Asellus is tbh one of the best routes even if mystics are a pain in the ass in the long term.
If you haven’t lost your chance to do so, aperider is a great early monster to absorb because it gives a +10 to every stat, and otherwise you have to try for suzaku and other rare late game monsters for similar benefits
is the switch saga collection worth getting? fast-forward without breaking the music appeals
I’m playing SaGa 1 now. It’s kinda baffling. My mutant seems unable to attack at all and won’t learn anything besides ESP which seems useless. I thought that meant I needed to buy spells for them so I did but they can’t use those. Humans can, but they have 0 mana so it does no damage, so I don’t know what the point is.
So now I am trying to kill a P Frog in a cave to save a one eyed girl but nobody can deal more than 1 point of damage.
EDIT: nevermind I bought agility potions and trashed him with rapiers
EDIT EDIT: OK I didn’t realise the in-battle menu scrolled downwards and so mutants actually can use magic and weapons, whoops 
SaGa 1 is a fun little game
My mutant girl, who according to the concept art is a metal bikini wearing babe learned the power of STENCH
My monster ate the flesh of a fallen foe and became CATWOMAN
later they ate an evil eye and turned into a pudding who was far stronger than the rest of my party
At the end I instakilled God with a chainsaw
Thank you for writing the perfect summation of SaGa.
oh yeah, i remembered this tidbit from the unlimited saga wikipedia article
which references this game as a precursor
Although made by Square, [. . .] Wild Card is a game that is very different from classic [Japanese] RPGs. Most importantly, it is not story-driven. The game is based entirely on quests which are not connected by a story arc. You play a nameless character with no background and there is no plot information or development beside your own progress with the quests. The gameplay consists entirely of playing cards. In the beginning of the game, an enigmatic woman named Maria asks you a series of questions, to determine the cards you get. After that, your character begins an adventure in a town. Locations, other characters, inventory, your movement - everything appears in form of cards. To get quests, you must choose your correspondent cards when encountering different people. You can buy weapons and equipment, and also fight enemies in turn-based combat by choosing the cards from your deck. You gain levels and become stronger in a traditional RPG fashion.
which looks cool as fuck. obviously it’s in japanese and i haven’t seen any discussion of a translation, but has anyone here played it or know anything about it?
I have a hard copy of it but haven’t managed to pick up a WonderSwan Color yet, and it’s not in the next few Swan Song episodes
Kimimi has talked about it though on her blog:
kimimi the goddess
I ended up jumping off Scarlet Grace. The combat is great cool but (for my taste) after 50-100 fights it gets very repetitive and the game is very long. Also the map / style graphical palette become very samey, lacking the magic of Saga Frontier (obviously, the comparison is unfair… it’s like comparing apples and oranges, but still…)
I do understand why this game can be loved. It’s just too much (and for too long) for me.
On the other end, I think I will reinstall Saga Frontier and play the other characters, very slowly, as the disappointment from having lost my items in the first playthrough has faded, and I want to complete all stories. 
finished asellus’ scenario and had an increasingly good time towards the end as things escalated and new sidequests started showing up. built a super strong team of mystics to stage an uprising against asshole vampire lord orlouge and it worked out!
Goddamn Riki’s route has had the biggest ending difficulty spike (and then another, and then another…) out of all the scenarios yet. Maybe part of it is on me trying (and failing) for a while to get Riki to turn into a Black Dragon, and then just to have a decent support skillset for the final fight, I definitely ended up maxing out my battle rank… I must’ve done the final boss like 10 times before actually getting it. I feel like I’m going to NG+ the last scenarios I have left to go just because while I appreciate feeling out the natural curve of each route, I don’t really want to do gold bar runs for a fifth, sixth and seventh go.
I’m still yet to attempt Riki’s route, as well as Lute’s. I think trying to do all the available Fuse scenarios first kind of burned me out of it for a bit. I never once did the gold bar trick, but maybe I should have because I imagine it alleviates the grinding somewhat.
Now I am up to the final boss of Romancing SaGa 2, and it’s kicking my arse. I think my gear sucks as far as elemental resistances go, but I am not really sure where the good stuff is. also doesn’t help that I got to the last generation without many formations unlocked.
