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Oh, boy! I missed out on the FFL LP, and I'm not good at making ideas happen, but I'm glad to watch this on the ground floor; it was always my favorite of the Gameboy SaGa games. As far as I know all of the glitches have been fixed from the first game, but there's a few other bugs (mostly crazy speedrun-tier shenanigans) in their place. Are you going to go over any of those in side-updates?
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Oct 10, 2014 10:15
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If you split hairs, there is one more reason to bother with shields: It's the only way for a character to not take a turn. As Chokes noted, you have to actually perform an action to get statboosts, so it's easy - especially with out-of-depth monsters and/or mechs in the party - to wipe out the enemies before everyone gets a chance to even act. Similarly, gains in the North Cave are awful because Mr. S does all of the heavy lifting. Thus, you slap a shield on whoever you don't want hogging all the battle experience, and just have them sit there picking their nose while the other people do some work for once.
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Oct 12, 2014 00:06
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Camel Pimp posted:So I presume this game has a select/cancel exploit too? Yay you took Sara yay! Not as such. Like in Dawn of Souls, you actually have to perform the action in order to get credit for it, and, in SaGa fashion, even then it's only a chance of getting a stat boost. That's not to say that there aren't exploits. They're just a lot harder to work than the original FF2's were.
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Oct 12, 2014 02:28
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DjinnAndTonic posted:Having actually played this game, I'm still not sure how my mind should be interpreting what the Male Mutant sprite is supposed to look like. Some kinda harlequin helmet with batwings? Did he spill paint on his head? Judging by the concept art, looks like the guy was intended to have a cyber-eye. For no reason. (Before anyone accuses this of being from the US manual, no; the art there was even more incomprehensible.)
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Oct 12, 2014 10:51
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Ah, yes. The curse of the traditional Human/Esper/Monster/Mech party: Having your mech being too powerful for anybody but your monster (who sucks no matter what) to keep up. Glad you took my comment to heart, then, about letting the other three do some lifting. Once they come into their own they won't have problems (particularly if your two Espers proc some good skill gains), but for the first world or so they're not gonna want to lean on Roy too much as a crutch for now. This is also why a 4 mech party utterly ruins the game's difficulty, but turns it into a different kind of difficulty: grinding for money. 
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Oct 14, 2014 03:36
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UmbreonMessiah posted:You can also SORT of control what abilities you get, but only in a very vague sense. Once again, I'd explain the ability system, but only if Chokes is okay with it. However, Monster is a class that really, seriously needs a guide by your side to use well. If you just cram every last piece of meat in your mouth you'll be consistently hovering several ranks below par and would be entirely justified in believing that the race was terrible. Mechs are almost as good as monsters and don't require a handy guide and/or memorization of transformation tables, is what I'm saying. That said, Mec + Human + 2 Monster is by far the easiest team to wreck the game with, if (and only if) you know how to game monster transformations. You could probably get by with 2 Mec + 2 Monster, too, but that would largely involve being incredibly consistent with monster form choice, since there are a few points in the game where you really want some form of Mana-based damage. Past that, your next easiest time will likely be with 2 Mec + 2 Human. KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 14:25
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Gabriel Pope posted:It takes ~80 mana for the best spellbook to outdamage the most powerful monster, and humans reach that point faster than mutants do. I guess if you grind your way to 99 mana mutants can tie humans, but that either takes RNG abuse or way too much free time. The appeal of Mutants anyway is more for utility than raw damage anyway, things like Barrier, Teleport, and early healing make a difference in the long run. Asura United posted:Didn't the translation group disband? IIRC, Saga 2 was still a little buggy on their last release. Most of SaGa 2 DS's problems are, appropriately enough, in the new content. In particular, the whole Threads of Fate system is confusing as hell and even though they try to explain it, the translation mangles it enough to make it even more confusing. SaGa 3 is done by a different team, and is about 99% completed; there's a few typos and the mashup combo names (the game has a combo system sort of like SaGa Frontier's) aren't translated, but that's the extent of what's unfinished.
