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Heithinn Grasida posted:Figuring out what to do if you don't read a guide or get lucky enough to stumble across it can be truly excruciating. Alternately, you can be unlucky enough to stumble across it immediately after leaving the beginning areas, leaving you in a situation where you can't really power up your party because you're too busy getting murdered by the plot. It's arguably the one thing outside of Riki's quest I'd call a legitimate dick move, because Asellus's intro segment is loving long and full of pointless blather. I'm sure we can talk more about it when we get there, though.
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Sep 10, 2014 11:24
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Welcome back! We last left off right outside Nomad's lair. Let's go check it out shall we? Nomad's hideout is kind of neat looking. It seems to be one of the first ships Tanzer swallowed.    We're going to see her no matter what you say. Oh yeah?  Welcome, I'm glad you came. Although, I'm not so sure about the bald guy.They have a question for you.What a coincidence! I've got something to ask you too. The rings! Hand them over.Your wimpy men don't scare us. I know, I know. You're Fei-on, big Kung Fu master who can take care of himself...But what about your children and old people? Can you watch them 24 hours a day?What! You dirty...Just hand over the rings or these people are Tanzer bait.  No!What? I'm not giving you the ring. You're a very bad old lady.Jesus! When did Riki get to be so cold. Old lady!! That's it! Get them! So now we have to fight Nomad's cronies. There's a lot of them here and it's kinda tedious to fight them all at once.  Along the way Riki turns into a Big Slime. You'll see this form almost every time you absorb Solvent from now until the end of the game so keep that in mind.  Fei-on shows what a badass he is by fighting this one guy the entire time.  There's a treasure hidden in this room. Of course we have to clear out all the enemies first. I don't think I've seen that sleeping enemy sprite before though.  Ehhhh.  There's another treasure in here that you want to be sure to get. It's a missile pod and it really helps out T260G.  Not bad for this point in the game.  Tanzer sure has a lot of organs.   And now we're thrust into a fight against a Platyhooks and a Razorback with buffed HP.  It's not too bad, in fact Riki is the MVP because his Tail Hit attack hits both for acceptable damage and almost always stuns the Razorback.  Yeah it's not looking too good for you buddy.  Especially not now that we found this combo (Sun Ray-Swallow Swing-Tackle-Swallow Swing). This will be exceptionally useful for the next fight.  Yes. You want to be careful about spending your JP and WP though. Overall this fight is pretty easy so you don't want to blow all of your resources here.  One more round and Platyhooks goes down.  This is our JP and WP at the end of the fight. Not great, but hopefully it will be enough.  You'll also want to be sure to save here.  It's really dangerous ahead. Are you ready? (Ready!)He's not kidding about that. This is a point of no return and a very easy way to find yourself in an unwinnable battle.  There's a couple plants here but aside from that, not much else.  This valve leads into the core of Tanzer, and to the second boss fight of this area. Eaggghhh help! What should we do? So one thing the game does here that is very sneaky is add Fei-on to your party. They don't add him until you've already seen this conversation and there is no indication that he joined. Which is a dick move because he'd probably be a better choice than Lute(+1)  Once we go through the door we're thrust into a fight against Tanzer's heart which seems to be attempting to eat Nomad. I don't get it either.  This fight is very difficult. Tanzer has a lot of health relative to your damage out put and some very nasty attacks.  The most basic and common attack Tanzer uses is Acid Breath which will straight up oneshot most of your humans. Fortunately Riki is in a form that is immune to aquatic attacks so he can tank it decently.  However that's not all. Every turn one of these...apendages will launch an additional attack. The other two can use Needles or Coils. Spore is the nasty because it does about as much damage as Coils but does it to an area.  This is how we stand after 2 rounds. It's only going to get worse.  Combos really are key in this fight. They help to make up for the fact that your attacks are so weak.  And Lute sparks a midgame sword skill as well. Not that it'll do too much with his lovely sword.  Thank God we found that level 4 combo. This fight would be even harder without it.  Unfortunately, we're not the only one who can use combos.  Tanzer can combo with his appendages, and any character who gets hit will be instantly killed. The one you'll usually see is Spore-Acid Breath which is what happend here.  Tanzer can also use Illstorm to try and poison everyone. It's almost the only time Saga Frontier poison is every going to be relevant because our healing is so bad.  