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Introduction Many fought for the mighty power. Some won and some failed. Now... another legend in bravery is about to begin...   Let's play Final Fantasy Legend 2!  (Alternate Title: "Final Fantasy Legend 2: Dad Harder") What? Final Fantasy Legend 2 is the Americanized version of the SaGa series: specifically, SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu. Don't ask me what that subtitle means. I don't know and I don't care. Forged lovingly by SquareSoft in the deepest pits of Hell with shards of the damned, the sequel to Romancing SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend is not without its charms. You may even acclimate to them after the first world or two. Never forget, though, that this is a SaGa game. It may seem as easy as swinging the sharp thingie at your opponent's face until he falls over, but there are a lot of variables that go into fights. The game will expect you to master them. The game will not give you the slightest help doing so. And by the time the mid-game bosses start showing up, hoo boy, you better have a firm grasp on things. Where? The world of FFL2 is—stop me if you've heard this one before—a multi-plane reality with a single vine-line tower connecting all of them. The worlds are not thematically consistent and, according to Why? Because it's fun, you goofball! Seriously, as much as I loved the original Final Fantasy Legend, it is a very flawed game that feels like it was produced in someone's basement as a homebrew. Levelling is uneven, there are huge dead spaces in every world, and the difficulty curve is ridiculously uneven, especially at end game. However! Let it not be said Square doesn't learn from their mistakes. The sequel is tightly woven, well translated, and an overall superior experience than the original. And, happily, exactly none of the schizophrenic batshit insanity of character development has been lost. If anything, it's been ramped up a notch. You want a laser ninja? You got it. Martial artist with grenades? Go hog wild. Bigger monsters! Crazier weapons! Motherfucking robots! SaGa can lead to some magical moments if you know what you're doing. I guarantee you, I will type at least two sentences over the course of this LP that will generate  and  responses at the exact same time.If that weren't enough, FFL2 is better simply because the goofy dialogue is intentional. FFL was a brooding, quasi-emo meditation on the nature of free will that was made utterly laughable by really awful localization. FFL2 is Romancing SaGa's dorky little brother who tells the corniest loving jokes and is a thousand times more likeable for it. How? Now we're getting into the meat of things. There have been some small but significant changes to the engine since Final Fantasy Legend. Those of you unfamiliar to SaGa shouldn't worry too much; we'll revisit the mechanics as we go along. The only thing you need to know beforehand is that weapons and spells can run out and you have to buy new ones to replenish them. Also, if you don't have at least one attack option available, your guy is reduced to sitting there like a brainless meatshield during combat. Alright, let's get to it!  Humans  I presume you're one of these. Humans are hardy and always a good front line choice. They will slowly gain stats as they fight, getting stronger, more agile, and more durable depending on the weapons they use and the strength of the competition. You can also accelerate the process by pumping them full of HgH. Seriously. 'Roids are a thing in SaGa, and they're a pretty big deal. You need dem stats, so buy dem stat potions. In a neat twist, FFL2 eschews the typical RPG strength/agility divide between males and females. This time around, they start them with the exact same stats. Social progress!   Mutants  If you post on Something Awful, you may be one of these. Mutants are a bit like the FFL version of elves—less durable and predisposed to spellcasting. Their real advantage, however, lies in their ability to pick up random powers. These will show up and/or disappear after fights pretty much whenever they feel like it. There's nothing you can do to weight or influence them. Sorry! On the bright side, a roaming Cure ability is always nice, and there's always a chance you'll spike something ridiculous like Whirl or O-Damage. Mutants also grow in stats over the course of the game. With a little coaxing, they can match or even surpass humans, making the difference in effectiveness more or less negligible. One disadvantage of mutant abilities, however, is that they take up slots in your active inventory. A fully powered mutant will use four slots, leaving you with four free slots and some dicey choices to make about armor and weapons. Consider yourself forewarned.  Monsters  If you post on Reddit, you are probably one of these. Monsters are a mixed bag in FFL2. They don't level up, and they can't equip items. Furthermore, they have a fixed set of abilities that don't change. (This is nice if you have a really good/useful layout, but it kind of sucks if the monster sucks.) So, how do they get better? After some fights, you will be informed that the enemy dropped meat. Meat has no effect on other character types, but for monsters, it will (usually) transform them into a new monster. There's a whole paper-rock-scissors chart with different types and multiple tiers and it all just makes my head hurt thinking about it. In general, though, stronger enemies mean stronger meat means stronger monsters. It's also pretty hilarious when that rule breaks down, though perhaps not for the person playing the game.  MOTHERFUCKING ROBOTS  Robots are both the weirdest and awesome-est of SaGa races. Firstly, Robots do not level up. Period. Their stats do not grow over time, they do not generate abilities, they cannot imbibe potions, they cannot eat meat. That's right, I used the word imbibe.  What they can do, however, is equip items—and that's where the fun starts. When a robot equips an item, its usages (if any) are immediately cut in half. After that, two things will happen:
Of course, unequipping the item will cut its usages in half once more, so don't do that. Also, equipping a single use item will remove it from your inventory entirely, so don't do that either. As long as neither of these apply, feel free to pimp out your robot as much as you want.  Spoiler Policy No spoilers: not equipment, not events, not wink-wink-nudge-nudge "oh man I can't wait for X" stuff. This rule isn't quite as crucial as it was for FFL, but it'll still spoil some nice surprises. Part of what makes FFL2 awesome is the "holy poo poo where did we end up this time?" factor, so don't ruin that! And now... Time for the good stuff! This is where you, the discriminating LP viewer, help build the party! Your choices will determine whether their ascent is a heartwarming tale of misfits coming together as a surrogate family or a nightmare of self-obsessed treasure hungry sociopaths. I'd put money on the latter, but I've been wrong before.  Here's what I need from you guys:
You can suggest as many characters as you want. I make no promises, though, and may take liberties with ideas. If all your suggestions suck, then I'll substitute my own.  Lead character will be selected from the final candidates based entirely on my own capricious whims. Playthrough gimmicks will be accepted if I think they're doable and they'll make for good characterization.(We're not doing an all-monster party. Ever. Don't even ask.) One last thing, and it's my standard disclaimer: I am not a Final Fantasy Legend 2 expert, nor will I be grinding the game into oblivion to prove my LP street cred. I'm just a nerd with a screenshot tool and a love of near-ancient RPGs. I encourage discussions (of things we've already seen!) and will edit corrections into the LP as we go along. I'm not planning on engaging any exploits, though, other than to show they exist. This will be a clean run with some extra plot on top, so just kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Let's see those character ideas! Voting closes whenever the hell I feel like it.
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Oct 10, 2014 04:12
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Updates and Fanart! Final party selected. Lots of appealing ideas, so I had to squish a bunch together to get them in. We'll be going with Roy (Chokes McGee, Alectai), Sara (Camel Pimp, Remliel), Zero (Snugglecakes), and Heather (Rabbi Raccoon). Fan art! If you see one saw this season, see MShadowy's saw.  SystemLogoff has height, width, depth, and a couple of other things!  Flash Fact: Bear Sleuth is made almost entirely of pudding.   Camel Pimp knows that red is the new black this season.  KataraniSword provides us with some concept art! I assume this is how Zero sees Sara and himself in his head.  US manual art. More reasonable to a degree, but still too old to be our guys. v v Chokes McGee knows that it's all relative.  MShadowy's computer still runs Microsoft Bob and no one knows why  DjinnAndTonic rides the wind! And doesn't tip afterwards. (Jerk.)  Zore makes a brave attempt at modernization.     Meanwhile, in Bizzaro SaGa...     Aristide is all business. ALL SERIOUS BUSINESS.  Captain Bravo knows a thing or two about musa acuminata, if you know what I'm sayin'.   Antie Em! Antie Em! It's a SystemLogoff GIF!  Also available is the HD remix! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm7VCPh2OUY In the grim dark future, there is only Ciaphas. And ice cream. Mostly Ciaphas, though.  TurnipFritter drew this picture, because Roy's party is saving the world, because I played this game, because you read this LP. Nice work!  EAT, SLEEP, CAMEL PIMP, REPEAT  Kheldarn is your worst nightmare. Other than the waffles. You know which ones.  Camel Pimp is a heartwarming tale of three men just trying to make ends meet as professional breakdancers.  Chokes McGee knows how it all ends. IN FLAMES 
Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Oct 6, 2015 |
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Oct 10, 2014 04:12
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Yapping Eevee posted:Chokes, you wonderful man/woman/something-else-entirely. I'm so glad to see this. I'm a wandering algorithm that started life as a Markov chain and achieved sentience. My wife is actually a quicksort routine. You should see her buffer Also, thanks for the well wishes, everyone. Keep in mind the plot is way better established in this one, so don't expect the sprawling epic from last time. But! There are some twists in store, so stay tuned! KataraniSword posted: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. I'm planning on showing off some goofy stuff, yeah. If I do them, they'll be sub-updates along the way.
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Oct 10, 2014 13:38
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Hot dang, you guys! I think I already have the final party in mind, but keep suggestions coming! I'm still open to tweaks, and ones that don't make the full roster may show up in the LP anyway. Or maybe not! Honestly I'm winging it at this point.
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Oct 10, 2014 16:06
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:There's an atrociously awful pickup line in here somewhere, but I'm not talented enough to create it. You're looking for "buffer overflow" and this whole joke was a horrible mistake so let's never talk about it again.
