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CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
I know it's earlygame and a boss, but cripes, didn't realize Liza sparked so fast. Granted, Emelia is one of the routes I haven't done so I've never really used her before.

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CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
The loss of damage from Mastery isn't very noticeable unless you obsessively track your damage values. However... there's a scenario in the game where you can use attacks for free, and it is pretty noticeable there. You lose something like a quarter of your damage on endgame attacks.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

KataraniSword posted:


SacredSong is sound-based and multi-target. This means Harmonium gear blocks it, but it also means that if you don't have Harmonium gear, it will wreck your poo poo, especially with Kylin's stats.

Honestly I tried both fights and ultimately went with the other path for exactly that reason. While the other fight is probably harder in a vacuum, in practice it the relative lack of MT damage makes it a lot easier to play it a few times until the RNG goes your way, and a few bad rolls won't end the fight. A Sacred Song is basically the end for you meanwhile.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
That would require there to be a SaGa game that was released on-time, budget intact, and in a complete state.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
T260G. After doing Blue doing Mystics right away would feel a bit samey and downplay their strengths I think. Getting some mech action would be nice.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

Derek Barona posted:

While I was defending the early portion of Blue's quest earlier on, I admit that I find the ending to this quest to be a full pot of horse turd stew on Square's part. I don't care how much your budget's getting slashed, you leave enough so that your developers can actually finish the bloody story, not make them slap a screentone on it and fade out. The fact that the ending only makes any sense at all if you went and bought the Essence book makes this even worse, like some early 90s era version of DLC. The one thing to this whole mess that I'm willing to forgive is that the idea of Rouge going down there and duking it out with Satan by himself is about the most :black101: thing anyone ever does in this game.

For Blue's quest I'd honestly argue that no matter how much money you gave the team, that's how they'd end it. The feeling of being cheated is very much intentional. Now, having more buildup to the idea that you can't win this fight or that going down to Hell here is a suicide mission would absolutely be in order. But just kinda fading out mid-battle? Defintely how the quest is supposed to end.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
Generally speaking, if your game credits include Kawazu prominently anywhere, it's safe to say it's gonna be fairly SaGa-like. Which The Last Remnant does. Haven't played it myself, but I've definitely been told it's pretty much the unofficial last SaGa game (in the sense that since then the only SaGa games have been remakes for the DS that didn't leave japan.)

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

neongrey posted:


I really love 5 too but wowwie is it easy to understand why that killed the franchise. :(

Yeah. Hell, I consider Dragon Quarter the best of the five games but not only is it way different than what a fan coming in after any of the previous games would expect or want (especially considering that, some backsliding in 2 aside, the series was very good at linearly building on the game before it), but it's a very artsy, limited appeal game to start with.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
BoFIII's big strength, thinking on it, is mostly that it has a great sense of how much to tell the player and when to do so. There's few parts of the game where I didn't have some hook that made me want to keep playing, and even if it was a small thing, there was always some sort of payoff for those hooks.
Some of that though is I played BoFIV first and distinctly felt a lack of hooks most of the game. The Fou-Lu stuff was so very very good but there was just nothing I gave a drat about in the Ryu portions of the game, so it was basically a complete chore struggling through them to get more Fou. There's probably some Ryu bits I underrate because I held this mindset most of the game, but it gave me a keener appreciation for BoFIII's charms.

... it's so strange we've had this extended tangent about Breath of Fire in a SaGa thread, considering the series are basically on complete opposite sides of the innovation spectrum.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
The main thing with Riki's quest is... much like Asellus is the Mystic Quest and T260G is the Mech Quest, Riki is the Monster Quest. And monsters are the overall weakest type of character in the game, while Riki's quest has lots of unique content that means it's one of the harder quests overall even without that. It has its own special "gently caress you!"s as well, but dude'll get to that.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
Yeah, blue has exactly one line of dialog in one of the remaining quests, and he manages to completely encapsulate his dickishness in that one line.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

Panic! at Nabisco posted:

I didn't get far enough to see the charm in Unlimited SaGa. :v: Does it exist?

Absolutely. What you do is, don't play the game at all, and instead marvel at the gorgeous sprite work, great character art, and quite possibly the best music Masashi Hamauzu has ever composed.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

dotchan posted:

Such good music that he basically recycled the Unlimited Saga battletheme into Final Fantasy XIII.

Oh wow, I did not remember the main battle theme to USaGa but yeah, there is definitely a lot of that in Blinded by Light now that I'm re-listening to it.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

KirbyKhan posted:

I tried. I tried so very hard to get into Unlimited Saga. But at the time it was so obtuse and there wasn't (still kinda doesnt) any documentation on the game.

Yeah, I held on to the gme for a while after release hoping FAQs might help me out since I was rather hopelessly lost in some quest playing as Laura, but after a few months I gave up. That sort of stuff might exist now (I've never looked really) but... I don't think the basic mechanics were ever really figured out. Like, comboing, how does it work. It's kinda really important!