It can also serve as a harsh reminder that Saga Frontier poison damage can be fatal. None of this left at 1 HP crap here.  This part of the fight was terrifying because if Mei-Ling and Gen go down, then I have no way to heal.   But after a few more rounds we're able to pull it out on the first try. Now a few more notes about this fight, this fight is actually on a time limit. If you try and fight too defensively Nomad will get eaten and you will get a game over. Additionally, we didn't see it and it's Tanzer's least frequently used attack, but Tanzer has the move Oscillation. Oscillation at this point is strong enough to KO everyone except for T260G, and if you didn't prepare ahead of time by buying him good equipment it is probably a full party wipe. All of these factors along with the other disadvantages Riki faces make this the hardest fight in the game (+1).  That ought to shut her up for a while. I sure hope so. You smiled, Mei-Ling!   Mei-Ling stay here. I will make sure there's no one left. No Fei-on!! Don't go!!  At this point we have to sit there and wait for Fei-on for some arbitrary amount of time. Every time we talk to Mei-Ling or try to leave Tanzer roars again and the screen shakes which can be kind of funny.  Just when Mei-Ling starts to give up hope... Little longer.He's here!! Sorry it took so long. Do you know how worried we were? Please hurry! How insensitive.These are the kids saying these last two lines. No I'm not sure what the second one is trying to say either.   And the ship is barfed out again and we get a concept art of Riki.  Then the game dumps us in Scrap so we have to pay the lady to get back to Koorong. gently caress you too game. RQHY: 6 buddychrist10 fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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Sep 10, 2014 18:22
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Riki being cold there was apparently a mistranslation. It was supposed to be more like "No don't do it! They have nothing to do with this." He then refuses to give over the ring because "Bad guys don't get what they want."
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Sep 10, 2014 18:42
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dude789 posted:
 Let the spite flow.
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Sep 10, 2014 18:55
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I never played this game, so prediction time on the hyped gently caress The Player moment.dude789 posted:Along the way Riki turns into a Big Slime. You'll see this form almost every time you absorb Solvent from now until the end of the game so keep that it mind. The last boss is a solo fight, it has an ability that instakills Big Slimes and it comes immediatly after another boss where Riki absorbs Solvent.
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Sep 10, 2014 19:13
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I actually had no idea the Tanzer fight was on a time limit. Then again I always do the junk shop glitch with Riki so
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Sep 10, 2014 21:00
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Your dog-creature thing repeatedly turns into slime - SaGa Frontier.
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Sep 10, 2014 21:25
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Thompsons posted:I actually had no idea the Tanzer fight was on a time limit. Your only indication is in the last couple of screenshots, where Nomad is in a different position than before. That's literally it. You have enough time if you're doing really well, but if your momentum stops for more than three or four rounds because you're trying to heal, and trust me you'll always be trying to heal, her head will eventually go in and that's it.
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Sep 10, 2014 21:41
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Derek Barona posted:Your only indication is in the last couple of screenshots, where Nomad is in a different position than before. That's literally it. You have enough time if you're doing really well, but if your momentum stops for more than three or four rounds because you're trying to heal, and trust me you'll always be trying to heal, her head will eventually go in and that's it.  I had no idea that was a thing that could happen and it actually creeps me the gently caress out for some reason. I definitely wasn't scarred by watching Akira when I was like 4, not at all Don't judge me 
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Sep 10, 2014 21:54
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Tanzer already sucks and they somehow made it suck even more. And you're telling me the eventual dick move is even worse than this? Just what even. What happened.
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Sep 10, 2014 23:06
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FelicityGS posted:And you're telling me the eventual dick move is even worse than this? Buckle up, friend. The ride does indeed get worse. 