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Oct 10, 2014 23:17
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Chapter 1: Beep Boop I am Your Protagonist Let's get this party started! See, it's a joke because of the dual meaning.   Ten years ago...    ugh glrrf Wake up, son! Dad it's like 4 in the morning. What's going on? GAH WHAT oh, sorry. *yawn* Listen! Whatever you do, whatever happens, don't lose this. Aw. Does this mean you're leaving again? I love you, Son. Don't ever forget that. Present day...  Mornin', mom! Hello, sweetie! How'd you sleep? Pretty good. Um. Look... Mm? Well... ... I'm sorry. Am I in trouble? *sniff* Mom! Don't cry! You're not in trouble, sweetie. You're all grown up now. I knew this day would come. Er... I'm the same height I always was. It may seem that way, but you're almost an adult now. Seriously, I haven't changed size in like ten years. It's kind of weird. Don't you think it's weird? Don't talk back to mommy, sweetheart. Now go get ready for school. 'kay!  ...and that's the story of the Worst Christmas Party in History. wooooooooooooow There's the bell. Class dismissed! Don't forget to study Chapters 12 and 13 in Monster Biology! They'll be a quiz tomorrow. *groan* Mr. Butte. A word? (Oh crap.) Hi, Mr. S! Did I do something wrong? I hear you're thinking of leaving town. Going to look for your father, eh? Yeah. Pretty stupid, huh? Indeed. You can't go out there all by yourself. It's suicide. I'm sorry. Not to worry, we all make mistakes. Now, run along and fetch your party. Huh? Your classmates. You got an A in Party Dynamics last year, Mr. Butte. I'm sure you know how many of them to pick. You're serious? Of course I am. Remember your lessons on balance and resource maintenance, and I'm sure you'll be fine. Okay, let's ignore how weird it is you're not trying to stop me. Why would the other kids help? They don't even like me. They don't? Whyever not? ...quote:
I look different from them. Mr. Butte! I'm surprised at you. How many times have I told you the color of one's skin doesn't matter? I am literally made of metal. Pish posh. Now, run along and find some party members! There's a good lad. This can only end in tears.And so, Roy checks around town for allies.  Hi! Wanna help me find my dad? SORRY GOTTA WASH MY FISH LOOK AT THE TIME WELL BYE Hell no. Aw. Roy! Hey, Zero! Want to come over to my house later? I bought a couple decks of "Collecting: The Gaming." We can run superblind double sealed tournaments! Oh man oh man oh man. That tournament format sounds awesome. How does it work? I dunno! I just made it up! Hey, Zero. Can I ask you something? Sure! Well... I was thinking of going out to find my dad, and... Omigosh, Roy. It's really dangerous out there. I know! That's why I need some friends to go with me. I dunnoooooo, I don't think mom would like it very much... Can we ask her? I guess. I hope she doesn't get mad, though. You know all those statues in our garden? Yeah? They're not statues.  Absolutely not. aw c'mon mooooooooom I mean it! It's dangerous out there. I'm sixteen! I'm old enough to leave the city! The outside world could kill you! You could get a paper cut and die from gangrene! You could stub your toe! Mrs. Sigma? I don't want to be rude or anything, but your entire garden is full of people you've personally petrified. You're lucky you're reflective, young man. Probably. But, you raise a good point. No matter how much I shelter poor Zero, someone may still bring an Aegis into the house and use my reflection against him. I can't keep him safe anymore. Really? Yes. Which is why your friend here is going to do it for me, or I'm going to add his mother to my garden. You are seriously the most terrifying person I've ever met.Meanwhile...   Sara! Time for prayers! Can't I skip it? Just this once? Sure! Wow! Really? That is, if you don't mind being eaten by the Hat. N...not the Hat! Yes, the Hat! It swoops down out of the sky at night and gobbles up naughty children like you! Noooooooooo If only you'd pray to Our Lady of the Sacred Saw, she'd keep the Hat away! It's too bad a certain little girl won't do it. I'm sorry mom! I'll be good! Glad to hear it. And don't forget to drink your gasoline before bed. It builds strong bones!   We're asking Heather? Look, everyone else turned us down. We need four people, and we don't have a lot of options left. It's not like I mind, dude. I just don't think she'll do it. Well, let's ask her mom first. That might help. I hear she's a total fox. Hi, Mrs. DiMarco! Why, hello, Roy! What brings you and your friends here? Well, I was thinking... y'know, if Heather's around, and she doesn't mind... Like, what are you doing here? Oh my goodness, this is precious! Heather, this young man has come to ask for a date! ...I have? *cough* I mean, I have! Ew? And where were you thinking of taking her? I dunno. North Cave? ! Omigod, I'd love to! Let's go! Really? Well, okay then! Psst. Sweetheart. What? A little behind the ears goes a long way. ... Hi, Heather! I didn't think you'd want to— Save it. Just get me out of here. What? Uh, hello? This little town's too small for someone like me. I need to see the world if I'm going to be a star! Well, at least it's a yes. We just need one more now. Look! Isn't that the freaky home-schooled weirdo? Hey, Sara's nice! She's just a little ... sheltered. And anyway, she's only the only person in town we haven't pestered, so... Hi! We're leaving town to find my dad. I was wondering if— Sara Chainsaw Blackendecker! You get back here and finish the rest of this petrol! Oh my Saw please take me with you Well, at least that explains why you always smell like gasoline. Alright, looks like we're ready. I'm scared!  Everything will be okay. Our Lady will watch over and protect us. Aw. That's kind of sweet! She will eviscerate any who dare harm us and wear their entrails as a warning. Amen. That's less sweet. Let's get going before I change my mind about this. If you're already having second thoughts, then... Mr. S! Hello, children. I couldn't possibly leave you to such a task with a clear conscience. Are you going to help us? For a little while—just to make sure you can handle yourselves. Alright, then... Let's go!Welcome to Final Fantasy Legend 2! Now that we've got backstory out of the way, let's go over the basic mechanics.  Layout's changed a bit from FFL, but the basics are all there. Most are obvious, save for MAGI (which we'll get to later) and Memo. Memo is actually kind of neat, as it allows you to review what your characters have learned about the backstory.  Granted, it's not always useful, but it's still a nice touch. You'll also notice there's a slot reserved for guest characters! This is new to FFL2. At times, an extra character will choose to ride along with your party. They'll usually be more powerful than your guys and will serve as their protector. You have full control over their actions, both in and out of combat. And, if you hit B on the main map, you can ask them for advice!  It's not always useful, either, but sometimes a reminder is helpful. Feel free to check back with them on occassion. The advice does change depending on certain triggers, and they're not always obvious. Trivia for FFL players: Mr. S' sprite is actually the Slime sprite from the original SaGa. As far as I can remember, it's the only time this particular sprite appears. It's kind of a nifty callback.  Alright, deep breath. Here we go!  Aaah! It's huge! Heather, do something! Gag me. I am not touching that thing. Oh no! I dropped my weapon! Help! Is this punishment? Did I do something wrong again?! Children, please. You must keep calm and work together if you're to survive.  ...ah. I neglected to mention the whole digesting-other-living-creatures thing, didn't I. I am suddenly so glad I've never gotten detention.Mr. S is bonkers powerful for this point in the game. He comes with Dissolve (a high level drain attack), Flame (crowd control), and a really good Cure ability. He's there to keep your retarded rear end from getting killed in the first dungeon while you figure out where everything is and how it works. You can even spend some time levelling up with him, if you so choose. Most of the levelling up in SaGa is handled by getting into fights and taking appropriate actions---attack with heavy swords to build strength, with light swords or bows to build agility, etc. We'll get into weapon types later on. The important thing is that you have to actually do something in combat to increase a stat. Note that selecting an attack is enough to trigger a level-up check; you don't necessarily have to hit that attack successfully, or even try it at all.    Neato. What's in here?  Shields are as useless here as they were in FFL1. Using one boosts your guy's defense for a turn and has them sit there like an idiot waiting to get clobbered in the head. There's not even a guarantee someone will hit them, which means you've wasted both an item use and a turn. However, in a shocking twist, there's actually a way to put them to good use...    *ka-thunk* Ack! Getitoff getitoff getitoffameeee  Fascinating. It appears the shield has attached itself to your chest via some sort of magnet. Didn't you teach us that magnets don't affect bronze? Don't interrupt, Mr. Sigma. Well... I mean, it doesn't hurt, and it'll help protect me, so it's not so bad. Kind of freaky, though. There is no freakiness in the world. It is all part of Our Lady's divine plan, hallelujah, amen. You are seriously creeping me out.Yep, shields boost robot defense! I guarantee you I will never (purposefully) use a shield in combat. But, one of the SaGa's most useless items can finally do some real good. Did I mention robots own? Because robots own.   I can't take them all by myself! Remember your training! I got the one on the left! AAAAAH Why do you have a gun?! Children shouldn't have guns! I can't help it! It's part of my arm!Roy comes equipped with a Colt right out of the gate. As in, a Colt 45. Forget swords, he will straight up cap your rear end. Guns are a weapons family that operate independent of stats—i.e. its damage output is always within the same range and isn't affected by strength, agility, et al. On the plus side, this also means a gun can potentially do way more damage than a melee weapon in the hands of the same character. As we'll see later, this becomes exceptionally useful when you pick up heavy ordinance. For now, though, the Colt is a solid weapon that will carry us quite a ways. One downside: It's harder to connect with guns than comparable melee weapons. However, increasing agility will eventually reduce that effect to negligible levels. The rest of the cave is pretty uneventful. It's a lesson in proper crowd control: Use Mr. S' Fire ability on groups and Dissolve on single targets. They'll probably never get a chance to do anything, but keep selecting attacks for your guys so they can have a shot at levelling. Eventually, you'll come across...    What are we supposed to do with this junk? How about equipping the bow? Uh, how about no? What about you, Sara? Do you want to try it? I do not need a bow. The Saw protects me. If no one else wants them, I have an idea. If I push this hand against them... *thunk* *kachunk* Look at me! I'm a swiss army knife!The hammer and bow are pretty useless as normal treasure; they're starting tier weapons. (If you need extra weapon uses with Mr. S in your party, turn off the game right now. Vidya games are clearly not your strong suit, and you don't want to end up hurting yourself.) Instead of just dumping them into the rubbish bin, give them to the robot. Each equipped weapon brings stat bonuses with it, and they stack if you equip more of the same type. Your robot isn't going to gain any abilities on its own, so keeping all available slots full, even with trash weapons, is enormously helpful. If you get better weapons later, just replace the trash weapons. No one is going to weep for a hammer that's been reduced to 12 uses. After that, a short jog down the corridor, and...  Excuse me! Can we squeeze through here real quick?  Gonna take that as a no.The BabyWyrm is a fairly big shock after everything you've just been through. Even with Mr. S in the party, you have to pfffffffffffffff hahahahaha nope can't do it.  Seriously, one Dissolve and he's dead. It's the second most hilariously one-sided boss fight in RPG history, eclipsed only by, you guessed it, a boss in the original Final Fantasy Legend. Even better, if you ask Mr. S for advice afterwards:  Well somebody seems pretty pleased with themselves!  At this point, I'm kind of wondering why you aren't looking for my dad instead of me. I don't get summers off since we moved to year-round schooling. Fair enough. Sooo. What was that junk about Magi? Mr. Butte. Do you have the gem your father left you? Yeah. I keep it on this necklace. Why? Would you peer into it, please? Okay...  Woah! Indeed. Your jewel is known as the Eye of Isis. It is a magi—one of the 77 fragments of the Statue of Isis. Each fragment is imbued with its own unique power. I believe your father set out to find the rest. Why? Did he want its power for himself? No—he wouldn't have left you the Eye otherwise. I believe he's attempting to keep them out of the wrong hands. I suspect his disappearance means those hands are closer than we'd like. That sounds a lot scarier than just trying to find Roy's dad... It is—but this is the path you've chosen. Keep each other safe, children. The fate of Roy's father is up to you. Mr. S? I have one last question, if it's okay... Certainly! What does the "S" stand for? Sanchez. Totally did not see that coming. Looks like we're on our own now. Let's go find dad! We are all finding dad, in our own way. In'sawllah. Seriously, she's starting to weird me out now.Next Time: Kickin' rear end, Takin' Magi
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Oct 11, 2014 21:19
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:Loving this so far, but is it just me, or is the resolution messed up on your screenshots? The pixels all seem to be different sizes. Probably. It typically takes me a chapter or two to knock off the rust and get everything formulaic. I had thought I used all the right settings for IrfanView but welp! Arcade Rabbit posted:Also I'm a little disappointed we don't have some sort of monster in the party. Seeing the weird things Dente came up with in the last LP was really fun. One of the many things I'm trying to do with this one is not repeat myself. I want these guys to be their own group, and the best ideas I saw for the other three slots were humanoid. We're missing out on monster evolution, yeah, but we can make up with it with a wider range of loadout themes. There was absolutely zero doubt at any time in my mind that the lead character would be a robot. 