Although truthfully the game's kinda hosed even if there is some rhyme or reason to turn order and comboing due to the way levelling up works. You only level at the end of dungeons AND it's less gaining new stats and skills and more "hope like hell you roll a new slot that's better than what you already have seeing as you HAVE to delete one and take one of the ones you rolled"? What even the hell Unlimited Saga.

e: Really I think the intent with Unlimited Saga was to bring ridiculously RNG dependent RPGs, sorta like really super old school pnp kinda stuff (or wargames more? My early tabletop knowledge is not the best) back into the spotlight. Turns out when you can't buy the book of stat tables that tells you what the rolls mean or see the rolls for that it really pisses people off because they don't even know why the game has stalemated them. Ain't nobody got time for that poo poo and all.

CmdrKing fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Sep 28, 2014

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

doing the obvious posted:



Light Sword can also be a good enough investment for Gen if you don't want to use katana techniques with him. Pretty sure that it even trumps the one sword unique to Asellus' story in terms of sheer cut-you-up power, which says something.

According to some folks I asked, LightSword is 80 power while the unique one is 75, so yeah. Also wow for some reason I thought LightSword was only 70 power (which still equals or trumps every other sword), plus you get LightSwordDeflect and all those stat bonuses. drat good spell.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

doing the obvious posted:

I still love that Red's scenario more or less hands the best characters in the game to him for free (even if only temporarily in some cases). Solely by virtue of being awesome.

I also love that we get to see what an utter dick other characters are in his scenario, too.

The insane thing with that being Red barely needs the help.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
I meant to say that Red getting probably the best character draw in the game is overkill. Like if Red had Riki's character draw you'd barely notice, whereas if Riki had Red's character draw his story would definitely be noticeably easier.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

KataraniSword posted:

More or less. I don't think blood-drinking is a "you need to do it to live" thing like with actual vampires, but the whole method of creation and immortal life and everything without a Y chromosome wanting to jump Orlouge's bones (except Asellus since she's essentially his surrogate daughter) is textbook vampire mythos.


Honestly from what I remember of Asellus's scenario I'm pretty sure that can be simplified to "except Asellus". And hey, he's called "The Charm Lord", one would hope his powers were not limited to the ladies.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
If memory serves the first three SaGa games all have DS remakes, although I don't think they added robots to the first game. Just those remakes didn't leave Japan.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
We never see the contents of the magazine, but... remember, every other character has a different reaction:

T260G: "Analyzing Data... B94. W58. H88. IQ... Incomprehensible."

Riki: "Look Mei-ling, she has no clothes on. She must be really hot." Mei-Ling: "Don't look at that! Riki."

Emelia: "That's really ugly. She's out of proportion. Size isn't everything, you know."

Lute: "Ooooh man! Check THAT out! But it'll never beat the real thing."

Blue/Rouge: "What a useless book."

So yeah we know basically everything about what they're looking at except her hair color. Asellus is looking at a naked, unrealistically buxom, woman and getting turned on by it.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

MartianAgitator posted:


\/\/\/ Dude, I just told you how this game is ripping off Revolutionary Girl Utena. Asellus is gay. No duh. But other than ripping off that anime, how does the game establish this?

Well, Like I said...


CmdrKing posted:

We never see the contents of the magazine, but... remember, every other character has a different reaction:

T260G: "Analyzing Data... B94. W58. H88. IQ... Incomprehensible."

Riki: "Look Mei-ling, she has no clothes on. She must be really hot." Mei-Ling: "Don't look at that! Riki."

Emelia: "That's really ugly. She's out of proportion. Size isn't everything, you know."

Lute: "Ooooh man! Check THAT out! But it'll never beat the real thing."

Blue/Rouge: "What a useless book."

So yeah we know basically everything about what they're looking at except her hair color. Asellus is looking at a naked, unrealistically buxom, woman and getting turned on by it.

Yes, it's basically a sort of bonus for replaying the game, but that's pretty damned direct. I mean, if you're asking "Is there any evidence that Asellus is specifically attracted to White Rose", then that's different, and certainly nothing so far is remotely concrete. But she's definitely into women.

Mootiman posted:

Is there any evidence she's into guys?

Well, that doesn't necessarily mean much of anything of course. That said, basically all the male characters involved in Asellus' plotline are trying to manipulate or kill her in some fashion, so her attraction or lack thereof is never really suggested.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
It's very SaGa in general really. There's only mild hints at how this will work, and the steps are contrary to typical player logic ("Hey cool a human with Mystic gear! Let's absorb some monsters!"), but it makes perfect sense once you know about it; Asellus' story is about her coming to terms with her life as a Mystic, and how much she embraces that side of her determines how that story ends.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
My impression has been that it's seen as a sort of... Phase, something kids do before they properly knuckle down and have a family like good citizens. Which does lend itself to denying it exists, with lots of getting married then spending all your free time with same-sex lovers. But this is based on third hand knowledge and may not be the majority attitude on the matter. It definitely fits with the Get Out If The Closet speech though.

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CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...

Derek Barona posted:


Or, y'know, there actually was supposed to be some mandatory relationship building between the two or something else that would've made this whole thing make more sense, but it got cut and we're left fitting the pieces back together like a jigsaw frankenstein.

Having seen all three of Asellus' endings, I'd lean towards this. Gina is weirdly prominent in them.

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