Oh boy I actually found SaGa Frontier 2 to be Kawazu at its meanest. The game’s aesthetics absolutely clash with its seeping hostility.
Plot is all over the place, dialogue is stilted, characters are generally unfriendly. The game is constantly toying with the player, changing characters and locations as it sees fit without warning. Allies often disappear entirely. Towns are transitory areas you don’t usually return to. You never really feel safe.
The entire game is resource management, with no idea what’s ahead, playing wih characters you are not used to, no possibility to go back to town and heal, weapon degradation and inscrutable mechanics. (I still don’t get what the hell is up with those solo battles with the bigger sprites?)
As usual you can usually get by without fully understanding how the game works, that is until the infamous South Moundtop / Egg battles, which will definitely test your enthusiasm. It is very easy to permanently screw your save at that point, too.
The nice watercolor makes it even worse, like there is something fundamentally wrong and hateful about the game but it puts on this nice friendly face as a ruse. Even as a Final Fantasy Legend 2 / Gameboy SaGa 2 kid , this game fucked me up. Great stuff
They announced Scarlet Grace for every console under the sun but so far have maintained that English translations won’t come until they get the JP versions out. That presumably means the Steam version might be JP only at first.
I just finished my…sixth (?) playthrough, and it’s the first time I didn’t feel like I won through the skin of my teeth. The original feels downright easy, in comparison. Playing it in Japanese, and thus keeping a good amount of the details that I don’t remember from the original (such as the new dating sim elements) impenetrable, adds an intriguing amount of mystery–I have no idea how much I haven’t done. Also, it remains very aesthetically pleasing.
I’m playing through Red’s scenario in SaGa Frontier and I actually really enjoy how bite-sized each event is. I feel like I’m seeing an eyecatch every 30-45 minutes and it gives me a nice natural start/stop point for a play session. Are all characters in SaGaFro like this and if not, which ones have similar pacing to Red’s scenario?
T260G and to a lesser extent blue are that tight. Riki is up there but much more difficult, Asellus tries but flails, Lute is a blank slate, and Emelia is a mess
After I accidentally advanced a zone to nighttime, I was left with harder mine encounter and no town options I meant to explore before moving on. But when I lost one of the mine encounters, the game didn’t prompt the “Retry?” dialogue, but instead advanced to day. I reloaded and won the fight, but it remained night.
Since all the encounters switched from Normal->Hard on turning night, I’m wondering if this zone is set up so that weak players revert to daytime before they move into the required night? That I should purposely fail a fight to hit the daytime encounters I missed? hmmmmmm