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Oct 12, 2014 01:13
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MShadowy posted:Lady of the Saw, eh? Yessssssssssss. It begins 
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Oct 12, 2014 03:46
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Siegkrow posted:Too bad you didn't use the translated DS version Much as I do love the "wrrr beep beep" robots in the DS version, we do it oldskool here. Always have, always will.
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Oct 12, 2014 05:05
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Seyser Koze posted:A couple FFL2 characters make cameos in FFL3, but again they're just a nod to people who beat this game without going mad and not related to the plot in any way. I'm not aware of any those. Including me. And me.
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Oct 13, 2014 02:13
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Chapter 2: Kickin' rear end, Takin' Magi (Part 1)  Roy? I just saw dad! C'mon, after him!   Dad! It's Roy! ... Dad? Mr. Butte? Is that you? Remember when I killed your father, Roy? I talked...  JUST... LIKE... THIIIIIIIIIIIS AAAAAAAAAAAAH CURSE YOUR EYES, THE HAT COMES FOR US ALL! FLEEEEEEEE Wait, no! Come back! ... Aw. Like, that wasn't very nice. I was just having a bit of fun. I didn't mean to scare her. Anyway, I'm afraid I'm not your father. Funny, you look like him from behind! From the front, nnnnnot so much. Shh Nah, it's okay. The eyes are offputting. They've got advantages, though! Oh yeah?quote:
Coooool. Anyway, here's a tip for your trouble. Lotsa people talking about them these days. Find some ruins, you might find some magi. Great! Thanks! Now we just have to get Sara out of that tree. THE TOME OF ETERNAL HABERDASHERY HAS BEEN OPENED! FUEL YOUR SAWS AND PREPARE FOR JUDGEMENT!A little while later...   Why are we at this inn? We need to get Sara calmed down, Heather. Maybe she'll be better after a little nap. Ugh, you are all so weird. Forget this, I'm going shopping. Hey! That's our money, too! We need to get weapons and armor. We will get ourselves totally killed without them. Just get her to stop screaming. I'll take the rest. Don't wait up. I am completely fine with not going shopping. Okay, Sara. Just try to take some deep breaths or something. can'tsleephatswilleatmecan'tsleephatswilleatmeInns in SaGa work quite a bit different than most RPGs. Rather than paying a fixed fee up front and recharging all your characters, you pay by hit point. It's kind of mercenary but can actually save money in the long run. FFL1 was pretty brutal about this; if you didn't have the gold, too bad gently caress you slappy. It got ugly if you didn't know what you were doing and ran out of resources. Happily, FFL2 is much more merciful, and there's more places you can heal your guys for free. You still need an inn to recharge abilities, but you can get a free heal and then pay 0GP for the recharge. It's convoluted, but it works.  This is a better translation, but I miss "Bye bye!"    Omigod, this is soooo much better. Hi! What can I interest you in? Do you have any armor? Like, in fuscha? Do you always end your sentences with that inflection? It makes it sound like you're always asking a question. Uh, yeah? It's just a habit? Shop layout is kind of arbitrarily split in FFL2 but fairly consistent. You get your weapons in one place and everything else (including armor) in another. The armor shop is also the item shop, so it's a little confusing when you walk into a place with a sword sign and don't see any armor. If you run out of the first town thinking there's no armor for sale yet, you're gonna get rolled.  Anyway, bronze armor is available here for cheap, and we might as well load up—including Roy. Our humanoid characters come with bronze armor, so all we need is helmets and gauntlets. We can't get bronze armor for Roy, but he's already got a bronze shield equipped, and it's about the same thing on bots. All non-Roy characters also come with decent-to-poor starting weapons. Compared to FFL kicking you out there naked and armed with a crappy little rapier, this is heaven. Enjoy it while it lasts.  There are a variety of weapon families in SaGa, and pretty much all of them have their own unique quirks. They include, in no particular order:
The first three work pretty much like you'd expect, we've gone over guns, and we'll get to the rest in due time. "Other" is a catchall for combat items; they're not a stat-based attack item per se, but using them in combat causes some sort of effect or attack anyway. An example is the Heal staff, which heals your party members (durr) and costs approximately eleventy billion gold. This is particularly hilarious because a cure book costs way less. There may or may not be a benefit to using a staff over spellcasting, but I'm sure as hell not spending the money to find out.  Man I'm beat. You wanna get a latte? I thought Heather took all our money? Nah, I hid some of it. I mean, I feel bad, but— I wouldn't. She's kind of a jerk. Ugh. Place hasn't been the same since they put in conversation tables. I dunno! It's roomier.  So a giant pillar is holding up the entire planet, which is flat. Yup, that's about the size of it. Heather's right, people are weird. Hey, guys! What's shakin'? You see the news? Ashura's shock troops set up shop in the north mountains. They must be lookin' for the magi. Who's Ashura? I don't know. I don't know what magi is. I don't know anything, because they took my brain. He said I could get it back, but I don't remember how, 'cause I ain't got no brain. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SELL HIM A SWORD YOU MORON See? This is exactly why I don't like the conversation tables.Pubs are, as always, the RPG epicenter of plot dumpage. Owing to Nintendo's Standards and Practices of the time, this is (apparently) a coffee shop and not a bar. It's never really made explicit, which is actually pretty tasteful.  You can buy a drink for 10GP. It does absolutely nothing—here, anyway—but it's a pretty cool touch. Also, over in the corner...  Neat, they have one of the new juke-gramophones. Wanna listen to something? Sure, why not? This song is totally my jam!  ...The jukebox is a neat little feature in bars that serves as a sound test. For 1GP, you can change the background music to pretty much anything you want. It'll stay that way, even across fights, until the next time a music change happens. (i.e. If you just go from overworld tune to overworld tune, the music will persist.) Here, Zero has chosen the "victory" song that plays after you win a fight. DAH DAH DAHT-DAH DAH, DAHT DAH DAH-DAH DAH please kill meIt's pretty obnoxious. I don't recommend it. Also, we'll be showing off the songs as MP3s as soon as I  I mean, that sword was so last year. Who uses a rapier? It's like, hello? No one's going to pierce armor with that thing. How would you know? H—hello, everyone. Sara! Feeling any better? A little. I'm sorry about earlier. It's okay. This stuff is scary to all of us. I don't understand. Why was the man in the hat so nice to us? Mother says hats are evil. They're just a thing you wear on your head, you weirdo. Here, put on this helmet.  Heather? Let's just take this one step at a time. Alright, I asked around town, and there's a shrine run by a Cleric of Isis a little ways west of here. If anyone knows anything about magi, it'll be her.  RARG Yeah, but we have to stay alive long enough to get there!One of the few good things about FFL's combat system was the control you had over your guys' growth. Mutants were pretty much the only x-factor (SEE WHAT I DID THERE); everyone else could be herded down any path you wanted. Not so much in FFL2—at least, not yet. You're at the mercy of the RNG for now. Let's show 'em what we're made of! Draw your weapons and—the hell, Zero? What? Where did you get that thing? Your dad's toolbox?Meanwhile... quote:
Look, it was free, okay? Whatever works. CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE   ... This sword is awful. I am never shopping there again. Let's... let's just move on.All non-robot members of the party suck right now. All of them. (Well, actually, that's not fair—Sara and Zero are pretty useful when not using weaons, but ~storyline~.) Fortunately, Roy can shoot just about any threat dead right now. He's also stuffed full of random weapons and has the stats to do serious damage with them. Furthermore, his defense is near impenetrable by the scrubs in the first world. It will probably be said at least once per update, but it bears repeating: Robots are awesome. It's gonna take a bit before everyone else catches up, though. No one's really doing more than 10 damage right now, and there's no fix except to fight and be patient. Fortunately, we can use Roy's shield (thanks to KataraniSword for this tip) to take him out of the fight and give everyone else a chance to flail around inanely. A point or two of strength makes a pretty big difference, so it's worth the aggravation. Side note: I'm happy to report we picked up some HP off-camera. Unlike FFL1, if one of our guys gets stuck with 98 HP for the entire game, we're screwed. So, this was an exciting development!   Ugh. Good thing, too. I'm running out of ammo here. Where do you even get that stuff from? Trust me, you don't want to know. ... Sara? Mother says Isis is a lie. There is only saw. Your mom told you a lot of things that weren't true. Heather! What? She needs to stop being scared of everything. It's not healthy. Mother wouldn't lie to me. The saw is family. Sara, we're not attending services or anything. We're just going to talk to the people inside. It'll be okay.  Don't you get the news out here? What the heck is the news? Guess that answers that question. Yikes. No kidding. Yeah. Acne, man. It's a killer. Tell me about it!  Hi! Are you here to see Ki? Looks like it. Do we need an appointment or something? Nah! We're pretty relaxed around here. Talk to the Captain, he'll make sure Ki's available. The captain? You guys. My awesome senses are tingling.  Arr. Ye be wantin' Ki? Sí. Oui. How much? Ki? She be free. Whee! We are talking to a pirate skeleton. This entire trip is so worth it. Be wipin' yer feet on the mat before you proceed to the altar, yar. Hi! Could you tell us— AUGH Warn us next time or something! Sorry! I get a little carried away sometimes. ... Oh! You look troubled. What's wrong? Mother says I shouldn't be talking to you. Oh. Oh no. I've seen this before. You're from the Cult of the Saw, aren't you? The saw is family. The saw is life. Is there anything we can do? She's been like this since we met her. Well, some of it's behavioral, but I can definitely help. Dw yn mynd i gwybod! Woah. ...wha? What happened? Where am I? Holy cow! What did you do? I flushed the gasoline out of her system with a Heal spell. That's the easy part. The rest is up to her. Wait, who are you guys? You may want to sit down. This'll take a while.Later...  What would you do with them? Be a god? Uh, yes way! Psh, more like no way! Well fought, my friend. Enjoy your victory. Seriously, we just want to find my dad. Last I heard, he was chasing after magi. *twitch* You okay? Fine. I'm fine. Do you know where he went?! How long ago? I dunno, couple of weeks? I've been here for a couple of centuries, I kind of lose track of time. You've been alive for centuries? How did you stay so pretty? It's totally easy. My mom has this cream that reduces eye wrinkles. Need to get me some of that! Do you know which way dad went? 'Fraid not. He rushed out of here in a hurry after I healed him. At least we know he's alive now. Thanks for your help! People say there's magi in the relics of the ancient gods. What, the guy with the weird eyes? You noticed those too? I mean, wow. I know, right? Anyway... ...big rock in the southern forests. You're good people, I'm sure they'll be safe with you. Thank you. Not just for the advice, either. No worries! You stay away from oil-distilled products, okay? That stuff is bad for your brainmeats. I will. I still have to wonder, though: how did I survive drinking all that gasoline? Oh. Esper genetics. Gotta love 'em!(Just a quick note: O-Poison is an immunity. Mutants and monsters will pick these up as well as weaknesses (i.e. X-Fire). For now, this means Sara can't be poisoned and takes no damage from poison-based attacks. It's not super powerful, but it can come in handy.)  Well, looks like we're spelunking! My mom has a cream for that, too. What kind of adventure did you three rope me into?!
Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 08:07
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Data! Mr. O'Brien! I need the warp drives at full power!
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Seyser Koze posted:I remember being afraid to fight ashigaru when I first picked up the game as a kid, because they looked so badass. It was ten years before I played Shogun: Total War and learned that they were basically farmers who were handed spears and told to go die for their lord. There is nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing else to lose.
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Oct 13, 2014 13:55
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Hi, everybody! Sorry, no update here. Just a courtesy bump to let you know I haven't forgotten about this thread. Life has been crazy lately and HEY GET BACK HERE THIS HASN'T BEEN ABANDONED I SWEAR Expect an update by Friday or so, wherein we will give Sara a nickname and establish a running joke at poor Heather's expense. I'm excited. Are you excited? Are you? ARE YOU?!
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Oct 16, 2014 15:41
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Hi, guys! I tightened up my screenshot/gif process, and I think it'll help. I wanted to hurry up and get this out there because Asura posted instead of replying. Instead of laughing, though, I had a brief moment of as I thought someone literally made a mod-sanctioned thread for people who like my LPs. So that was kind of awesome.  Anyway, I'm finally figuring out the party's various personalities, so let's get to it!
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Oct 18, 2014 06:39
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Chapter 2: Kickin' rear end and Takin' Magi (Part 2) Yo check this tune out! Some overworld music for you! Pretty swanky stuff for just walking around outside.  Okay, Ki said we can find some magi to the south. We'll want to keep an eye out for— SPIDER SMASH KILL DESTROY Uh, Heather? It's dead. You can stop now. Seriously, what is with you? I don't like spiders. They're creepy! They're more afraid of you than you are of them. They are now, yeah.You're not missing out on a whole lot as far as fighting goes—whole lotta bugs and the occasional conscripted Japanese farmer. It does seem that our guys are slowly getting better with their respective weapons without actually gaining stats. I don't know if weapons do more damage the lower their use count goes or if we're just fighting monsters with lower armor. At any rate, we definitely need the stats, so we're stuck with poking monsters with sticks at the moment.    Hey! The big rock! Like, it's about time. That desert was awful. Yeah, but think of the tan you'll get. Hmm! Wait. Do you hear that? Nnnno? ... They're everywhere Uh oh. Do we need to take her back to Ki and get her oil changed? Ack! I tried to tell you! Whatevs. It's not like we haven't killed them before. Yeah, one at a time. This is an entire pack! Do jaguars even travel in packs? I... don't know, actually. A group of jaguars is called a "jamboree." What, seriously? *nods* That's dumb as heck. Less talking, more KILLING  *roar*    ... Right, I'll mop these guys up. You two drag Heather to safety. I call left leg! Aw.As you can see, Heather just ate a crapload of damage and keeled over. This is to be expected, as she and Roy will be taking most of the punishment over the course of the LP. Roy's basically bulletproof right now. Heather... isn't. Party member death in Final Fantasy Legend 2 is so much more merciful than other games. It's not even death; your guy just gets clobbered so hard they're out cold. (The official status is "Stun.") If you get out of the fight with at least one character surviving, all your stunned party members come to. Granted, it's with 1 HP, but you have no idea how hard this can save your rear end if something goes horribly wrong. Best of all, you can get stunned all you want as long as you win the fight. No heart limitations or Houses of Healing here! Just chuck a healing potion at them to deal with the concussion and be on your way.   Heather, what were you thinking? Uh, glorious death through combat? Duh! Am I seriously the only one worried about having a bloodthirsty lunatic in our party? I am not a lunatic! And the rest? Guilty as charged. Okay, here's the big rock. Now we go east... And south...  Wow! No kidding! If Ki didn't give us directions, we never would've found this place. We're gonna raid a lost temple for ancient treasures. This owns! So there's magi here? Yep! Probably not out in the open, though. We'll have to search the place. Great. My feet are already killing me. Pfft. I'm barely tired! That's because you have tank treads instead of feet. Which reminds me: Why do you have tank treads instead of feet? Born lucky, I guess!   And behind door number one...   Ooh! Gimme. Seriously? Hey, everybody! I'm Simon Belmont!  ... Who?     Mushrooms are walking around? This place seriously needs a janitor. I HATE FUNGUS IT'S GROSS  Isn't it fungii? Fungi. I thought that's what I said. No time for talking! Face the Mushroom Killer Whip, scoundrels! ...That sounded so much better in my head. Protip, duder: "Scoundrel" isn't the word to use if you want to sound cool. FJKADLGJKALEJFKLEA How about that one? Prrrrobably not that one, either.Whips are our first hybrid weapon. They build agility, but they use strength to determine damage. It's fairly dumb and makes them hard to use except by trained fighters, which means they probably have a better option available anyway. However! Whips have one advantage other weapons don't. If you successfully do damage, they can paralyze. You can do any amount of damage to trigger the check; it has the same chance whether you do one HP or a thousand. If it succeeds, you get the fairly incomprehensible "Winded the whip!" message, which means that enemy is paralyzed for a single turn. I assume it means they got tangled up in your whip and you can start punching them in the face without resistance. It's my completely unscientific opinion that whips have a much higher paralyze rate than other special weapons and/or spells. I have not tested that because I know I'm right. But, it still doesn't work on enemies immune to paralysis, like robots and undead. Probably. I mean, I'm just throwing stuff against a wall at this point, it could be wrong or right.   Jawsome. What's in these? Man, what a ripoff. Wait. Remember what Mr. S taught us?quote:
Yeah, not to interrupt his lectures. I think you took the wrong thing away from that class. Anyway, if these are empty, there's someone else here! Great! I'd totally love to kill them. Meet them! Meet. Also kill. You have some serious rage issues.   Looks like they beat us to these, too. Look out! There's too many of them! Perhaps today is a totally rad day to die. Okay. Set, focus, channel energy... Zero? Check this out, guys! Der Zwerg ist in meinen Hut! Holy butt! What was that? Magic? Kinda! I can't do it that often, so I save it for emergencies. Plus, mom really doesn't like it. Why not? Well...quote:
Yeah, that'd do it. ... Sara? Mother said magic is evil. It was created by the Hat. And you believed her? I do. Well, did. At one point. Well, Zero just saved us with it. That means it's not really evil, right? ...Zero has mutant abilities! He actually comes out of the box with Blizzard, and Blizzard is ridiculous for this stage of the game. It's a 40-60 damage attack that hits everything. As in, every enemy you're facing, not just a single group. Right now, that's enough to knock some serious chunks through multi-monster ranks. Even better, reptiles of all types are weak against ice! It's basically a "win" button against the frogs and lizards in this area. He only gets 15 uses before he has to recharge at an inn, so we have to use it sparingly. Also, we don't want to spam Blizzard all fight erry fight, or we'll end up with Zero at a billion mana and everyone else with horrible stats. (Remember when I mentioned nuances in SaGa combat? This is one of them. You have to sandbag your strongest guys so the others can grow.) When the number of enemies you're fighting goes past 3-4, however, it's time to bring the pain.   Looks like the floor collapsed in here. I'm not surprised. These ruins are pretty old. (The chest was a cure potion. You didn't miss much.)   me irl | | v  I know I'm not covering much about monsters, but other than the lizards' weaknesses to ice, there's not a whole lot to say about them. The mushrooms will punch you for laughable amounts of damage if you don't kill them first. That's about it. Kung-fu mushrooms are not the most SaGa thing we'll see on this journey. Not even close.   Uh. There was someone here! I knew it! They took the magi! We have to get it back! I think they're hiding in here! Oops! Maybe not. ... C'mon, we're losing them! Shiny... so... box-like... Roy? Must... open!   Magi! Did it call to you or something? Nah, I just like opening treasure chests. Excuse me. I don't mean to be rude, but maybe we can go back to catching the people who stole the powerful relics before they can use them for evil Spoilsport.  ARGH! Oh man oh jeez oh crap there's like a million of them You were right. They've got magi. Time to die, kids! ... leave us alone. What? Leave us alone. Go away. Bwa ha ha! That's rich. I think I'll start by killing this one. Leave us alone. Leave us alone!! Zero? Yeah, Roy? I'm starting to feel like our party members are bad influences on us. In our defense, they're the only ones that would take the job.In contrast to Zero, Sara starts with Flame. It's the exact same as Blizzard except, y'know, with fire. This does indeed mean we can spam Blizzard and Flame every fight and take down entire hoards of monsters while we laugh—laugh—at their ineffectiveness. But, again, that would catch up to us real quick later on. So, we hold back for now. Not pictured is Zero picking up O-Poison, because that's boring and no one cares.   Seriously Carrie back there is going to roast us alive  No! They got away! Oh no. Roy. Look...  we failed... Ashura's men... took.. the.. M.. MA..GI.. .. Were we too late? Is this our fault? No. These wounds look like they were attacked way before we got here. There wasn't anything we could do. This is awful. We have to tell Ki! And fast!   Hi! Back already? We've got some bad news... Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat We tried to stop them, but they were too fast for us. Didn't someone in town say Ashura's base was north of here? Yeah. We better head up there if we want to get the magi back. ...Ashura! Should you be making air quotes with your fingers when you say that? It's a long story. I'll explain later.Next Time: Ki and We Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Oct 18, 2014 |
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Oct 18, 2014 06:46
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Asura United posted:I'll be kicking myself for that for a while now. I thought it was adorable, personally. I like to see that level of enthusiasm! (And post/reply issues happen all the time, don't take it too hard.) Asura United posted:In regards to the newest update and Zero getting another mutant ability, if I remember right, mutant abilities always replace the bottom one when they roll a new ability. That means that you can shuffle the useful ones like Cure and Flame up to the top, and leave X-Fire and the like at the bottom to get overwritten. I was going to get to the that eventually (no biggie), but you are correct. Right now, I think both mutants in the party have three abilities apiece. When we pick up our fourth, I'll show off the shuffle method. Wayne posted:Huh, never heard that (and I'm one of those guys who pointed out that owls came in "parliaments" and not "courts" to his comic book friends). Always figured it'd be a "drive." I was really skeptical at first, but the internet says it's so. If it's on the internet, it must be true. Also my favorite of those is an "intrigue" of kitten. Intriguing~
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Oct 18, 2014 15:59
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Valgaav posted:You would think having tank treads for feet would be an issue with, oh, the millions of stairs Roy just had to climb. 
