for me.
>>3610397Yeah, we've talked about this before and I don't really disagree with you there, it was a cool mechanic and encounter chains don't really scratch the same itch.The DS remakes also had a very interesting rework of the original enemy batch mechanic from the GB games that added some interesting elements of position where you'd get enemy pincer formations that are very interesting as a mechanic but just do not exist in other entries, there's a lot of interesting things that are just a one and done deal and do not get implemented as mainstays for no good reason, that's just how Kawazu rolls I guess.>>3610403I'd honestly not recommend moving onto MS after the GB games, it would be better for you to play Romancing SaGa 2 or 3 instead, MS is something of a culmination of many series mechanics up to the point it came out and going back to previous entries, especially the SNES ones, might feel a bit jarring.It's ultimately up to you though, do whatever gives you the most enjoyment.
>>3608955Well yeah, but in CC's case it was an archipelago in the middle of a large ocean rather than having an actual edge. I didn't find it frustrating as a kid but I did later once I actually had gone back and played Chrono Trigger. Despite Cross being among my favorite RPGs purely based on its artstyle, music, and plot, it's quite annoying that everything happens basically in bumfuck nowhere in the middle of the ocean and doesn't have much relevance to the original heroes. I can see why people were so annoyed by it.
>>3610379Not to put the both of you on the spot like this but now I see how Stellafag (and you too Sagafag) you break with B*zzy in many ways. His arguments for defending all of Tabata's games (Stellafag I'm sorry even if you do like Type-0 this is the case) based on how entertaining they are. He says that political intrigue is boring because it never affects the MC directly and means nothing to the main plotline. He doesn't have anything to say about level design or combat systems very deeply. He's not interested in meaning-making or seeing how devs express themselves or use games to say something either. a game is good only if it satisfies him and his preferences. The boy has consoomer brain and we should remember who of Tabata's 15 sold 10 million.This is his defense of 15:>the main 4 have the most verisimilitude out of any ff party and as a result it has the most emotional cathartic at the end through its tragedy, it also has the most well realised conflict between any ff villain and protag and does so by making them mirrors of each other and effectively has both the main villain and protag fully achieve their goals and lifes meaning, the mystery it creates around the gods, messengers, world history and lucis caelums is compelling and pays off in a huge way at the end, it Syngergizes narrative with gameplay perfectly not only through party dialog but character animation and behaviour, combat moves and skills, link attacks and the actual act of combat itself. The music perfectly encapsulates the story moments and characters, its energetic when it needs to be, blud pumping when it has to be, operatic and majestic, tragic and heartbreaking. The core essence shines through which translated into its widespread success and high appeal.Meaning:>the main party are realistic and have an arc>the protagonist and antagonist are contrasted>there is a central plot that comes to climax>the gameplay and narrative are integrated>its soundtrack is varied
>>3610010>Nomura and Matsuno teamsOh yeah and I've said this before but yes, the Versus team was exactly that. FF12 battle designers, TLR writers and even people from Dirge who stayed on projects involving teams led by people under Kawazu and Matsuno. If what you said about games are a medium of self-expression holds true then I can see why you were really looking forward to it.>and why Ba**y flipped on ot.
>>3610410Got it, any reason to skip 2? People elsewhere are saying it's hard but I see conflicting opinions.
>>3610476nta but, no, romancing saga 2 is one of the best, however i don't think the original super famicom version is translated
>>3610479Bummer, the steam version it is then.
>>3610476No reason to skip 2, it's considered one of the peaks of the series and a legendary game in general, which is why the remake is getting so much fanfare.Of course, you'll see some conflicting opinions but SaGa's largely like that in general, it's certainly not a casual game, some design choices are starting to show their age and some parts of it are maybe a bit too obfuscated for its own good, but it's a really good RPG that shows just how far ahead of the competition Kawazu and the team were, the breadth of options in terms of progression, the quest writing and overall the effort that went into the amount of mechanics is truly impressive, especially for a 1993 game made by a "B" team.It's even more impressive when you factor how many things Kawazu and Koizumi fixed coming from the first game, they already had some really nice ideas but most of them were implemented very shoddily or with some glaring oversights, RS2 fixes so many concepts from RS1 it's insane, the polishing and evolution of the enemy symbol mechanics alone is very impressive, many notable mainstay mechanics such as the swappable formations and sparking/glimmering were introduced with this game too so it's an extremely important game when it comes to the series' history.It also has a really good story with some amazing moments, which coupled with the sheer amount of quest choices you can make make it very pleasant to replay, you could play through it several times and still find something new, a different way to play through it or some new challenge.Pick up the remake and go to town, it also has a lot of QoL fixes and options to make it a bit less overwhelming to new players.
