it is super weird to me that square is capable of thinking about the 16 bit aesthetic in interesting ways for games like octopath traveler, but when it comes to remaking the actual games of that era they are obsessed with making everything look like a flash game
the saga frontier remastered thing looks like an improvement though
I think part of it was they had that same sprite artist try to replicate the chibi promotional art from back in the day, which didn’t really turn out in practice
game needs a walkthrough way more than updated visuals (which were incredible imo) but at least this looks well done
Looking back it’s hard to appreciate SaGa Frontier’s visionary gaudiness now that @username’s Steam games thread exists but it really was an uniquely ugly beauty back then
Just learned Shibuya did the sprites for SF too
https://www.4gamer.net/games/064/G006480/20130227073/
Good read, still comprehensible through Google translate
saga frontier could throw out a 3 frame dancing baby gif as an enemy and i wouldn’t blink, this seems like a good design goal to me
There’s a lot of Romancing SaGa anniversary stuff going on on SE’s youtube channel for the franchise 30th anniversary and the Re;univerSe 2nd anniversary.
You can also check out those weird ads for their mobile game Ranbu while you’re there.
This game isn’t bad. I tried Opera Omnia first, which gave me headache. This does not. I let it run on my phone at work, mostly so I don’t use my phone to browse or do other things. Therefore, this game has made me money.
i like those sprites but the mismatch with everything else is… rough
So I got Romancing SaGa 3, and I immediately feel thrown into the deep end, in a pleasantly SaGa way, with a whole lot of choices whose significance was not immediately apparent but which seem interesting and novel in 1995 and maybe still now. I chose Monika as my main, and it was interesting to see her immediately rendered not actually usable in combat, for the first bit. 
I really hope this isn’t like DS SaGa 2, where your character development choices are essential to being able to beat the final boss, but I wouldn’t be mad if that were the case: I didn’t buy a second SaGa game to not get kicked in the teeth.
you should be fine with nearly any character development choices and most party compositions. there’s a cap on how many characters you can ever recruit - varies with each character but you’re unlikely to hit it really and worst case you can grind in the endgame (and in general, event rank is way less punishing than rs1/2)
some more rs3 tips: martial arts are very good, a lot of the travel locations can be unlocked from the port in pidona
Early good vendor items, most usable until endgame
Vambrace - wilmington
Close helm - zweig / farce
Silver trail - wilmington
Brigandy - vanguard / muse
the royal ring at the bottom of the palace in pidona can be sold for 1000g and bought back for 10, oops
I just beat the fire abyss lord in RS3, really cool intimidating entrance where he mode 7s up into the camera.
Here’s some general tips for RS3 that I think will save anyone a headache (spoiling just in case you don’t want them):
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-There’s an invisible Greed counter that can screw you out of a few quests and characters if you don’t know about it. Basically if you ever get the option to haggle, don’t. There’s a quest early on where you can sell some things and if you haggle the prices as high as they go, you’ve maxed out your Greed counter and can no longer lower it. Money isn’t as tight as it seems starting out, so don’t stress having to err, be Greedy.
–You can only hold up to 8 pages of items in your inventory so make sure to make use of the various warehouses in the game. If you get an item when you have all 8 pages full, it’s lost forever. I think this even replies to one-off super rare stuff. Pretty sure this isn’t communicated anywhere.
–Every character can learn two different schools of magic: one from the four elements and one from basically sun/moon/dark(?), you’ll know what I mean. If you try to learn a spell from another one of those respective categories you’ll have to forget everything you’ve ever learned which can be expensive.
–A character that learns magic with zero MP will be given 5 MP to work with. You gain MP through casting spells (just like magic skill) but it’s pretty slow going so you may want to keep an eye out for recruits that start out with more of an MP pool and have them learn more spells. The cheap water heal spell is super useful.
–If you focus on skills and not learning magic (and vice versa) you’ll get a crown by your SP (or MP for magic) which means all your skills cost one less SP to use. Not a game breaker but still pretty handy.
–Focus on specialization; i.e. don’t try to level up a bunch of magic or different weapons with one character. One or two weapons per is more than enough to try and get skill gains on.
–Don’t stress the Battle Level thing in this one. There’s both no need to grind or a need to cautiously avoid encounters. You’ll notice when certain fights give you nothing for it (i.e. a pitying “one person gains a point of HP” type deal), so you can either duck those or power through fighting the same enemy type until they change to a stronger enemy. Otherwise it’s handiest to keep an eye out for enemies that Do seem to level up your skills/HP/SP and possibly spark techs more often. They wouldn’t be a bad idea to focus on killing as many as you see although again, you don’t have to go crazy with it.
–You can only hold eight techs at a time so if you have eight equipped, you won’t be sparking new ones. If you check skills in the menu, ones that highlighted red are ones you’ve learned but haven’t mastered, while the black ones you’ve learned and used enough to master. Try to master everything you can and then forget what you don’t need (i.e. press A/X twice on a black skill) to free up space for new sparked techs. If you forget a red (un-mastered skill) you’ll probably just tech it again anyway instead of something new that you do want. Also, any skill you master is put into a pool that any character can equip which is super helpful.
–Kinda goes against explaining the Greed thing above but don’t stress not being able to do everything; there can be some pretty obscure quest triggers. That being said if you’re stuck or lost there’s nothing wrong with checking a guide for some direction imo!
if i remember right the crowns are also supposed to give you some kind of damage buff as well but in my last playthrough vs the final boss katarina plus a phys crown did way less damage with pressure point than boston just because he could cast shadow servant, really didn’t seem worth it
getting tempted to play some kawazu this christmas
it’s always christmas when you’ve got kawazu 
someone here mentioned that every main has unique town music, so i started a new file on rs3 
i have no discipline
playing about an hour or so of RS3 a day (with some variation here and there). i still don’t entirely feel like i have hit a point where i’m feeling like the plot is progressing in a normal way, but this is pretty common for SaGa games. overall, i think it’s more coherent as a game than RS2 is, though.
things i’ve done so far:
explore a deep tower in Pidona until a voice told me “the Ring” and i could go no further. also ran into what feels like a boss or high level enemy just chilling on a summoning circle. tried to kill it a few times, but i think i need better stuff.
explored all(?) the treasure caves around Great Arch and found some cool stuff that idk what to do with yet. also a bunch of money!
found the SaGa equivalent of Kasmir, took money from both sides and then jumped in their well. ran into another high-level, stationary enemy that i couldn’t kill.
(i think i need to buy better armor. that is my next move)
fought in the battle arena in Zwei and made it to round 2 and then got my butt handed to me by a spider lady
became a mercenary and played a Dragon Force minigame. we won!
so now i have around 7k aurums, my team is made up of:
i like them! i tried to recruit Thomas, but he just sits in his house and tells me the same stuff all the time. kind of curious how many more i can recruit? i’m assuming one more, and then what, i’d have to get rid of someone?
the game has a lot of hangout-itude. don’t feel like i’m really in any particular rush and i’m just going around the world meeting people.
you can boot someone and then come back to re-recruit them up again later, likely you’ll need to do this a couple of times over a full playthrough, some recruitable characters unlock quest lines or the ability to go on and recruit other related characters etc. but there is a hard limit eventually where nobody will join you
(this is high enough that I wouldn’t worry about it)
just imagined a scenario wherein some 90s marketing team was trying to figure out how to sell SaGa to a Western audience and they decide to go with Gen X’s rejection of authority with a tagline that’s something like “finally: a game that doesn’t tell you what to do”
a whole slew of commercials of a kid stuck in school all day and then being driven around by their parents all day to soccer games or whatever and they finally get home and pop in SaGa.