Seriously, what are the pro tips for this? Getting close to just throwing this game in the bin
Most of my team are over 900 HP, I use gilden shield on everyone and misty veil or whatever it’s called on my crusader and let her wait until all 7 heroes are out, then spam hasten time while dealing as much damage as possible until MP runs out, then use whatever’s left of the tacticians MP to do the same. This usually gives me around 6 turns max before they just wipe me out.
I only have access to rapid stream, goblin formation and dragon stance besides the default formations. I’m using rapid stream to get first move, but not sure if I should be using something else. Pretty sure I don’t have the best equipment but I don’t know where to find anything else besides the workshop in the castle which mostly just produces physical defence stuff
have everyone resist charm (if you didn’t spark the tech for this in the rocbouquet fight there are a bunch of rings available that do this + some classes e.g molemen resist automatically)
you have all the best formations besides whatever the amazon’s is called. i would definitely use goblin formation instead of rapid stream for this - the first turn on rapid stream comes at the expense of like, all your other stats
use the start of the fight when it’s just rocbouquet - who should do minimal damage if you have full charm resist - to buff everyone (golden shield, sword barrier, phoenix, liberty staff, shadow servant if you have it etc.)
there’s a bunch of game breaking equipment in out of the way places, i can dig out the spreadsheet if need be
there’s also a convoluted trick with the amethyst axe i used to beat it with a solo emperor
you can have a very rough fight if you get bad rng and all seven act on consecutive turns but that’s rare
oh and equip the soulsteal resist from the tutorial on everyone
the speedrun strat is to give everyone an axe, spark the best axe techs vs the giant then grind for two thirds of the run in the one room with fixed high level encounters until everyone has enough mp for quicktime spam
Gone back to where I left Saga Frontier. I am Blue and I have just battled with my nemesis. Now I am omnipotent.
Cleared out Emilia and Lute today and I’m glad I chose to do them both on NG+ because Em’s route seems like a real pain in the ass and Lute had maybe 20 minutes of a storyline in total. Realising that Fuse has to fight every character’s boss ro complete the case files makes me think I’m done with Frontier for a good while… I really enjoyed it but not like “probably another 20 hours on top of 50 more” enjoyed it. The dev room you get for clearing all the non-Fuse scenarios was the perfect sendoff, and I think I’ll be fine just watching his stuff on youtube.
Thanks for the tips
I have the temptation and soulsteal resist on everyone, although she also has another charm move I’m not resistant to which sometimes ends up having someone cast stone shower on the party.
I was under the impression that gilden shield and sword barrier, and most other buffs cancel each other out. And do regular stat raising buffs like water dance stack? They seem to when enemies use them.
One of the biggest pains is tentacle, which is a guaranteed instant kill if gilden shield doesn’t kick in.
I don’t know if I can get dragon pulse to do the amethyst axe trick, since I likely can’t skip forward any more years at this point
nope! use them all!!! they don’t expire either, even on death in most cases. put any casters in mist as well.
temptation is the only charm move in the game, maybe there’s one character without the tech equipped or something?
and no if you are on the final emperor you have no remaining timeskips and can’t get the combo magic
as for good equipment, amethyst axe’s tech phantom chivalry is still very broken without dragon pulse (it’s basically phoenix without having to master fire) and the liberty staff tech, blessing i think it’s called? is a p significant magic/attack buff you can cast on anyone in the party and stacks with any others
it’s a really tough final boss requiring a bit of preparation and foresight in a game with very little information in english online
Simply switching to Goblin formation seemed to make a difference, still got hammered after MP ran out so I’ve been grinding to get revival spell and phantom chivalry, which I’m hoping is enough
There’s definitely another charm move that rocbouquette has, I forget what it’s called but it works on females too. I also managed to get a time skip with the final emperor when the termite event triggered. Gave me a few extra fusion spells but unfortunately dragon pulse wasn’t one.
Gosh I finally did it 
Just barely had enough MP between 3 of the characters for Hasten Time, one more turn and they would have started hammering me with everything
I think it took me around 5 hours just trying to beat that boss. Anyway, done and dusted now, not sure if I dare touch the 3rd game yet