>>3610474Takatsugu Nakazawa is in chargeEvolution of XV seamlessness and party dynamics with more PS1 era FF stuff like optional party members and stuff like exploring a cave from one side and existing the cave on the other side to a complete new location on the other sideSomething as simple as that makes you feel like you're going on a big adventure journeyMix XVs real time action RPG aspects with X-2 sphere system but as classic FF jobsHave party members have actual world interaction, not just only able to run around on flat groundHave sidequests have actual bespoke proper cutscenes not those lower quality standing idle and talk scenes that reuse the same animationHave sidequests be stuff you can just stumble upon like a random haunted house out in the middle of nowhere or optional towns with their own conflicts going onHave an airship but it makes the world like PS1 FF/Type-0 world mapstyle when in itWhen outside and just running the fields around then its seamless 1:1 scale like XV from town/city to dungeons to fieldHave more events tied specifically to a new city you enter with a character associated with a locationSyngergizeMake sure the villain is a counterpart to the protagonist or has some actual personal connection or relationship with them, not some random ayylmao with nothing to do with the protagAll the good FFs have a proper connection between the protag and villainMake sure the final boss also is the main villain, not an ayylmao showing up out of nowhereThis is what he wants for 17.
>>3604710Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Mind-blowing to find out that the world is flat and slowly eroding away which is what the villains from the first game were trying to prevent as their hometown was about to fall into oblivion.The tower was the only cool concept about this game. Big enough to host mini-worlds.
>>3611180I played Lost Age and I don't remember a single thing about it.
>>3604560>Yeah, I almost bought it but I saw this and went back to old faithful emulation.Funny thing is that notice isn't about the English version. It's a translation of a notice regarding changes to the Japanese game text.Did they even make any new changes to the English text? It was already censored to begin with, bananas et al.
>>3605312My first playthrough of Saga 1 was one human+three monsters. I pretended my human was a necromancer and kept skeletons, zombies, and ghosts.I felt like I just blew through the game with that setup, I pretty much always had monsters with strong magic or attacks and it made it trivial to cut through a lot of the game. By the time I encountered Suzaku, I finally started grinding stats for my human who carried the party to the end of the game. I did saw the creator though.
>>3611593>Did they even make any new changes to the English text?yes, a shitton, at least in saga1, which is one thing i don't like about the collectionitem names were changed, enemy names were changed, the dialogue was changed, it's essentially a complete relocalization and takes out the goofy charm that the original localization had
>>3611630well fuck
What a quest. 12 hours of dungeoneering and talking to dragons who want me to go get an item from another dragon who wants me to get an item from another dragon who wants me to get an item from another dragon.
>>3611640yeah...that fetch quest broke my patience and i decided to just kill all of them and keep the items for myself
>>3611654I just hope the summons are worth it.
>>3611659Eh, Tiny Feather can instakill Saruin due to poor programming, other than that not really, they're much better in the remake even if you can't do the aforementioned trick.Also the four elemental lord questlines, while largely the same, are handled better there, not to mention you have more tangible rewards for either helping them or choosing to kill them, did you meet Galahad already?
>>3611778>did you meet Galahad already?Yeah, I used him for his Ice Sword and gave him the boot so I could get Hawk back. Finding Hawk again was its own adventure too.