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Oct 21, 2014 18:50
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Chokes McGee posted:But I have such sights to show you around the halfway point of this LP please tell me poison is involved  that glitch is the most glorious thing and nobody outside of speedrun circles knows about it
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Oct 21, 2014 19:59
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DjinnAndTonic posted:I can't recall any specifics, but I do remember at one point hearing that SaGa3/FFL3 was either spearheaded by another director, or had some heavy executive meddling to make the game easier/more traditional, which is why it stands out some much. UmbreonMessiah posted:That's because [FF2 and FFL2 are] both designed by the same man: Akitoshi Kawazu, a man who has admitted point blank that most of the games he's made aren't very good. SaGa 3/FFL3 was directed by Kouzi Ide, someone who only has two other games under his belt. One of them is Treasure of the Rudras, a sleeper hit SNES game with a really... let's say interesting magic system. The other? Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. You can tell, too; a lot of the art assets from the original FFL3 got taken and spruced up, then used in Mystic Quest - most particularly the weapon attack animations. But yes. FFL3 is both more forgiving and more "traditional" than the usual SaGa game because it was directed by the Mystic Quest guy instead of the FF2 guy. EDIT: That may also be why it's less hilariously glitchy and/or easy to break than the first two SaGa games were. drat shame, that. KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Oct 23, 2014 |
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Oct 23, 2014 16:34
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RabidWeasel posted:I remember playing Treasure of the Rudras, but I can't remember a drat thing about it other than I'm pretty sure it was fun? You basically made your own magic "words" by combining katakana for various effects, some obvious and others less-so. Naturally, this was the biggest hurdle to fan translations, since changing a katakana-based table to romanized alphanumerics is a nightmare and a half. It wasn't a bad game by any means, no, but it's more iconic for how hard it was to translate than for anything about its plot or gameplay. (Also for it's music, but that's to be expected from a Square game)
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Oct 23, 2014 21:25
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Drakenel posted:I just assumed the Young Men's Christian Association is a mystical word of power in this world I've heard that it is quite fun to stay there. You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal, you might even have the power to do whatever you feel. 
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Oct 24, 2014 03:06
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Gabriel Pope posted:It gets even better!  Wow, that's slipshod coding right out of FF2's book. Good to see Kawazu's standards of testing are up to par. EDIT: It's worth noting that even if you're trying to specialize, you don't want to overspecialize. Everyone needs Agility (fun fact: the run formula is based on your entire party's combined agility versus the enemy's, to say nothing of the importance of turn order), and everyone needs Mana (it serves both as magic power and magic defense). Defense is largely granted by equipment, and Strength only matters if you're one of the characters in your party using Strength-based weaponry (you shouldn't have more than one or two) KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Oct 25, 2014 |
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Oct 25, 2014 21:58
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UmbreonMessiah posted:As well, as much as agility determines your run ability and turn order, it's all more or less random ANYWAY. There is a certain threshold - I'm not sure what it is, but it exists - where running is a guarantee. It might not hit until you get several characters with Agi > 99, though. (Oh, remember how the listed stats stopped at 99 but could get higher, in FFL1? That's a thing here, too. You typically would never get any stat that high short of Mech shenanigans, is the problem) As far as turn order, I figure it's some sort of initiative-based system, since slow characters can and do go faster - occasionally - than fast characters.
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Oct 26, 2014 15:59
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Legend 2 is a lot more forgiving than Legend by virtue of being both less grindy (unless you have bad luck) and better balanced. It's still no cakewalk, but it's not an exercise in tedium and/or pain like the first one was. Since Chokes got through 1 just fine, I don't have any doubts about him getting through 2 with no issues.
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Oct 28, 2014 05:16
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Gabriel Pope posted:You're working too hard, unfortunately. FFL2 just keeps track of your most recent action, so only the last attack you use counts for stat ups--trying to drag out the fight is pointless as long as everyone has a turn. It's worth noting that this is only true in the original GameBoy version; multiple stats can and will be raised in a single battle depending on your actions in the DS remake, if you happen to be playing along with that one. That version also is confirmed for the "last two actions" deal, meaning in prolonged fights your best bet is to alternate an Agility weapon and a Strength or Mana weapon, really. Chokes McGee posted:
 Something about this seems... off. Can't put my finger on what exactly.
