I thought it was meant to be like one of those Link’s Awakening color dungeon puzzles where you hit the things to try to match all the colors, and usually you just work it out in a few minutes by stumbling onto the right sequence. But I guess here it’s a bit buggy, maybe mashing works because it’s checking the colors match before changing the surrounding tiles or something weird like that
“race condition sokoban” is definitely something kawazu would implement on purpose
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My Fuse playthrough has gone a bit weird, after grinding for ages I managed to scrape through the first boss, then it jumps me straight into a second boss, which I somehow managed to beat as well. Then Ren got DSC within 2 hours of play, like the only moves he learned were the ones required for it. And so I think I beat one of the bosses in two turns because of that, and now the final boss is giving me some problems again so it’s been back to grinding and doing arcane quest etc.
I still cannot enter Mu’s Tomb! If I follow the bottom right path at the entrance, the words Danger, Gefahr, and Peligro appear and I am pushed back. I am not prompted the choice to go on anyway. I have the rune pebbles, and my party is very strong (I destroyed the earth dragon optional boss). What am I missing?
If you started the arcane quest, you have to finish it before you can do the rune quest.
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Some SaGa games are 50% off on switch now, and the GB collection is 20% off
One of the things I like about Frontier is the weird mish mash of robots, magic, monsters etc so I was thinking of getting the GB ones. How well does it stack up today? Too grindy?
If I was only going to buy one of RomSaga 2, 3 and Scarlet Grace, which one is most recommended?
I know next to nothing about Scarlet Grace, what’s the gist?
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Scarlet Grace is weirdly cheap, feels sort of like a mobile game, but at the same time proves they still more or less know how to make these – very unpredictable progression and complex combat, it didn’t quite click with me but it’s pretty good for what it is.
Romsaga 2 feels like one of those PS3-era jRPGs where they try to respin the regular quest progression and world exploration around a single hub, the beginning is too dry but the permadeath is really well done if you get into it.
Romsaga 3 is the most like Frontier but with a more grounded fantasy setting and a bunch of weird knocked-off FFVI assets
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rs3 i reckon, it’s like frontier but rather than 8 shorter scenarios you get one big 30+ hour snes jarpeg. it is a more grounded fantasy alt-ffvi setting yeah but there’s a very diverse cast of weirdos to recruit
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Bouncing off Saga Frontier after having finished Red’s quest and played a bit as Blue. I like the weird style and the how jrpg archetypes are often twisted, but at the same time the gameplay is so boring and repetitive. Plus, there are too many numbers and micromanagement and I have become too old to stand those.
I might try with another Saga, we’ll see.
FFL1-3 are the only other games in the series with monsters/ robots etc. Mystics and monsters were in 1 and robots were introduced in 2. I like the games a lot and find that the higher speed of the remasters make them very palatable for gameboy RPGs.
FFL1 and 3 are pretty easy, FFL2 is more difficult and can be grindy with the wrong team (4 humans) but you could also pick 4 robots and give them a bunch of lasers and never grind
Romancing SaGa 3 is maybe the most normal out of all of them, it’s very much a longer less crazy Frontier
Romancing SaGa 2 is similar, but it’s about playing as a dynasty of kings and queens throughout hundreds of the years with all the unique perks that comes with it (building your hometown, conquering other territories, being loaded, dying of old age and transferring only parts of your stats to your kids) If dealing with that weird spin on the classic JRPG format sounds cool I’d pick it up over 3
Scarlet Grace is the biggest outlier in a series that has Unlimited SaGa in it. It capitalizes on none of the strengths of the series at all!
It’s very focused on its battle system and quest structure/writing at the cost of everything else, there’s no exploration, no dungeons.