>>3611778>started with Gray>had no clue what to do so just ran around and killed stuff in the plains till I got bored.>got rid of the bitch and kept Galahad>wander around from city to city but there’s nothing to do>found isthmus and just started wandering around killing stuff>got bored and left to all sorts of cities trying to find something to do>there’s nothing to do>I mean I fought a lot of battlesI eventually got to crystal city and have a full party but now I’m pretty sure gray and Galahad are carrying
>>3611893You just gotta walk around and talk to everyone you see in every town. I check up on everyone I pass by whenever I finish a dungeon and rack up more battles.
>>3611883in minstrel song it's hilarious when you do this, it shows this dramatic shot of galachad looking up at the camera so sad as the ice sword floats on up to pyrix
>>3611883Oh, you didn't try to rob him blind, very honorable of you, I guess you're RPing as Albert after all and he probably wouldn't do it
>>3611936Technically I did rob him, but yeah I wasn't gonna kill him for it. I usually default to good guy paladin runs on my first playthrough of anything that gives me a choice in the matter.>>3611933That sounds sad.
>>3611939Yeah, Albert is probably the better character to do that since he's the archetypical noble and selfless young hero.Robbing and killing Galahad is a big meme in the community though, Galahad and the Ice Sword were so iconic the Ice Sword reappears in multiple SaGa games and the quest itself is also referenced a couple of times, people liked it so much Galahad is featured in multiple collaborations from the meme public wifi in the Saga prefecture to ice cream collaborations and even ice sword popsicle molds.
>>3611939it is, but i reloaded and killed pyrix instead, and kept galachad in my party since i recruited him early on in the crystal city temple and didn't want to have to cultivate up any more characters to replace him
Decided to do yet another RS2 run to prepare for the remakeForgot how brutal the early game is but beelining for the Splasher is still as good as ever.
>>3612145I replayed RS2 recently and minmaxed like crazy.I got libra with lvl5 water&wind after fighting 7 battles, went south after the intro, powered up versus pyrohydras, then killed the termite queen and rocbouquet with gerard.Was fun.
>>3611972Are you a moon person? Does Japan have any funny memes from the game boy games?
Is 15 the max weapon level? It's kinda funny how sparse information about this game is.
>>3611633A lot of it was possibly due to copyright words, like Red bulls (didn't exist back then), colt, and many more. You'd need to play the original and the rerelease side by side to catch most of it since it is subtle. I believe in the original it was called a N. Bomb instead of an A. Bomb. Still mentions the kid is dead.The only change that actually bothers me is the T260 final boss name. I can't remember what they changed it to, but in the original it's named Genocide Heart. Many minor changes as well such as Life Sprinkler called Spray of Life. The former sounds better, but they still convey the same meaning.
>>3612360Hawke, my beloved...And yes, the max weapon level is 15, weapon level in RS1 is mostly there for you to unlock the four techs on weapon, RS1 doesn't have sparking so you learn weapon techs by grinding their internal levels, this is a system that was never used again.The NDS remake of SaGa 3 sort of brought it back in a way, in the sense that all weapons have four built in techs again, but in that game you use sparking mechanics to learn techs, and unlike RS1 if a weapon does have a tech in common with another you don't have to learn it again if you learned said tech on a previous weapon, making it a vaguely similar but much better system. >>3612505Genocide Heart got changed to Heretic Heart in the localization, the various instances of ass got changed to butt, and Mesarthim's nipple pasties got turned into a bikini.Other than that the localized text got quite a few fixes outside of some stray changes to some techs that were actually localized correctly, it's pretty jarring since most of the wrong shit got fixed but a couple of things that were previously correct got changed for no reason, some details are also still not translated correctly since it's really just a revision of the old localization rather than a completely new one.
24 hours of playtime and this is only the second time I've heard the boss theme.Why didn't the Jewel Beast have it????
Got a lucky Poseidon Spear drop during a fight in the termite nest, also splurged enough money for the Cross Claymore.Time for fish fucking.>>3613099Jewel Beast isn't really considered a boss in the first game, it's also a victim of cut content, Minstrel Song has a pretty lengthy and complex questline and the Jewel Beast itself is no pushover there.
Being a Zelda fan paid off. I'm ready to be done with this game.>>3613308How is Jewel Beast not considered a boss? He was a much bigger deal than anything else I faced up to that point. Very silly development choices here.
