I’ve been super fascinated by RS3, it’s a lot more of a proto saga frontier than I realized after having played all of the prior titles (and not having RS2 do much for me)
how do you lot feel about minstrel song?
it was the first saga i put any real time into and going from “lol what is this shit” to “yes this is great” over the course of ten hours or so was something
was kind of checked out of PS2 RPGs in 2006, didn’t play
my favorite is the one where your dad is sam from clarissa explains it all and appears in your room at night and then jumps out the window.
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Welp, after some tinkering and exploring, my cobbled-together setup for Romancing Saga 3 eventually proved adequate against the four Abyss Gate bosses, with Buné being the hardest. Now, however, this same set-up–only two real magic users, only one dedicated healer, average character HP at 600, what I think is a fair amount of solid techniques–is now proving woefully unsuitable for the endgame, which is what I was afraid would happen (-_-). Time for side quests! Going through the thread, I’ve realized that there’s some caves I’d missed in the southwest corner of the map.
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For healing, there’s power rods or whatever they’re called. Staff of power? I think I found 3 in my first playthrough.
vague strategic spoiler Make sure you go into the final area with sun and moon magic
Is spoiler about Fusion Magic? Bleh, if so: my dedicated Moon Magic user is also my main, who is also my most powerful character and one I really can’t afford to sideline. Clearly I should not have slept on Command Mode and its possibilities, and I might not have done so if the game had at any point indicated it wasn’t just an early-game one-off.
(SaGa being obtuse and keeping critical things to itself? Surely not!)
Not fusions, just something that could help you if you’re having trouble at the end
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Started up FFL1 wtf is going on lol. I was a bug man but have transformed into a zombie. Gotta kill some bandits to free up this squid girl for a marriage to some king. I have zero clue on how to upgrade or what the benefits of different classes are. Do I buy all upgrades? It seems like mutants level up traditionally but everyone else needs to buy potions. I kind of like the confusion, it’s very refreshing compared to over-explained conventional mechanics. Filling in a lot of gaps with imagination. I like how random people in the back of the party just speak up sometimes when talking to plot-critical NPCs.
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This shit sucks so bad
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I’ve somehow managed to be impressed by monochrome Gameboy graphics from more than 30 years ago, because immediately jumping from FFL1 to FFL2 shows a huge leap in pixel art quality
I love my house…
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Did you just spoil it here in the thread? Images often don’t load for me. That’s a real shame, they did a good enough job at hiding RS3’s ending. I’m assuming this has to do with the Xmas event.
No, I just posted the goofy design of Wil as Santa Clause.
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it’s very possible that monochrome gameboy graphics from more than 30 years ago are the best graphics that have ever existed imo
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Dang I love the SaGa collection. 2x speed is perfect for all these games. You can fly through any of tgem in a few hours. The extreme random battle rates aren’t a problem anymore. The worlds are still weird and evocative.
This pulls me back to a time when games in a series could have massive shifts in difficulty and you’d have no way to know. FFL1 is confusing, but easy if you pay attention. FFL3 is straightforward and easy. FFL2 is brutal. Enemies are fast and relentless, large enemy groups appear early, weapons have limited uses and money is particularly tight. Humans are hard to use since they have no way to damage at all without using weapon durability (unlike the other classes (not that it makes monsters good ofc)) If you use humans and mutants it’s not uncommon to come out of a fight with less money than you had coming in
So I went with a 4x human team to see just how far this could go and the game is now half RPG half hellish resource management!
This team is poor as hell. We’re always underequipped for the task, fights are tough as a result and inn prices prohibitive. So we mostly use potions to heal (which is slow) and only go to the inn after finishing a dungeon (as a treat)
Every treasure chest, new armor or stat boost we can get is felt because they mean losing less money. Visiting a new place is always sad instead of exciting because the shops are filled with items we can’t afford. Not to mention the slow humiliation of having to slowly go back to earlier places to get cheaper weapons. A team of robots could have grenades right now but we’re stuck with rapiers
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This sounds like me when I first played the game, back in high school. Now as an Adult Who Knows Things (about this one game in particular), I’m all: this is solvable! I mean yes, the early game is tough that way, especially once you get to Kai’s body, which I’ve never been able to beat in one go. There’s a definite point, though, possibly immediately afterwards, where you’re getting more items than you’re using, and the trick becomes figuring out what you’re going to drop.
Some general tips:
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Strength-based weapons: Sell most of them. With the possible exception of the final boss–and possibly only in the DS version–it’s a useless stat, insofar as you’re better off upgrading Speed for similar amounts of damage in addition to all of its other advantages.
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Firearms that don’t attack groups: Sell most of them. Yes, they do solid damage and sometimes overlook defense, but they also don’t raise stats.
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Martial arts skills: Keep. They’re dirt-cheap, cause more damage the more they’re used, they increase stats (I think), and crucially, they’re useful whenever you don’t want to waste weapon durability (i.e., when you have a guest party-member who’d ideally be doing most of the monster-killing for you).
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With the exception of the Speed stat, do not worry about having a balanced party. Specialization is good, and will prevent you from having to buy four of every offensive item. One character should be your speed offense / martial artist, one your offense offense, one firearms, one magic.
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Shields are only really useful for your main character. Sell most of them.
Of course, the difficulty remains that SaGa being SaGa none of this is actually ever apparent to the player. The first few times playing, I got by by running away from most battles, which is just about doable, up to a certain point.
Re: Romancing SaGa 3: I was all set to talk about how I was still having trouble with final boss Oblivion, even with mdgn_blend’s useful tips and having first defeated the Abyss Monsters redux, except I just realized that yes, part of the reason why I’m having trouble is because I did, in fact, miss all the plot-relevant items, even after I technically got them, because they’re all in the storehouse, and the game never told me, and I never thought to check until just now. FUCK. I imagine I’ll still have problems once I get them, but that’s something for the future.
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Did you trigger the text when fighting Oblivion? That’s when you know you almost got em
I…I…don’t think so? I just found the combo variably useful when they did the Eclipse move, which I don’t think was a sign that I was done, since they went and did it like four times. Oh, no.