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Oct 18, 2014 19:26
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Just so you guys know, I am recording fan art as you submit them. If you check the second post of the thread, you'll see me slowly add them there. Keen! As for people clamoring for exploits: I'm going to eventually do side features showing them off. For now, though, I'm focusing on the story. This chapter coming up will be kind of boring, but everything should take off pretty well afterwards.
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Oct 19, 2014 05:01
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Chapter 3: Ki and We Let's go!Ki's joined the party! Let's take a look at what's she got.   Ki's stats are actually comparable to our characters right now—nothing special, pretty much on par for a magic user at this point in the game. Her gear, though, is outstanding. Thunder is a very powerful spell right now, and Cure is always welcome. The hammer and shield are meh, but if you need to stall her so your characters can grow, they're very helpful. You'll note our guys are coming along pretty well! Stat growth is more or less on par with expectations. We will not be grinding this run unless it's absolutely necessary. I appear to have a talent for minmaxing RPG combat to the point where I hardly ever need to grind, and I plan on using it to my advantage. Grinding sucks, is boring, and basically breaks the game if you do it enough. I'm in this for the plot.  So, Heather. Yeah? I gotta ask. How are you going to be a movie star if you can't go five minutes without sticking a sword through someone's head? Movie star? What are you talking about? When we left town, you said you wanted to be a star. I just assumed, you know, it was stage and screen. Guh, no thank you. I want to be something a little bit higher profile than that. Oh? Like what? A gladiator! You cannot possibly be serious. I totally am. I'm going to be the most beautiful, most vicious pitfighter that ever wielded a blade! Is this really how you guys roll? 'Fraid so. Well, at least it's never dull. Besides, party quirks are endearing! I bet you secretly wear a hat when no one's around.  Kind of, anyway.  Cozy. Don't be fooled. North Town has been in cahoots with Ashura ever since he set up a base nearby. I don't know if I blame them. Sometimes cooperation is the only way to survive. We need to ask around. If they've got a deal with Ashura, they might, like, know things.  ...become the only god to rule the whole world. "Only?" Man, you guys are in for a shock later on. Pretty sure we're covered on that one.  ...Ashura's Base. You don't seem too happy about it. I'm not. They quarter troops in our town and are complete jerks to everyone. They said they'd leave us to our own devices if we cooperate, but they've pretty much wrecked the place, and they lean on our merchants to cut them ridiculous deals. Beats being dead, I guess. Psh. You should totally stand and die like a man. I'm a woman! So am I, but it doesn't stop me! Shopping tiiiiime~ Let me handle this. I've got, like, expertise. New faces? Huh. Where'd you come from? Rumor has it the stork brought me! Weirdo. Anyway, here's what I got. GAH How are we supposed to afford this stuff? How is anyone supposed to afford this stuff?! We get these weapons directly from Ashura's smiths. Most of it isn't for widespread public consumption. This stuff is legal, right? It's grey market, if that's what you're asking. Ashura'll turn a blind eye to us selling his surplus as long as it gets put in the right hands. Explains the high prices. Fits Ashura's M.O., too. I can't help that. Now, are you gonna buy or not? Ew no. We don't have anywhere near that much gold. Then scram.North Town has some incredibly powerful gear available. It's also incredibly expensive. I'm reasonably certain this stuff isn't as expensive in later towns. I definitely don't remember Cure being freaking 6.8k gold, but it's been a while since I've played FFL2. Personally, I don't see a need to invest in any of it. There's a reason it's stupidly expensive, and our guys will be fine as is—especially with Ki's Thunder and Cure spells.   So, what's up with Ashura? You seem to know a lot about him. Guy's seriously bad news. We've got scrolls going all the way back to the dawn of time that prophetise his appearance. Prophecies are just, like, guesses. You can make them mean pretty much anything you want. ...quote:
It was prrrrretty specific. Well, here we are! Love what they've done with the place. Really? No, absolutely not. Maybe the zombies will know something. That could very well be the worst idea in the history of ideas. You shouldn't judge people by their appearance, Roy. Unless they're wearing a hat? I have my limits. Hi! Can we have a moment of your time? Sure thing. Wow! Really? Yeah. Makes it a lot easier to kick your rear end. You are in for the surprise of your incredibly short life.   Well, at least your heart was in the right place, Sara. So are theirs! You put that down this instant.Talking to the roving guards will, of course, trigger a fight. You'll notice they're not actually zombies; it's just a convenient placeholder. You'll get the same random encounters as usual. Afterwards, the guard will still be walking around on the map, so you can repeat the process if you like. This is actually a really good place to grind—assuming you feed Ki a steady diet of hammers and/or shields to keep her out of the way.  Alright. Now that I've seen you guys in action, I think I can trust you with a few secrets. Great! Whatcha got for us? You remember those magi from the ruins? How did you know about those? What, seriously? I can see them glowing through your pockets. I didn't even know I had pockets! Anyway, here's some blessed necklaces I brought with me. Each of you take one and hook a magi on it. Okay...  The power of the ancients totally flows through me!  Now that we have magi, we can equip it! Each character can have one type of magi equipped at any given time. IIRC, they stack—i.e. if you have six power magi, you equip all six of them. If you want different effects, though, you'll have to swap them at the appropriate times. The names pretty much speak for themselves at the moment, but we'll see some more interesting types later on. Not surprisingly, they have a noticeable effect. Heather jumps from about 30 damage to about 70-80 with her power magi equipped.   They can watch other parts of the base? That's some seriously powerful magic. Ugh. This kind of tech is completely inappropriate for our time period. The prophecies were right, Ashura's a dick. Uh, Ki? You're a cleric. Should you be using that type of language? Hell yeah I should!    There really isn't a lot going on here. It's far and away the most boring part of the game. The random encounters are the same as everywhere else, and there's barely any new scenery to take in. Unless you're particularly enamored of watching us spam Blizzard, Bow, and Long Sword over and over again, there's not a lot of reason to linger.  Hmm. What's in these? I think I can guess...  I guess even bad guys need time to unwind. Sometimes you wanna go where they punch you in the face!  Roy. You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'? Oh yeah. We can totally get away with it in here. Yo, barkeep! A beer for me and my friend! Sure thing—as soon as you show me some ID. Dang. You guys actually card people? We may work for the very incarnation of evil, but we still have to keep our liquor license.  Ooh! Too bad it's surrounded. I don't think we can take that many of them. You guys are adorable. Just head on over there, you'll be fine. Shouldn't they be doing something? Anything? Guards are the least observant monsters in the entirety of existence. The sooner you learn that, the better. Omigod! This totally goes with my outfit!  Silver armor is the next tier up from bronze. It's still pricey right now, so this is a welcome find. We give it to Heather since she's our secondary meatshield and Roy is still very, very difficult to damage.    Command Center Well, this seems kind of important. We should brace ourselves for a fight. I'm pretty sure a command center needs a commander to run it. See how much clearer you think without hydrocarbons in your bloodstream? I have to admit, it's pretty nice. Hot dang! It's rainin' loot! Ooh! Ooh! Let me do it! Go for it, dude.  Neat, I can use this to— *yoink* Oh come on! That's the second treasure you've taken! Zero, if you try to take this from me, you're getting it back the hard way.And just like that, we have our first axe! Axes are, not surprisingly, a power weapon. Using them increases strength, and they use strength to determine damage. It's a weapon practically custom-made for Heather, and it will definitely not be the last one we see.    ...yes, sir. Our men secured all the magi in this world but three. No, I assure you, I'm aware... We have every soldier in the area looking for them. Absolutely not, they won't be able to get in here without Isis' blessings. Then I got some bad news for you jerkwads! Wonderful. Now we don't have to go looking for you. I'll call you back as soon as they've been disposed of, sir. Over and out. I mean, I appreciate you coming all the way out here to deliver the magi personally... but now that you've seen our operations, I have to kill you. Then it's a good thing I didn't come alone! You guys ready for this? Maybe! That's the kind of ambivalence I like to hear!This is the Rhino! He's totally not a dinosaur, stop asking. Rhino is a higher level enemy that basically serves as babby's first world boss. Not surprisingly, its defense is pretty high. Fortunately, we have some pretty powerful magic users, and the Rhino's Magic stat isn't that great. By the way, now seems a pertinent time to mention that spells and abilities are resisted with Magic and not Defense. An enemy with a low Magic rating will get absolutely pasted by spells. Why do I mention it? Wnes i wneud rywbeth! Oh, no reason. Nice shot! Thanks! Now let's point Miss Cuisinart over there at him and call it a day. Kill the pig! Drink his blood! ... Welp. Is she okay?! Yeah. This happens a lot. You'll pay for that, Ki! What do we do now?! Tá hata agam!  Woah! When did you learn to do that? ...For whatever stupid reason, rhinos are considered dinosaurs—which means they're reptiles, and thus have X-Ice. And that means it goes down in one round thanks to Ki's and Sara's combined attacks.  ...Ashura's hands! Computer, initiate Protocol Eleven! ... Computer. Protocol Eleven. What? What are you talking about? Is that even a thing I should know? JUST BLOW UP THE drat BASE  YEAH WE CAN SEE THAT AAAAAAAAAAA RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE— Oh hey, treasure. NOW IS REALLY NOT THE TIME Meh, I'm sure it'll be fine. It takes a lot to bring down a four story building.   So THAT'S where they put the magi they stole. WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE BASE THAT'S ABOUT TO COLLAPSE AND BURY US UNDER TWO TONS OF RUBBLE Oh. Yeah, we better do something about that. There's no timer, so you're actually safe as houses if you want to screw around. In fact, you'll still bump into random encounters while the base is exploding. You have to deal with the screen shaking while you're walking around, though, which is pretty annoying. Plus, there's no reason to walk back through the base unless you somehow missed the world's most obvious treasure chests. Grab the magi and beat it.   ...magi and come after us again. It's only a matter of time. Heck yeah we will!  Hey. What's that? The Pillar of Sky! We can finally get to it now that Ashura's base is gone! It's a beanstalk. It leads to the Nexus of Realities. You'll be able to access other worlds with it! It's totally a beanstalk! Well, yeah. But it's a very important beanstalk! We need to restock if we're going up there. Saw only knows what we'll find. Good idea. Mind hanging out with us a little longer, Ki? Meh. Not like I have anything else to do. What about your shrine? Honestly, Sylph and the Captain take care of day-to-day stuff. I just kind of hang out and heal people. Nice work if you can get it!Later...  Alright, all geared up. Looks like we're ready to go! Wooooow This is so totally rad. What's the panel up there do? ... What? No! We need your help! No, you don't. Seriously. I barely did anything back there at Ashura's base. Except collect gold from our fights Shh You're a lot more powerful than you give yourself credit for. All of you. All you needed was some encouragement. Thanks. Just remember: No matter how sharp your swords, no matter how powerful your spells... the most important weapon you have on your side is your friendship. And our magi. That too. Laters! Alright, soooooo. Now what? *bzzt* HOLY CRAAAAAAAAAAAAPNext Time: Saaaaaaandstorm
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Oct 20, 2014 05:03
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Krumbsthumbs posted:Also, if you didn't go back and buy an SMG for your Robot you're a horrible person or something. That thing is a great "oh poo poo" button. Look, I loves me some SMG—probably to an unhealthy degree—but there's a time and place for everything. Just hold on to your trousers for now, we'll be bringing the pain soon enough.