>>3613530romancing saga 1 was a very ambitious (to a fault) and unfinished game, it was kawazu and team's first blush with super famicom development, things would be better in the follow up and much better for this game specifically in the later ps2 remake
>>3613625This final boss music is making up for a lot of the pain I struggled through.
>everyone dead but Barbara>throw out TinyFeather>one stone beak>it landsKINO
Looking forward to Minstrel Song
>>3613530Again, cut content, RS1 had a lot of cut content and you really can't understand just how much was cut from the game until you play Minstrel Song and see the fully realized vision Kawazu had for the game.A lot of quests were cut, recruitable characters were also cut, even some Fatestone quests were cut and that's way worse than the Jewel Beast not getting some fanfare since those are supposed to be the big main quests in the game, Kawazu had big plans and trusted Nintendo would make an exception and allow him to use a bigger cartridge than the standard ones of the time, Nintendo refused at the last minute and so he had to cut a lot of shit, it's less of a development choice and more of a planning mistake as he really shouldn't have waited until the last minute to ask Nintendo for a bigger cartridge.>>3613647Romancing SaGa 2 next?
>>3613647i'm not looking forward to the romancing saga 2 remake becoming the first saga remake that's worse than the original
>>3613664I was gonna do Minstrel Song next and then the remasters of 2 and 3.>>3613680What's wrong with it?
>>3613684If you're going through the series in order and even bothered with the OG RS1 you may as well keep going and move on to RS2Minstrel Song is an incredible game and a fully realized version of the original, but it also incorporates many mechanics from later games which you'll probably appreciate more if you experience them in their original forms
>>3613684>What's wrong with it?it's not being done by kawazu and his team (presumably because they had been working on emerald beyond, and are currently working on saga frontier 2 remaster/remake and unlimited saga remake) and the outsourced team who is doing it are taking a lot of "creative liberties" with it that are either dumbing it down or just outright breaking the game based on how it was originally designedi don't even think the rearranged music is being done by kenji ito either
>>3613691>i don't even think the rearranged music is being done by kenji ito eitherIt is. Soundtrack sounds pretty great so far from this and the other videos SE's been uploadinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T1nHS97pBM
>>3613684I agree with>>3613688, you should keep going in release order at this point.
>>3613688>>3613701I guess I'll do RS2 then. I'll have to squeeze the Wonderswan SaGa 1 in at some point for consistency too in that case.
Hmmm I don't think this is right.
I'll have to find another rom.
From what I can find after a brief search, the original version of RS2 is mostly untranslated. Menus and items work but it seems like the dialogue is fucked.That's unfortunate. Now what?
>>3613944There's only the remaster. Apparently it is difficult to inject the text into the game. It isn't a simple matter of putting in the English text in place of the Japanese text.
>>3613944skip it and go to to rs3 i guess
>>3613944Play the remaster, I have no idea why you would play the original.You can also play the remaster in Classic mode which deactivates all the content they put after the SNES version but keeps the bugifxes, there's no reason to play the original versions of the game if a remaster is available, same goes for RS3, Frontier and Minstrel Song.
>>3614025no, there are plenty of reasons to play the originals of things, that's an absurdly reductionist and narrow minded view to think that just because newer and "better" thing means that there's no reasons to experience the original thingin the case of rs2 though, the only legitimate reason for not experiencing the original is that it is untranslated and from what i can tell, completely untranslatable due to the way the scripting in the game works and the extreke difference in verbosity between the original kanji-filled japanese and fully spelled out proper english
>>3614065There's no reason to play the original version of RS2 unless you really want to see how the FoW filter on dashing behaves, that's the only thing the remaster does not keep together with some annoying bugs and glitches like Sword Barrier working on more things than it should or the various save corruption glitches, although it does keep the more beloved glitches and oversights like the jumping man in the thieves' guild or the various exploits like the final emperor skip glitch, in fact there's even a cheevo for that.Purism for the sake of purism is just another form of reductionism, and if you actually cared about experiencing the original thing then you shouldn't have played any of these games because you don't know japanese in the first place, so you haven't really experienced any of them.For the records, RS3's english patch is also an incomplete, MT translated mess so I guess you'd have to skip that too by your reasoning and go straight into Frontier, and Wonderswan RS1 also doesn't have a TL patch, you really shouldn't do this to yourself and I say this as somebody who did play the original versions of the games too as I grew up with them.
