A look back at: SaGa Frontier 2

Ah yes, another SaGa game. Another moment of momentary frustration with regards to gameplay, dealing with highly damaging foes, only limited HP, weird stat growths, and scaling gameplay. At least both SaGa Frontier games tried to work well with their Western releases in regards to difficulty, but they are still among the hardest RPG games for the Playstation.

SaGa Frontier 2 may actually be harder than the previous SaGa Frontier. While it can admittingly be easier to learn new skills in battle, via those duel battles, those are a double-edged sword depending on what you duel. And a game over for just one character going down isn't fun. Then there's the dilemma that I've had regarding the SaGa's enemy scaling: should I continue to grind my ass off to ensure my characters are super powerful with great skills learned? Because doing that will end up with the enemies being just as strong, if not stronger. Or should I try to speedrun through areas avoiding encounters, fighting through easier enemies? This of course becomes an issue when it comes to boss time, as those bosses would have tens of thousands of HP and either take forever or result in total party kills.

And then you have the overall nonlinearity of the game with quite a lot of discrepancies. This is something I didn't enjoy. Certain party characters don't show up for lots of scenarios in general, making grinding these characters an afterthought. Only Ginny's party by the end of the Knights scenario was worth grinding in any way. I also noticed that many parts of Gustave's scenario are entirely cutscene-based, and I finished with his scenarios way too quickly. Would it have made the game better to have more playing involved with his scenarios instead of giving characters offscreen deaths all the time? And the idea of fake Gustaves, ugh. The Knights family scenarios are more gameplay-oriented and often make a lot of sense, although the main villain being this "egg" is also a bit silly. So yeah, this is a silly game that will throw you for many, many loops.

A look back at: SaGa Frontier

Wonderful, I managed to finish seven entire stories worth of one game. One rather hard RPG too, then again every SaGa RPG is way tougher than its contemporaries. Seriously though, does difficulty make the game good or bad? Endgame bosses definitely are tough enough to scrape through even a middle-leveled party with ease, although with the right techniques, usage of combo attacks, and the always fun DSC, it's possible to turn those tables right around. I'm still not a fan of the encounter system that started with the Romancing SaGa games, but it's a little easier here.

Now emphasis on "easier", because I know how hard it is to survive encounters that easily do triple digit numbers of damage, and some scenarios are made harder than others. I always go for the Grail card first if I do the Arcane quest, since I mentioned how annoying the monsters are in the swamp for that scenario the more I leveled up. No bosses in that quest apart from Suzaku for the Shield card, and that's excepting the dragon bosses and the optional Suzaku recruit. I guess apart from the combos and the other stuff that I mentioned in the full review, the other thing I like is something not present in SaGa Frontier that I hated in the first Romancing SaGa, timing constraints in accordance to levels outlawing the presence of some events. Although some characters are not able to do some quests, either due to mutual exclusion or to character constraints, they at least make it not impossible to do the majority of them. That's the beef of SaGa Frontier, the sidequests. Sure, the main quests are generally good, but spending time doing the sidequests and getting the unique treasures is always welcome.

I'd love to see more out of this game though. Why so much cut content? Why does Squaresoft have a horrible habit of rushing things? They did that with the entirety of Disc 2 in Xenogears, and they cut loads of content for a release for this game. Asellus was supposed to have more storyline in dungeons that are now fully optional, for instance. Fuse's entire arc is cut completely too. Of course, I don't want to complain here, I'm happy with what was given. Especially since I probably would've taken another month just to do more quests, and on home stretches I tend to try to hurry up. Given that I decided to empty an entire memory card for seven saves and system data, I guess I have got my work cut out for me with this game.

A look back at: Romancing SaGa 3

At this writing, I am officially now all caught up with putting all my old RPG reviews from TheTopTens onto "look backs" in this blog. This includes Romancing SaGa 3, which I actually just finished just a day or so ago and written my full review on it. So yeah, more SaGa stuff. I've played more games here than I have any other franchise apart from Suikoden and Final Fantasy.