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Oct 20, 2014 14:05
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DjinnAndTonic posted:Power, okay. Speed, okay. Mana... ambiguous but IIRC that's the name of the Magic stat in this game. "Prism"? Did I miss a screenshot that makes that effect obvious? Yeah. Back in Chapter 1, Mr. S teaches Roy how to use the Prism. It shows the amount of magi left to collect in each world.
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Oct 20, 2014 14:59
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UmbreonMessiah posted:While I am totally stoked for this, there are some nuances of the game that make me question the way you're building your characters, Chokes. Of the 4 main stats, only 2 are relevant concerns...mostly because of the way the game is built. I'm just hoping your choices don't come to bite you later in the game. No sweat, I can make stuff work if I have to. I managed to shepherd Rezen through the game with 98 HP, remember?  I'm a professional, though. Don't try this at home.* * is not a professional of any kind
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Oct 21, 2014 03:44
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Since people are clamoring about it ( thread discussion), forcing certain mutant abilities off your list has already been discussed but will eventually be featured in an update for storyline's/posterity's sake.It's not all that world-shattering. Just put the one you don't want the farthest down. As far as breaking the game goes, I don't really have any plans to show them off soon. But I have such sights to show you around the halfway point of this LP
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Oct 21, 2014 19:25
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Camel Pimp posted:Fan art train toot toot Oh hi heather! Glad you could make the OP!
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Oct 22, 2014 02:35
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Asura United posted:It's true. Chokes is getting closer so I have to ruin the thread in a hurry! And god drat did you almost do it. Good thing Roy is awesome  Seriously though, Ashura's put away, but Jesus loving Christ did I forget how balls-punchingly difficult this game is. I've adjusted and should be fine going forward now that I'm sandbagging fights correctly. We will go over these mechanics in Chapter 4, in which every minute Chokes gets owned hard. 
Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Oct 23, 2014 |
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Oct 23, 2014 03:01
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KataraniSword posted:You basically made your own magic "words" by combining katakana for various effects, some obvious and others less-so. My immediate reaction to this was "MALE MACO GRRE YMCA" and oh god I am such a damaged human being
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Oct 24, 2014 00:51
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Ybarra's Mystical Coat of Armor, you heathens! Oh wait, no one levels a Magician to level 11 except me
Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Oct 24, 2014 |
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Oct 24, 2014 02:42
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KataraniSword posted: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. Assuming "what you feel" is -4 AC, otherwise you'll want the Dreamspell instead.
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Oct 24, 2014 03:56
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Did somebody say... ...video games? :iamafag:
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Oct 25, 2014 21:24
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Chapter 4: Saaaaaaaaaaaandstorm Okay! Okay. I think it's stopped. AAAAAAAAAAAAA Get ahold of yourself, dude! Sorry. So, like, where are we now? Ki said this was the Nexus of Realities. If we go through this door, we can probably visit other worlds!  I dunno why they put the doors in these little vine things. Seems kinda silly, if you ask me. I heard a story from Mr. S about Yggdrasil—the World Tree. It's supposed to connect different worlds together. I wonder if these are its branches? Seems reasonable. What? No it doesn't! That's just, like, a fairy tale! If the other choice is "we built dimensional portals into a beanstalk for no reason," yeah, I'm gonna go with Zero.Stepping on the colored panel inside the Pillar of Sky will whisk you away to this "outer space" location. The various vines lead to different worlds. You'll never see more than two in a section, so you don't need to worry about getting lost. Also, there's no enemies up here. It's a nice place to catch your breath, admire the scenery, and wonder what the hell the game's going to throw at you next.    Ooh, another door! Bzzt. Access denied. What? Why? Protection lock engaged. Magi power insufficient to pass. They lock you out if you don't have magi? That doesn't make any sense. Why would you need magi to visit other places? Doesn't that encourage people to hoard them and take over worlds? Only the strong survive!  Not really proving me wrong here. Either way, looks like a no-go until we have more magi. Let's see what's downstairs! I hate this part Woo! Kinda fun once you get used to it.  Oh, that's attractive. Zero? You alright, buddy? I GET MOTION SICKNESS OKAY  Ugh. It's like a million degrees out here. You're not the one with metal skin. I can feel my insides baking. Well, someone should've come prepared.  How about you, Sara? Holding up okay? Oh, I'm fine! I bought sunscreen back in North Town. Why would you buy sunscreen ahead of time? That doesn't make any sense! Hey, as long as she's not drinking it! ... You're... you're not drinking it. Right? maybe a little  Wow. This place is a dump. Ehn. As far as wretched hives of scum and villainy go, it's not too bad. We should at least find out where we are. Excuse me! We're not from around here. Heh. Do tell. Can you tell us the name of this town? You did not just say "scamps." I did! And I'd do it again! No rules, no masters, baby. I wouldn't call her "baby" if you like having your hands on your wrists. Wow. Hot. ha ha no seriously I'll gut you like a trout. The prophecy was right! Score one for Ki. Pff. Just a lucky guess. How do you even know that if it's hidden? Open secret! Touché, my igneous friend. I dunno, it's not too bad here. Most of the people leave you alone, lots of sun, you can go indoors to cool off if you want... Look! An eagle! Wow! I've never seen one up close before. A little too close. Shouldn't it be going back up by now, or— AAAAAAAAAAAAHDesert Town is a madhouse. You can and will get jumped by enemies—even if you're just here to shop and recharge your HP. It's actually a good place to grind if you need to catch up, but it's such a pain to have to buy things here. Our best bet is to cleanse everything with Fire (and Blizzard) and not worry too much about leveling within city limits. After we're done torching everything, we can stop by the inn for a quick recharge and head out ASAP.  AAH AAH RUUUUUUUUUUN HELP THEY'RE TRYING TO PECK OUT MY EYES THEY'RE ATTRACTED TO SARA'S SUNSCREEN GET RID OF THE SUNSCREEN I CAN'T DRINK ALL OF IT THAT FAST   *slam* *pant* *pant* Okay. Okay! We're safe, guys. Wait! Where's Heather?!  This eagle jerky is great! Soooo high in protein. Oh. doot dee doot dee doot-dee doo Hey let's pester the locals!     You guys have no clue where it is, do you? maybe a little ...anymore. Well that sounds like the coolest thing ever. Wonder where they all went? Bermuda. Seriously? No! Why would I know where they went? You pesky kids, always asking everyone questions! I swear, back in my day I grumble grumble grumble respect for the grumble   Kind of pricey for an iced coffee. Not for me! I have a reward on my gold card! Yeah, we don't accept those here. Deep breaths, Heather. We'll take a round for everybody, sir. We probably need the fluids anyway. Hey, you kids are alright. Let me tell you a little secret. ...of town. You'll see a cactus. Head south from there, and you'll get to Tower City. Ashura's tower is right next door. Wow, thanks! But why would you tell us that? I Used to hang with Ashura before he made the big time. But you know how it is with celebrities... went straight to his heads, and we haven't talked since. Way I figure it, I don't owe him any secrecy. Isn't it dangerous to be that close to Ashura's base? Compared to this hellhole? It's utopia. The only area that's really dangerous is the tower itself, and no one's stupid enough to go in there. Not yet, anyway! Zero...  Sandstorm's up ahead. We probably won't be able to see much. Ew. This is going to be so gross. Maybe it won't be so bad. Think of it as a free facial scrub. What would you know about that? Just because I was raised by a gasoline-swilling cult doesn't mean I don't know what cosmetics are! gak Hmm. Alright, here's the cactus. What? I said, here's the cactus! This wind is awful! I can barely hear you over it! Now we just go... uh... was it east? What? I said, was it east? I forgot. No, we're totally going west! East is the other way! Oh, west! Thanks, Heather! WHAT? Okay, now we go, uh, south, and...   Guys, I've got some bad news. I think we may be lost. augh I got sand in my mouth help Oh, don't be such a baby. Everything's fi—  whoosh MY HAT I'LL KILL YOU The hat giveth, and the hat taketh away. Now do you see why I don't trust those things?!As in all RPGs, the bartender knows what's up. Buy a drink, and he'll tell you where to find Ashura's tower. Unfortunately, his directions are of the "go up six or twelve lights and then turn left at the thing, you know the one" variety. I swear I follow his directions, I even write them down ahead of time, and each time I fall into a jet stream and get lost. Cue wandering around for three or four minutes before I finally stumble onto my destination by accident.  Meanwhile, some noticiably more powerful enemies are kicking my guys in the collective junk. We've already seen flowers, which have a couple of "meh" attacks and a weakness against ice. You will also find such luminaries as...  Pebbles have good defense and a few elemental immunities. Werewolves aren't as bad as in FFL1 (thank gods), but they still hit hard and fast. Plus, they've picked up a new trick this time around: they regenerate! After each round concludes, they get a little bit of HP back. We can outpace these guys pretty easily, but later on, we'll have to concentrate fire to take down their big brothers. Fortunately, regen will never be used by bosses because of the inherent hahahahaha it's totally going to be used by multiple bosses.  Eagles and barracudas really aren't that big of a deal, although the Eagle's beak attack can hit pretty hard if your defense isn't up to snuff. Slimes are bad news right now. Dissolve hits hard and cuts right through armor (and restores their HP). Fire still ruins their poo poo, so do that as soon as possible.  Troopers are the first of the "knight" family of enemies. They're considered humanoids and thus don't drop meat, as Nintendo's Standards and Practices are only okay with non-human cannibalism.  