Every battle is meaningful and taxing, almost puzzle-y, I could only play like 30 minutes of it per session at first before I got used to it. The quests are very playful and often unpredictable. It’s definitely my favorite of the 3 now but it’s such an oddity. Play as Leonard if you pick the game up
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Thanks! I have started Scarlet Grace about 1 hour ago and, after I answered some questions, the game gave me Leonard as main character 
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I love SaGa 1. I dunno if I love it so much I’d spend $18 on it but being able to fast forward without speeding up the music sounds amazing.
Frontier is the one I’ve played that feels the most like 1, that “What the fuck is going on” feeling that’s like an 8 year old handed Square a design doc and they just went with it.
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The saga 2 and 3 remakes on the nintendo ds are great because they’re still super short games but now they have every good mechanic from the romsaga subseries
Anyway, minstrel song on ps2 still feels like the iconic “best” saga experience.
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Going through all the Fuse files in a row is like watching 7 episodes of a SaGa Frontier police procedural
Fuse is different in his new remaster-only stories; before being a Law and Order protagonist, he was one of the most brutally honest portrayal of cops in videogames : An overall unpleasant, violent, authority abusing man, he didn’t recuse himself from a case he had a personal connection with just so he could throw an innocent woman in jail, he involved innocents in dangerous activities and sucker punched them when they spoke out of line, his nickname was Short Fuse / Crazy Fuse because he was like a ticking time bomb, etc.
All in the ~3 minutes of screen time he got
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Are those two ds remakes also in English? I am having some difficulties in finding info on internet… I see they have japanese titles!
Do you know if the controls were optimized for the Nintendo touch screen? If so, I might try to play them on the mobile phone
Scarlet Grace feels better for me! I love the map, the encounter gimmicks (icons appearing on the map), the random tales narrated in the cities. And I dig the battles more (although I am quite weak), they are more modern, I like their looks and require slightly more attention.
Question: how can I recover my characters LP? Will they die permanently or is it more forgiving (like Frontier)? In the cities I cannot find any place to let my party sleep.
Regarding Saga Frontier, I was a bit pissed off yesterday because after beating the earth dragon and proceeding further, after having performed several quick saves (and after the game autosaved during many changes of scenarios), I force-closed the game on the Switch and when I reopened the game, two-three hours of progress was mysteriously gone. So, instead of doing the remaining quests with Red (arcane, rune, checking the german castle, etc) I proceeded straight to the ending, with the purpose of doing those quests with the next characters.
And so, I started new game+, wanting to retain all my credits and items, but I must have done something wrong becuase I had almost no special item, nor credits… and by the time I arrived in the monster’s belly I couldn’t bear the grinding anymore and I uninstalled the game 
What a pity.
Combat mechanics and battle soundtrack apart, the game has beautiful creative drawings and I dug those, so I feel a bit sorry to not have explored the remaining environments.
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LP is a big thing in Scarlet Grace
There are four ways to recover LP:
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Let the character reach 0 LP, they will take a few battles (around 5-10) to fully recover LP, you cannot use them at all in the meantime
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Remove the character from your retinue, they’ll recover 1 LP every 2 battles. It’s slower than the first method but less risky (you can still use your low LP character in a pinch)
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Rare places on the map (there are two of them) that will eat up half of one character’s corresponding elemental stones to heal all of their LPs
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Rare events
It’s strongly advised to use more than 5 characters and cycle through them to handle LP, 7-9 is good
Also I suggest getting a shortsword character with high dex / acuity, they’re very useful and fun to use.
In general damage alone doesn’t win battle; status effects / cover /counter / interrupt / buffs / debuffs are all either vital or potentially super powerful if used correctly.
For once the in-game glossary is very detailed and can help a lot
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the ds remakes have fan translations
I don’t remember them using the touch screen in any way, but they might have? It’s been a while.
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also started playing frontier. having an easier time staying with it than romancing saga 1 or minstrel song or ffl. maybe it has to do with what you want out of it? i just enjoy running around these pre-rendered toy sets and building my characters. it also feels faster than these other games. minstrel song will show a chargeup animation for just about anything and it’s annoying.
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