I won't walk away from it impressed though. There were things I was expecting. Having eight potential protagonists with some intertwining intros, fair enough. Having to get lucky with the RNG to get the techniques and stat boosts, not a fan of that anyways. Quests are interesting, but somehow Romancing SaGa 2 did a better job with them. There were things I hated. Monica, which was my main character, is barred from several quests. Harid can't use anything but a curve sword in his first weapon slot*. Katrina is pretty much unavailable unless she's your main. Mikhael's war battles are honestly more trouble than they're worth, and I don't know if the ruling game is any better than being the emperor in Romancing SaGa 2. There are of course, hidden counters. I was barred from recruiting some of the last few characters like the snowman due to an unknown "character recruit limit", which honestly shouldn't have existed. There's also a greed counter, apparently bad if you are playing as Harid, I think. Oh yeah, and mastering techs is at the mercy of the RNG. Especially evasion ones.

For what its worth though, at least Romancing SaGa 3 provides a neat premise, like the other two before it. And at least we will get involved with them in the middle of all the quests to take. And despite not a whole lot of background for most recruitable characters, Romancing SaGa 3 seems to better than its predecessors. The ones involving Sharl and Muse are good, as is Herman/Black. Zo (the elephant) wants to cure his sister, while the eastern characters like Bai Meiling and Yan Fan work together with the hero on things. The best part is that none of the characters in the game actually suck at everything**, each one is skilled in at least something. So barring some minor nuances, Romancing SaGa 3 is a nice swan song for the mini-franchise, one that even got translated well enough. SaGa Frontier takes over from here.

*Though the Seven Star Sword trick does work with Harid, good freaking luck with that RNG.
**Except Herman, who's meant to suck due to having lost his youth. Sure, he can use the axes rather well, but then again, his entire stat pool is a tumble. Fight Forneus with Herman in the party and win and he becomes the much better Black. Also Muse may count, since she has zero levels in everything, but she gains them very quickly and can be really good overall.

A look back at: Romancing SaGa 2

Fun fact, I almost played ActRaiser, and then I realized it's not really RPG material. So I ended up playing this.

Back to the grind with Romancing Saga 2, not entirely the hardest of the SNES RPG compendium, but certainly a hard-to-come-by game, until recently in 2017 with a re-release. But it's still pretty hard regardless. Gone are the eight selectable protagonists with separate intros, now we have the concept of an emperor who rules their nation and can belong to one of many classes. The concepts from Final Fantasy Legend actually make a return in this game, which is remarkable since it shows what the series is about. Having to recruit characters is quite nice, as well as manage your own empire and go on quests from time to time. Having a new emperor when the previous one dies or after a certain time period was an interesting mechanic, even moreso when they can be any particular class. Enemies scaling as I gain stats though, and especially when they become really strong enemies that can shave hundreds of HP easily is a real pain though.

Well, at least they came up with some impressive storyline overall. Having one emperor and his son fight off one of the Seven Heroes, who will use his signature move to kill the emperor then, just so the son can learn the technique and beat him the next time in a rematch was a cute move. Having to name an emperor in the beginning isn't so much one though, since said emperor only appears at the very end. The Seven Heroes are an interesting bunch of villains, each apparently with their own backstories and motives. They're all supportive of one another in a number of ways, like Noel and Rocbouquet, or generally good at commanding things, like Bokhohn and Subier. Or they are pretty much just feeding off of things like Dantarg.

I guess if there's one other thing to mention besides growing the Avalon empire, it's the way the inheritance works out, so emperors basically inherit everything (plus whatever class they have) from their ancestor when they take over. The game certainly is rough around a lot of edges, things are definitely gonna be hard no matter what, and even if you decide not to grind so much to avoid the enemies, there's still ways to screw things up. But you know what, ignoring all the hardships encountered in this game, and realizing just how much you can do for an emperor, his/her empire and subordinates, and the overall plot, and believe it or not, this is a fantastic game.

A look back at: Romancing SaGa

Yeah, I am pretty determined alright. Having to go through an entire series just cause I was interested in a more advanced game, or something along those lines.