>>3614086don't try to strawman me, i wasn't making an appeal to purism. it's about archaeology, it's about understanding where things came from and exactly how far along they progressed with each iteration, which is what op is doing whether he intended to originally or not
>>3614086>>3614261I was originally going to just do the remaster because it seems to be the same game with some extra stuff, but others in the thread made a good point in that I suffered through SNES RS1 so I may as well just do the SNES RS2. But I don't speak Japanese so it's a moot point anyway, I'll just have to do the remaster. The question now is if I do the remasters of RS2 and RS3, then Frontier, then Minstrel Song, or if I just skip to Minstrel Song and then jump back to Frontier after all the Romancing games.I did already buy Minstrel Song and it's like the third game I've bought this month already so I'll probably just do that one.
>>3614272When I said you may as well move on to RS2 I did mean the remaster, but I can see why you thought otherwise. The rule of thumb for the series is to generally stick to the remasters whenever possible since they're largely the same games but with some extra content here and there and some quality of life stuffSaga2/3/RS1 are interesting exceptions though, as they all have full-blown remakes that are substantially different from the originals, and going into the remakes having experienced them in their original forms is pretty neat.
What's the deal with Saga 3? I heard Kawazu wasn't involved in that one. Still worth it or should I skip to RS after I beat 2?
>>3614307I just played through it and it's much more Final Fantasy than SaGa. It doesn't have any of the mechanics of the first two games. It does still feel like the first two games otherwise though. It was okay enough, I'd say play it. You can beat it in one sitting because there's no grinding for random skill ups.
I'm surprised you guys like the rs2 remaster, it's basically the same thing but with worse graphics and iirc kawazu wasn't involved
>>3614307It's a decent enough game on its own right, just not much of a saga game. You don't need to play it necessarily but it's worth considering if you ever get around to playing the DS remakes.
>>3605064>Emerald Beyond was so fucking goodlol>People trash it and SSG for their budget budget has nothing to do with it
>>3614349I'll bite, why isn't EB good
That's better.Gerard and Therese both glimmered in the first battle so I think I've got this game in the bag.
I just finished the first GB game and despite the shoddy localization, it was great. I'm surprised how little I had to grind compared to other games of the time (DQ 1/2, FF1/2 etc.) I really only grinded near the middle and end to get my mutant's hp up and both times found it was completely unnecessary. Should I go for 2, or move straight to Romancing Saga?
>>3615001Second game is more of the same but with an added robot race and more controllable esper stat growth so play that one if you had fun.
Is that an Elden Ring reference?!?!?!?!
>>3615054Make sure to explore the Somon mansion thoroughly since it's one of the rare places where you can't go back to after you're done with it and there's one really good ring in there.
>>3615093Too late. I guess I should have checked for hidden walls?
>>3615105Did you already kill Kujinshi?You go there twice, check the fireplace on the ground floor for a secret passage
>>3614369don't mind him, he's the falcompedo, any game that isn't a visual novek dating sim masquerading as an rpg made by "falcom" (not actually made by falcom) is shit to his one-dimensional fanboy ass
>>3614307>I heard Kawazu wasn't involved in that one.correct>Still worth it or should I skip to RS after I beat 2?eh, it's fine, it's just not really a saga game, it's by the team who would later do final fantasy mystic quest/final fantasy usa which is a fine game on its own, but it's neither a final fantasy nor a saga, it's this weird unique eldritch chimera which is an abomination to purists of either series but plenty enjoyable if you aren't
>>3615001it was designed to be played and beaten in the time it took to take a plane ride from japan to la iirc, but yeah that's one of the reasons why it's my #1 turn based jrpg of all time, it doesn't ask too much, it doesn't overstay its welcome, but yet it scratches that rpg itch all the same, and it doesn't take itself too seriously and it's a meta commentary unto itself, a really nice self-contained bite-sized unit
>>3603979Dragon Warrior Monsters is always a blast to play and only faggots with no taste disagree.