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Oct 31, 2014 22:37
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Yeah. Wife and kid. My son's a terrific boy. You remind me of him, actually.
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hanales posted:I wonder what the crossover is between games like this and games like dark souls in the player base. I know that I love both. The stupidly complicated ends up for fun exploring and research. Lord knows I'm a research nerd. Probably a lot higher in Japan than here in America; whereas Dark Souls capitalized on the recent attention of masocore platformers (Super Meat Boy, I Wanna Be The Guy) in America, the masochistic gaming market in Japan is much bigger.
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Nov 1, 2014 21:26
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It's so easy when you first start FFL2 to write off martial arts as completely loving useless, since Punch doesn't actually start doing anything resembling damage until you've burned something like 20 uses off of it, and Kick isn't much better. This is why a lot of people think FFL2 is hard. Seriously, once you drop down to about 30 uses of Punch, you're one-shotting pretty much any normal enemy in the first two worlds, and a sub-10 Punch will one-shot anything for a few worlds after that. And that's just for the very first martial arts weapon. Add in the fact that they train agility (previously mentioned as one of the more important stats) and it baffles me as to why physically-oriented Humans use anything else. As noted, it's also the only real way to have a melee mutant, too, due to the way Strength gains work for them. Short form: dump all your Str-based weaponry on your mech and let humans go all Fist of the North Star. EDIT: Of course, the problem with martial arts is no real multitarget capabilities, but that's why you train Mana too and use the money you don't waste on str-based weapons for spellbooks and/or big guns. KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 23:49
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It was basically 100% of the gameplay in Bowser's Inside Story.chiasaur11 posted:...So bad at hiding the fact he isn't a giant? No, he's just magnificently bad at hide-and-seek.
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Nov 6, 2014 09:05
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JustJeff88 posted:I was surprised that 1 didn't get the remake treatment. Of the trilogy, I'd say that that one needed it the most. It did get a remake! On the Wonderswan Color.
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Nov 7, 2014 00:27
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Choco1980 posted:Am I the only one turned off by the fact that the SaGa 3 translation doesn't use the FFL3 official translation as its guide for pronouns? It bothered me for a while, too, but then again, a Ted Woolsey localization is always a harshly divisive subject in translator communities, and FFL3 was his second (after FF4; as the story goes that when approached for FFL3, Squaresoft approached Woolsey with a copy of FF2 US and basically told him to "don't do it as bad as that") To be honest, the only thing that bothers me to this day about the remake using the Japanese names over Woolsey's is the name "Nemesis" instead of "Faye". One of these names is more or less a giant flashing neon sign that "this character is plot-relevant", whereas the other... well, isn't, and I think it helps the story to not be slapped across the face with that at every turn.
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Nov 7, 2014 09:07
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neongrey posted:No, FFL3 was his first project; he had nothing to do with FF4's translation (but they did tell him not to do as badly as FF4). I could've swore "you spoony bard" was entirely his doing. My mistake, then. Chokes McGee posted:Also also, I will never get tired of writing Zero as Roy's dumbass little buddy. Ever. A boy and his mutant. It's fantastic and I don't think we'll ever get tired of reading it. 
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Nov 8, 2014 01:57
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Chokes McGee posted:hat guy is totally god But we already saw a few updates ago that "hat guy" in this one was Mask! And/or Roy's dad. 
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Nov 16, 2014 11:56
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Random fact: The victory theme's actual track title in-game? EAT THE MEAT  It's like the game actually wanted you to use monsters or something! :iamafag: As far as the Incredible Ki Voyage: It's a lot more managable in the DS remake if for the sole reason that the DS Remake uses generic "enemy sprites" on the overworld ala Tales of Symphonia instead of random battles. Sure, if you get in a battle you still get swarmed like a motherfucker, but you can at least try to dodge enemies as opposed to getting into a random battle every five steps. (FFL2's random encounter rate is pretty high. I agree with Chokes that I don't think the rate inside Ki is any higher than normal? It just turns out that "normal" is pretty ludicrous and this is the first time you'll end up facing down ten or more enemies at once with regularity.)
