MagmaSmiles are one of the three major curveballs the game throws at you during Riki’s quest (that I remember), congrats
Monsters are the FF6 Gau of SaGa though I -did- manage to get a good one without using a guide this time. I picked Lute’s bro who comes into a powerful lightning attack, immediately downgraded him a ton but eventually turned him back into a pretty good death ray throwing sunflower.
One good thing about Lute that I keep forgetting about is that he comes with the Gate spell and can ignore all his obligations and teleport anywhere by accessing his weird underwater pocket dimension node-based world map anytime he wants
Just beat Blue’s story, which had a couple of really hard walls. The last boss only died once I had completely exhausted my consumables and pretty much all ammo/WP/JP on my party, just doing Power Grab and a 0WP sword move over and over, hoping it’d be enough. Game owns.
What are the abilities she’s supposed to get from these fights? I’ve just beaten all three with her alive and I don’t think any mystic abilities got unlocked, unless you mean the transformation ability from faeblade
this is the first time i’ve played more than one scenario, only just dawned on me how much of a synthesis (aesthetically and mechanically) of gb saga & romasaga this is
still think i prefer romasaga 2/3 though
i’m very curious how they’ll approach a remaster of rs1 - it was the first jrpg to drop random battles but the encounter rate ends up worse than an nes rpg because they just fill the screen with enemies and you can’t really dodge anything. the battles themselves are very, very slow and shallow until the mid/late game where you start getting Ridiculous Shit to play with
And the absurd Yu-gi-oh tricks he can pull with his array of spells are still there
Here is the simplest one : Equip the Overdrive spell and a Snake Oil item (available in Kowloon for cheap)
Snake oil, counter-intuitively, removes bad stat effects.
Overdrive makes Blue act 8 times in a row, but then drains all his JP (magic points) at the end of the round.
Use Overdrive, then Snake Oil. This will remove the bad stat effect « lose all JP at the end of the round », and, crucially, also remove « stop having 8 turns in a row at the end of the round » So now Blue gets to act 8 times every round for free!
You can of course also throw in a stat boosting spell or two + Shadow Servant to create a shadow double, and now Blue is throwing 16 mega powered spells per round, oh boy
I always felt like this was like the morrowind of jRPGs in terms of its technical synthesis and its rickety expansiveness and I’m really glad so many people are playing it at last
All these mystics in my party are stressing me out. I miss sparking and getting more stat boosts. What does a Mystic Transformation do?? I don’t remember even though I’ve googled it like 4 times now
Being able to flee from all non-boss battles is a pretty huge change isn’t it.
Placing skill cost alongside the skill name is reason enough to prefer this over the original. Watched some videos of the PSX version and the battle menus are tacky. In a bad way. Way more of a hassle. The battles also looked even slower than half speed. This new one is so snappy. This is so heaven.
Emelia’s last boss utterfly wrecked me, glad I learned to keep backup saves from RS3 (though it does give you a heads up in this that you’re entering the point of no return). Being able to flee plus fast forward definitely makes grinding painless at least.
I don’t get mystics either, saving learning about them for when I have to play as one. Sticking with the Gradius Gang and the kung fu guy I met in a monster’s belly.
I’m stuck at the final boss of Riki’s route. Virgil doesn’t have HP, and instead scores you based on the quality of combos you perform. 2 points for 3-combos, and 3 points for 4-combos. I only have a few combos and they’re difficult to pull off, and the boss doesn’t allow the same combo twice. I saw that Fei-on has access to a powerful move with great combo potential, but getting that move requires I grind for additional skills.
I like that the ending to this part of the game is a hard check for “do you know how the combo system works”, but the system itself is obtuse and it seems impregnable if you don’t have a couple very specific highly comboable moves. I’m glad that this is SaGa and I can just start a different playthrough and come back to this one once I’ve had enough experience to understand the combo system better. It’s a pretty good example of how each route gives you bits and pieces of the full experience, converging both in story and mechanics.
Wait is this what “Koorong” was supposed to be? I found it kinda hilarious seeing that on the list of locations only for it to turn out to be Blade Runner town, mostly because:
Just found out about Frontier 2. Jeez, what a visual downgrade. The comicbook style on its own doesn’t look bad, but it gives off major “edutainment CD-ROM” vibes