>>3614336>you guysThis is a general from /vm/. You are very naive.
>>3615275Is the second one also that short? I love short RPGs in general, but nobody makes them like that, with a few rare exceptions.
>>3615371i own the original on GB and the DS joker one.they are in the back log. if you could only play one which one should i play?
Starting the second GB game, I went with Human, Human, Mutant, Monster for the first one, is this a good party for the second one? Seems humans level like mutants now, so could be slower to level but I'm not sure as the manual says they level faster anyways.
>>3615606>Starting the second GB game, I went with Human, Human, Mutant, Monster for the first one, is this a good party for the second one?robots are too powerful to pass up in SaGa 2. they get more powerful as you equip stronger stuff on them. also you can buy upgrades for them.but like in S1's human, it gets expensive and grindy if you use more than 2 robots.
>give Gerard the Lion Helm>he still gets paralyzedY-you too...>>3615606Use a robot, they're absolutely insane. My robot carried the whole run for me.
>>3615695Lion Helm doesn't have paralysis defense, only Dark iircWatcher can drop Rabbit equipment though and iirc Rabbit Ears do have paralysis defense
>>3615721Yeah I was thinking of the Rabbit Ears
>>3615661>>3615695Noted, thanks! I didn't get too far with the 2 human party so I'll just restart. Also I'm noticing that different weapons up different stats, should I have my human up either Agility, or Strength? Or should they alternate between both types of weapons?
Got that ring, thanks anon.
>>3615579Call me a blinded by nostalgia fag but I unironically would pick the first one for the GBC. There is something about the 8-bit music and all the references and callbacks to the old NES games I also grew up playing. They are both great games.
>>3615750Nice.After Gerard gets his costume change you'll officially be out of the prologue, and the game opens up, past this point remember to sit on your throne often as the game rolls a die for your emperor to ask for expansions on Avalon if some are available, so do it regularly as many of those are vital unless you're doing challenge runs.Also, while you can sleep around the world in Inns and various other places, Gerard's bedroom will be sort of special for a couple of reasons, I won't spoiler all of them but I do suggest you to sleep in it after your costume change and see if something happens, especially after hearing the rumours from some NPCs in the pub.
>>3615758>past this point remember to sit on your throne oftenYeah the manual said to sit on your throne and sleep in your bed because stuff will happen so I've been doing it every time I walk past.Should I remove any rare gear from my people before I fight Kujinshi? If I lose someone will their stuff get sent to my treasury or is it gone?
>>3615760All your gear is sent to the storage after somebody dies, your party gets wiped or there's a generation change, you don't lose anything you pick up, ever, that includes key items.
>>3615762Nice, good to know. Also, Knee Split seems extremely overpowered.
>>3615764It sorta is, Stun is very good in this game as nearly anything that isn't one of the Seven can be stunned, status effects are king in RS2, but Stun, Dark, Berserk and Instant Death are by far the most valuable and overpowered of the bunch.Which reminds me, at some point in the game you'll get to a town named Mobelm, in the North Longit region.There's a fairly cool questline in there about one of the recruitable classes in the game, however there's also a completely missable dungeon related to that, so once you do get there and find out about the armed merchants, talk to that one ship captain in the harbor, he will tell you about the Messina Mines and how to reach them.
>>3615567i'd say it's considerably longer but still relatively short as far as rpgs in general go
>>3615579the first joker game is the only dqm game i ever played and i thoroughly enjoyed it back then when it came out, not sure how i would feel about it now though as i haven't replayed it to re-evaluate it
New RS2R trailer and demo my dudeshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRWoyq8bozUNew Seven scenes, new classes, remaster classes incorporated into the main campaign, and final emperor
>>3615951Nice, I was wondering if they would drop a demo
>director barely has any credits, first time directing>lead planner and battle planner seemingly have no credits at allNot the strongest first impression, hopefully they know what they're doing
>>3615951>Coppelia also got turned into a sameface waifu>MORE classes when all possible niches have been already covered>One of those if the fucking mermaid to rub salt into the wound of nereids being losing their fish part>Those absurd damage numbers>That atrocious english dubMeh, these people really don't know what they're doing, I guess they will bait some normalfags with this at least, and now most of the stuff about the Seven Heroes' backstory will be in a non mobage gameOh well, let's try out the demo and see just how bad things are
I may have to restart RS2. I didn't have a mage for this slime dungeon and had to grind to get someone killed and then grind the new mage up but now enemies are kinda getting unreasonable to deal with.