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Sep 10, 2014 23:20
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FelicityGS posted:Tanzer already sucks and they somehow made it suck even more. And you're telling me the eventual dick move is even worse than this? I won't fight the claim that this is the hardest battle on Riki's route if not the game (short of that one "unlucky" circumstance I mentioned in Asellus's quest). You're guaranteed to be woefully underlevelled, will be underequipped unless you abused the Junk Shop glitch, and have to use Riki. The thing is, the dick moves later on aren't just screwjobs on the level of "ball-bustingly hard battles". No, things get more gently caress-you.
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Sep 10, 2014 23:29
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KataraniSword posted:I won't fight the claim that this is the hardest battle on Riki's route if not the game (short of that one "unlucky" circumstance I mentioned in Asellus's quest). You're guaranteed to be woefully underlevelled, will be underequipped unless you abused the Junk Shop glitch, and have to use Riki. Yeah, this is basically the worst in terms of forced underleveling. There will be a couple fights later on that you pray to whatever deity you believe in that you're prepared for when you face them, but that's standard SaGa Frontier fashion anyway. This is the worst time where the game knows you aren't really ready for it and doesn't give a poo poo. Thus, the bigger dick moves later on play to a totally different standard.
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Sep 11, 2014 01:56
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And just imagine, we still have five more rings to collect!   
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Sep 11, 2014 02:21
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In a weird way, I almost applaud SaGa Frontier for just blithely making itself too hard on purpose, knowing it's setting you up to fail. Like it was clearly intentional and not an oversight.
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Sep 11, 2014 02:36
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W.T. Fits posted:And just imagine, we still have five more rings to collect! Yeah, and I only remember three of them specifically. I know how one of the other two go but can't remember if it pulls any other special dick moves on you, and one of them I don't remember at all which means there's still plenty of potential dickery to be had!
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Sep 11, 2014 02:36
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It's a pity how they hosed up the translation - I like to see a hero that doesn't immediately fork over the mcgruffin in a hostage situation because they know that's the worst thing to do.
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Sep 11, 2014 02:44
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Black August posted:In a weird way, I almost applaud SaGa Frontier for just blithely making itself too hard on purpose, knowing it's setting you up to fail. Like it was clearly intentional and not an oversight. Forgot one RQHY, one that hates you so hard it seeps through all other quests. Two Words: Save Anywhere. Don't remember the game perfectly? Playing on an original PSX with enough memory to save maybe... 6 games so you can't just reliably make multiple saves? gently caress you, start over, and pray you'll be able to spark those wonderful techs the RNG graced you with the first time around half as fast.
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Sep 11, 2014 03:02
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Black August posted:In a weird way, I almost applaud SaGa Frontier for just blithely making itself too hard on purpose, knowing it's setting you up to fail. Like it was clearly intentional and not an oversight. You really only encounter the game lazily stacking unfair things against you in Riki's scenario. The others have their fair share of dick moves, but most of those just feel like oversights or that it wasan't as developed as it could have been (see: the last portion of Red's scenario, Asellus' intro segment). He's really the one unique bastard that couldn't be fixed with a simple change to the mechanics unique to his scenario. His scenario is entirely chasing flawed, awful concepts without stopping to realize that they are terrible and can't be made good without abandoning what makes them so bad. That or they knew they were making something kick-in-the-pants difficult for the sake of it and gave no fucks 
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Sep 11, 2014 03:13
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FeyerbrandX posted:Forgot one RQHY, one that hates you so hard it seeps through all other quests. Two Words: Save Anywhere. Don't remember the game perfectly? Playing on an original PSX with enough memory to save maybe... 6 games so you can't just reliably make multiple saves? gently caress you, start over, and pray you'll be able to spark those wonderful techs the RNG graced you with the first time around half as fast. Oh yeah, almost forgot about that. I don't think Dude's ever mentioned it, but each save file in SaGa takes up 2 blocks on a 15 block PSX memory card, and the system data takes up an extra block to round out a whole card. You're fine for the first couple quests, but if you want to keep saves of all of the quests handy, say for playing different quests whenever you want instead of one at a time, you're basically only going to be able to have one file per memory card after a certain point, so better and save somewhere you can't back out of later.
