I just finished playing SaGa 2 / Final Fantasy Legends II. I've read some people say this is the best of the original GB trilogy, but I don't know, I thought it was good but I never jived with it as much as the first game.I get why they would change the humans and espers stat gains to be more like FF2-style, since it was easy to max everything in the first game so this forces you to do "builds" more unless you grind like a maniac, but I thought that went well the brisk pace of the first game. The way 2 does it feels odd since you would want high AGI on everyone to preempt enemies, but if you're just killing things efficiently then you're only going to be raising your primary attacking stat, and trying to grind a stat by using a weaker move hoping you'll maybe get a +1 at the end feels bad. So you end up with with a high STR character with high DPS but slow, high AGI character who goes first but just okay DPS, or high MAG character who's slow and just okay DPS but is good at nuking and healing.And I guess my biggest issue then is that robots just seem straight up better than humans. It actually takes less money to fully gear up a robot, and it gives them good stats right away, AND they get a damage buff when using artillery weapons, AND they restore weapon uses by resting. The only benefit humans seem to have is that they're hypothetically the strongest and most flexible if you grinded them to be fully maxed out.Neither game has any amazing writing, but I thought the first game was paced well and wrung all it could out of its several world ideas, did some quick storylines with a balance of comedy and tragedy, and fighting God at the end was fun. The second game feels like no individual world or idea sticks around long enough, and the overall tone feels like it's moved too far into "wacky". It doesn't feel like it builds up any villain much, and the final conflict is just cleaning up something similar to a natural disaster that was barely foreshadowed.
Yeah that's basically how I felt too. Unfortunately going back to 1 afterwards has it feeling a tad barebones, making me wish there was a happy medium, like a SaGa 1.5 or maybe a DS remake of it.
>>3881707did you play the ds remake? i like it better
>>3881707Yeah, this is more or less how I feel too. It's a weird complaint, but I feel like espers don't change often enough in FFL2. I'd get skills that just hung around forever, where in FFL1 I'd have to redo my strategy every couple of battles because my esper had forgotten how to cast fire but could now resist paralysis or some other shit. That was weirdly more fun. On the other hand, robots are cool and I like robots.
>>3883320Most of the time espers just get hard stuck with skills in FFLI since you can't rotate skills so you'd get three useless skills and one that constantly changes. While in FFLII you can rotate what skill gets changed and most of the time the skills are useful during combat.>>3881707>And I guess my biggest issue then is that robots just seem straight up better than humansThey're more money dependant than humans, and they have a low mana stat which makes them extra screwed against spells. Humans can grow fast and can use magical and physical attacks. One robot in the party is nice, but more than one and then you can just jam things you find in the dungeon onto one, and robots can't do hand me down weapons since equipping and unequipping items eats up durability. Final Fantasy Legend II is liked because it's a bit better graphically compared to the spartan looking over worlds of the first game, changes that enhance game play like changing which spell can get replaced to upping the power of monsters (monsters are pretty potent for a large chunk of FFLII), and introducing a new and fun race to tinker with. The world's are fine with their own self contained stories, but there was still an over arching aspect that the second game has that the first one does as well. First one is finding paradise and then trying to tackle the big bad Asura. The second game leads you on the thread of finding your father and then learning that various gods are trying to collect the magi for their own use. Both games have great worlds. Love the destroyed city running from Suzaku that continually pursues you. Also like the various worlds like the one with Venus and her city of beautiful people, to a world in which giants inhabit and use potions to shrink to blend in with people.
>>3883304No. There's a bunch of old Square Enix games I haven't played that I'm going through chronologically. I'll get to the DS remakes someday probably.>>3883320I can see that. It's convenient how in 2 the esper will only ever replace the skill they have lowest on the list, but there's not much reason to ever replace the starting full-screen ice/fire attack (except I guess if you get one off the strongest two attacks, which I never got) or the Cure spell so you're probably not changing things much as you go. I also got lucky and my esper got the passive that makes them immune to all elements relatively early on against a boss, so that was another skill I wasn't going to mess with. It did feel like espers didn't change skills as often, and when they did it was almost always just messing around with elemental resistances/weaknesses or a basic Fire/Blizzard/Thunder spell.
>>3883459That's my experience, too. FFL2 is the superior game in basically every way, especially for just how primitive those games really are.
>>3881707
I thought FFL2 was a big upgrade over the previous game.IMO robo robo mutant monster is ideal for new players, but human robo mutant monster is also fine.Robots are great at single target damage with agi-based weapons, can outspeed enemy groups and blast them with guns/bows/cannons/etc, can tank well, and late in the game can switch to 100% accurate strength weapons. They're comparable to FFL1 humans in a way, but I much prefer the way robots power up.Mutants get (and keep!) valuable spells, the most notable of which is the 'warning' passive. Eventually you may get good passives and drop your healing and attacking spells to make room. Far better than in FFL1 where all your skills are prone to disappear and weapons are all you can rely on. I think it's best to use only one mutant because you'll give her HP and mana stat boosters, plus you don't really want another slow unit in random battles.Monsters are sometimes underwhelming but once you get a decent one it'll be considerably stronger than your mutant. And you don't need to spend money on gear. I feel like they're easier to use in FFL2 than in FFL1. Still, one is enough as you don't want to deal with extra randomness or to split meat between multiple characters.Humans are like mutants that have higher HP and AGI in exchange for losing spells. Don't expect them to match robots in single-target damage unless you grind. Instead they can use weapons that don't depend on your stats for damage. Weapons like the samurai bow, laser gun, and martial arts can activate a human's AGI growth. Others like the tank cannon and aegis magi are worth using even though they aren't good for growth. When you obtain a new weapon you can give it to your human and pass to your robot when it's almost depleted. Unlike robots, humans have nonzero mana stats so they will take less damage from magic attacks and heal more HP. Overall I think most players would fare better with a second robot, but a human can still fare adequately.
>>3881707Completely agree on the story. The first game had a great sense of intrigue and the world of the tower sometimes seemed enigmatic and bleak, which motivates you to ascend the tower and look for the top, it accomplishes a lot with the sparse dialogue of a gameboy game. SaGa II has this tone of being a jovial world hopping trip and just feels less exciting overall, theres no sense of mystery or wonder, it feels like being a tourist group instead of a lone band of adventurers. That whole lost father trope and trying to develop your protagonist character into something other than a blank slate also felt uncalled for and I was satisfied with how they were handled in the first game.
>>3883320>I'd get skills that just hung around foreverIIRC I didnt realize that only the top slot on your spell list gets overwritten with new spells so my espers were stuck with fire for like the whole game.
First game was more memorable for me
I can hardly recall anything that happened in 2 even when looking at my screenshots
III was bland as fuck though, but maybe I'm partly to blame for sticking to an all human party the entire game. It's just that every time I tried to change them to something else it felt like a downgrade.
>>3884003>>3883929I will agree that in content and gameplay mechanics it's 100 times better than the first, in that I just wanted to get over the slog battles faster so I skipped through the last 3 levels fast with the chainsaw while FFL 2 was a treat>body level>Odin>smasherbot>your dad is an archmage with fucking guns and fights at your side2 is much closer to Frontier which is great.
>>3883304>Goddess of DestinySOVL extracted with surgical precision