>>3615982You shouldn't play RS2 with that mindset, the game is literally made for you to NOT restart over and over the moment you hit a wall.
>>3615982don't restarteven if you die, keep going
>>3615982you don't actually need a mage for slimesmartials arts has a tech called ki blast, it's basically non-physical attack and will work for things that are highly physical/blunt resistant/immune like slimes and ghosts
>>3615987>>3615992I'll persevere then. A new party for a new age.>>3616004Good to know, I'll pump some more martial arts level on my emperor then. I have an actual monk now too.
The remake seems fine, but RS2 definitely deserves better especially given the quality of every other remake in the series
>>3616005yeah the dragon dudes or whatever they're called, the masked wrestlers, are great martial artists, as are ninjas (remaster exclusive), thieves are not bad martial artists either, mercenaries (not the pirate kind) are also decent martial artists as well
>>3616004The slime boss is immune to crushing attacks like ki blast (which is just a long range physical attack)Mages are your best options at the start of the game but you can also deal a bit of damage with bows. And the claymore if you already developed it. And if you already cleared the canal fort you can obtain even stronger tools.
>>3616021Oh, do classes actually effect skill growth and not just starting stats?
If the demo is anything to go by, this remake is going to be trash, it's also tiny as fuck, the demo ends after you beat Kujinshi in Somon with Leon.Can't say I like what I played, honestly wouldn't even call it a SaGa game, it's just that bad.>>3616042Not really.Classes give you a specific stat layout and access to specific sparking tables, but the growth is the same among all classes, some specific classes like Molemen come with unremovable, unique equipment with special properties and some other specific perks like regeneration if the field is attuned to a certain element, but that's about it, and of course most recruitables teach new formations if they're chosen as emperors.Brawlers are good because they can learn martial art techniques and are rather decent in terms of stats too when it comes to using them, but they have no native proficiency outside of martial arts so their TP/MP is rather low, most Armed Merchants can learn a lot of axe techs and various stuff like spear techs depending on who you're using, but stat wise they're actually not all that great at using axes ironically, and are also terrible casters, Light Infantry change their spark tables also according to their gender and are general all rounders in terms of stats, but their biggest advantage is that they come with A LOT of native proficiencies so they have absurd TP pools that lets them spam shit all day unlike Brawlers, and so on.All classes have specific pros and cons when it comes to what they bring to the table, some classes may be worthwhile in order to learn weapon techs that other classes can't learn but can actually use better, some classes are good because of the their natural proficiencies which gives them specific niches, some other classes have unique gimmicks like Molemen being immune to mind attacks or Salamanders having enormous heat resistance due to their unique unremovable armor.
>revenge of the seven is 30 fucking gb>dragon quest monsters the dark prince is only 10gbwhat the shit?>both of them have denuvoyeah i'm sitting this one out, sounds like i won't be missing out on much though, still a shame
>>3616137This game has a lot of voice acting, and is also a much bigger game, it's not a surpise
>>3616391yeah i can tell it has a lot of voice acting, and is precisely why i hate voice acting, it ends up taking up more space than the game itself, literal bloat
>>3616416The JP voice acting is pretty good at least, it's also not fully voice acted like MS, most NPCs are silent and even named ones only have spoken lines in cutscenesIf you don't like bloat you have bigger issues to worry about, namely the new crafting system, the new magic research etc.
>>3616416Voice acting in vidya is such a pointless waste. It can be good sometimes, but it really adds nothing. Normalfags think it's such an important thing too, like if a game isn't fully voice acted they lose their shit for some reason.