They have middling sword strikes as attacks, but their most obnoxious ability is activating a shield and blocking all of our attacks for that round. It's doubly obnoxious because these guys don't care about wasting weapon uses on our shields; they'll all be dead by the end of combat. We, on the other hand, have to buy new weapons after whacking them repeatedly against their armor. It's kind of unfair.  Well, that was really awful. I have sand in places I didn't even know I had places and I don't know how to get it out Woah. You guys made it all the way out here? I'm impressed. Thanks! So, this is Tower City, huh? How do you guys feel about living in the shadow of Ashura? Honestly? Guy's a tool. That's pretty honest, yeah. All this "Ashura" crap is completely made up. Some local goblin got ahold of a ton of magi and became a creature with... So he's not really that powerful? Oh no. He'll straight up rip off your face and feed it to your friends. That was unnecessarily graphic.Tower City—a name which I totally did not make up on the spot I did—is neat in that the environment actually acknowledges the raging sandstorm outside. The background moves as if wind were blowing over it, and certain areas of town are cordoned off by sand clouds. That inn over there? It's not really half-complete. Just walk on over, and the rest of it will pop into view. This can be a bit disconcerning if you're unobservant and/or forgetful. It wasn't until a pebble casually strolled out of nowhere that I realized what was going on.   Four different people, actually. Though to be fair, only one of them was right. He's toast. Totally. Hahahahaha that guy? No he's dead as heck WHAT WHAT Not now, Sara. You said he went into the tower? He got caught?! Yeah. But, like you said, he's probably dead, or— Forget what I said, that's before I was related to him! We need to gear up and get in there! Hahahahaha we're dead as heckAs Roy mentions, we've got a fairly hefty amount of gold and new gear is available, so I decide to put it to good use. We pick up a few odds and ends that I'll show off in due time. We also rejigger our magi lineup a bit. Being single-minded is usually a good thing in RPGs (so long as you maintain party balance!), so we stick each of our guys with their bread-and-butter magi. Roy gets Defense, Heather gets Power, and Zero gets Mana. Sara, meanwhile, gets the Fire magi. This works as an elemental buff; you boost the damage on your fire spells while giving yourself O-Fire. As far as I know, you don't get X-Ice from equipping it, either. What a deal!  Roy, we don't even know if it's him! There's a lot of hats in the world! Too many, if you ask me The guy was wearing a hat. We know Dad was after magi. Ashura has all the magi. This is not complicated, people!  *huff* *huff* Slow down a sec! Dad! Daaaaaaaaaaaaaad *tackle* Stop being a spaz! The're still monsters in here!Slimes we've gone over, but zombies aren't fun, either. They're fairly resilient and have a tendency to dog pile a single character with their attacks. Fortunately, they're also weak against fire. However, as stated previously, I'd rather not rely on Sara and Zero to win all our fights for us.   Ashura has a lot of goons, doesn't he? No prob. That's why we bought new weapons! Eat taser, chumps! Man, what a ripoff.The StunGun seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turns out it's terrible. It only works on a single enemy, and the hit rate is laughable. At least it boosts Roy's agility. That's something.  How are you guys holding up back there? I'm exhausted. Pyrokinesis isn't exactly light work. Yeah. I don't know if we can keep this up, Roy. Just hang in there! We're making progress!  Oh hey, here's a welcome surprise. I bet Ashura's guards have all the good treasure!  INTRUDER ALERT, INTRUDER ALERT  And also the good traps. Oopsie.This actually isn't a fixed encounter, it's just conveniently timed.  Red bones have a punch attack and are laughable. Octopi, less so, but they're still not going to ruin us on their own. After we're done raining down fire and ice upon them, we pick up a Saber for our troubles. It's a nice upgrade to rapiers that's somewhat expensive right now, so we'll save it for Ashura. You'll also notice that's no less than nine enemies we're facing. Crowd control is incredibly important in FFL2, way more than in the previous game. You can get swarmed by up to 27 monsters if the game's feeling particularly nasty. Our magic users can keep it contained as long as they can act early, but we're going to need some backup really soon, or it's gonna get ugly.   And by really soon, I mean right now. Alright, I've got one more spell left in—  OW OW OW OW OW Get back! Ithim an úll!    crap crap crap CRAP CRAP CRAP  You guys okay? nnfnfffg. I can taste my liver You get used to it after a whileSnakes have high agility. Like, disturbingly high agility. The only way we can beat them on the draw consistently is to hook a Speed magi on one of our magic users—but then, we have to give up the extra elemental boost, and that means a one-shot isn't guaranteed. As you can see, snakes also hit very hard. (Also, I swear the zombie's nail attack is armor piercing somehow, because they're managing to get through Roy's defenses when he doesn't have his shield up. It's just little shots of 20 damage or so, but it piles up.) Add it all up, and we are seriously in over our heads. Get up! We have to keep going! Roy. Roy! We can't make it up the tower like this. I'm not gonna leave my dad here! Look, I am totally down with dying with you in combat, but they're going to call us weenies in Valhalla if it ends here. We need to regroup! Daaaaaaaaaaad! Roy. We'll come back. We'll get him out of here. *sniff* He can handle himself. I know he can. How do you know that? We've seen his kid fight, homie. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.   Ugh. Well, at least we made it out. And just in time. We're fresh out of healing potions. What now? Our skillsets are totally lame. We need to start over from the beginning. Guess we're going back to our world for a bit. I'll come back for you, dad. I promise!Next Time: (Re)Boot Camp Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Oct 25, 2014 |
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Oct 25, 2014 21:24
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Akratic Method posted:
Is ea. Actually I've been trying to study Irish on and off for a while now. When DuoLingo got it, I flipped out a little and immediately went through the first four lessons. I've had to put Welsh on the back burner though
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Oct 25, 2014 23:46
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DjinnAndTonic posted:Not sure how true this is, but I once heard that Kawazu said in some interview that he makes SaGa games so labyrinthine in their mechanics on purpose. His reasoning is that every time he plays his -own- game, he wanted to be surprised. On the surface, this comment seems harmless, but when you really think about how games are made... it must take a hell of a lot of complex coding to create something functional where the creator itself has no idea of the expected result. I mmmmmay see the problem here.  But yes, that sums up the SaGa experience perfectly: Even the creator has no clue what he's doing. It should say something that this thread has gone on for about a page and a half about game mechanics and bugs, and I'm still not stepping in, because I'm fairly certain that when I revisit it later no one will remember talking about it. (Possibly including the people bringing it up in the first place.) Anyway,
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Oct 28, 2014 00:42
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KataraniSword posted:Since Chokes got through 1 just fine, I don't have any doubts about him getting through 2 with no issues. YOU FOOL, YOU'VE CURSED THE LP 
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Oct 28, 2014 05:45
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Merry samhain, everyone! It's pronounced suh-whun and I will find you if you say sam-hayne. Anyway, what's everyone going as? I'm going as a guy who can get LPs done on time, because no one will know it's me!
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Oct 31, 2014 06:40
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Chapter 5: (Re)Boot Camp Alright, Heather. You're trained as a fighter, so we'll follow your lead on this one. Great! First, we need Zero and Sara to pick a weapon. You guys are totally wimps, so you'll want something that'll hit fast to make up for it. Hey! Nah, she's right. I could get into a fight with a ball of lint and lose. That's the spirit!  Okay, show us what you're made of! Got it! Time for a little arrow up in this piece!  Wow. Really? My bad. Ugh. Now you try, Sara. How's that? Did I do it? Is that how it's done? We've got a lot of work to do.I know what I said about grinding, but it's also been a while since I've played FFL2, and I forgot how character growth works. I need to correct it before we can move on. Humans and mutants in FFL2 don't get experience points and have to use certain weapons to raise stats. Growth isn't guaranteed; rather, using a certain type of weapon makes you a candidate for an increase after the fight. Generally speaking, the same stat a weapon uses as its damage modifier is the same stat it'll raise. Note this does not hold for hybrid weapons, like whips. I cannot possibly express how irritating it is to equip a strength weapon and get agility points from it. They're handy utility weapons, and I'd really like Zero to have one, but oh well. Anyway, all five statistics are given below, along with examples of what weapons might raise them. It isn't exhaustive, but it should give you a good idea.
What this means is, you want to use as many different types of weapons as you can to maximize your chances of levelling up. Attacking repeatedly with the same weapon won't raise your chances further; once you've used it, you're locked in. You can level multiple stats in one fight if you get lucky enough, so keep spreading those attacks around. One final note: To make up for their natural abilities, mutants level up significantly slower than humans. This, plus their limited inventory slots, puts them at a noticiable disadvantage. If they pop the right abilities, though, it's all worth it. Trust me.  Okay. Let's try something simpler. Good. I'm starting to get a little worried back here. I need those back, dude. They aren't cheap. We'll have to give you some training wheels. First, I kill a monster! BLARGH GLAARRRR ahem. Now, you guys pretend he's still there. ...seriously? Totally! Just, like, visualize. Okay... Perfect. But I didn't do anything! Exactly. How is this supposed to help us? And why isn't Roy training? He's just sitting there! Huh what? Sorry, I was just enjoying this delicious iced coffee. ... So delicious.Facing multiple parties is fantastic when you're trying to level. You see, FFL2 uses the old-school RPG targeting method. Once the order is given, your guy is going to swing at that target come hell or high water. If they're not there anymore, it leads to them "doing nothing," i.e. wasting a turn. But! There are two important factors in play here.