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Sep 11, 2014 03:22
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KataraniSword posted:Alternately, you can be unlucky enough to stumble across it immediately after leaving the beginning areas, leaving you in a situation where you can't really power up your party because you're too busy getting murdered by the plot I pity the losers who don't buff the gently caress out soloing the dungeon at the beginning of the game. Same deal with Red at Shrike basically. Savegames are free, health regenerates and inns are cheap, so why not get hilariously swole before the plot intro is over? e: of course this can make the game unwinnable if your decidedly un-buff starting party can't handle the massively overpowered enemy parties the game will then throw at you hackbunny fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Sep 11, 2014 |
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Sep 11, 2014 10:43
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There is, in fact, only one saving grace about the Tanzer battle - the developers actually throw you a bone by hiding a SanctuaryStone in the last room of Nomad's ship, I believe, which is your only source of full party full-healing in Tanzer. If I recall correctly, it's hidden up by the cupboards and may, in fact, not have a map sprite to go along with it - it's been a while since I've been to this exact gently caress-you.
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Sep 11, 2014 12:14
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:Buckle up, friend. The ride does indeed get worse. Maybe I should be glad I didn't understand this game at all when I was younger and just gave up.
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Sep 11, 2014 15:22
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If the Biggest Dick Move speculation is still going on, I'm guessing it's something like the original Dragon Quest/Warrior where you get a yes/no choice before facing the last boss, and the wrong option just gives you a game over. Only here, it'd be like five questions in a row with three or four answers each, and you have to get the exact right combination with no feedback on what the right answers were, otherwise you have to fight a massively powered-up version of the final boss you have no chance of winning against.
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Sep 11, 2014 17:32
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Volatile Penguin posted:If the Biggest Dick Move speculation is still going on, I'm guessing it's something like the original Dragon Quest/Warrior where you get a yes/no choice before facing the last boss, and the wrong option just gives you a game over. Well, the final gently caress you does involve a choice, but it's nowhere near as clear cut as all that.
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Sep 11, 2014 22:10
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When my brothers played the game, the final "gently caress you" was that a certain town that was mandatory to complete the quest would crash the game as soon as it loaded. The disk was pretty damaged, so I won't blame it on the game. It still counts.
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Sep 11, 2014 22:23
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:When my brothers played the game, the final "gently caress you" was that a certain town that was mandatory to complete the quest would crash the game as soon as it loaded. The disk was pretty damaged, so I won't blame it on the game. It still counts. That was me with Blue's quest. The game would crash every time it tried to load the magic kingdom.
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Sep 11, 2014 23:07
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Double Rabite posted:That was me with Blue's quest. The game would crash every time it tried to load the magic kingdom. Fun fact: you can also replicate this by using a Gameshark to fully unlock the Region Map, and then using it to go to the Magic Kingdom. Since you're not allowed to go to the MK before you fight Rouge, instead of (sane reaction) teleporting you to the MK that everyone else sees or (speedrun reaction) kicking you into the endgame, it just crashes because oops, you aren't supposed to be able to get here! (Fun fact #2: something like 60% of the Region Map's entries are debug areas; you aren't supposed to be able to teleport to nearly any of them)
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Sep 12, 2014 10:00
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KataraniSword posted:Fun fact: you can also replicate this by using a Gameshark to fully unlock the Region Map, and then using it to go to the Magic Kingdom. Since you're not allowed to go to the MK before you fight Rouge, instead of (sane reaction) teleporting you to the MK that everyone else sees or (speedrun reaction) kicking you into the endgame, it just crashes because oops, you aren't supposed to be able to get here! I had a lot of fun playing around with the gamesharked region map as Riki, since I got bored and didn't want to do Tanzer.
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Sep 12, 2014 11:58
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So basically Riki's quest is seven Lute quests in a row?
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Sep 14, 2014 07:13
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Glazius posted:So basically Riki's quest is seven Lute quests in a row? Riki's quest is seven Lute quests in a row while punching yourself in the dick with brass knuckles the entire way through.