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Nov 17, 2014 02:57
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There is one boss in particular Chokes thinks you're referring to that I can't talk about in greater detail without spoiling something. Suffice to say that brute force is not the way to get past that boss but some people choose that path anyway. Agility is a crapshoot in this game unless you get it to absurd levels, but if you're training it to the degrees you should be, then "chance of losing one member due to crappy enemy turn shenanigans" is still a lot better than "certainty of losing one member due to being too goddamn slow". I think it's something like a 50 Agility difference that makes it 100% certain you won't go before a slower enemy? The gap is restrictively huge, either way, and may actually be bigger than the gap to safely run from battles. EDIT: There was a dumb question about showing something off here but I realized it was dumb. That said, is there any way I could contact you, Chokes, outside of PMs? KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Dec 8, 2014 |
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Dec 8, 2014 08:01
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Chokes McGee posted:Sadly, nothing I'd like to make public. If it's a famous bug, though, rest assured I'll get to it—either in the main story or as part of one of Mr. S' lectures. Not so much "famous" as "it exists on the Internet on a page but actually works and it should be famous like the other ones but isn't". I guess I'll just wait to see if you get it, then.
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Dec 8, 2014 15:20
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DeTosh posted:I really was playing this game wrong as a kid. My strategy for several worlds was boosting Agility and relying on weapons that keyed off that stat. At least until I got endgame equipment. That's actually not that bad of an idea, for physically-oriented humans. I forget how many agility-type weapons there are in the game, but we've already seen the Rapier and Sabre, and those alone can do some decent damage in the hands of a speedy enough character. The biggest problem is that nothing in the game - save for Ki's brief cameo - really clues you in to Mana being the godstat for non-mecs. You can always get bigger and better spellbooks, Cure will never not be useful, and if you want to swing around a weapon you can just use a Psi-Knife or something similar. There's also something to be said about grinding a bunch of martial arts and just burning their last 5 or so uses on really difficult bosses.
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Dec 10, 2014 13:39
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Well, with a whole bunch of things getting tweaked, buffed, or nerfed in the transition between FFL1 and FFL2, obviously the Revenge Sword isn't as terrible as before, right?  (No, seriously, I don't know; I never got this far when I wasn't running nothing but mechs and martial arts.)
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Dec 18, 2014 08:08
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Jeweler's lenses are a lot more complex than the stereotypical monocle, though. They're practically steampunk monocles with how much magnification they're expected to have.
KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 00:05
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TKMobile posted:So, in the SaGa 2 remake, is the "Dad has an affair" plotline still intact? Admittedly this game wasn't made in an era where you could give Gameboy RPGs lots of onscreen time to play out the twist, but my sadness for Roy is matched only by my curiosity... It's still there, and spelled out a lot clearer than in the English GB translation.
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Dec 22, 2014 20:27
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Siegkrow posted:The DS Remake (which is translated btw) has SaGa 2's system + animalification and robotification Yeah, though the game kind of beats you over the head with the plot and its own idea of "characterization" so the usual Chokes charm wouldn't quite work on it. (That said, there's something to be said about a SaGa mech like Roy having a Serious, Dramatic conversation with a catgirl, a male stripper, and a literal German tank. It's still a SaGa game, all in all) KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 26, 2014 22:35
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JustJeff88 posted:Some of the mechanics I wouldn't miss... I was never a fan of limited-use everything except for some items like spells and potions, for example. It's a good thing that weapon durability wouldn't come back to the series until SaGa Frontier 2, then!  In its own way, FFL and FFL2 wouldn't work without the breakable weapons. You'd have to completely throw out the Martial Arts mechanics, for one, since they depend on checking how many uses of an item you have left. The way Mecs work would have to get rehauled, too - something that didn't technically happen again until SaGa Frontier. In a roundabout way, the Romancing series works by making everyone more or less functionally a Mutant - able to get random stat gains, but also randomly proccing special abilities as they go. (That's right: Sara and Zero are essentially the grandpappies of sparking.)