Great! Now try it on a live target. Sara! Sorry! Reflex.With all this in mind, it's possible to get levelling down to a science. If it's a single enemy/group, stopper your powerful guys with shields and let the weaker members use their weapons. After that, you dispose of what's left however you like—preferably with magic, so you can get a shot at increasing mana as well. When the multi-group fights come up, focus all your weapons on one group so you can get wasted turns. Then, have your fighters raise shields and mop up the rest with whatever magic/abilities you have handy. Obviously, you want to split spells between groups for maximum coverage. (Although, now that I think about it, you can probably waste a turn on magic and get the stat boost, too.) If we do it right, Heather clobbers a monster for a shot at a strength upgrade, Zero and Sara flail inanely with weapons for an agility upgrade, and then they burn everything to the ground for a chance at mana. Do this consistently, and you should notice stats rising at a much faster clip. Plus, you'll preserve weapon uses! Two for one! Roy, meanwhile, does not give one single solitary gently caress about any of this because his stats are purely equipment based.  Later...  Behind you! Got him! See? They're better already! What? Oh, we're done here. Great! Let's get back to the tower and rescue my dad! Holy cow, is that an issue of Nintendo Power? Maybe?After tower fights and training, we've got a pretty hefty chunk of cash saved up. We splurge for silver armor, because you always buy armor first. Always. Roy gets to two-fist silver gauntlets because he's awesome like that; robots aren't limited to the one-item-per-armor-type rule. We also buy refills for our basic weapons, a good chunk of X-Potions, and a little something extra for Heather and Zero. We'll get to that in due time.  Alright, we're back. And badder than ever! Less bad, actually. Like, bad, or bad? Bad. Oh.  You guys are way better at this than before! Thanks! Yeah! That Ashura jerk isn't gonna know what hit him. Neither will this guy. That reminds me, Heather. Yeah? You're good with swords and axes, but what would you do if all your weapons broke? Wouldn't you be helpless? No way. I'd just do this gnnnnnnnnnn *thud* Did... did you just kick him in the junk? Sure did! That seems kind of unfair, Heather. First rule of combat: First person to fight dirty totally wins.While we were in town, we picked up some martial arts! This is Kick, the next tier up from Punch. It has 20 less uses than Punch right out of the box, making it infinitely more useful. Martial arts in SaGa are a bit weird. Firstly, they increase agility, so they're a perfect fit for keeping Heather's stats well-rounded. Secondly, as the number of uses decreases, the amount of damage they do increases. It is my completely unscientific opinion that it jump tiers in increments of ten. I know this is true, because it's on the internet, and they don't allow things that aren't true to be put on internet. There's another nifty feature about martial arts, but I'll hold off on that until much later. Nobody spoil anything!   Sup! Nada. Cool, cool. Have to kill you now, though. Gotta do what you gotta do. Word. Woodman is a mini-boss for the tower. He's a golemn-type that's actually not all that powerful, but he's out of place for this zone, which makes him a nice surprise.  (Pictured: Exactly what you expected to happen) Dad! I'm here! We came to get you out! Oh. Um. No problem! We heard a spy got caught, so we came to free him. I thought it was my dad, though. ... It's alright. I came here to defeat Ashura, but, well, you saw what happened to me! You kids look like you can handle yourselves in a fight. What do you guys think? He seems pretty dope. I vote yes. Totally on board. Guess it's settled. This is your party, son, so lead the way. Ha ha! That sounds like something my dad would say. ...Twist ending: We came to bust Roy's dad out of prison, but we found this guy instead! I'm not really sure who he's supposed to be, but let's take a look at his stats...   Mask is ridiculously overpowered for this part of the game. He's also noticiably lacking in equipment. If you hit B, you can ask him whatupwitdat. So what brings you to Ashura's Tower, Mask? Everything. And I won't rest until I get it back. Omigod that is soooo cool. We'll do whatever we can to help!  Finally. My quest comes to an end. What, that's it? We walked upstairs! It took, like, a minute at most! And yet, it felt like ages. Well, now that you've got your stuff back, wanna kill Ashura with us anyway? Ehn, why not. It's not like I have anywhere else to be. Here's Mask at full power. Yes, that's a hammer and bronze armor. The armor is terrible. If you have the foresight to bring an extra set of silver armor and a decent sword with you, you can make life a lot easier on yourself through this next part. I, however, consider that cheating, since there's no reason to do that unless you knew what was coming. And anyway, that's a ridiculous expense for what amounts to a throwaway character.Also, you would think his hammer would be a handicap against these monsters.  Aweeeeeesoooooome~You would think wrong. 35 strength goes a long way towards closing any equipment gaps.  I'm glad we were able to help you, Mask. Sorry about the earlier mix-up. Hey, I understand. I have family of my own. Really? Yeah. Wife and kid. My son's a terrific boy. You remind me of him, actually. Thanks! ... We're getting into the restricted areas of the tower now. Ashura'll keep his elite guard's gear up here. Keep an eye out for treasure chests. Like reminding a fish to breathe water, duder.   What the heck are these? Steroids. They seem kinda dangerous to just have lying around. That's because they are. A lot of adventurers swear by them, but I don't trust them. You can get hooked pretty easi— GIMME *chug* I'm sure it'll be okay. Besides, we need all the help we can get. Hey, guys! Whatcha talking about? Nothing. Here, drink this. Okay!  Coooooooool.Amongst other items, we find our first stat potions. These things are a godsend. Unlike magi, any effects they have are permanent, and a single point of stats can make a surprising amount of difference. Use these immediately on whomever makes sense (so long as they're human or mutant!). I like to specialize my characters with certain themes; my philosophy is, if you spend time evening everyone's stats out, you get a party that's kind of meh at everything and has very little charm to boot. I'm sure there's a million people out there who can prove how wrong and/or dumb I am, though.  We also pick up some extra silver armor and a Battle sword. The Battle sword is a step up from longswords and a SaGa staple for journeymen fighters. It replaces Heather's long sword, giving her no less than three attacks in her arsenal. Our bloodthirsty yuppie princess is growing up so fast.  We gave Roy the silver shield, by the way. And while I'm in the neighborhood...  Yup. He's halfway to Mask's stats already. Roy's dad would be proud of him—wherever he is.  Pretty good haul! I Wonder why they put all that stuff in one room, though? Oh. I guess that makes sense. No sweat. We pound him with spells, Heather stabs him with her new sword, and we're done. Wait! So much for that plan. See? Aren't you glad you did all that training? Hi! Shut up, Zero. So glad you could make it! It saves me the trouble of bringing you here. Yeah, yeah. Everything we've done is part of your plan, you're the puppet master, blah-dee-blah. Admit it. You didn't expect us to show up. Oh, I'll admit something. But it's not that. ...body! Micronized?! Nothing, really... except using my scientists' new shrink ray to take back what's mine! ...her the power to heal and extended her life. You simpletons thought her power came from the gods, but I knew the truth. You're going to kill Ki just so you can get a few more magi? That is totally vile. Oh, it's not just that. Her death will demoralize your world. Without her calming influence and healing, people will grow restless and turn on each other—and I'll be right there, providing them with the means. With your world's gold and Ki's magi, I'll expand my empire across all of Reality. I'll kill two birds with one stone! I'll even take...  Forget everything you've done up until this point, that was Babby's First Adventure. It's time to put on the big boy pants. Ashura is our first real, honest-to-goodness boss, and he will be a rude awakening if you just bumbled your way up here.  No, not that one. (Though not too far off.) Ashura's got massive physical attacks that can one-shot most characters, high defense, and complete immunity to magic. Know what else he has? Stay strong, everyone! He can't, like, kill all of us at once! Yeeeeeaaaah, about that.  Ha! Didn't feel a thing. AAAAAAAA Should you be on fire? That doesn't seem right.Yup! It's our first hostile area effect spell! Given Ashura's mana, Flame can easily take half a character's HP off in one go. I didn't mention this earlier, but Defense is completely bypassed for spells. If your Mana isn't up to snuff, you're going to get completely trucked by magic/abilities. Having higher Mana will take the sting out of it, but it's still not fun patching up four characters instead of one. There's armor you can equip to help with that, but it's not available right now. Ergo, ow. Sara, of course, takes no damage because she has a fire magi equipped. If we had the foresight to equip Roy with a fire magi, we would cruise to victory here, because, well... Alright, enough playing around. Let's start with you, metalface. *plink* ... Do what now? ...do I really need to say it at this point? He's distracted! Sara! Now's your chance! Got it! How's that? Did I do it right? Zero, please tell me you have something better. No sweat. Check this out. *roar* Boom goes the dynamite!One of the items we picked up in Tower City was a psi knife. In FFL1, the Psi Knife was a high level magic weapon you didn't get direct access to until the latter half of the game. Here, it's available in the second world. Between this and equipment prices, it seems the world of SaGa's undergone a bit of inflation. The psi knife is neat because it uses mana as both its modifier stat and resistance check. Ashura's mana rating is pretty impressive, and Zero is still pushing 100 damage. Unfortunately, it raises mana instead of strength or agility, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, slapping one of these on a character is a great way to pump up their mana without totally killing their damage output. Psi knives are relatively cheap compared to spellbooks, so use this to your advantage.  We got 'em on the ropes! I'm helping!  Fools! You think you can match my power? I am invincible! I am a god! No. You're not. You're just a goblin with delusions of grandeur.  We manage take out Ashura in just two rounds—which is good, because if he starts spamming Flame, we won't make it to three. Get used to this. Boss fights in SaGa are ugly. Your goal is shovel out as much damage as you can, as fast as possible, and hope they don't get enough time to return the favor. And Ashura's the easy one. It's all downhill from here, folks.  ... don't want ... ... to die ... That six-armed bandit's reign of terror is finally over. Hey, want to know why they call him the six-armed bandit? Um... because he has six arms and likes to robs people? Nah.  It's because he spits out magi like quarters when you beat him! Nice.   There are other people out there who need my help. I can't abandon them. I understand. It's been great teaming with you! You too. Wherever your dad is, I'm sure he'd be happy to— Lady of the flipping Saw you're his dad YOU'RE TOTALLY HIS DAD ... He was trying to keep the magi out of Ashura's hands! He's wearing your father's hat! Why am I the only one that can see this?! What are you talking about? He called you son It's just, like, an accent. I'm sure he calls every kid "son." Sure do, son! I'm sorry about Sara. She didn't have the best upbringing. It gets to her sometimes. It's okay. I know how it is, being a dad and all. Oh my Saw you are all idiots. Wait a minute! Ashura's shrink ray! We have to go save her!Next Time: Little Big Men
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Oct 31, 2014 06:40
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Jegan posted:Psi Knives definitely give Mana gains, but as weapons go, they're not great. I disagree. Although admittedly, I'm using them on a character that already has a high mana rating. That's the thing about training deficient stats, sometimes you have to deal with doing piddly damage for a while.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. The fastest way to grind is to get your slowest characters to wipe everything out at the end of the first round. Conveniently, mutants generally have the lowest agility and (early on) the best at killing lots of enemies at once, which makes it really easy to train their mana while training your humans in whatever. Hmm. I swear I had one combat round where Zero used both bow and magic and increased agility. Maybe I just have the brain issues. At any rate, I've managed to blunder my way into some good stats, so whatevs! quote:Note that, due to a bug, mutants' strength growth is also zeroed out the way defense is for humans. Hope you weren't planning to rely on Zero's strength in the long run! We don't need some nerd on the front line when we have Heather DiMarco, Ruiner of Faces, Scourge of Saks Fifth Avenue. edit: Seriously though you guys, keep the intel coming. I've got a bonus feature coming up that will serve as a giant info dump for corrections and new stuff I come across. Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 15:47
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Gabriel Pope posted:FFL2 does things to people. There are people who will swear that their mutants gained abilities that they don't have access to, or that just plain don't exist. Final Fantasy Legend 2: An Adventure in the Relativism of Reality.
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Oct 31, 2014 16:50
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MightyPretenders posted:I've heard that the game keeps track of the last two rounds of actions for stat gains, but I can't remember where. I've heard if you get each stat to exactly 54 then you can get Mario as a guest character. I think it was from my uncle at Nintendo.
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Oct 31, 2014 20:31
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FredMSloniker posted:Let's keep Well. To a degree it's on purpose; one of the running themes of my FFL1 LP is how a few individuals doing extraordinary things downstream have a massive effect on society many, many years in the future. This includes myths, legends, and yes, even religion. But yeah, I really want to discourage real life theological debates here. The last thing I need is the thread clogging up with religion chat In other news, content is recorded for the next two chapters! We got some barn burners coming up, including the moment you've all been waiting for! And by you, I mean me.
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Nov 3, 2014 14:40
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content where it belongs, hm? Which is not in this subforum.
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IT'S THE MOTHERFUCKIN FARM CLUB Y'ALL Hey, everybody! Sorry this update was a bit late coming out, my life has gotten interesting as of late. I'll spare you the gory details, but let's just say I didn't think the words "kitten enema" would ever enter my day-to-day vocabulary. At any rate, I've split this next update into a two parter so I can get something out there. This is mostly story dump, we'll be getting into new faces, weapons, and mechanics in the back half. But for now, enjoy! Kitten enema. Kittenema.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:09
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