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Sep 14, 2014 08:03
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Derek Barona posted:Riki's quest is seven Lute quests in a row while punching yourself in the dick with brass knuckles the entire way through. And topping the whole thing off by trying to eat a rabid wolverine whole.
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Sep 14, 2014 08:05
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Thinking about it, T-260's quest has the most recruitable mecs, and Asellus's has the most recruitable Mystics (which makes sense, given that they're the mec and mystic main character representatives) but Riki's doesn't have the most recruitable monsters. In fact, none of the monsters he can get are, to my knowledge, recruitable only in his quest, and he even misses out on a few potentials - I'm pretty sure the Slime from Tanzer doesn't force its way into Riki's party, and there's one that's exclusive to another quest. I'm not sure if that should be counted as a RQHY moment, since "able to make a full party of monsters in SaGa Frontier" is slightly worse than "can peel off own fingernails" in the list of achievements in masochism so nobody sane would really mind being deprived of it.
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Sep 14, 2014 09:13
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KataraniSword posted:Thinking about it, T-260's quest has the most recruitable mecs, and Asellus's has the most recruitable Mystics (which makes sense, given that they're the mec and mystic main character representatives) but Riki's doesn't have the most recruitable monsters. In fact, none of the monsters he can get are, to my knowledge, recruitable only in his quest, and he even misses out on a few potentials - I'm pretty sure the Slime from Tanzer doesn't force its way into Riki's party, and there's one that's exclusive to another quest. I definitely wouldn't count it as a RQHY moment. It's not a downside. It's just an interesting fact. Now if he can't get to monsters with some of the best skills to eat them, that would be a moment. But because of the way SaGa Frontier does enemies that's almost certainly not the case.
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Sep 14, 2014 15:06
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Prism posted:I definitely wouldn't count it as a RQHY moment. It's not a downside. It's just an interesting fact. We'll call that one a pending +1, then. I don't even remember if he does or not, I'm just assuming the worst because it's Riki.
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Sep 14, 2014 16:01
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Honestly, making sure Riki can't have an all monster party sounds like a kindness more than anything.
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Sep 14, 2014 16:29
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KataraniSword posted:Thinking about it, T-260's quest has the most recruitable mecs, and Asellus's has the most recruitable Mystics (which makes sense, given that they're the mec and mystic main character representatives) but Riki's doesn't have the most recruitable monsters. In fact, none of the monsters he can get are, to my knowledge, recruitable only in his quest, and he even misses out on a few potentials - I'm pretty sure the Slime from Tanzer doesn't force its way into Riki's party, and there's one that's exclusive to another quest. I'd say how very few sidekicks he can actually recruit is worth a dick move point. If only because he can't recruit Rouge for the same reason T260-G is locked out of recruiting Rouge.  Rouge will not join up with anyone who can't use magic. Mecs and monsters can't use magic.The only mercy you really get sidekick wise in his scenario is giving you Gen right out of the gate. Other than that, he's locked out of recruiting a deceptively long list of sidekicks that could help make up for how mediocre he is eventually going to be.
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Sep 14, 2014 18:06
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I've looked it up. Riki has 17 possible party members - just 2 more than could actually fit in his party. And five of those are Thunder, Cotton, Sei, Suzaku, and Kylin. So he could put together an all monster party if you went a bit out of your way. MightyPretenders fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Sep 14, 2014 |
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Sep 14, 2014 18:19
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I think the real gently caress you about riki being a monster, is that he is the literally worst monster in the game. He move set is poo poo so you need to hunt moves down. And I'm pretty sure he starts with the lowest hp so you need to change his form more anyone else. Even lute isn't the worst human.
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Sep 14, 2014 18:46
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Shwqa posted:I think the real gently caress you about riki being a monster, is that he is the literally worst monster in the game. He move set is poo poo so you need to hunt moves down. And I'm pretty sure he starts with the lowest hp so you need to change his form more anyone else. Lute is probably the worst human.
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Sep 14, 2014 18:54
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