To be honest, I didn't even play all that much into Romancing SaGa. For a game as nonlinear as this, with eight characters to choose from with separate intros, why was I not inclined to continue? Well, there is a hidden timer with events, and I never was really sure of how it went and all that. Some events end up closed off after a while, which honestly prevented me from really enjoying this. That and enemy scaling with stat increases. Well, that's there at least, but it's so random it's honestly difficult to really enjoy a game like this when damn near half the game is me trying to increase certain stats so I don't die horribly to higher monsters, who seem to scale faster than I do. Well, there's no random encounters at least. Magic is harder to figure out for this game as well, considering the apparent rules for buying magic in the first place.

So yeah, events in this game. I wound up not liking the event timer, and it left me wondering if certain characters can even finish their own intros in time for the early events. Barbara thankfully has the shortest intro, but I can't say the same for Albert or Sif, both of which have intertwining intros but both generally being rather long. Gray and Claudia have intertwining intros, as do Jamil and Aisha, although if you play as Jamil you might not see Aisha right away at the end of his intro. Hawke has the funniest intro, and honestly was a funny character overall.

In case it isn't obvious, yeah, I only really played each of the character intros, it was quite fun to see each of the individual characters in their own adventures. Gameplay got hard real quick. The one thing I will say though, is that inns are somehow free. That's amazing. Because the equipment I need most of the time is quite expensive and for some reason there is a cash limit. I'm probably never picking this one up again.

A look back at: Final Fantasy Legend III

Well,

Looking back on this, I realize it's a mistake to give this a higher rating than its predecessors. As far as SaGa games go, this is the most different. And sadly, that difference being that they made this to be basically like any other turn-based JRPG. You can buy armor and weapons, that's not new, but you can also buy spells, which is certainly something I wasn't expecting here. Also character levels. We actually have those in this game, unlike the other games. It certainly isn't as tweakable as the previous games were.

The main four characters are two humans and two mutants, each apparently having default names and three of them being from the future for some reason. The characters can actually become monsters or robots by either assimilating parts or eating monster meat. That's about as close to the previous SaGa games that this one gets. Oh yes, and we have the temporary characters as usual, who aren't really bad at all. The gameplay of this particular SaGa game is only slightly more lenient than Final Fantasy Legend II, yet many of the enemies tend to hit hard and take a lot of damage themselves. Trivializing the encounters was certainly a lot harder to do in this game, but what can I do. The challenge is at least present. I just don't like how it was done a lot more differently than usual.

The first game has the tower. The second game has the separate traversing world. This game? A kickass flyer ship. The enemy here is apparently Xagor, some entity that's responsible for a huge flood, or something of that nature. It's pretty hard to follow especially considering that time travel is a gimmick. So Xagor is trying to flood both the future AND the past worlds? And the key to fixing everything is to find parts for the Talon. Confusing. The temporary members are mostly marginally interesting. Faye for some reason is the only one to use Excalibur. Borgin is the guy to blame for basically everything. And Dion? He somehow gets killed or seemingly killed not once but twice, and yet they still bring him back to life again. It's weird. And so is this game. Unfortunately, I realize this isn't anywhere near what I was looking for when I played it the first time. Sometimes, it's the things you expect from a previous game that will make you enjoy a certain game more, but I found very little of that with this sequel.

A look back at: Final Fantasy Legend II

If you can't tell, I really want to get to SaGa Frontier already, which is why I had been churning through the rest of the SaGa series (the Final Fantasy Legends and Romancing SaGas, of which I am currently on Romancing SaGa 3 right now as of this writing). A look back at the second game reveals I actually hated it.

But why though? Why don't I like it? Well, I have to admit, this is the entry in the series that has an actually annoying random encounter rate, and sometimes you will be fighting up to about 16 enemies in a group, maybe more. It's utterly crazy, and half the time, I wonder if the encounter rate is in some sort of fixed pattern, because I do remember half the time where I would be going a long ways without an encounter, then two steps before an encounter, then one step. It makes no sense to me. The game does have its interesting locales, as well as guest characters which very often tag along as fifth playable characters for your party to use.