>>3616422and yet minstrel song remastered manages to be a half of the size, and it doesn't really have much voice acting compared to a modern game, since it was a ps2 game originally and had to fit on a ps2 dvd, but even minstrel song remastered's 15gb makes me wince a little, scarlet grace did it right, only 3.5gb for a game with voice acting only where it matters: flavor exclamations during battles
>>3616438Anon, MS is a PS2 game, you can't possibly compare the two as much as I think this demake will be largely shit
>>3616442actually yes i can, voice acting filesize bloat needs to stop yesterday
>>3616566MS is the worst example you can use since it's the only fully voiced game in the series, if any game got VA bloating that's the prime example of it
>>3616585and it's almost 5x the file size of scarlet grace
>>3616643Scarlet Grace is a Vita game that has basically no complex assets and is 90% text, some PNG images and a couple of simple 3d meshes for characters and monsters, what the fuck is this supposed to mean when compared to a Switch game with actual dungeons and towns?What the fuck is this satanic level of retardation?
This gets boss music????
What happens here if you chose a male emperor?
I didn't even intend to get this boat.
And now I understand I should have hired the guy.
>>3617595Yeah, in many dungeons there's boss nodes that are actually variable encounters that are slightly above your current BR and can net you completely different fights, it's not just unique bosses.>>3617605Depends on the personality which is tied to the class, the "wild" classes like the brawlers just beat the shit out of the guard for instance, the "honorable" classes announce their presence and make the merchants flee etc.Many events in the game have this sort of internal variations which leads to some small differences in how events play out, if you pay attention classes and genders also have different speech patterns when interacting with NPCs.
>>3617827>Many events in the game have this sort of internal variations which leads to some small differences in how events play out, if you pay attention classes and genders also have different speech patterns when interacting with NPCs.That's really cool, this game has more going on than most modern RPGs, let alone SNES era RPGs.
>>3618036Yeah, it's mostly flavour stuff but in some cases there are actual gameplay implications, the best example of that would be the alterate route to the Landship that doesn't involve using your Strategist, it's only available as an option for certain class personalities, and is sort of a hard mode to solve the quest as well.There are many, many details to RS2 that you won't notice without multiple replays, the game is really much deeper than it lets on and there's many neat options for quest completions and also some specific outcomes that modify how other quests play out, it was very ahead of its time and a testament to Kawazu and his team's talent.The massive jump in general quality from RS1 alone is impressive as I'm sure you've noticed, simple battle mechanics are on another level and enemy symbols are way more balanced and with actual, complex behaviour patterns.
I've been playing the RS2 RoS demo (first game besides the gameboy ones that I play) and I'm finding it more linear than I'd expected. Is it the remaster or is RS2 just like that?
>>3620178As far as I know the demo is just the first 30 minutes or so until Leon dies. The game opens up after Gerard becomes emperor.
>>362018030 minutes?? I've clocked in an hour and a half and still haven't gotten to that point. Either way, noted.
>>3620182In the original game it's like the first 30 minutes but I would guess they expanded the scope.
>>3620184Gotcha. Honestly, if the whole game is going to be bloated I'll probably just play the 2d remaster instead.
So do I have a time limit to get all these seven heroes? I haven't met one yet.
This party is not very good...
>>3620297no
>>3617027it's fine that the point just goes completely over your head because you are too autistically retarded to see the forest for the trees, it comes with the territory i guess
>>3620178RS2 is linear until the second fight with Kujinshi, it's like one of the prologue sections in the other two RS games, if you played RS3 that one's also linear until you get out of Loanne, the second fight with Kujinshi is the breaking point of the prologue section.This demo stops after the first fight so you can't really see that, after that there's a small fight section in Avalon and then you can fight Kujinshi again, or clean up a small side dungeon and fight Kujinshi again.This remake is very bloated so you can no longer blast through the prologue like in the original, mostly because the cutscenes are longer and the fight themselves are also longer due to the change to CTB and various other details, they added a lot of tedious shit in general and also made dungeons way bigger than in the original game, it's very noticeable in the Somon Mansion where they not only changed the layout entirely but also added a wholly new section with the patio portion of the dungeon.
This or DQ monsters