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Dec 28, 2014 22:34
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JustJeff88 posted:Speaking of the remakes, and I tip my hat to the kind people that translated them, didn't someone say something just a short while ago that the remake of 3 used mechanics from 2 that weren't in the originals? Something like that... I didn't quite understand what was different. FFL3 was incredibly Mystic Quest. You had weapons as generic equipment, spells as same, with stats being the only differentiator between characters. In addition, EXP/levels were introduced into the SaGa series for the first (and thankfully only) time, removing the typical levelless difficulty curve. SaGa 3 DS eschews that for the more SaGa standard in-battle statgains and a system that somewhat resembles sparking - each weapon (and spellbook) has a set of techs that you unlock as you fight, each costing a certain amount of weapon durability (since MP/WP/whatever weren't in the game). In addition, with the remake of 3 they finally did a smart, sensible thing and set up a shop in most towns where you could actually repair your limited-use items.
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Dec 28, 2014 23:12
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Captain Bravo posted:I'm with this dude. What does the "Jr." add to the Robot pun that wasn't already there? As stated a little after that question, the SaGa mechs have an uncanny resemblence to Radio Shack's old Robie Jr. toy. In other news, when digging through boxes of crap at my house, I found my old FFL2 manual. It's water-damaged to hell and back, but it's still fascinating in that "bad 8-bit era manual" way. The "Story" page is literally a picture of a dude holding a sword and nothing else, the manual describes the A button as being used for "Searching a Door" (pictured: opening a chest) and "Searching for Treasure" (pictured: playing the jukebox). Mr. S, instead of being a slime-based creature, is apparently Yoda with a fivehead. The list of goes on.
KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 02:27
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Before anyone asks: Yes, all the female outfits are that bad. 
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Dec 31, 2014 11:50
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I love that last world we were in. All the other worlds seem to have a distinctive biome or just a little bit of room to explore? Not that one. It's just a place for a ninja to take Lynn and for Dad to make heroic sacrifices. It's literally a hallway to a dramatic clearing and nothing else. It's even less impressive in the DS remake, where it's just an empty field with nothing to note.
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Jan 13, 2015 04:49
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Cheez posted:I'm pretty sure those shops are supposed to be the people who evacuated the Guardians' world. This is more or less the implication, yes, as the shops are identical to what was in Guardian World. It's still uncharacteristically nice of them to let you revisit them after poo poo Got Real.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:27
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Ah, good, I was wondering if you were running out of time to get a total party wipe in. Also, SaGa mimics hate you because Akitoshi Kawazu hates fun. This is also why mimics in FF2, well, exist. That said, we can't blame Kawazu for mimics altogether, just in video games. No, the iconic "sentient treasure chest that wants you for dinner" is entirely a Gary Gygax creation. Gary Gygax hated his players more than most JRPGs do, so mimics in D&D can take the form of literally anything made out of stone or wood, they just happen to favor treasure chests and doors because those are the things adventurers put their grubby mitts on most frequently. EDIT: Because the only people more sadistic than Gygax were the people who played his game, in the late 80s a campaign came out featuring "house hunters", aka giant mimics that imitated entire buildings in order to eat you.
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Feb 6, 2015 08:15
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mauman posted:Chrono Trigger had mimic save points too. Chrono Trigger also had enemies get alerted and attack you if they heard the 'ding!' of you hitting a save point, in one spot. It was kind of glorious.
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Feb 7, 2015 10:21
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CmdrKing posted:Is there any game not improved by a visit to Valhalla? I posit no. Valhalla in Valkyrie Profile is actually kinda boring! All spreadsheets and talking heads.
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Feb 14, 2015 08:57
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Chokes McGee posted:I must confess, I haven't the slightest idea how you're supposed to proceed from there. The final levels of this game are difficult, brutally so—even by SaGa standards. I can't imagine how an inexperienced party would survive them. Three mecs and a monster is actually how speedrunners do it. There's a handful of monsters that come pre-loaded with Teleport, so the trick is getting one of those monsters and then letting your mecs do all the heavy lifting. There's a little more to it than that, but that's the basic. EponymousMrYar posted:Overflow errors are also great source of entertainment. Heal your enemies by literally doing more damage than the game itself can handle! And this is the rest of the recipe for a successful speedrun: Actually triggering underflow errors on your mecs to give them somewhere around 255 Agility and 65535 HP. Ballparking it, of course. After that, even a Rapier will one-shot a whole crapload of stuff. KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 20:28
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