Alright, so we got a new class to use besides the humans, mutants, and monsters, which is the robot. This thing doesn't really gain anything unless you actually equip it with weapons and armor. So basically it's sort of like the monster class except you actually need to buy stuff instead of killing stuff to enhance their abilities. I personally stuck to the same group I used last time, two humans and two mutants. Also the humans do join the mutants in that they do get stat gains from battles this time around, but not necessarily special abilities. Again, this becomes a staple for Romancing SaGa games.

The whole plot of this game isn't that good. It starts with the father giving a magi to whatever you main character is* and then making his exit by jumping out of a window? What? So we got all these unique worlds to go around in too. That's pretty much the staple of the Final Fantasy Legend games, with subplots in each one, but the main focus is having to find your father throughout the whole game. At first, this Mask guy shows up who resembles your father, but he's not the real deal, he's just another one of those "fifth companions" that feels compelled to help. You do find your father though, and he helps out until his apparent heroic sacrifice, which, well, he survives, but eh. And the ending of the game is your character's entire family going on another adventure, which honestly the sequel to this game doesn't really touch on. I liked the premise of the first Final Fantasy Legend a whole lot better than this one.

*And considering that your player character can be any class, including a robot or a monster, you wonder how did both your human parents conceive your character if you choose such classes. The robot I can probably understand as it would probably be a creation, but then again...

A look back at: Final Fantasy Legend

You ever wonder why certain games are titled as such? Honestly I wonder why Square would think to market it as another Final Fantasy game even though the gameplay of this game does not coincide with the rest of Final Fantasy as a whole. For what it's worth though, it did offer an alright experience.

It is a game with character classes and expendable weapons. So basically speaking, you only get a finite amount of what you can attack enemies with, while certain character classes get certain traits to them. The human classes are incredibly basic, and don't actually get anything good for them except for things that would boost their stats. This could make them hard to train up, but then again, they get the full eight slots for their equipment and generally can equip the top-of-the-line stuff. Mutants, or Espers in remakes (I think) only get four equipment slots, but have the ability to get or lose abilities after each battle. While random, these don't necessarily make mutant's bad characters, as they can get things the human classes cannot. The random stat gains become more prevalent in the future games, especially Romancing SaGa games utilize them almost fully. Then we have monsters. Oh boy, I personally hate these since I prefer to amplify my characters via equipment. Sure you can get some of the toughest monsters when it comes to their abilities, but they have to change themselves by eating monster meat, which thankfully tends to show up after every battle. Personally though, I would rather not have such a wildcard type of creature for my party anyways, so when I played, I stuck with the party of two humans and two mutants.

And speaking of such, well, you can actually remove said party members permanently by having their hearts deplete, meaning you have them die in battle. As heartless as it sounds, it's a mechanic that at least allows you to experiment with other classes to see which works best. I stick to the humans/mutants combo though, they are worthwhile for what they do. The types of equipment achievable in this game spans several different aspects, so it's not just fantasy. Who would imagine that a SMG would be in the same vein as a fantasy sword, or more so, an insta-killing chainsaw?

The game's plot has shades of Final Fantasy in it, helping out numerous kings, fighting off four fiends, which are named after the Four Chinese Constellations. There's a few interesting tidbits here and there, such as breathing underwater, helping a resistance movement, running away from an unkillable fiend in order to get help from...a biker gang of all things, as well as collecting of spheres. All this because the hero and companions want to climb a tower. What's at the top you ask? Some form of paradise, guarded by the head demon. Or so you think. There's the help of friendship with characters met along the way, and then fighting off the fiends one more time, and then the Creator,.because he just had to be that kind of douchebag to make a game out of something that shouldn't really be considered a game. Still though, the fact that the main character is looking for that paradise, never finding it, then deciding to live in the world below at the very end was some kind of plot deconstruction. Overall though, the first game in the SaGa series, and the first of three Final Fantasy Legends is quite a fun experience.