After the usual rough 5-10 hours adaptation period for any SaGa game, I’m already ready to call Emerald Beyond an all-timer. It’s very rare to see an RPG be deep and engaging like this during every moment in battle - and even SaGa has only managed that with the last two games. The idea of eliminating healing alltogether but adding a lots of ways to manipulate the flow of battle has really worked well for the series. All the additions to the Scarlet Grace formula are great and there are a lot of unique character types, each character starts basic but develops very organically etc etc. I think this is my favorite RPG battle system!?
I am also slightly obsessed with the very light unique 3 seconds .wav files that activate every time the protagonist gets near a building in this game. Sirens near the police, bells near a temple, soft coughing near giant lungs. Even with the shoestring budget there’s a lot of attention to detail
Have to mention the human body subplot that was so joyfully tasteless…
You join a white blood cell and a red blood cell against an evil god corrupting their world and turning allies into enemies… Even if you defeat the god it might come back later…. The god’s called Canker
I’ll definitely replay the game with every other character and possibly more (multiple replays of the same characters seem to be encouraged)
Scarlet Grace/Emerald Beyond’s battle system is the kind of thing that I don’t know you could do in a more traditional RPG framework with more “exploration” and narrative. The combat is the game in SG/EB- it’s intense and complex, and it requires so much attention and planning that it would turn into a frustration if there were other motivations for playing the games. I haven’t played too much of EB yet, but I think the jump to a snappier, more direct writing style that hinges of humor and one-liners and shorter stories works a lot better than SG’s narrative. I played 50 hours of SG and that was entirely just working through Urpina’s story, for the first time, and I never even finished it (I’m not sure if I even got to her final chapter).
It does seem like SG will feel more like an adventure than EB however, since EB is direct in presenting you what your world map options are while SG has an exploratory aspect on the worldmap since you need to find interactable locations yourself. There’s a bit more of a discovery element to the non-combat aspects of the game.
Yeah people were complaining about the lack of exploration when the games could not really have accommodated them - Xenosaga 2 did it? It had 5-10 minutes long complex battles in standard RPG dungeons and everyone hated that
EB’s more accessible - more complex but is otherwise a lot less demanding than SG. There’s only one world to explore at a time, the emerald wave telling you where to go, frequent full LP recovery make backup members not a necessity anymore and make death less bothersome, trading / forging is available on the go, easy battles are easier (making them a good mean to aim for Mr S objectives - another olive branch to the player)
I kind of admire SG more for being this fully realized and stubbornly uncompromising on the first try. It was even the first one to truly realize series artist Kobayashi’s vision, turning everybody into a sort of terrible yassified monstrosity, if I have to be honest (with all respect)
When you put it all like that, Emerald Beyond feels like a good successor to Unlimited SaGa.
Edit: Thinking on this for 30 seconds, I take that back. Dungeon crawling was a significant aspect of Unlimited SaGa, and that’s something EB doesn’t do. Dungeon Encounters is probably a game closer to Unlimited SaGa than Emerald Beyond.
the way this guy talks is fucking KILLING ME (its a shame they dropped him just repeating anglo slang over and over so quickly). also i know haley complained about the tweening car already but its making me scream with joy cuz it has such unlimited saga game board vibes
also that shes doing some like sad trad white girl version of Auld Lang Syne??? AND ITS FORBIDDEN??? ugh i havent played a saga game in forever its been too long
Both are conditional techs, their effects on combos is
shown by the square on top before the conditional effect is triggered
shown by the square at the bottom if / after the conditional triggers
Full black square on top means this character won’t participate in combos before the tech triggers and will block any combos from adjacent allies from happening
Green square at the bottom shows the tech will have a combo range of 1 after it’s triggered.
Like with the other tech above, black square on top = no combos until the tech is triggered
Square with the dotted line at the bottom means the tech has a combo range of 0 after it’s triggered
The difference between a full black square and a square with a dotted line is that the character can now participate in combos after the tech triggers, even if the 0 combo range makes it a bit tricky. You need an ally with a big combo range that overlaps over the Covering Fire user, for the Covering fire user to participate in the combo
I was lying half asleep in bed when all of this just occurred me and I came here to post this too!
I’m too sleepy to remember the exact scenario but I think a chain from a Persuant Strike (or sometime like that) actually broke my unite attack apart rather than adding to it before. I don’t know what icons that attack has though. Are your sure the dotted square means it needs to overlap to combo , Rather than it can’t combo at all?
I had a unit to the left of a single enemy use a chain attack Pursuing Strike, and then to the right of the enemy were my remaining for characters set for a combo. After the second hit of the unite attack, the chain effect activated and the combo actually broke and ended.
Are you sure the ally to the right had a combo range that overlapped further to the right to include the ally with the chain tech?
Maybe it only works if the chaining ally has allies on both sides of them overlapping all over, IDK I haven’t played with chain attacks enough to give a definitive answer. But there has to be a difference between a full black square and a dotted line square somewhere
I’m trying to remember- I wonder if I’m misremembering and what actually happened was someone in the combo had the Delay +1 effect that pulled an enemy into the middle of the group, which then broke the combo? Because I do have a guy with that effect equipped.
Chiago was constantly my worst unit though I kept using him
I just finished an Ameya playthrough under 2 hours!
I gathered a bunch of cats, went to the frozen world, immediately finished it by telling the lone guy there that maybe he should avoid responsability and not do anything (whole place took like 2 hours with Bonnie and Formina) , went to the dismal king land, finished it under 4 battles, got scolded for gathering too many cats, the end.
I have to say, this science research facility world with the red, yellow, and green divisions is absolutely awful. I made horrible decision making this my first world (playing Mido) because man is almost every single thing about this world in terms of narrative and pacing dull and grating. I wince every time I hear that conversation BGM.
10 hours into the game I remembered you can equip and unequip techs, and that you have to equip soul techs onto kugutsu to actually give them new moves.
